I’ll start:
I could never choose a single game, but some of my favorite games that I played as a child are Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 & 2, The Sims 1 & 2, Medal of Honor Allied Assault, Runescape 2 (“OSRS”) and GTA San Andreas.
The RCT and Sims games gave me a lot of freedom, while making it hard to screw up. It was so cool that I could design my own house or amusement park. I loved spending hours doing just that. I also learned a lot about living life, managing people and things like economics.
Medal of Honor Allied Assault was my favorite shooter in that time. It very well might be my first proper FPS. The atmospheric story-driven campaign drew me in a lot. The music and missions gave some very intense moments and the online multiplayer was absolutely amazing. Rifle-only battles, freeze-tag or a regular (T)DM were a blast!
Runescape is one of those games that I never really get tired of. As a child I only played as a free user, while being impressed by every member I saw. I loved the atmosphere, the people that I met and the progression of my character. I went on adventures in the wilderness with classmates or went mining for hours to make some money.
I can still get drawn into this game and really feel like I’m on MY adventure, where anything might happen. There are not many games that have this effect on me, so intensely.
This game also learned me a LOT about life. I learned about having to work for getting a result, I learned about economics and how you can use markets to make some money (this was long before the Grand Exchange). I also learned to watch out for ill-intended people: I stopped playing for a long time when 11 year old me got scammed out of my gold-trimmed black armor that I had been saving up for for a long time.
Lastly GTA SA made me feel in love with the GTA series. I already loved previous games as I had played a lot of GTA 2 and a little bit of GTA 3. But San Andreas was on another level. The huge feeling map, the intriguing story and all the thing that I could do blew me away.
I loved learning about the lore/backstories of the characters and even joined a GTA-related forum which opened up even more to me. I stayed a big fan of GTA and Rockstar Games up untill GTA 4 and bought all theirs games, often multiple times on multiple platforms. GTA 5 was fun to me, but it never really got to me like the previous entries did. I think this is partly because I really enjoy the stories and characters of the previous games, and the (admittedly interesting) choice to use three switchable protagonist resulted in character development that wasn’t as deep and refined as games like GTA SA or GTA IV. But San Andreas… Man, I love that game!
Now I’m curious about the games that you loved playing during your childhood! What made them so special to you?
It’s cool how most here seem to be older, I was almost expecting people to name drop Skyrim and make me feel like a dinosaur lol.
I used to love the text-based adventures, like “Adventure” and I believe one was called “Humbug”. Even learned C programming at a young age in an attempt to make my own.
Enjoyed the Hugo trilogy too. Wasn’t a big fan of side-scroller games but I fondly remember Secret Agent, Duke Nukem I+II and Commander Keen.
My real love was RPGs, specifically Ultima VII.
I used to love the text-based adventures, like “Adventure” and I believe one was called “Humbug”.
There’s an archive of a lot of them on https://www.ifarchive.org/ and https://ifdb.org/
You can get modern clients for them, including on mobile (though I find playing with an on-screen keyboard to be kind of frustrating).
I could recommend Babel and Anchorhead, though both are kinda dark and may not be to everyone’s taste.
I used to love the text-based adventures, like “Adventure”
Any relation to the Atari game of the same name? I have fuzzy memories of playing a literal block that had to pick up a vaguely shaped sword and fight blocky looking dragons to get a blocky magic chalice.
Did some digging and the full name is “Colossal Cave Adventure”, though was commonly just called “Adventure”
Was the first well-known game of that type.You can actually find many repo’s on Github that contain CCA, like this one:
https://github.com/troglobit/advent4
I’ve it installed on my PC as well. It’s a fun occasional time killer
I go way back to the early days. I played some of the Ultima series on a friend’s computer, Atari 2600 stuff, C=64 etc. Zork and some of the infocom games. First PC game I played I guess was one I typed in on my Atari 400 and saved to casettte.
The first game I played till the sun rose was Populous. 1989. IIRC I had a 286-16.
After that, my great love affair was Ultima Online, which I played on the Baja shard from just around beta. I got a little taste of the dread lord days and into the rep system etc. I lived for that game. Moved on to EverQuest and WoW which both never really captured me as UO did. Spent some time with Ashron’s call.
I’d have to give an honorable mention to Total Annihilation and Warcraft and I am sure many others I can’t recall.
I spent a lot of my summer vacations as a kid playing Asheron’s Call. I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
Ultima 7 is very special for me. It was such a magical immersive experience when I first played it.
Ooh! Nostalgia time!
I have very vivid memories of Sonic, Pac-Man 2, Moto Racer 97, Contra, Final Fight 2 & 3, Knights of the Round, Earthworm Jim, Spyro, Phantasy Star IV, and Mega-Man. I don’t remember a lick of storyline but when I close my eyes, they’re there.
