What game made the biggest impression on you as a child?

[dscross]

For me, it was Monkey Island 2 on the PC. My friend who had a PC showed me it - I'd never seen a LucasArts adventure game before and I'd only really played platformers for the Mega Drive / Genesis up to that point. Think I was about 10 and I was amazed at the fact that I you could choose your answers and actually act as the characters. Plus it was a funny engrossing story.

I'd really like to hear yours and see why it made an impact on you - as we may all discover something new.

 

[American Tanker]

In terms of what continues to influence my tastes to this day, you'll probably not find a bigger influence than San Francisco Rush for the N64. One of the first two video games I ever had for the system. My parents bought the console, SFR and Diddy Kong Racing for my fifth birthday. DKR, I stopped playing long ago. But SFR, I still pop in from time to time. Its sequels too.

And I'm still a massive motorhead, to this day. Love me some good arcade racers.

 

[Saelune]

Sonic 2. Not my first game, but the first game I cracked out on truly. Sitting in my mother's basement, playing Sonic 2 all day. I mean, I was little, so it was ok but still.

 

[CaitSeith]

Final Fantasy VI (the SNES version, back when it was called FFIII in the US). It has lots of impressive and emotional moments; but the first time I laid my eyes was when it was being exhibited on a store, with the intro running. When the intro credits were rolling (with the Magitek armors walking through a blizzard towards a town inside a canyon), I thought they were playing the ending (the actual ending was even better). Blame it to the music. I'm a big fan of background music in videogames, and this one was a delight to my senses. It's just such a gem.

 

[Kerg3927]

Probably Dungeons of Daggorath on the Tandy Color Computer 2. 64K RAM, baby. (My current computer has 500,000 times that much memory.) It was my first computer RPG. I think I was about 8. I played it a ton, and I don't think I ever finished it, because it was really hard and you couldn't save! It was permadeath.

Some of the things in that game were interesting, like your heart beating the whole time and speeding up as you moved and if you fought tough monsters. If your heart got to beating too fast, you could die of a heart attack. As you leveled up, your heart could handle more stress. Your constantly beating heart added to the game's tension.

The graphics were also rough dots with the low level torches, and as you got better torches, the lines became solid and more defined and you could see further down the hallways. You had to identify all the items before you could use them to their full potential, and you got better at identifying stuff as you leveled up. All of the monsters made distinct sounds, and it was really scary when you heard a high level monster, because you knew he was somewhere on that level and coming for you.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Tekken 3, Sonic 2, Breath of Fire 3.


Not bad, young self, not bad.

 

[sanquin]

A combination of Morrowind and Ragnarok Online for me. My first proper RPG and my first proper MMORPG.

I started with morrowind. And I was amazed at how big the world was. I had quite a bit of fun exploring and figuring out what to do for quests, as it was a time before I had internet. Then I got internet, and soon got into Ragnarok Online. A whole new world of interaction over the net with others opened up for me. (back then Ragnarok Online was still mostly very friendly and social.)

 

[pookie101]

the original bards tale series on the amstrad cpc464 displayed in wonderful shades of green. the game that made me a gamer made me love crpgs.

ill never forget the combat system.. "warrior swings at bandits and kills 99 of them" haha

 

[FalloutJack]

That's...a hard call to make. I've played so many games in my life.

I was born in the age of Atari, where that became one of my early amusements in life before the NES system was created. I simply took to video games naturally, because they were fun. I can't recall finding myself being particularly influenced by a game UNTIL the SNES/Sega era, where I came across one of the first video game controversies ever.

The first-ever article of violence in video games, on the subject of Mortal Kombat.

Even as a child, I knew that this would lead to nothing, this notion that video games create violence in reality. Mortal Kombat was no more harmful than the old classic, Rampage. It's just a fun game. A new theme, but really... Mortal Kombat is 25 years old now, and in that time has grown more violent and more explicit as technology has progressed. Yet...we've yet to see an epidemic of people tearing people apart en masse.

Mortal Kombat is the proof that video games do not create violence, and neither does any fictional media.

 

[Zhukov]

In no particular order...

Flashback (Sometimes subtitled as Quest for Identity):
It had really smooth animation and the shooting was nice and punchy. Firefights could be over in two seconds, but you had to plan your movements and shots precisely. Well, until about halfway through when the enemies changed and then everything got shitty and repetitive.

The Exile series (Escape from the Pit, Crystal Souls and Ruined World. Later remade as the Avernum series.):
My first RPG. Kinda crappy in hindsight, but the setting was legitimately unique (an underground fantasy prison colony) and I got quite absorbed.

Giants: Citizen Kabuto:
It let you play as a crew of space pixies with heavy weapons and jetpacks, then a topless alien witch, and then a giant. The witch could summon a proper legit fucking tornado. The giant could eat enemies and make earthquakes with his attacks. Do I even need to explain why this made an impression on a kid? It was also the first game where I got into the online multiplayer, but I got my arse kicked because I was on Australian dial-up and the only populated servers were in the US. I didn't know about latency back then, I just thought by aim was terrible.

