Games released on September 14
16 games that still hold up, from Alien Crush in 1988 to Deathloop in 2021
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Alien Crush 1988
Turned 38 this year TurboGrafx-16
A pinball table dressed in the look of the Alien films, with walls like vertebrae, skull shaped targets and a creature watching from the background, split over two screens. It was the first game in the Crush Pinball series.
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Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru 1992
Turned 34 this year Game Boy
Two friendly rival princes race to save a princess and are both turned into frogs, in a Japan only Game Boy action role-playing game whose engine later powered Link's Awakening.
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Contra: Hard Corps 1994
Turned 32 this year Genesis
In this run and gun for one or two players, set five years after Contra III, the Hard Corps task force is sent after Colonel Bahamut's terrorists, who have stolen an alien cell.
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Mario's Super Picross 1995
Turned 31 this year SNES
The sequel to Mario's Picross, a game of picture puzzles chiselled out of stone, with a second set of puzzles in which Wario takes over.
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Luigi's Mansion 2001
A GameCube launch game in which Luigi explores a haunted mansion to rescue Mario, stunning ghosts with a flashlight and sucking them up with the Poltergust 3000.
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Sly 2: Band of Thieves 2004
Turned 22 this year PlayStation 2
The Cooper Gang goes after the Klaww Gang, who have taken the last pieces of the robot owl Clockwerk, through open worlds where small heists add up to a big one and Sly, Murray and Bentley can all be played.
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The Sims 2 2004
Turned 22 this year
A neighbourhood waits for a household, moved into a house already built or into one of your own, and their lives are yours to run, from the furniture they buy to the parties they throw.
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God Hand 2006
Turned 20 this year PlayStation 2
Gene, a martial artist with a legendary divine arm called the God Hand, fights to save the world from demons, in Shinji Mikami's beat 'em up full of jokes.
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Rock Band 2 2008
Turned 18 this year Xbox 360
Up to four people form a band on guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and a player who fails can be saved by another's Overdrive. Its downloadable library grew past 1,400 songs.
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Halo: Reach 2010
Turned 16 this year Xbox 360
Noble Six joins Noble Team, a squad of supersoldiers trying to hold the human world of Reach against the Covenant, in Bungie's prequel to the first Halo. Firefight sends waves of enemies at up to four players.
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FTL: Faster Than Light 2012
Turned 14 this year
Your ship carries critical information to an allied fleet across eight sectors generated anew each time, with a rebel fleet closing in behind it the whole way.
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Divinity: Original Sin II 2017
Turned 9 this year
A Godwoken, one of the persecuted users of a magic called Source, takes up the fight against the monstrous Voidwoken in Rivellon, with up to four players sharing the squad. Fights are turn based puzzles of elements, armor and high ground.
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Hiveswap: Act 1 2017
Turned 9 this year
Joey Claire, a human girl, is accidentally carried off to Alternia, the planet of the trolls, in the first act of a game set in the Homestuck universe. Its story and cast are its own, so it needs no knowledge of the rest.
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2018
Turned 8 this year PlayStation 4, Xbox One
The close of the trilogy that began in 2013, in which Lara takes a Maya dagger in Mexico, sets off an apocalypse, and follows Trinity to Peru and the hidden city of Paititi.