As for games that have a more emotional tether, that would be things like Legend of Mana, Chrono Cross, and Threads of Fate. All of which helped build my love for fantasy. I was enamored by the art style and gameplay of LoM, the fact that you could mix and match different skills and discover new ones was like a drug, add in a crafting and pet system and I was stuck. I have a deep love for the soundtrack of Chrono Cross, the combat system also challenged my stupid child brain. Threads of Fate was more of a casual playthrough, but I remember going back to it over and over again, because I kept losing my saves.
I also have games that were more communal: sometimes played with cousins and siblings or with me as the riveted audience. Things like Bomber-man, Tetris, Puyo-Puyo 2, Worms, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy 7-9, Valkyrie Profile, Prince of Persia and Grandia. I have stories for all of those but this is already getting too long. 😅
I see a lot of great names on your list! Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross are still on my list of old games that I want to play! But I want to finish Chrono Trigger on the DS first :)
I discovered I really like J-RPG’s and since then I’ve been trying out classics that I’ve missed when I grew up
Chrono Trigger’s pretty good! The soundtrack is equally phenomenal. :D I never got to finish it because I got stuck, but I hope to return to it someday.
I find J-RPGs have a unique sense of optimism and whimsy. Then again, maybe that’s just me being biased.
Funnily enough, I got stuck too in CT, at a boss fight. But I’m determined to pick it up again and finish it some day. I’m not even sure if the boss-fight I’m stuck at is the last fight of the game or if there is a whole other chapter. It’s sometimes hard to guess if you’re near the end of the game in J-RPG’s.
I also experienced that when I played Star Ocean First Departure and Star Ocean Second Evolution a few years ago. Those games are actually the games that made me discover my appreciation for J-RPG’s. Every time I thought “Oh, this is it. Story is over”, something completely unexpected happend and the story went on for many more hours. If you haven’t played those games yet, I would highly recommend them (but I might be biased as well). Square Enix actually announced another remake of SO The Second Story, so you might want to wait for that (but you don’t have to, the PSP version of Second Evolution is incredible as well). Second Evolution was one of the best games I’ve played in a long, long time, so I’m really exited about this one :)
I get what you mean with the optimistic and whimsy vibe in most J-RPG’s. I love how I get drawn into the adventure and get the sense of “Sure, I can save the world”, while not overdoing it.
I fondly remember the Activision titles for the Atari 2600, especially Star Raiders and the Pitfall games. Also the Scott Adams (not Scott Adams) text adventures from Adventure International on the TRS-80.
I’m with you in the Pitfall era. Spent hours playing Gangster Alley, Combat, Space Invaders, Frogger, Frostbite, Seaquest and countless others. We got our system well after the new, fancier Intellivision and Coleco systems came out so the prices had dropped enough to afford it. So much fun for so many years.
How far back does it have to be for childhood to count? xD
For a game where I had a deep connection with, probably the X-Wing games. Being a Star Wars fan in the early 90s wasn’t so common and having a polished Star Wars game where you can fly a X-Wing was just the dream come true for me. While I had played a lot of games before (Wolfenstein 3D was really groundbreaking for example), I don’t think a game caught me as much till then.
The tip top number 1 for me has always been TIE Fighter Collector’s CD-ROM. Everything about it was awesome. Mindblowing for the time 640x480 graphics, the iMUSE music system that dynamically changes the music to react to what’s happening in game, really fun flight mechanics, a massive amount of missions to complete, and the overall really excellently done Star Wars treatment.
For those who are interested, a free community-made remaster of sorts called TIE Fighter Total Conversion was released a couple of years ago, and has received several updates. It is based on the ancient (although not as ancient as TIE Fighter) X-Wing Alliance engine, and has been hacked and modded so much that it feels like a modern game, and it includes both the original campaign from TIE Fighter and a reimagined version of it that uses things that the newer engine can do that the old one can’t, such as having many more ships present at the same time and the ability to travel from one place to another via hyperspace within a mission, etc.
TIE Fighter works fine in DosBox btw. TFTC works natively in modern Windows. If you’re going to play either game I highly recommend using a joystick. Mouse control does work but it is not that fun. Gamepads will probably work too, but still won’t feel ‘right’. Also you’re going to need to keep your keyboard within reach as there’s a whole bunch of keys you’re going to need.
Little fighter 2 is a game that I fondly remember playing. I used to play with my brother, sometimes against each other and sometimes as a team against the computer. It was so much fun, all the fancy moves made me feel really powerful.
Escape Velocity was pretty much the game that instilled a love of gaming for me.
I got the game on a CD that came with Mac Magazine or something, played beginning missions for hours thinking that not being able to save was part of the shareware limitation; then realized I just needed to install it on disk. Sank many more hours into it as free, then a registration code was the first thing I ever bought online - I still have the postcard it came on, somewhere, and inexplicably still have the code memorized.
If steam existed back then, I’d be showing up on thousands of hours I think - I played as much as my parents would allow, grinding out credits and playing each storyline and then various self-imposed challenges … from there, got into mods and modding; I’d have to carefully set up the computer to not sleep and then run downloads overnight because we were on dial-up.
