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[Ken]

I'd like to ask the group what you consider to be your most influential gaming experiences.  By that I mean those games that made you redefine what you thought was possible in the medium or that set a standard for quality that has yet to be reproduced in your eyes.  These aren't necessarily the games that you've played the most or even that you remember the best, but are instead the ones that shaped the terms by which you measure all other games.  Who knows, they may have even shaped who you are as a person in some ways.  They could be very old titles played in your childhood or something relatively new that hit every single note perfectly and reminded you of the wonder of those more youthful gaming days.  Take a little time, think about everything you've played over the years, and try to boil it down to a list of five.  I'm very curious as to your selections.  Here are mine:

• X-COM: UFO Defense (brought in the raw recruits, watched them grow through challenging and dangerous missions, guided them toward a combat specialty, researched and produced new and better equipment for them, and sent them into the fray again and again... so, when they were finally cut down by some random Sectoid holed up in a building like a punk, I really got mad, and it felt good to demolish that alien *!%@& and the farm house it was in with volley after volley of rockets and grenades)
• Master of Orion II (if 4X strategy games were grown from DNA, one of the base pairs would be MOO; a lesser-known 90's title called Ascendancy runs a close parallel to MOO2 and took a laudable hard sci-fi line on alien species (lots of weirdness and hypothetical lifeforms instead of a menagerie of forehead ridges); no space empire-builder since has quite managed to capture the same majesty that MOO2 conveyed, and technology has taken the genre in the direction of hybrids like Sins of a Solar Empire, so I think it is unlikely I'll ever see a worthy successor to the original formula (MOO3 was a wreck), but great credit to modern accomplishments in the 4X genre is owed to the foundations laid at the Battle at Antares)
• Civilization II: Fantastic Worlds (this was the first time my eyes were opened to the creative process that we now call modding and it turned the already magnificent experience of Civ 2 into a platform from which to create and conquer an infinite number of worlds; although it was really just an expansion pack, this significantly expanded my gaming universe)
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (a portrait of a bleak yet hopeful future for humanity that meaningfully combined good strategy gameplay (Outpost, sadly, was a buggy and incomplete if memorable mess) with hard science fiction and social/philosophical commentary for the first and only time I can recall; it has yet to be matched)
• Mass Effect (this was the first time I played an RPG and felt like I wasn't in control of the main character or the storyline but that the were in control of me... rather than "playing as Shephard", I was Shephard, shaped and driven by the surroundings and events of the story; the first game and the series that it has grown into now define the roleplaying genre for me such that a new title may well be very good but "it was no Mass Effect")

[Varrent]

I'm probably much younger than alot of you, so my list might be a little different, anyhow I like this idea, so here goes:

• Everquest - This was the very first MMO I had played, my dad introduced me to it when I was in Elementary School and I still remember how cool it felt to throw fireballs and summon elementals and pretend to be this Dark Elf doing quests. I'll also never forget the sound the first thing I ever killed in a game (Gaint Rat) made when it died. Sqeeeeeeee!
• Dungeons and Dragons: Online - This is the first game I seriously got into roleplaying in. And yeah, I know its not tabletop, but it was free to play when I downloaded it, and had a newb friendly community. I have since played a few tabletop games, and loved it. My account over there is actually still active, and I go play my cleric every now and then.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - First FPS game, and its what got me into the PVP scene in every other game I have played since, the competitive element just makes it seem more interesting. Self admitted EFT-Warrior and KB Whore.
• Portal - This game is probably the major factor that pulled me away from fantasy based games (D&D, WoW) and into Sci-Fi, along with discovering The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and 2001: A Space Oddessy. Also, it is just plainly epic in my opinion. Between Portal and Portal 2 I have had some of my best gaming memories in those puzzles, and listening to GLaDOS endless and hilarious taunting. Obligitory Companion Cube Here: 
• Sonic the Hedgehog - The first video game I ever played. And it was on a SEGA Game Gear (link provided if any of you have no clue what it was). It was my dad's system that he had to keep busy when he was overseas for work. I inherited it when I was like 5 years old and I just sat there collecting rings for hours.

