I saw this Lemmy post, but a huge list of games with no discussion isn’t very interesting! Let’s talk about why the games that influenced us had such a big impact - how they affected us as people.
For me, it was the PC game Creatures. It’s a life simulation game featuring cute little beings called ‘Norns’ which you raise and teach.
You can almost think of it like a much cuter predecessor to The Sims, but which claimed to actually “simulate” their brains.
As a thirteen-year-old it was the first game that made me want to go online and seek out more info. What I discovered was a community of similar-interest nerds hanging out on IRC chat, and it felt like for the first time in my life I had “found my people” - others who weren’t just friends, but whom I really resonated with.
I learned web development (PHP at the time!) so I could make a site for the game, which became the foundation for my job in software engineering.
And through that group I also discovered the Furry community, which was a wild ride in itself.
So yeah, Creatures. Without that game, I think I’d have become quite a different person.
Halo 1-3
They are some of the best games ever, playing halo 1 for the first time after getting an xbox for christmas hit me like a freight train and to this day my love of fps games is in large part to the endlessly interesting tactics in halo multiplayer and how much fun I have learning them.
Playing a big team battle halo infinite seems like replaying a memory I never actually had in the best way.
Still to this day even if I haven’t played halo in years, I will kick your butt.
I peaked hard on Halo. I wish I had the gear/inclination to start a YouTube channel for it. Back in those days YouTube wasn’t the high-paying career it is today, and i was convinced it would be a waste of money to get the gear required to start one.
I’ve properly grown up since then though, and now im nowhere near the best at any video game. I often wonder how different life would be if I’d managed to just sit at home playing games every day and be a near millionaire from it.
you can always start now but I get you
DOOM. It blew my mind when i played it. I learned a new genere, how fast paced a game can be and how clever map design makes a good game. I also learned about shareware which lead to a broader interest in the internet as a whole. Later i got a computer with a soundcard and when i fired up DOOM with music for the first time, it felt like a revelation.
As a child, has to be Diablo 2. I had no idea what I was doing but I had fun. And it got me into reading, actually. I read some books now and then, but wasn’t an avid reader. But when I played Diablo 2, I found out there are books from the Diablo world and got one. I remember when I got home I was like “ok, since I got the book I will read one chapter and then go to playing” - well I didn’t turn on the PC for 3 days until I have finished the book. And then went to get more.
Another was World of Warcraft (though I was not exactly a kid by then). It made me fall in love with MMOs, a genre which I still love (though no game holds me today quite as WoW did - still hope for one though). And thanks to it I got to know people I’m friends with to this day.
I love how you didn’t mean to read the whole book but totally got captured haha. Definitely a formative experience :)
I would say Age of Empires 2 which was where I first used the name that I still have on here, over 25 years later. Its amazing editor also resonated with my urge to create my own games without requiring programming knowledge that I just didn’t have at 11 years old. I went on to create custom content for Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, eventually studied computer science and joined some indie gamedev communities where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still meet in person once or twice a year. I never became a full time game developer but I worked on some stuff part time in the mid 2000s and still do it as a hobby.
I remember making custom maps for the Star Trek: Armada RTS with the in-game editor, and I tried my hand at making some Half Life maps, too. For me that didn’t turn into any big community like your experience did, but it definitely helped me to believe I could be a creator of things, and looking back that was probably important :)
I remember I rapidly advanced my typing skills at one point as a kid purely from trying to enter cheat codes quick enough in AO2 over and over again lol.
Competence through necessity! :)
!pizza !pizza !pizza
I think Warcraft III, it built a certain mixture of gameplay and lore that one way of another shaped all the games I regrettably sunk way too many hours into:
- World of Warcraft
- League of Legends
- Dota
I would say Shufflepack which made me into a kid that wanted to played videogames all the time, but I feel that has not “influenced” me much, and any other title would have had the same effect.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
My older cousins got me into it, and they were the coolest.
My first playthrough took months to finish. I would just roam fighting every enemy, cutting every bush, charge into every tree, sprinkle magic powder on every living being to see if they would transform. I loved that it felt limitless in the secrets and exploration. It’s definitely the main reason I’m so into the Dark Souls games as an adult.
I think as adults we’re still looking for a game that recaptures that childhood wonder.
One game that comes very close is Tunic, which is a zeldalike with a lot of spirit. I won’t spoil it for you or anyone else who may not have played, but it’s brilliant and I highly recommend it.
Best enjoyed on a lazy Saturday morning snuggled in a blanket pretending you’re nine years old again.
I played TUNIC fairly recently and I also love and recommend it.
Yay <3
Tunic felt to me like being 3 or 4 again. Unable to read the instructions, working it out from the pictures and button icons.
I didnt complete it, I got stuck against some baddy quite early on and just sorta lost interest, but its on my list of games to go back to.
