Why Retro Game Ratings?

Many button presses ago, in 1985 a young lad got a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas, and with his first play of the Mario & Duck Hunt combo game he was hooked for a lifetime spent in countless fantasy worlds with friends. 

New games have all kinds of rating sites, but NES, SNES, MegaDrive/Genesis, and many other classic consoles don't have that same benefit.

This site was originally started as a way to keep track of our growing game collections online with easy access to the titles we liked and would recommend, and also note ones we didn't like, and has morphed from there to today's site.

This site is created for newcomers to the retro genre, collectors, and also the next generation of gamers so they can discover the "good" retro games. 

There are thousands and thousands of games beginning from the 8-bit and 16-bit era, and the nostalgia factor is popular today.

When you spy an old cartridge or a CD-Rom jewel case at a yard sale or flea market - how do you know if it's worth picking up? Just because it's retro doesn't mean that it's an instant classic. 

That's why you came here.

All games on RetroGameRatings are graded on specific criteria to give you a level-set comparison of which games you might enjoy, and which are a waste of time and money.

The goal of RetroGameRatings isn't to have an instant database of crowd-rated titles where the more popular games rise to the top and obscure titles languish at the bottom of lists.

Each game rated on RetroGameRatings will be put through our scoring rubric, but also evaluated as to the kinds of players that would enjoy each game. 

Like RPGs? Want a good sports game to play with friends? Desire a challenging platformer to test your skills? What about a perplexing puzzle game that will require serious brain power?

As we continue to rate more titles, look for the ratings criteria to update, and the volume of hashtags to increase.