Mario Bros. And Legend of Zelda make it up there too. The first classic games I played, I still keep up with the newer ones in the series, but I still think the originals were the best.

[Bacchanalian]

Final Fantasy III (aka VI) - Played this when it first came out, think I would have been about 13.  I had played a couple of the earlier ones, but they never really did much for me--I enjoyed them but they didn't stay with me.  FFIII, however, struck a chord.  The story sucked me in and it was the first time I'd ever really thought "wow, this isn't just a video game, this is art".  The music in particular is what sticks with me--note that this was SNES, so we're talking 16 bit here.  I can remember being floored by the amount of time that had to have gone into the music.  Every character (there were many) had their own theme, cities/areas of the game all had their own music, etc--there was even a mini-opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwHrQdC02FY
Another bit from the same general part of the game, done by an orchestra/opera singers:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NC45S948ss
Kefka's theme--one of the better villains of any game I've played, and again another fantastic piece of music.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hqmeDtVEoE
One of my favorite area themes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8CmlIhSf-U (the hissing I believe is because it was always raining in that zone, but I could be imagining things).

I'll leave that with a more somber piece:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m69X198EAxk

(this has made me want to go dig my SNES out of storage and play this again btw, though I don't even know if my flatscreen TV has a coax input)

So yeah, you can tell that FFIII/VI tops my list by about 10 miles. 

Tetris - Got it for the Nintendo probably right before or after I moved to Argentina when I was 9 (1989-1990).  My father and I used to play and compete for highest score, and I kept the NES even when I had an SNES just so he and I could play this game.  We played all the way through until around when I hit high school.  In college, they released a 4 player version for N64, so I got it and my friends and I used to play this while drinking/smoking/what-have-you on nights when there weren't parties or other things to do.  Good times.  And of course, the music.  My favorite bit of it--complete with the sped-up version for when you fuck up and let the blocks stack too high, as though you aren't already stressed out at level 18 when you make an oops and you have to make instant decisions on what to do to avoid losing--goes until about 2:00:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHEs5kDwuck&feature=player_detailpage#t=25s

Incidentally, an absolutely fascinating BBC documentary on the history of Tetris:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9dO_iL7lo  Part 1 of 6.

Yikes.  That's only 2. 

Diablo II - Sucked me in later in college.  Junior and senior year, several friends of mine and I would play together over the college network.  It wasn't until I graduated from college that I started playing online, but once I did, through a forum (the first I'd ever registered on, incidentally--I later ended up as a moderator on the sister WoW forum), diabloii.net, I "met" quite a few people that I wound up playing with.  This is where I first discovered the hilarity of griefing, incidentally.  Bots were common on the ladder, and they would create open games to run the end boss of the game for XP--the more people in the game, the more XP, so they'd be public.  The bot would use a maphack+teleport ability (sorceress or attainable through a runeword item and thus usable on any class) to get to the final boss, open a town portal, and everyone in the party would hop through and kill stuff.  As soon as it was over, the bot would leave the game and create a new one with the same name, #2 or whatever, and so on endlessly.  So we used to emulate bots, set up these games, get people comfortable, and then I'd go and find the nastiest most devastating spawn I could find, and open a portal right in the middle of it.  Everyone dies.  The fun part is, dying in D2 in hell mode had an XP penalty attached to it, often harsh enough that it would set you back several runs worth of XP.  Some of the others in the group, also friends of mine, would convince people it was just a glitch with the bot, they ran with it all the time and it only did it once in a while.  A few games later, I'd do it again.  And so forth.  Yes, I'm a bastard.  But fuck people who ran bots/ran with bots.  In any case, eventually through those same people, I came onto my first true MMO:

