Gonna be going over five-spot list by a bit, because I'm a rebellious individual. Also, warning - words!
- SimCity 2000 - One of the first games we got on the old Compaq which was the first PC in our family. We got the game from one of my mother's cousins in the form of a small bunch of diskettes and the game had to be meticulously copied over for things to work. As it was in English, I couldn't play it, but my father was practically addicted. I would sit next to him and ask about every single thing on the screen, and later - when I started getting the hang of the controls, I would play with him by my side learning English the sink-or-swim method. When my father had managed to build a stable city, he would create challenges and branching saves for himself, like in one case where he saved one pristine copy of the city while creating another "Disaster" copy where he engineered a multitude of nuclear meltdowns and started working around that.
SC2K is definitely the one game which has shaped my view of games the most, driving me not only to learn game mechanics but a whole language to simply understand the game - and indoctrinating me with a philosophy of freedom, creation and self-made goals. In retrospect: with SC2K as the starting point of my PC gaming life, I was fated to end up playing EVE.
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun - The same relative who gave me SC2K would also let me watch while he played early RTS games (Dune 2 or 2k, can't recall). I was intrigued, but I don't think it was until Tiberian Sun that I really got into the genre. TibSun was, I think, the first game I bought myself. I had been following its development in various magazines, and the setting and art style absolutely blew me away. I probably played the demo of it a thousand times before scraping together the coinage to get the box, but as it was with Westwood products you were rarely disappointed.
As has been mentioned above, TibSun featured two distinct factions with entirely different arsenals, amazing graphics (shut up, I loved the voxels) and a story to just drool and awe over. What I think hooked me the most was stuff like how the game designers built scenarios and missions. Age of Empires 2 was released that same autumn, and hooked me in just the same way, but the Tiberian setting was burning into my mind like a hot ember.
- Sonic the Hedgehog - This was, to my memory, one of the first games I ever played. I believe I received the Megadrive/Genesis from my uncle, along with a whole bunch of games, so it must have been a few years dated by then (my friends acquired Sonic 2 at about the same time, so probably just a year or so). There were a lot of games in that collection (and the collections of my friends) that have scorched themselves into my brain (Chuck Rock, Outrun, Senna's Grand Prix, Rock & Roll Racing...) but Sonic stands out for its lasting power. I would get together with my sister and my friends and we'd take turns trying to get as far as possible, as one did in most games, and whenever we were at our place it would be Sonic that was running hot.
The music from Sonic 1 and 2 remain some of my favourite game music of all time, and I can probably play through Green Hill Zone Act 1 with my eyes closed.
- Doom - Back in the days of that ancient Compaq, we had a game sample disk that came with it to demonstrate the capabilities of Windows 95 (the interesting thing about the collection was that it was presented as an arcade hall in a space station where you could walk around in first person... it was very strange in retrospect. Here's the intro to it.). Among other things I believe it had demos of Doom 1 and 2, and I would play them with my younger sister all the time. I'm very happy that our parents weren't paranoid about video game violence, because seriously we were like 6 and 4 at the time (and there were parts of the demos that scared the shit out of me).
Despite my early exposure to the genre, I never really got into FPS games until much later, but Doom retains a place in my heart.
- Tribes 2 - This was my return to FPS gaming. I was twelve at the time and a member of some fanclub, and one day I got a call asking which one of three games I'd like. I hadn't really heard of any of them, and asked the guy to describe them. From his very vague descriptions, I figured that Tribes 2 sounded the most like a strategy game, so I went with that. When I got the box I was initially rather disappointed, because I had concluded that I had very little interest in FPS games. Happily, that game would take my notions and smash them with a big green mortar.
I never played much online, as we were on a shaky dialup connection, but even against bots or over LAN I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I wouldn't say that the game made me go out and buy every single other shooter on the market, but it definitely opened my eyes that there were games out there that were more intelligent than just "run and gun". I'm still not a hardcore FPS gamer, but give me a few days to get accustomed to a new game and I can definitely handle myself well enough not to ruin a team. When I was in school we used to play Quake 1 and Counter-Strike in the computer lab, and if I hadn't had Tribes 2 as a foundation I'm sure I would have missed out on a lot of fun.
- Tibia - With the coming of ADSL, a whole world of online games opened up for me. This little German-made online game was the first MMO I ever played. A classmate of mine introduced me to it, and I introduced every single other person in my circles of friends to it - creating a scourge which goes on to this day, even though I was quickly outpaced by my more competitive friends.
I would be content just sitting in town creating magic runes for retail or for my friends to use for hunting, while chatting merrily with my buddies and contacts. The game was freemium, but back when I started there wasn't a whole lot of premium content to offset the free stuff. Also, the game was very punishing. On a PvP server everyone was always flagged, and you were only protected in the down depot. Later they introduced a "skull" system akin to the colour flags in EVE, tagging player-killers for everyone to see, and severely punishing repeat offenders.
I stopped playing after they ruined my passive lifestyle by forcing me to go out and kill something every once in a while to get more Mana for my runes, but the game taught me a lot of lessons I still carry with me in EVE. Had I known how much EVE was like what I wanted Tibia to really be, I would have tried to get into EVE much sooner than I did.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons - What I consider to be the last games for the Game Boy, OoA and OoS were two separate games where when you completed one you got a code allowing you to continue the story in the next game. I had played Zelda games before, and I knew I loved them, but the Oracle games were the first I played through completely and on my own. They perfectly demonstrated every single strength the original Game Boy platform had, and enhanced it with entertaining metagaming. I think I still have notebooks full of codes for unlocking stuff like hearts, sword and shield upgrades, etc...
Personally, I still find the Game Boy Zelda games to be a fair bit more interesting than the more advanced ones like Ocarina of Time, because they are operating on basically the same look and functionality as the original Zelda games did. Overworld perspective, few buttons and directions at your disposal... it was a more elegant age.
- Grim Fandango - One of the best games ever made, Grim Fandango heralded the end of the LucasArts adventure game era by setting the bar at a level no-one would ever be able to surpass.
A story that grabs a hold of you and never lets go; a setting so innovative, creative and funny that I have never seen anything like it since; character design styles that intelligently skirted around the technical limitations of the time while looking incredibly stylish; and dat aztec-deco.
I and a friend of mine played the demo of the First Year so many times that we could recite practically every line of dialogue. During recess we would act out the balloon clown scene:
"What's going down, clown?"
"Back off suit, I'm practicing!"
"Practicing? Practicing what?"
"Wringing your neck, what does it look like?"
"Hey, twist me up one of those, eh fella?"
"Yeah? Twist this!"
"Bet you can't do a cat."
"Shows what you know, buddy! I can do anything! Birds, amphibians, famous poets! Go ahead, name one!"
"Robert Frost."
"Trying to stump me, eh?"
- EVE Online - No introduction should be necessary. It's EVE!
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Topic: Most Influential (Read 2670 times)