You should definitely go back, it’s so fun to learn about the inscrutable manual pages.
Rather than feeling like I was four, my experience was more like as if I was a kid in the 90s and my Dad was a businessman who brought home Zelda from Japan but it was all in Japanese and I didn’t know Japanese lol.
One thing to note about Tunic is that it has really good accessibility options. You can go in and give yourself extra hearts, or you can even turn on invincibility if you are really struggling and need to.get past a tough part sonyou can continue with the.story :)
Tales of Phantasia.
At the end, you find out that the BBEG was controlling monsters and waging war against the kingdom to save both your world and his.
You’re literally the villian in his story.
What a twist :) I like it when games subvert your expectations
Ocarina of Time - it was mindblowing to have the open world at the time (I didn’t play Ultima 7 until much later) and the music is incredible.
Dwarf Fortress. That’s where my mild obsession with technological bootstrapping and self-sufficiency started.
Although I think I was more of a tween or teen when I discovered it. If I needed to be an actual child, it’s harder, because Mario Kart and JumpStart influenced nothing. Probably RuneScape; it’s fuzzy, but I think that was my first taste of internet culture.
It wasn’t my first RPG, but playing through Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US) in middle school made me fall in love with music.
I ended up asking my parents for a digital piano and acoustic guitar which eventually spiraled into download ModPlug Tracker to sequent music. I didn’t have a powerful computer back then so I’d record one-shot samples from my digital piano and spent a few hours each day trying to create my own music.
I stopped recording around 2012 because I got really sick and music didn’t pay the bills. I’m a father now with a 5 year old son and I’m looking forward to sharing my love of music with him.
If anyone is interested, I can share one of my very early tracks and one of my last recordings to listen to. It’s one of my favorite things to do, sharing the culmination of my work.
Feel free to share. Would love to check your music.
I replied to the OP in an adjacent post but I’ll paste it here as well.
My very first track (1996) Anteros Beat
My personal favorite track (2011) Starbortorium
And my last track that I never got to finish because I got really sick (2012) I’m Not A Bargain
I was never formally trained in music but I absolutely fell in love with everything about it. I ended up writing poetry and lyrics a lot towards the end up my recording journey. I’m hoping to get back into it once my son is a bit older but I’d need to purchase a lot of gear I sold haha.
Thank you for listening. It means the world to me.
It’s great that you can trace your love of music back to that specific game. Go ahead and share! I’m not really a musical person myself and only just started learning piano as my first ever instrument. That’s one childhood regret I’m working on fixing :)
My very first track (1996) Anteros Beat
My personal favorite track (2011) Starbortorium
And my last track that I never got to finish because I got really sick (2012) I’m Not A Bargain
I was never formally trained in music but I absolutely fell in love with everything about it. I ended up writing poetry and lyrics a lot towards the end up my recording journey. I’m hoping to get back into it once my son is a bit older but I’d need to purchase a lot of gear I sold haha.
Thank you for listening. It means the world to me.
Toy Story 2 for PS1, it hasn’t aged at all, and it looks better than the praised MGS (silly comparison, and graphic style helps the Disney game, but I have never seen praises to that title regarding that field, also I played Toy Story as a kid and MGS as a grown up, that’s why I brought this) change my mind.
Metal Gear Solid?
Yes, that one.
That would be games like Space Quest, Kings Quest and the like. I’m not a native English speaker. And my dad gave me two dictionaries to look up words.
Learning English at a young age opened a world of possibilities. Playing more games of course like Monkey Island and whatever adventure or rpg game that came out.
But I quickly started to read in English and had no problems communicating with other English speaking folk.
Pretty influential, most of the things I read/listen are in English still. Go there on vacation and whatnot.
Probably Sonic Mega Collection because it really got me into platformers and made me into a Sonic fan. Kinda solidified my taste in games a little as I’ll gladly take a family friendly platformer like Sonic or other titles like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Yooka-Laylee over an online PVP game like any call of duty because Sonic taught me to love platformers more, even to this day.
Also kinda solidified the fact that I’d rather casually play through a lot of games and not be that guy who tries to be perfect at a game. That caused me to get where I am today where I’ll play co-op in a game but avoid full-on PVP with a random group of people because I know they’ll mop the floor with me and I’d just end up quitting before giving the game a fair shot.
Mafia 1. Not only is it still one of the best single player storylines, it’s also how I “met” my best friend. My family had just moved between cities and I had to change schools. I obviously didn’t know anybody yet and joining a class with existing social circles can be hard. The first common ground I found with someone was this game, as we both had played it and struggled with the same mission (“The Race” iykyk). We hung out after school trying to beat this game together. This is essentially how our 15+ year long friendship began.
I also really got into classic cars because of the game and my future hobbies and career would most likely have been very different had I not played it.
Zack McKracken