Probably put similar amounts of time into the sequels, as well; Override and Nova were both fantastic games as well. When I got my first PC and swapped off Mac, I still put a crude emulator on it just so I could keep playing Nova. I played from
Across the whole series, that was my main game from grade 5 to second year of college. In all those years, I met exactly two people who had ever played.
Hooray for Escape Velocity! My brother and I played that (alongside Lode Runner: The Legend Returns and Sim Tower) extensively growing up, and I remember excitedly awaiting the release of Nova. Though I probably spent the most time in Nova (especially after finding the TCs for the original and Override). And similarly, I’ve never met anyone since then who has played it.
If my whole home server setup went up in a fire, one of the things which would worry me most would be losing all the mods, cracks (since Ambrosia is long since defunct), tools, and original installers for EV.
(since Ambrosia is long since defunct),
That one winds up being such a wild story, too.
That Ambrosia went from The Darling Star of Mac software and gaming, into near total obscuring and quiet collapse, is just … bizarre. The choice to pivot to “serious, adult” tool software from gaming, where they had this loyal and devoted following and could have continued collecting cheques if they’d just made an agreement with a platform … over to a marketplace that was already saturated, no one knew them, and most of their tools were significantly more expensive than competitors with only minor polish and UI advantages to justify the price was one of the most openly self-sabotaging choices I’ve ever seen a company make.
That Andrew Welch just vanished afterwards is probably even more confusing. Trying to find out where he ended up or what he’s doing now … no dice. He’s occasionally surfaced for retro interviews about their old games, but it doesn’t seem like he’s still active or visible anywhere; huge change from a guy who was loudly That Mac Snob for years and was a constant presence on early internet BBS and forums.
Matt Burch doing nearly the same thing just compounds the impression. He is doing computer engineering stuff, walked away from games work entirely after EV Nova and says he “never” intends to return to the EV series or games dev in general. It’s seemed like he’s super emphatic across a few interviews that it was rewarding at the time but it is absolutely under no circumstances something he’d return to, no matter what fans say or what other inspirations strike.
Have to wonder if the internal collapse of Ambrosia was so horrid that everyone in leadership burned out completely and just wants to put that entire chapter into the rearview.
I remember watching my uncle playing Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past when I was younger, and when it was finally my turn with the SNES, I just couldn’t stop. It was the first game I ever played all the way through. I played the Mario bros, and 2 and 3 but I never could beat them (for some reason we didn’t have Zelda 1 and 2, but I doubt I could have beat them either). It was a moment for me, where I realized beating a game was fun! And it was easy enough for me to progress through, but not so hard like the other games that I would quit. And unlike the Mario games - I could mess up and end up not too far from where I left off!
It’s hard to pick just one but… the Tony Hawk Pro Skater Franchise! I played this with my childhood best friend during the “skating and ska is cool” phase we had in the 90’s - early 00’s. I remember we’d try to replicate the moves on our skateboards in his basement. Also the soundtrack was one of the best I heard at that time and it really shaped my musical tastes
Deus Ex: invisible war. it was so cool. it introduced me to cyberpunk and was one of the first games i ever played that really gave me freedom to choose how i was going to play.
I got a whole list, but I’ll stick to a few:
Super Mario 64 made me fall in love with video games in general. In another timeline, I would have been a game journalist because of this game.
Spyro the Dragon was super impressive when it came out, and was the second game I ever owned. It made me fall in love with the PlayStation and choose it for my first console.
Final Fantasy 7 is my Baby’s First RPG. But, Chrono Cross has the honor of my first major fandom. I enjoyed weird timey wimey stuff even then (and when I got to Chrono Trigger, I loved it too).
My dad surprised me with a PlayStation 2 due to my really good grades. He also bought me a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament. Later I got Final Fantasy 10 for Xmas, and that is still my favorite FF to date.
And like I said, PlayStation was my first console. What I missed out on, I emulated. Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, but most importantly: Radical Dreamers and Bahamut Lagoon.
Honorable Mention: my family played Bejeweled on the family computer A LOT. My little sister and I also played the hell out of that Gorilla DOS game.
GTA2 and then GTA3. The open world of GTA2 seemed so big, and you could do all kind of random crazy stuff. GTA3 then was the same thing but in 3D!
Also another favourite was Prehistorik Man for the SNES. Was just a neat platformer that wasn’t just the “default” Super Mario.
In GTA 2, One of the first things that I did when I started the game (in the first level), was driving all the way down to the far bottom-right corner of the map. The tank that was hidden over there was way too much fun!
The Sims 1, specifically the building. Playing the actual game was terrifying to me as a child but the best part was the music and silly things you could do with these blobs of pixelated dolls. This game had the absolute most horrifying noise for burglars and missed work days that scared my 8 year old brain to death. Its sequel, The Sims 2, is one of my top favorite games of all time and it is a timeless classic. The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 had their charms but theres no topping the old formula.
Link’s awakening was my favorite game on my game boy pocket, which was the first gaming system I ever owned. Ocarina of Time absolutely mesmerized me though.