World of Warcraft - Yes, I played.  For years.  My first MMORPG, as I don't really count Diablo since I played for so many years in single player mode or with friends in the next room in what amounted to a LAN party.  Still log in once in a while and tinker around.  Formed a guild out of a dozen people that I knew through the diablo forums, and within 6 months we'd built a guild of 100 or so people and were setting out to raid.  I was at the helm, and kept the guild running through 300 people and 3 years (it's now 6 years old and counting, though in the last 6 months or so it's finally winding down and dying) before passing it off to another friend.  I met a few dozen people through WoW, and had two roommates that I met originally through the guild who later moved to my city and needed a place to stay.  A few more traveled to the US for the first time on my sponsorship for a visa (apparently South Africans need a sponsor) and my couch as their place to crash (I was in the Washington DC area at the time, so was a good place for them to visit).  I traveled three times across the country for guild meets, and eventually found EVE through another player in my guild, Scorpio Dantes as he was known in EVE.  He was another office of the guild.  Incidentally, he's one of the many members of the guild that I've met and hung out with, though he and I never did get around to going fly fishing together, it might happen still--he only lives about 5 hours away from me right now.  In any case, WoW was the first game that introduced me to the idea of making real friends via the internet, and I made lots.  Still in touch with quite a few, and wind up visiting with some of them when our paths cross.  Oh, and the guild was known for being a bunch of drunken trolls. 

EVE - Has to make the list.  Same idea as WoW--I've made dozens of friends through EVE.  Got a job through a friend I made in EVE (Aeaus).  Have met dozens of my EVE friends as well on my travels.  And as far as the gaming experience goes, I've played now for 5 years.  Consistently through the years as well, unlike most of my other games that are hot and cold for me.  And finally a place where my griefing was acceptable.  \o/  The PvP was intense, unlike WoW or D2, and the game environment was harsh as hell.  No respawning at the graveyard and running back.  Your ship explodes, everything on it vaporized or looted by the winner, and you're back to square one.  I don't really need to explain it I guess, we all play.  But yeah, EVE is certainly in the top 5 of the influential games in my life.

[IzzyChan]

Morrowind -  All the crap you can do (at your leisure) in this game spoiled me rotten. Plus mods. 

Overlord (2) - Finally a game to satisfy my itch for an evil tower + minions at my beck and call.

[Crucifire]

Xenogears - The most fulfilling game I have ever played and really unforgettable. It's a Playstation RPG that reads like a novel, a beautifully moving story that deals fearlessly with topics like God, AI, meaning of life, and other ethical and philosophical themes. It's a decent length at about 60 hours if you do everything, super hard boss fights and a fun combo system. Plus sci-fi overtones and plenty of mecha.

Street Fighter series - I like arcade fighting games. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is the magnum opus of the series, but I'll never turn down a game of Street Fighter II Turbo. That's some fine PVP.

Ikaruga - Perfected and improved the arcade shoot'em'up format with an inventive polarity system. Two colors of bullets; one you can absorb, and one kills you. Change polarity at the wrong time and you die. Not too much more can be said, it's simple enough to see in action. This is also the game that helped pump a little bit of life into the dying Dreamcast, my favorite console (RIP).

[Esna Pitoojee]

Hummm...

C&C - Tiberian Sun / Firestorm - for having 2 sides with a decidedly different feel and playstyle, freaking awesome terrain, and showing how a story can be told in an RTS.

EVE Online - had to make it in as well. Let's see... entirely community run economy? Check. Gigantic community support system? Check. Huge sense of togetherness and solidarity, even through the intense trolling/raeging/arguing/whatever? Check.

Morrowind - as Izzy said, Morrowind spoiled me rotten in terms of sheer sandbox content.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction - if Morrowind is an excellent example of a sandbox RPG, Mercenaries is its FPS counterpart. Cruise around a battle-littered country assisting one side or another at your whim, creating spectacular explosions as you did? Yeah... that was good stuff. Unfortunately, the game at time couldn't seem to decide whether it wanted to be sandbox or linear (yeah... you were eventually going to have to shoot your way into that big fortress), the maps if anything needed to be a lot bigger, and there were some derpier points you felt should have been edited out in testing (after killing an infinitely respawning helecopter a couple dozen times to line my wallet, I felt like they should have sent a bigger force to figure out where their helecopters were going... or at least not send any more helecoptors), but many of these only became apparent with many, many hours of play.

