Ooh, this is an interesting one, plenty of games that I wouldn’t ever say were great games but I had loads of fun growing up with them. I’ve also included games that I felt beating them prepared me for games I played later or shaped my tastes.
GameCube
007 Nightfire
Timesplitters 2
Zelda Wind Waker & Ocarina of Time
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Tiger Woods 2004
PS2
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 & Underground
PES 6
Ratchet Gladiator
Persona 3 FES
Kingdom Hearts 1+2
Wii
Wii Sports & Resort
Smash Bros Brawl
Zack & Wiki
Super Mario Galaxy
Lego Star Wars and Harry Potter
DS
Dragon Quest IX
Pokemon generations 4 and 5, Heart Gold was probably the best one
Ace Attorney
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Final Fantasy III
The World Ends With You
Ghost Trick
3DS
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Virtue’s Last Reward
Fire Emblem Awakening
Etrian Odyssey 4
Shin Megami Tensei IV
How dare i forget on for the Ps3/360 era but Mass Effect series is another one. James Bound 007 Golden Eye is another. And the hours i wasted on the original Mortal Kombat and Mario Kart.
NDS
Cooking Mama games
Animal Boxing
My Sims games
Imagine series
Petz games
3DS
Animal Crossing New Leaf
Tomodachi Life
Miitopia
Gamecube
Harvest Moon Magical Melody*
Wii
Harvest Moon Tree of Tranquility
Mii games
My Sims games
Dance Dance Revolution games
Wii U
Mario Kart 8
LEGO CITY Undercover
Switch
ARMS
Animal Crossing New Horizons
1-2-Switch
PS1
FF VIII
FF IX
FF Tactics
Dance Dance Revolution games
Punky Skunk
Pepsiman
Bishi Bashi Specials 1 & 2
PS2
K-1
Dance Dance Revolution games
Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life Special Edition
Guitar Freaks & Drummania games
Para Para Paradise
Ratchet & Clank games
FF X & X-2
FF XII
PS3
Ratchet & Clank games
Sly Cooper games
FF XIII
The Sims 3 games
Final Fantasy IX - The first game I bought with my "own" money. I was 11. My favourite game of all time. I fell in love with the characters, who really resonated with me, the music, the story, the setting. Everything. I bought the official guide, and I would be excited to wake up early in the mornings and continue it.
Hitman (starting with the 2016 reboot) - My most played game according to the PS5. Never have I spent so much time on a game redoing the same levels, wandering around the world, doing pointless silly things. What a great game. CANNOT wait for Project 007.
The Witcher Wild Hunt - The game that brought my wife and I closer together. The best memories of recent times is sitting with her every step of the way through Geralt's adventure. There has yet to be a game to surpass it.
Hmmm ok. I'm going a different route here. We always talk about our favourite games. But with this subject it's arguably the relatively bad games that you enjoy which say more about you as a gamer. Or rather what you play. How many games you play. If you like to play online. if games are for social reasons, the challenge, addiction or to relax.
For me it's too relax.
On my old Amstrad years ago my family were poor at the time. I managed to snag 100+ games from my friend who had sold his. That was crazy and some of the games which I enjoyed were already popular like Paperboy, Dizzy and Elite. However I really enjoyed absolute rubbish like Animal, vegetable, mineral, Cyberball and Highway encounter. I'm unsure why this is but anything a bit different is my bag. I don't like playing the same games over and over.
I then started buying Amstrad Action every month to keep up with the scene. That magazine was amazing btw. You got free tapes as well! I also wrote a few scripts in Basic. So I started reading up on games and is a big part of why I enjoy gaming.
Since then my game habits have been moulded by the media I consume and the games my friends have been playing. Those friends are more recently have been the PushSquare crew! Also getting free stuff on ps plus is ace!
Forum Best Game of All Time Awards
PS3 Megathread 2019: The Last of Us
Multiplat 2018: Horizon Zero Dawn
Nintendo 2017: Super Mario Bros 3
Playstation 2016: Uncharted 2
Multiplat 2015: Final Fantasy 7
@Arugula short circuit and chase hq were great. Rik Dangerous, First Division Manager. Good times. Amstrad action was a brilliant magazine, pity they don't make them like back then!
