These could be games that left a lasting impression on you, games that had stellar gameplay mechanics, characters that captivated you, games that you played tons of hours on, etc.
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MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat
The Remembrance speaks to us on the evil of man’s will, of the reasons for Exodus, and the Rites of the Traveler. Arcadia is our destiny and our right. Enlightenment is our gift. By the Bloodnames of the founders we must return, return and protect that which is unique among the stars. Terra awaits us as it was written. We are the last of the Wardens, the sole hope for the Earth.
Wolves still prowl
Become warden, help to protect the word.
I still have the Clan wolf propaganda flyer the game came with and it turned into a lifelong hobby, I’m still making my way through all the Battletech novels.
House Davion was the first house I fought for on the SNES
- Contact Sam Cruise
- Robin O The Wood
- Kokotoni Wolf
- Back to School
- Killed Until Dead
- Head Over Heels
- Batman
and about a hundred more, probably. These are all on the ZX Spectrum. No one else start out in the early 80s with a Spectrum or Commodore 64 or Dragon or whatever?!
Looks like I’m one of the oldest here (Pacman guy presumably older)…
Crusader: No Remorse and it’s sequel. FMV cut scenes, isometric shenanigans. I would love a modern day remake that obviously isn’t a shitty cash grab.
There’s something special about those old FMV games. Sega CD had a bunch. Megarace is another that always comes to mind. And Mad Dog McCree!
Pokemon (1st gen and 2nd gen – plus some of the spin-off stuff from that era to a lesser extent) captivated me in a way no other games have before or since. Honestly, I hope nothing ever grabs me that hard again; it’s kind of scary how obsessed I was in retrospect.
A number of N64 games also made a big impact on me. Majora’s Mask was probably my second favorite game (after Pokemon) for many years. (OoT made an impression too, but I played MM first.) I loved the music in Diddy Kong Racing. I got 120 stars in Mario 64, and when I tried it again as an adult, I really appreciated how short and to the point levels could be (not that I played that way as a kid) – also the camera in that game sucked. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness kind of disturbed me a bit as a kid, but it’s probably the first game I encountered a sort of “New Game Plus” in, which was neat. (People have since told me that’s the “black sheep” of the series and that it’s really weird that that’s the only one I’ve played significantly.)
Duke Nukem 3D was the first game I modded, I think (very simple graphical stuff). Definitely wasn’t age appropriate but I played the heck of it anyway. Didn’t really get much into other shooters other than playing through the main game of Perfect Dark on N64 and playing split-screen Golden Eye with friends.
I also played a lot of Sim<Whatever> games – particularly SimCity 2000, SimEarth, and SimTower. Also had a bunch of others like SimFarm and even some of the more obscure ones like SimSafari. Streets of SimCity and SimCopter being able to load SC2K maps was really neat though. Played a fair amount of other city builders and simulation games like Caesar III and Roller Coaster Tycoon too. My parents probably hoped I’d become some sort of business manager. :p
I had a lot of creative tools back then as well which I treated as not-that-different from video games. Various Kid Pix programs (one of which had a bunch of odd video clips integrated – including a short documentary about jackalopes of all things), Kid’s Studio, Digital Chisel, some version of HyperCard, etc. Game Maker – which I found around the year 2000 back when it was still on www.cs.uu.nl – ultimately led me to being a professional programmer.
One that never really took off for the N64 almost surely because the controls were so fucked - Jetforce Gemini.
Those who took the time to tolerate and master the janky controls were rewarded with a shooter that was otherwise second to none. AND YES THAT INCLUDES 007!
Hearing the music cranks the nostalgia up to 10 immediately.
syphon filter and syphon filter 2. The multiplayer against my cousin where we just ran around and throw grenades at each other was just pure fun.
the first syphon filter was so mind blowing as a teen.
Tomb raider, AOE, command and conquer. Those kinda games
I’ve got a really fond spot in my heart for The Neverhood. It really opened my young eyes to the possibility that video games could be weird and artistic. They didn’t have to be an action packed generic mainstream capitalization of whatever is popular at the moment. As a kid, I could still tell it was a unique piece of work that required a lot of passion and creativity. I consider it the first indie game I ever played and it absolutely set the tone for what I chose to play to this day.
I still listen to the soundtrack nearly three decades later.
Thank you for mentioning this. My personal favorite was Skullmonkeys. High school in the ‘90s was a wild place.
Star wars Jedi knights games for sure. Asheron’s Call also got a lot of playtime as my first MMORPG. Tony hawk pro skater 2.
Do you remember which server you played for AC?
It was so long ago, I honestly can’t recall. I remember playing on one of the pve servers for a while before moving to a pvp server.
Edit: Did you play as well?
I did! I played on Harvestgain server (and then near its end I moved to a PvP server)
NES: Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, TMNT 2, Galaga and Contra (with Konami code)
SMB1 was my first game ever
Last 2 I played with my dad while friends played SMB3 and TMNT
Hell yeah Contra! I can still hear the restart screen!
Mario kart Street fighter 2. Super Mario world Tetris Dr Mario AND Dr ronitniks mean bean machine. Sonic 1+2
Now playing sf6 and buying son Mario kart and switch for Xmas.
Rollercoaster Tycoon 1, 2, and 3 when I was quite young. In my teens it was Minecraft.
FPS by age: Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Blood, Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Quake, Tribes 2, Counter-Strike.
RTS by age: Dune 2, C&C, Tiberium Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, WarCraft 2, StarCraft, Warcraft 3
Sim by age: Conway’s Game of Life, SimCity, SimCity 2000, The Sims, The Sims 2
Strategy by age: Civilization, Civilization 2, Masters of Orion
RPG by age: Final Fantasy 2 (4), Chrono Trigger, Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind
Adventure by age: Pitfall, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, King’s Quest, Space Quest, Tomb Raider, Grim Fandango
Honorable mentions: Microsurgeon, E.T., AD&D Minotaur’s Labyrinth, Golden Axe, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Ecco the Dolphin, Eternal Champions, Android Pinball, Solar Winds, Detroit (not Become Human; it was a car making sim on DOS), Crusader: No Remorse
Apparently we had the exact same childhood.
Now you’ve got me longing for my old Atari back. My top 3 games by a country mile were:
Supercars 2 - must have played it through a thousand times.
Ellie Frontier - sank many hours in to it despite never being very good at combat.
Sensible soccer - one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. Would often play with my step dad. Some epic matches.
These days you can emulate old consoles almost perfectly, with a lot of quality of life improvements. The whole memory can be written and retrieved in milliseconds so you can save everywhere and anywhere.
A raspberry pi 4 can emulate any console up to the N64. I’m still running a pi 3. The 3 can’t do the N64 well. I’m unsure how good the pi 4 is with the graphics of the N64.
I can run basically any game published before 1995. It’s just a matter of finding roms. They used to be easy to get, but Nintendo got angry with websites that were hosting them. So now you have to dig a little more to get them.
Maniac mansion
NES Spider-Man.
NES TMNT 2
Arcade Simpsons
Sim City and Sim City 2000, on the school’s Apple Macintosh computers.
SC 2000 was amazing!
