I had been through four consoles and five jobs before most of the games in the notes had come out.
My top five were virtually chiselled on stone tablets by comparison :)
- Zork
- Civilization
- Daggerfall
- MechWarrior 2
- The Journeyman Project
I played a lot of Atari and Collecovision as a kid, but games didn’t feel “important” until my family bought our first PC. After that, game consoles in general stopped being important. It was a new world of possibility.
Journeyman was amazing! Great story and pretty amazing 3D rendered graphics for the time.
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Sims 3
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Skyrim
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Animal Crossing New Leaf
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Cities: Skyline
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Sims 2
So I don’t really feel that old when reading the notes, I do however apologise to anyone having an age crisis reading this.
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Super Mario 64
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Pilot Wings 64
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Balloons Tower Defense
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Portal 2
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Banjo Kazooie: nuts and bolts (I dont care if it killed the franchise, I really enjoyed this game)
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Commander keen
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Wingnuts
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Burn:Cycle
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Myst
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Duke Nukem (the first one but also 3D)
Wingnuts was a dumb fmv ‘dog fighting’ game, but when you beat it you could play it again with silly dialogue. I also remember when setting up the sound card the test audio was a guy saying ‘ah veiners, just ze vay I like zem!’ In a bad German accent.
Burn:Cycle was an fmv adventure game that I adored, it also came with a sound track cd and a little packet of leaflets based on in game stuff that was really cool. I still listen to the ost on occasion
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Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
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Super Mario 1 & 3.
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688 Attack Sub
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Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe
Halo:CE would probably be the single most important, but it just missed my teenage years.
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Baldur’s Gate 1 (I think it took me 10 years to actually get to the point where I was able to finish this, but it was still the best advertisement that D&D, and fantasy media in general, could have hoped for)
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DX Ball (breakout clone)
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Minesweeper
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Gothic 1 (Elder Scrolls just fucking sucks compared to this series, especially the melee combat system and the characterization of the NPCs (TES does have better lore))
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Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (to this day, I still haven’t finished it. Outstanding multiplayer mode, though!)
I’m not that old, ya old coots!
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Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, Apex Legends, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (1 and 2) and Terraria. I’m not very old X)
Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask
Super Smash Bros Melee
Halo: Reach
RuneScape
Guildwars 2
- Pikachu volleyball. Legends, we played it in computer class
- Dota. The OG of moba
- snakes. The only game in our phone
- suikoden
- ff8
I m old.
You really aren’t.
The first one on my list was a game in the arcade, then a game on the Atari 2600 :)
Damn, Atari 2600 looks so old. The oldest I have is nes kungfu. The sound effects are classic.
Listing ff8 hurts, my list didn’t have a number attached to ff.
- Microsurgeon
- Quake
- Ultima Online
- Myst
- Fallout 2
I can’t believe I left Fallout 1/2 off my list.
- Star Fox 64, for sure
- Half Life was a very big deal for me. Couldn’t finish it when I was 8 because it was too scary, and it felt absolutely amazing coming back at 15 and blowing through it.
- Turok 2 seeds of evil. Didn’t play it outside of using the cheats. It was basically a gore Sim for me.
- LoZ series was a very big deal.
- Much later, Armored Core 4 and 4A would make me obsessed with good mech gameplay.
Man, it’s hard stratifying games you care about, especially when you have a massive log of them that all impacted you in one way or another. There were a bunch of free Linux games that I have very fond memories of too, like Nexuiz, OpenArena, Abuse, etc. Also a bunch of weird niche games and demos, like One Must Fall and Food Fight and Fur Fighters. It’s an impossible task, honestly.
My top 5 were (in no particular order):
- Pokemon Diamond
- Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue Squadron (PSP)
- Fossil Fighters
- Skyrim
- FTL: Faster Than Light
stone tablets
Right there with ya OP!
- Defender
- Tempest
- Rogue
- Gato
- MechWarrior 1
- Elite (Spectrum),
- Gauntlet (arcade then Spectrum),
- Dragon’s Lair (arcade),
- Star Wars (arcade),
- The Hobbit (Spectrum)
with a bonus mention for “The Empire Strikes Back” on Atari 2600.
So yeah – all these games people played as “teenagers” are games I started playing last year, relatively speaking :)
- Unreal Tournament
Don’t remember which game specifically, but the moment when you’re escaping out if the bowels of a living planet is unforgettable. Also the game is overall kinda creepy, I had hard time playing it lol.
- Borderlands 1/2
More towards my mid-teens, found about borderlands. Played it through and through, found great people in borderlands forums, it introduced me to so many good songs that are at the top of my playlists to this day. Two very great games.
- TF2
Speaks for itself. There will never be a game remotely close to how good TF2 was. Even TF2 itself.
Also some honorable mentions:
- A strategy game where you play as a mech that goes nuclear when destroyed, name is long forgotten sadly
- I’m Going In 2
- Hitman Silent Assassin
- Counter Strike 1.6/Source
And only recently I discovered World of Warcraft, specifically Wrath of the Lich King. Don’t really have anyone to play with, but sometimes it’s fun tanking for the entire group of randoms. I really enjoy tanking, when I know where to lead the group to lol.
A strategy game where you play as a mech that goes nuclear when destroyed, name is long forgotten sadly
Total Annihilation.
Supreme Commander as mentioned by others was the spiritual successor but I recall it didn’t fill the shoes of TA.
I haven’t played this yet, but I’ve heard Beyond All Reason is a very good Total Annihilation-like: https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Omg yes, it’s actually both, I played both of them. Thank you!
Supreme commander?
Yea :D I played both total annihilation and supreme commander, so they blend in my memory a bit
Definitely supreme commander
Based on the dates of the other games listed, I think it’s more likely Total Annihilation. In fairness, Supreme Commander is a spiritual successor; there’s also Planetary Annihilation. And I’ll just leave this here in case it’s of interest…
Moo2
FFT
Golden Eye
Red Alert
Mariokart 64
This list could also be alternatively titled: “Why I flunked out of college the first time.”
True. For me it was counter strike source 😄