C&C Renegade - rounding out the list, Renegade takes a decidedly non-sandboxy multiplayer (it's a very traditional "spawn at bases, kill other team" thing) and makes it incredibly complex: You have about eight basic TF2-esque infantry classes, advanced versions of each class, and five (sometimes seven) vehicles to back those infantry up. Your base also has 6-7 buildings, each of which serve their own function and are detrimental, but not crippling, to lose. Being C&C, the developers had also tried (and succeeded) at giving both sides significantly different play styles. Mix it all together, and you have a nice recipe for long, involving matches. It also had a very nice support community, which was good since there were some very definite issues in some places.

[Mizhara]

Hmm... having been a gamer since the C64 era, I think I'm going to have to restrict myself to PC gaming or the list will be massive. Games like The Last Ninja, Kabal, and even the flight-sim that was carefully coded by literally transcribing the code from a magazine and compiling it had massive influence on me as a child, but the list would become endless. So, for PC gaming then...

Dune 2:  The first RTS. Yes, the first RTS out there. You could only command one unit at a time, and there were no contextual commands. Click a unit, click move/attack/whatever and then the objective/location. It was a meticulous experience and it was fantastic. The impact this game had on a young mind can't be understated. A whole new genre and I witnessed it's very birth. By today's standards, it's of course a freakin' dinosaur and unplayable, but the sheer fun of it all was undeniable. The really impressive thing is that there's very few innovations in the RTS genre compared to this game except for context sensitive commands and other 'smoothing' of the UI.

Legends of Kyrandia: The game that made me really appreciate the adventure genre. Today, of course, the genre is mostly dead but the whole 'click to move, click to inspect, pick up, combine, use, solve puzzle, move on to next area' game series was never really my thing before I found this game. It was an eyeopener, and after that I devoured everything in the genre. Another game that's unplayable by today's standards, but very enjoyable back then.

Wolfenstein 3D/Doom/Doom 2: The original FPS games. (Yes, I know others got there first, but these were the first PC ones.) Without the insane fun of these games, I probably wouldn't have gotten hooked and wouldn't have made it to Europe's top 5 in Q3A back when that was all the rage. They set the stage for a lot of nightmares through 'horror' and a lot of OH YEAH! from taking down hordes of aliens, demons and evul people. Love them.

Star Control II: Sci-Fi awesomeness and spaceship command. 'nuff said. Even sexy blue chicks.

Final Fantasy VII: I never tried the FF games before this one, but I have to say this one hit like a truck. The gameplay was brand new to me and the cutscenes were fantastic compared to the rest of the games of the day. I loved this to bits. The thing that needs mentioning though, is the emotional impact. When Aerith/Aeris died, I quite literally felt hate. Yeah yeah, Aeris dies, waaah. In retrospect it might feel silly, but this was the very first game that truly made me hate the bad guy. I really wanted him dead. Of course, right now I'd probably just hump his leg. Sephiroth is noms.

Fallout 1&2: Oh Gods... Oh dear sweet Gods... Those games sucked so many hours out of my life. I was addicted. I 'sploded pants and I explored the wastelands for ages in these games. I completely and utterly loved them. These games really hooked me on RPGs and since those days I have never been able to pass up a good RPG. Post-Apocalyptica, RPG, fantastic writing and stories... these games were fantastic.

Baldur's Gate 1&2, Temple of this and that, all those games.: Same as the above, only fantasy.

Diablo II: This game is crack! Seriously... I have a level 99 of all classes, I played offline, online, and even in LAN. Gods and Spirits this game got me hard. Simple gameplay, simple story, simple mechanics... and just a freaking BLAST to play. As for Bacch's experience with bots, yes they existed but most of those #1, #2 and so on games were not botted. This I found out since quite often I had to either use my Sorc or slap the Enigma armor on whatever class I was playing and go do the running myself. Bhaal runs were short, sweet and awesome for xp and loot. I miss my Blizz Sorc.