Forum Best Game of All Time Awards
PS3 Megathread 2019: The Last of Us
Multiplat 2018: Horizon Zero Dawn
Nintendo 2017: Super Mario Bros 3
Playstation 2016: Uncharted 2
Multiplat 2015: Final Fantasy 7
Sierra games did it for me. Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest For Glory, Laura Bow, Conquest of the Longbow and Gold Rush. The VGA graphics of Kings Quest 5 blew me away... then Lucas arts had Day of the Tentacle which was incredible. On console I was a Nintendo kid. Mario , Zelda and the greatest to me was mega man 2
We had an old Atari as a novelty, but it was the golden age of the mid-90s which started to enshrine my future status as a gamer. We had a MegaDrive to explain my introduction to Sonic, alongside a creaky old PC with a shareware disc (so, DOOM and Wolfenstein and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold... all the usual suspects of the era) and Star Wars: Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight.
As much as Sonic made an impression (obviously), it was the idea of licenced games which really had the biggest impact, though. I absolutely adored certain movies and TV shows, and getting to then play interactive versions of them sealed the deal.
I got my first PlayStation to play Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
I got my first PS2 to play James Bond 007 in... Agent Under Fire.
Even when I ventured off the beaten track and found original games to play, they'd be things sharing a connection with franchises I already loved. I played Tomb Raider because they weren't making any decent Indiana Jones games. Metal Gear Solid appealed to me because it had shades of a Tom Clancy thriller, books I'd started to read as a natural progression from Bond. I would occasionally seek out shooters similar to those shareware examples above, as well, enjoying things like Medal of Honor and Red Faction because the screenshots looked cool and yeah, there was always Sonic where possible.
By the time the PS3 hit, I had broader tastes. The first games I got for it were all licenced, Sonic aside, but there was a better balance. When I think back on the system, experiences like Katamari Forever, the Mass Effect trilogy, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Mirror's Edge, Split/Second, the Uncharted trilogy and Vanquish rank highly alongside the Bonds, lightsabers and hedgehogs.
I still crave cinematic, narrative-heavy experiences, and I think I'll always prefer them because of the importance I placed on those early licenced games, but my focus isn't so narrow nowadays.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
The first FPS I played was Doom on the Jaguar Atari, there's never been another game quite like it but no doubt it had quite an impact on my expectations for FPS games going forward.
The first third person title for me was Tomb Raider, that absolutely blew me away, very fond memories of playing that.
I played quite a lot of Dungeon Master on the Atari ST, had a lot of fun with that. That was probably the ultimate RPG for quite a while, as far as I was concerned and then FF7 came along and changed everything and demonstrated story telling in a video game far beyond anything I had ever seen.
For shooty 2D platformers, I was really into Midnight Resistance and Turrican. Both had just about the right level of challenge.
Midnight Resistance image
My first space exploration game was called Space Rogue, it had quite a bit in common with Elite but it had lots of interesting story that could be enjoyed and you could get up to mischief on space stations and get chased by security guards (and alien monsters) when things went wrong. Great fun.
Walking around a space station in Space Rogue.
I couldn't say what my first fighting game was but first to really impress was Tekken 2. We played the demo and decided we really needed the full game. To this day, I still regard Tekken as the best fighter.
As a few people here know, I do enjoy playing Chess. And so turn based isometric games are always games I take an interest in. One of the best I have ever played was Vandal Hearts on the PS1. Yes, even better than the legendary Final Fantasy Tactics. An excellent story and some really fun game play and I believe it has aged pretty well.
The first mission of Vandal Hearts.
Similar to @TheIdleCritic I played much of The Witcher 3 with my wife, the story telling is so well done that it is well worth playing with someone else. I'm always on the lookout for games that we can both enjoy togegher such as the Uncharted games, Ico, Broken Sword, Machinarium or The Last Guardian.
Touchstone games that fundamentally changed my life as a gamer... so, this shouldn't be mistaken for a "favorite games" list. I'm going to excise a LOT of games I really loved throughout my life, and just focus on the ones that, I feel, shaped the direction of my interest from early childhood to the present day.
[Age 1 - 4]
Super Mario Bros. 3: Probably my first real memory with a game. Really, it could have been any number of NES games I enjoyed as a child, but SMB3 was one I continually returned to over the years.
[Age 5 - 9]
Toejam and Earl: My first experience with local multiplayer, and one of the few tools I've been able to use to connect and have fun with my mother over the years (she's pretty much a non-gamer, but she has played this religiously over the years; before the launch of the Wii VC, she even paid $150+ or so for a cartridge when her old one from the 90s stopped working). It's also just a brilliantly designed game that's still fun to play even after 500+ runs over the years.
Phantasy Star II: My first JRPG. I never properly finished it, or really even got all that far in, but it did help to verse me in the design language of the genre, and laid the groundwork for the obsession with the genre I harbored later on in life.
