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Games @lemmy.world
TehBamski @lemmy.world

What were your top favorite video games as a kid?

These could be games that left a lasting impression on you, games that had stellar gameplay mechanics, characters that captivated you, games that you played tons of hours on, etc.

182 comments

  • Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter series, Ratcher and Clank series mostly. Most people usually associate childhood with Nintendo games but they're super rare in my country, I only ever got around to playing series like Zelda and Mario in the mid-2010s. For what it's worth the playstation 2 really was the console to have at the time, the games were amazing. Pretty sad Sony is reluctant to make good ports of them for the new generation.

    Oh, and everyone I knew had House of the Dead 2 on the computer. Now that's a classic.

  • Mario RPG was my favorite (yes Im eating good right now). I like describing it as a toy, there are so many things to be done for no other reason than to have fun, enabled by the fact you're a platformer character in a 3D fantasy world. You cant jump onto the store's counter in other RPG's of the time, but you get to in this game, and you're rewarded with being scolded by the shopkeep. You can jump on all the NPC's, on wedding cake, pianos, hyperactive kids, all the beds, catapults. Jumping is often times your response to NPC dialogue.

  • Heh, pacman and centipede.

    I had the high score at the gas station nearest my house on the pacman machine until the place closed. Nobody could even get close in the local area. I would usually be in the top three at the arcade on both games, depending on whether or not I had access to time and money. None of my scores were high enough to be some kind of record, but I was the king of those two games in two counties. I'm not saying I could never get out-scored, I could. But I never had bad games, only less good, where the other players around would have way more bad than great games.

    But I fucking loved pacman. The entire sensory assault of it was so damn satisfying. I was good at centipede (largely because of the trackball being very intuitive for me), but I liked it more because I was good at it than for the game itself.

    Pacman though? Fuck, I'd spend hours playing it. I even had one of those old coleco mini versions that I got for Christmas one year. Which, I was not as good at, what with the difference in controls, but I still loved playing it until it died maybe ten years ago (seriously, that fucking thing lasted decades).

    I was so fucking bummed when I couldn't find any place to play the real version. Later console versions didn't have the same joy for me. I've managed to luck into some time on restored machines here and there, though.

    Past that, mario cart was big in our house when it came out. My sister was better at it on average, but we'd have some killer weekends playing it with our mom and friends. I never liked consoles much. The controls just didn't work for me.

    So it wasn't until this century that I got back into harmony gaming at all. Mmorpgs are my thing, when I can do it (disability makes pc gaming sporadic). The first game I found that sucked me in was shaiya. It wasn't that great of a game overall. Heavily pay to win. But the story was good, and I had a great guild.

    Then it was on to war and battle of the immortals. Mid tier games, but I liked the world setting.

    Then, I found neverwinter and that was my game. I haven't been happy with anything else since. I don't really play any more, but that was the perfect mmo for me. The d&d world, with an intuitive and fun control setup. The classes and races were fairly well balanced. The graphics were fucking bonkers for the era too. It just made me happy. It still kinda does, but I don't have the time or stamina these days.

  • NES: Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, TMNT 2, Galaga and Contra (with Konami code)

    SMB1 was my first game ever

    Last 2 I played with my dad while friends played SMB3 and TMNT

  • Jak and Daxter, Crash, and the Lego Star Wars games for sure.

    I also loved Wii Sports, Pokemon, and Mario Kart.

    Edit: Also admittedly Call of Duty was a big one for me. Stopped playing after MW3.

    • Age of Empires I
    • Stronghold
    • Dune 2000
    • RollerCoaster Tycoon
    • Warcraft 3
    • World of Warcraft

    Since WoW, I didn't play much strategy games I used to play, but it changed this year when I started play a lot of TFT.

  • On PC I must've spent thousands of hours playing The Sims, the first and second ones. They had fantastic soundtracks and were very chill experiences where you couldn't really lose and didn't rely on reflexes or strategy. Above all else I've always enjoyed being able to build cool houses. I would barely even play with the Sims themselves, I was mostly just creating families to not leave my houses empty. I had entire neighbourhoods made from scratch, all with wildly different houses with wildly different people living in them. I lost all my data a couple of times but I always kept the CD around with the key code written on it so I'd just reinstall and start rebuilding from scratch (that disc is probably still in my bedroom somewhere). Just selecting an empty lot and spending an entire afternoon building a cool house on it, then making a family to live there and putting all the furniture in place. Rinse and repeat, life was good.

    I'd later go on to play other games that allowed me to build stuff trying to scratch that same creative itch. Mostly other Maxis games such as SimCity 3000 and Spore (never got into Sims 3 as it didn't run well on my PC) but also Minecraft, which was all the rage and would go on to consume countless hours of my life. A few years later I also tried Sims 4, which did run well (on a newer computer tbf), but also felt so limited with the small fixed-view non-customizable neighbourhoods. It's baffling to me that 4 couldn't have the same features 2 had a decade earlier. Oh well, at least the building tools are much better than 2's, so there was that.

    Tl;dr: I like The Sims. The first couple ones, not the last couple ones.

  • One that never really took off for the N64 almost surely because the controls were so fucked - Jetforce Gemini.

    Those who took the time to tolerate and master the janky controls were rewarded with a shooter that was otherwise second to none. AND YES THAT INCLUDES 007!

    Hearing the music cranks the nostalgia up to 10 immediately.

