The Game...That Made You A Gamer.

[Starbird]

What was it? You know, the first game (or games) that absolutely consumed you and got you into videogames forever?

For me:
- Various NES titles, but probably the Megaman series. I still know 2-4 like the back of my hand ^_^.
- Golden Axe on the arcade. The first non NES/crappy PC game I ever saw. I think I managed to play it once (I was *young*) but used to watch others play it for hours.
- Dune 2 on PC. My first RTS love.
- One Must Fall 2097. In my option still the best fighting game ever made. It got me started on the idea of modding and making my own content for games too. I mean just listen to this intro music...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdVnKYcYi3g

Later on the shooters took over. Doom 2 was amazing. Duke Nukem Forever...I never loved the game but loved the map editor!

Quake 2 was my first game with a 3D graphics card (ye olde 3DFX Voodoo2!). I had played it through several times with no card and it literally had my mouth hanging open at times. The lighting! Then Unreal...

How about you?

 

[Turkeyburger]

Hmm...for me it would probably be Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (or 4 and 6 rather). I had played plenty of games before that point but those two games hooked me for such a long time. I played Final Fantasy 3 all the way through and after beating the game, immediately started a second play through because my step brother told me there was a way to keep *spoilers?* General Leo from dying. That lying jerk.

 

[AllCorrupt]

Phantasy Star for the Sega Master system. I was too young to figure out how to finish the game and I finally went back and finished it a year or two ago.

 

[SonOfAnarchy91]

Personally I just picked up a controller and it kinda stuck lol.I started out with the SNES and Mega-Drive (Genesis) but the game I guess that REALLY made me a "Gamer" was Resident Evil 2. God knows how many countlees hours I played that for.

 

[Starbird]

Personally I just picked up a controller and it kinda stuck lol.I started out with the SNES and Mega-Drive (Genesis) but the game I guess that REALLY made me a "Gamer" was Resident Evil 2. God knows how many countlees hours I played that for.

Ah...that was a good one too. So badly needs a remake. I loved the dual playthrough system.

Man that game used to scare the crap out of me though. Even knowing every bit of it some parts would still give me the creeps...just the sound of the Tyrant's footsteps - brr.

It was also the first game where I got so scared I started laughing. I forget where it was, but the Tyrant smashed through a wall behind me all of a sudden so I ran, and then he smashed through the wall in front of me. No idea why, but it just overloaded me and I started laughing.

Good memories ^_^.

 

[gorfias]

Fortress of the Witch King for the Commodore 64. It became a major habit for me: put a movie in my new State of the Art VCR with 25" Sharp TV, open a pack of Marboros and 2 liter Diet Coke and play it. Man, those were the days.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

Well, I had been playing games since I was 4, all the way back to the Ms. Pac-Man table arcade and Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I went on to playing more titles in the arcade and NES, as well as the SNES, but games were just "kid's stuff" and nothing more.

It wasn't until I played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Genesis that I realized how awesome games were.

Sonic 2 itself was amazing; being able to blast through acts and zones in mere minutes, the challenge of collecting several hundred rings without being hit once, entering special stages for Chaos Emeralds that felt like a completely different game, finding secrets all over the stages, having multiple routes to traverse the stage, going Super Sonic, and finally, having several cheat codes to unlock the stage select, Super Sonic, and debug mode.

This was truly the game that got me to see games in a new light and has since forth been the reason why I am still a gamer today.

 

[SonOfAnarchy91]

Good memories ^_^.

Yeah thats what I loved so much about it. It was the first game I ever experienced anything like that with. So many awesome moments in it. The Tyrant in Claire's 2nd playthrough was so creepy. The first time he burst through the wall holy crap. One of the best moments in my gaming life, even today just because of how unexpected it was.

 

[Leafie]

Hmm...for me it would probably be Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (or 4 and 6 rather). I had played plenty of games before that point but those two games hooked me for such a long time. I played Final Fantasy 3 all the way through and after beating the game, immediately started a second play through because my step brother told me there was a way to keep *spoilers?* General Leo from dying. That lying jerk.

Don't hate me but I fell in love with 7 before any of the earlier games!
Ocarina of Time was definitely the main game that influenced my life as a whole though. Either that or any n64 game.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Truly? What made me interested in the medium and the industry behind it rather than just it's products was probably(no surprise really) Bioshock. I mean, I'd played a lot of games before, but there was nothing that quite gripped me like that.

What got me into RTS(and it's cousins, 4X and grand strategy) was the venerable Rome Total War. This fueled a love of complex mechanics. I still don't really get how the morale system in TW games works but it adds a delicious layer of complexity to the standard RTS system. I mean, imagine if you had to worry about your marines getting scared and trying to run away from the zerglings? I did love Starcraft once upon a time too.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

The original Legend of Zelda on the NES.

I'd played other games before, such as Super Mario Bros. But, to my 6-year-old self, Zelda was more than just a game to be played, it was an adventure to be had.

Yes, when it look at it more objectively, the original Zelda didn't have much of a story, but the sense of adventure combined with the 6-year-old mind realization of "Wait...games can have cool stories in them?" made me a video game enthusiast for life.

 

[XMark]

Dragon Warrior (AKA Dragon Quest 1) is probably the game that first really demonstrated to me what video games can be, and how much of an in-depth experience you can have with them.

Also Contra was a hell of a fun game in terms of shooty explody action.

 

[RexMundane]

Alley Cat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(video_game)]. And no, entire internet, you wouldn't remember it.

I'd played other games before, like Wheel of Fortune and this one Trivia Slot Machine thing, all amusing, but Alley Cat? That was something I didn't understand at first, and truth be told isn't all that good as a game. But the more I screwed around with it the more I understood, and was rewarded for figuring out. That high never really goes away.

 

[Turkeyburger]

Hmm...for me it would probably be Final Fantasy 2 and 3 (or 4 and 6 rather). I had played plenty of games before that point but those two games hooked me for such a long time. I played Final Fantasy 3 all the way through and after beating the game, immediately started a second play through because my step brother told me there was a way to keep *spoilers?* General Leo from dying. That lying jerk.

Don't hate me but I fell in love with 7 before any of the earlier games!
Ocarina of Time was definitely the main game that influenced my life as a whole though. Either that or any n64 game.

Ocarina of Time was a great game. As was Final Fantasy 7. I still kind of put 6 above it myself but 7 was also a game I put an insane amount of hours into.

 

[Stewie Plisken]

Half-Life. I had played many a game before, but this was the first time I got obsessive over a game; finished it a dozen times, memorized all enemy positions and attack patterns (by the 10th time playing my health never dropped below 80), spent hours upon hours hunting down and downloading mods on a dial-up... Ah, those were the days.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

Sonic The Hedgehog 2.

I was two years old, got a sega genesis and that game from Santa at church, and never fucking looked back.

 

[Pyrian]

I dunno, Combat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_(video_game)], maybe? That came out before Space Invaders or Adventure. I don't really remember ever NOT being a gamer. I was never interested in Pong or Breakout, though, so let's go with Combat.

 

[Nicholas Chandler-Yates]

Warcraft 2, then later, Half life 2, and Planescape Torment

 

[Stats ^1]

I just remember playing the Lion King, Sonic and Streets of Rage with my dad.

 

[Fudj]

Shining Force 1+2 and Phantasy Star 5.......first games i obsessively played, could not get enough of the turn based goodness, and loved the storylines.