Freespace 1&2, Tachyon: The Fringe: I never really got into X-Wing and other spacefighters, but these three games I really can't understate. They were magnificent space adventures with fantastic gameplay and experiences. Sure, Freelancer had a bigger and freer universe. Sure X2/X3 are better sandboxes... none of them are better spacefighter sims. These games really made it a pure joy to plug in the joysticks and get into massive dogfights, or going up against massive capital ships. Great stories in all three, great gameplay and fantastic overall experience. I so well and truly mourn that this genre has died so hard.

Quake III Arena:  Ultimate fragfest, twitchfest, speedfest and fun. I don't think I'll ever find an FPS that will be able to match this one in sheer speed and fun.


Now, there's dozens if not a hundred games more out there that had a lot of influence on me, but they're either MMOs or 'new' games and for the most part just adjusted or redefined something I already had experience with. As an old-school gamer, the major impacts all came from the Ye Olde days, and that's (mostly) what I've talked about here. There's a lot of newer games out there that really had impacts... but they don't have a place in this list, or I'd never be done.

[Half Cocked Jack]

Nice topic!  Let's see...in the order of my exposure:

-Zelda: Link's Awakening (for Gameboy) sucked me in completely and made me see the great potential of games when I was nine.

-Final Fantasy III/VI blew my effing mind in a way that nothing else has ever come close to touching.

-Dune 2000 was how I discovered my favorite genre: RTS!

-Black and White stunned me with its beauty, novelty, playfulness, and sheer fun...it breaks my heart that they have yet to make another game that compares.

Conquest: Frontier Wars wasn't anything hugely special for the RTS genre except for one thing: you could play on a dozen or so circular maps connected by wormholes simultaneously. Ever since that game, just about every other RTS feels small.

-Starfleet Command (Empires at War: Orion Pirates) remains my all-time preferred--not necessarily favorite--spaceship strategy game. It offered such a huge array of ships to choose from, and then there were a mind-numbing number of things you could do with them. It catered to a huge volume of play-styles and offered worlds of different strategies that were all effective and balanced. Unlike most other games, there was no *right way* to do it.

Also, I think SC (and 2001 in general) marked a watershed in spaceship games, and serves as the last signpost of what space strategy could have become. Up to that point, UIs and the options they offered players were getting more and more complex. After that point, spaceship strategy has been ruled by two drives: simplification and customization. In my view, this has led to watered-down games where building and getting into ships matters more than actually flying them.

Onslaught taught me that free, online, casual flash games do actually have a place in the universe.

[Alain Colcer]

Since online games in South America are a relatively new "breed" of games....i used to play all sort of single player games first and only lately have experienced competitive PvP.

Wing Commander (all of them except 4 and Prophecy)
Homeworld 1 and 2 (oh boy do i miss these)
Civilization 1 through 5

from 1998 when online service was available and ping times allowed, Tribes 1, 2 and Vengeace (sitll i had to cope with 180ms pings).

Diablo 1 and 2 (with the expansions) was a side entertainment....but since i couldnt play it connected to US servers it remained a casual thing with friends when doing LAN gatherings.

I gotta say that the first time i installed and played Eve (around 2004) i was in awe during the entire weekend.....it was like playing WC privateer on steroids and the "alien" look compared to all past scifi games out there (which had a much more industrial and utility look than eve). The first thing i remember doing was warping to the Star and just be blinded in delight ......to be there...........man that was the most mindblowing moment i've ever experienced in a game....to be free to "navigate" space as i see fit.....after that there was no turning back i guess.....

[Victoria Stecker]

Let’s see, in roughly chronological order,

Bug – one of the original really 3D games for the Sega Saturn, before the N64 came out and blew it out of the water. Just a fun little platformer.