Oni:
Third person beat-em-up with a bit of gunplay on the side that was desperately trying to be Ghost in the Shell. Had really sweet combat. There was a move where you grab a guy by the neck and swing yourself around him, kicking anyone else in range. There were disarm moves where if you used them while you where unarmed you would end up holding the weapon ready to fire and the whole transition was buttery smooth. There was a stun move that amounted to kicking enemies in the crotch and didn't work on female enemies (I spent hours testing that, bitches kept dodging.) I also rather liked the story, although in retrospect it was rubbish.

Halo: Combat Evolved:
Oh, fucking sue me. That multiplayer was a barrel of fun. Back in the day I could make goddamn magic happen in one of those ghost hover bikes.

 

[Kerg3927]

the original bards tale series on the amstrad cpc464 displayed in wonderful shades of green. the game that made me a gamer made me love crpgs.

ill never forget the combat system.. "warrior swings at bandits and kills 99 of them" haha

Loved Bard's Tale. I remember there was a room in a tower where when you entered you got attacked by like 99 groups of monks, and you could throw a fireball or whatever AoE spell, and it would scroll for like 15+ minutes listing all the kills. It was a great place to level grind.

 

[ninja666]

It might appear shallow because it was solely the graphics that made an impression on me, but when I saw a gameplay video of Heavenly Sword for the PS3, it blew my mind. The characters looked incredibly realistic for the time. Today it doesn't look nearly as good, as it did back then, but still holds up in some places, imo. Faces and character designs, mostly.

As for games I actually played, I think the cake goes to the first Soldier of Fortune. Its damage model, where you could rip any limb from an enemy with your weapon, and do some other stuff, like shattering their heads and blowing their guts out, really made a lasting impression on me, especially since it was a game made in 2000, where 3D FPS games still were kind of primitive.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well Super Mario 1-3 I guess. I remember being huge into Mario when I was a kid. I watched the cartoon, read the comics...

 

[Kerg3927]

One of my favorite RPG's of the 80's was Knights of Legend. I played that game forever. Never finished it because I got stuck and couldn't find where to go next. Reading about it later after the internet was invented, turns out there WAS nowhere to go. The developers never finished the game.

 

[Cycloptomese]

Final Fantasy II (I think it was IV in Japan) busted open the front of my brain and drove a beer truck out of the front of it. It was the first game I played that had much of a story... and characters... and plot twists... Yeah, that game changed my world. Before that, the only story element I can remember was if the princess was going to be in another castle or not.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I have great memories of playing Mario, Sonic, Aladdin, Bubble Buster, Crash Bandicoot and all sorts of classic old-school games at my Nana's home when I was in grade school. They were all fun and I loved playing them, but I think the game that left the biggest mark on me is...

Final Fantasy VIII. It was the first one I played, and everything about it just blew me away. A game with an actual story, not just "Go here to save the princess"? Holy cow! An opening cutscene that was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen on a screen? Jaw hit the floor. A game you played for ten hours and you've barely scratched the surface? Everything about it was just amazing to me. Here was a game that showed me that games could be so much more than just a game. They can be an adventure, a story that you can actually follow and get invested in, with consequences for the characters and side quests that you can completely miss if you're not paying attention. It was so unlike anything I had played before it, that to this day it remains my favorite in the series.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Easy - 1984/85's (I can't remember what system I played it on) Rescue On Fractalus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus!]:


Inventively nifty graphics and gameplay for the time, and as a young child it also managed to occasionally be genuinely scary, too, at least in the sense of including simple jump scares.

 

[Guffe]

Giants: Citizen Kabuto:
It let you play as a crew of space pixies with heavy weapons and jetpacks, then a topless alien witch, and then a giant. The witch could summon a proper legit fucking tornado. The giant could eat enemies and make earthquakes with his attacks. Do I even need to explain why this made an impression on a kid? It was also the first game where I got into the online multiplayer, but I got my arse kicked because I was on Australian dial-up and the only populated servers were in the US. I didn't know about latency back then, I just thought by aim was terrible.

We used to LAN the shit ouf of GZK with my mates back in the day

WarcraftIII in early teens
The Pokemon games and Zelda OoT as a younger kid

 

[Arnoxthe1]

So many... If I had to decide on five in chronological order, I'd say Elder Scrolls I: Arena, Banjo-Kazooie, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Unreal Tournament, and Halo 3.

I still play UT to this day though.

 

[Pseudonym]

Rayman 2. I learned how to play a 3d game pretty much entirely from that game.

It has a great upbeat atmosphere and it presents a lot of weird creative ideas as if they naturally belong in the world they are in.

I also have memories of not understanding it at all. I had too much trouble getting out of the first room in the game. I had too much trouble making really easy jumps. I had too much trouble grasping what to do when there were really obvious cues. There are sections in the first couple of levels that I recall walking through repeatedly, not understanding what I had to do when with my experience in videogames now, the answer seems completely obvious to me.