Nowadays there are rarely any truly great local multiplayer games. With most multiplayer gaming being done online, developers and gamers alike have seem to have forgotten how fun it is to sit in a room with a console, a few beers and your friends, kickin’ it old-school.
The following games definitely do kick it old-school, as they are the very best retro multiplayer games that still manage to be incredibly fun to play to this day. View them in the gallery below, and let us know your personal favorites in the comments section.
Old-School Multiplayer Games That Are Still Fun Today
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Mario Kart: Double Dash
Mario Kart: Double Dash is the most underrated Mario Kart game and it was also released on Nintendo's second most underrated console (the Wii U took this dubious honor from the GameCube, unfortunately).
Along with featuring some of the very best tracks in the whole series, Mario Kart: Double Dash also allowed you to play co-op with your friends along with going head-to-head with them, as it required two characters per kart: one driving the vehicle, the other throwing weapons from it.
The best use of this gameplay mechanic came in 4-player mode, as you can could team up with a friend to take on two of your other buddies, swapping between driving your kart and throwing red shells at them on a whim.
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Kirby's Dream Course
Kirby's Dream Course has withstood the test of time better than any other multiplayer SNES game, and in an age where smartphones and tablets have fuelled the so-called "casual gaming market", the simply-yet-challenging gameplay of Kirby's Dream Course is perhaps more appealing than ever.
Kirby's Dream Course is a golf game of sorts, with the spherical Kirby acting as the ball. Rather than instantly shooting for the hole, though, in Dream Course you're tasked with clearing each course of enemies, which reveal stars when hit. However, these stars can then be stolen by your opponent, which can lead to truly infuriating moments when you've spent the round cleaning house, only for your buddy to swoop in behind you and steal all of the fruits of your labor. A cruel but immensely fun game.
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Team Buddies
This underrated and often overlooked PS1 classic blended Worms, LEGO and real-time strategy gameplay, and it worked a lot better than it sounds.
Team Buddies tasked you with using your squad to stack blocks, which rewarded you with new weapons when you did so. You would then use these weapons to fight your enemies. Team Buddies featured 4-player splitscreen multiplayer, and was one of the most addictive multiplayer games to be play with your friends (or buddies) around. Unfortunately, the game is now incredibly rare due to it not being popular upon its release, and is now only obtainable if you fork out a lot of cash or use an emulator.
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Super Bomberman
The first 4-player game to be released on the SNES, if you owned a multitap for the console then Super Bomberman offered one of the most frenetic multiplayer experiences on the console.
Even if you didn't own a multitap (which was the case for many people), then Super Bomberman also added 2-player co-op on top of its legendary multiplayer modes, meaning that there were plenty of reasons to keep playing this SNES classic.
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Conker's Bad Fur Day
Conkey's Bad Fur Day's multiplayer was a hidden gem that perfectly complemented its ludicrous single-player mode.
Bad Fur Day featured a hwide variety of multiplayer modes, each one more odd than the last. These modes were essentially mini-games, and ranged from controlling raptors in order to feed a baby dinosaur, controlling tanks in order to gain control of a lethal corrosive gas and a racing mode.
Conker: Live and Reloaded on the Xbox brought an updated version of Bad Fur Day's multiplayer to Xbox Live, though it did away with the majority of its most popular game modes and was therefore overlooked because of this. This is a shame, because Live and Reloaded's multiplayer was also great in its own right, though arguably not as outright silly as its predecessor's.
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Super Smash Bros. Melee
Simply put, Super Smash Bros. Melee is the best Super Smash Bros. game there is. While Super Smash Bros. Brawl added a lot more features to the series, Melee offered the best gameplay, with it still being played in tournaments to this day.
While it suffered from a considerable amount of "cloned" characters (Mario and Dr. Mario being the worst case of this) it played more fluidly than any other game in the series, and for many it remains the GameCube's crowning jewel.
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Power Stone 2
The Dreamcast had a lot of great fighting games, and Power Stone 2 was one of the console's very best.
Originating as an arcade game, Power Stone 2 featured a variety of characters, a whole heap of ridiculous moves you could pull off and some clever, detailed stage design, Power Stone 2 still stands as a great game to play with your friends even 14 years after its original release.
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Super Smash TV
Smash TV was a huge hit in the arcades when it was released, and its ports to the SNES/Sega Genesis as Super Smash TV was equally as popular.
The game pitches players in a series of arena battles in a futuristic TV series, where they compete for prizes and, more importantly, their lives. Smash TV was violent for its time, which automatically made it a hit among the younger crowd, and its frenetic gameplay has surprisingly held up well.