Shining Force 3 – tactical RPG for the Saturn, essentially the same game as SF 1&2 for the genesis, but with much better graphics. If you enjoy turn-based tactical games, I highly recommend grabbing a genesis emulator and SF 1 and 2. If you can find a Saturn emulator and get SF 3 episodes 1-3 are pretty awesome too. Anyhow, first game with a compelling storyline. After this, I was hooked on a good story.

Command and Conquer, the original, on DOS. I loved this game until I realized the reason my friend always beat me was that he was playing on Win95 and had twice the screen resolution that I did, could see 4 times as much area at once.

Diablo 2: addictive, etc, everyone knows what this game is. It was the first game that could actually keep me up all night when we’d have lan parties – literally, I was the guy pulling the full all-nighter while everyone else was at least getting a couple hours of sleep. While this is a fun game in its own right, when we had 6-8 people playing (2 or 3 who knew what they were doing and the rest noobs), I had an absolute blast.

Starcraft: another game I loved, period. Another awesome lan game. I only ever bought Diablo and SC because I played them first at lans. The fact that that has been removed from certain recent Blizzard games is the reason I don’t own them.

Should probably throw in some random FPS games, but PC shooters never really grabbed me until Gears of War, and that’s not a traditional shooter. Console shooters got a decent hold on me, Goldeneye back in the day and Halo 1 and 2 more recently, but I haven’t touched them since I started playing EVE a bit over a year ago.

MMOs: I played WoW briefly; it was a lot of fun, but eventually grew stale. Never found the community that is the reason I’ve stuck with EVE as long as I have. Recently got sucked into Minecraft, playing on a server a friend runs and considering setting up one to run the much sought-after EVE server. I was trying to explain the appeal to someone and finally said that it was like a videogame form of building legos.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

1. Half-Life (series) - added puzzles and adventure to the first-person shooter genre, and its followup continued to inspire.
2. Civilization 4 - I started the series with this game, and its difficult to look at any other game similar to this without comparing to it.
3. Medieval (total war series) - It's like RISK, only with more depth, charm, and bloody battles than I'd ever experienced ever. Can't play without ultra unit sizes either!
4. Final Fantasy Tactics (including A2 on DS) - Stories are pretty much always horrible, but the gameplay, customization, and turn-based combat are unbeatable. I really wish they'd make more.
5. TIE Fighter - The whole reason I took an interest in Star Wars at all. This is and has been my favorite flight sim of all time, and the game really made me feel good about playing for the evil empire. \o/

[lallara zhuul]

1. The Bard's Tale - My first dungeon crawl, played it for ages and ages.
2. Elite - Making your way to Lave and starting your career as a trader, bounty hunter or an outlaw.
3. Dune - Walking in the shoes of Paul Atreides was interesting...
4. Dark Seed - Horror brought to the PC in a way that still followed you into your dreams.
5. Quest for Glory-series - Humor, fun and adventure in a wonderful package.

[Valdezi]

1. The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time - Changed what games could be for me.
2. The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion - Blew my mind, ate my time.
3. GoldenEye - Basement, with pistols, Health at -10. Begin.
4. Alpha Centauri - I always played at the Greenies, and using Mindworms against the enemy was fun.
5. Baldur's Gate II - Played this through so many times.

[Bacchanalian]

3. GoldenEye - Basement, with pistols, Health at -10. Begin.

Proxy Mines, forget the named of that incredibly small two story map. 

Also, loved grenade launchers on any map with long, high-ceilinged hallways.  Firing them around corners and all the way to the end of a hallway was always good for a laugh. 

[Valdezi]

3. GoldenEye - Basement, with pistols, Health at -10. Begin.

Proxy Mines, forget the named of that incredibly small two story map. 

Also, loved grenade launchers on any map with long, high-ceilinged hallways.  Firing them around corners and all the way to the end of a hallway was always good for a laugh. 

I think that one was archives. It had a bunch of secret doors in it.