  • Megadrive - Gain Ground, Sonic 1&2, World of Illusion

    PS1 - Toy Story 2, Rayman 1&2, FFVII, Rugrats, Tony Hawks 1-4

    Gameboy/Color - Pokemon Blue, Tetris, Rayman, Tweety - Around the World in 80 days

    PS2 - Kingdom Hearts 1&2, GTA 3,VC&SA, Need for Speed Undeground 1&2, Tony Hawks Underground & American Wasteland, Jak 1-3, Sims Bustin Out

    GBA - Pokemom Fire Red

    Xbox - Halo 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, KOTOR 1&2, Fable, Prince of Persia Warrior Within, *Fahrenheit

    Gamecube - Wind Waker, Sonic Adventure 2, Mario Sunshine, Luigis Mansion (I didnt have a gamecube as a kid but was enamroed by these at a friends house)

    DS - Mario 64 DS, Pokemon Diamond. New Super Mario Bros, Worms Open Warfare, Sims 2

    PSP - FFVII Crisis Core, FF1, Cars, Daxter, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Puzzle Quest

    Wii - Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, Guitar Hero 3

    360 - Rockband 1-3, Guitar Hero World Tour & 5, Halo 3, Battlefield Bad Company, Mass Effect, Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, Far Cry 2, Assassins Creed 1-3, GTA IV

    PC - Rome Total War, Empires Dawn of the Modern World, Black & White 2, The Movies, Sims 1-2 (I liked 3 too but I was older than a kid then), Spore

    Lines are a bit blurred at a certain point for 360 and PSP to when I wouldve no longer been a kid and more of a late teenager or whatever.

  • Well, in early 90s it was NES games: Darkwing Duck, Super Contra 6, Robocop 4, Battle city. Then, in lately 90s it was PC games: Half-Life, Warcraft 2.

  • Warcraft 3, Age Series (AoE, AoE2, AoM, AoE3), Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005)

    I played the first age of empires when I was 6 or 7 y/o and I've played all of the games besides AoE4 (including Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds).

    As a kid we had few crappy dell computers connected to just a hub (LAN without internet) and would play a lot of Age of Empires 2 and C&C Red Alert 1 & 2 multiplayer.

    Age of Empires and Red Alert were also games I would frequently play at small LAN parties (although everyone was really bad)

     

    I played a bit of online AoE2 when AoE2 HD came out on steam but it was pretty bad so I stopped playing it. When DE came out I started watching AoE2 content but I'll never play it because I've come to greatly dislike Microsoft over the years.

     

    I've replayed Need for Speed Most Wanted (and also Carbon) tens of times over the years, and I still play it every now and then (with mods now)

     

    But the game I've played the most is probably Warcraft 3. I've played a ton of custom games on Battle.net (RIP) and it's what got me a bit into programming since I liked making custom maps and making triggers eventually led me to learn JASS (Just Another Scripting Language)

    If Blizzard didn't completely ruin Warcraft 3 with WC3 Reforged Refunded I'd probably still be playing it and making custom maps every so often.

    I have played a bit on private servers but it's just not the same anymore.

     

    There's a pretty cool Warcraft 3 open source project called Warsmash though so maybe one day I'll start playing again.

    • I forgot all about Age of Empires. I used to play the shit out of AoE 1 and 2 and also cossacks European wars and rise of nations.

  • Gridder for C64

    Sonic, streets of rage, tekken 2 and 3. Original gta, WWF attitude. Crash bandicoot.

    GoldenEye , Diddy Kong racing and Mario kart.

    GTA 3 , Vice city and San Andreas. Halo 1-3, Kotor 1-2, mass effect trilogy. Wipeout games. Skate 3, OG tony hawk games. Original modern warfare 2, morrowind, oblivion and skyrim. Final fantasy 7,8,9 and 10, also the splinter cell series.

    Thats all that comes to mind but I would have spent a good amount of time on them throughout the years.

  • Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge are my favorite games of all time. I sunk so much time as a kid beating the campaign and then making custom maps and levels for fun. The installer and the cut scenes were so memorable. It also had an amazing sound track. It was also one of the few RTS I tried at the time where the game didn't feel like it took forever. For contrast I remember playing some C&C and also Dune 2000 as a kid and I remember each campaign easily taking over an hour to complete. I also remember it got kind of boring fast.

    Aside from those some other honorable mentions:

    • SimCity 3000: My first sim city game. It was fantastic with an amazing sound track.
    • Pokemon Red: My first pokemon game.
    • Runescape: First MMO I've ever played.

  • I'm thinking about the games I played in my childhood that influenced what I like to play now, so it might be only halfway relevant to the question.

    First monster collector: Pokemon Blue. Digimon World 1 was also one of my favourites, because of how real it felt, like a real monster. The one other monster game I really got into as a child was Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, I think I played Cobi's journey. It helped that a lot of my friends were playing it.

    First builder: Simcity 3000. Started my lifelong love for city builders, even though I'm not great at them per se.

    Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper 2 were my introduction to management sims and also my favourites for a long time.

    As a kid I absolutely loved this RTS called Warbreeds because of the ability to graft any weapon onto any unit. Nowadays though I just find such mechanics fiddly, but as a kid it felt so sci-fi. In terms of time spent playing, though, the standout RTS was probably Starcraft.

    I also played on a lot of MUDs as a kid. Wheel of Time (but had never read the books), Discworld (but had also never read the books), Aardwolf and I think one or two others. I was amazed at how it felt like I could do so much (even though most of the "free" actions were just emotes.

    My first graphical MMO was I think Maplestory, which was a huge part of my social life as a kid. I think I miss the feeling of being part of a big community than the MMO experience itself, honestly. Nowadays when I try getting into MMOs it feels like that feeling of being a part of a giant community of people is gone.

  • Sonic Mega Collection was a game I absolutely loved and provided a ton of hours of my free time when I felt like playing it. That, and around middle school I got really into Borderlands 1 and have been in love since.

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