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.
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.
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.