[Age 10 - 14]
Pokemon Red: This one was huge. One of my most distinct memories from childhood was the birthday at a Chuck E. Cheeses where I was first gifted this game, and it really did shift the course of my life. Like a lot of children, I was swept up in the wave of Pokemania that washed over the world at the time, which baffled most of the adults around us about as thoroughly as you could ever imagine. Like a lot of people, it began a life-long love affair with the franchise for me.
Spyro the Dragon: Lot of firsts here. It was my first PS1 game. My first 3D platformer. My first 3D game in general. The game was basically the perfect length to encourage constant replayability, because it could be completed in an evening. And I did complete it. A lot. The late 90s - mid 2000s were all about Playstation for me, and this game is one of the three reasons why.
Final Fantasy VII: Not my first JRPG (as I said, I played Phantasy Star II when I was tiny, and Pokemon Red would have made me an expert in the basics of RPG progression by this point), but it did a lot for me: it showed me that games could be emotional epics, with characters to root for and cry over. It showed me the possibility of new technology, as its exciting setpieces would have been impossible on the 2D consoles. But, most importantly, it served as a gateway drug to the world of JRPGs on PS1, and, having grown up in a predominantly Christian household, it was my first major exposure to ideas outside of that bubble. ANYTHING can help to stimulate critical thought in children, and the JRPGs of this era were a perfect compliment to my growing rebellious streak, as PS1 JRPGs commonly featured heroes who questioned the status quo, made enemies of the powerful, and defied the gods themselves. This is my second major PS1 selection.
Silent Hill: My first exposure to this was a PS1 demo disc from a magazine or something, which featured a demo of the game where you could explore the elementary school a bit. Even having grown up with horror movies my entire life, I found it to be terrifying, and I loved it. I purchased the full game a year or so later when I found it in a Blockbuster, and have rather treasured that disc over the years. Silent Hill was my first horror game, and it still stands out to me as one of the great horror visions in the medium. I spent countless evenings (maybe staying up later than I was supposed to!) wandering the desolate, fog-choked streets of Silent Hill, gripped by his desperate quest to find his missing daughter Cheryl in the midst of what could only be described as Hell. This really opened up the possibility for me that games could be frightening.
[Age 15 - 19]
Contra 4: After the GB/GBC, I fell out of handheld gaming in a big way, and didn't even own a GBA until many years later. But something about Contra 4 called out to be. I loved the series on the NES/Genesis, and I just had to have this. It opened me back up to non-Playstation games in a big way and reinvigorated my interest in handheld tech.
Etrian Odyssey: Although I wouldn't actually realize it until years later, this game was the beginning of a long-standing love affair I've had with Atlus over the years. At the time, I didn't know anything about the developer, but absolutely loved this game's creative use of the Nintendo DS touchscreen as an interactive map. This game, if anything, sold me on the "gimmicky" nature of Nintendo's machines, because they were enabling experiences that were impossible anywhere else.
[Age 20 - PRESENT]
Things become less clear-cut at this point. All I will say is this: console-wise, after the PS2, I opted for the Xbox 360 due to the sky-high price of the PS3 at the time, and the seventh generation of consoles... let's just say that the less is said about them, the better. Almost everything I loved about console gaming disappeared this gen as Japanese home console gaming all but died and was replaced by bland Western AAA sensibilities. That's not to say I hated all AAA Western games: some, like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Bioshock were quite good. But it's no exaggeration to say that my passion for the hobby largely died for the space of a few years... until I discovered a certain game.
Super Mario Galaxy: Possibly the single most important game I've played in my life. If I had to find one dividing point in my life as a gamer, it would be before and after I played Super Mario Galaxy. This game did a lot for me: it made a Nintendo fan out of me (to point out how disconnected I'd been from Ninty until that point in my life, I'd never played a single 3D Zelda game at that point, and my experience with Mario was limited to a handful of early 2D games; I'd kept up with Metroid, but that was about the extent of my exposure to the Big N's games); it reinvigorated a fiery passion for gaming that I hadn't felt since I was a child, which continues to this day; and it showed me that there was still a segment of the industry out there that resonated with me.
From there, there are lots of games that shaped the sort of gamer I am today. Shin Megami Tensei IV fully opened my eyes to Atlus' wonderful output, and I've subsequently played as many Persona, SMT, and Etrian Odyssey games as I could get my hands on. I've, of course, played all of the Mario and Zelda games: for the latter, I'd say The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD was the game that made me a fan of that series. Series like Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, Professor Layton, Corpse Party, and so on made me a fan of adventure gaming and handheld gaming in particular, as did most of the catalogue of the wonderful Nintendo 3DS.
Forums
Topic: Games that made you the gamer you are today.
Posts 1 to 12 of 12
This topic has been archived, no further posts can be added.