What was the game that made you a gamer?

[snappydog]

It's a weird one, but Kingdom Hearts. A friend with a PS2 rented KH and I played it at his house, then I just had to have it. Before that I'd had a GBA but never a proper non-handheld console, so I got a PS2 and Kingdom Hearts and played for weeks. I kind of did it backwards, I guess, in that KH got me into the Final Fantasy series rather than the other way around - so when I played FFVII and VIII I was constantly squealing because I recognised characters from KH.

 

[Ryallen]

Yoshi's Story. Basically, when I was really young, about 5 or so, I was visiting my cousin's house in Pennsylvania and they had an N64. They let me play on it for a while. This was back when I had never even heard of Mario or Zelda or anyone. But they had Yoshi's story, and that's the game that I decided to play, and when I started playing it, I never had so much fun in my life. When I got home, I asked my dad if he could go out and get me Yoshi's Story, although I never learned the name of it. I just said "that video game that I played at [my cousin's] house". He went out, and got Super Mario 64 instead, because he couldn't find Yoshi's Story. Heck, I still remember him giving it to me. I loved Super Mario 64, but I always wanted Yoshi's Story more. It wasn't until a year ago that I learned its name after all these years.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I have no idea. Probably Super Mario World or one of the Donkey Kong Country games.

 

[Legomaniac91_v1legacy]

The game that made me a gamer was Spyro 2:Ripto's Rage for the PS1. I played and replayed that game more time than I can count, but my only regret was never getting 100% on it. I came so close with like 92-95% and only hand a couple orbs and maybe a handful of gems to go. The reward for that was actually more that just bragging rights; if you got all the orbs and gems in the game and then started a new file, you got the super fireball powerup on permanently! I wound up selling it to get a Gamecube, which wasn't too bad since I got a free Zelda Collector's series disk with it (containing the Original Zelda, Zelda 2:Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask).

 

[Remus]

I've played videogames since SMB on the NES - even kept a comprehensive list of games I've beaten. Stopped keeping track after it numbered over 200. But the games that really pulled me in, that scratched that itch, started with Faxanadu. It was a side-scrolling action/RPG where games were saved with 40-character passcodes, armor and weapons that changed your appearance when equipped (big thing for an NES game), and every death changed the game. Die once, a random goblin will appear at the border of the towns. Twice, three times, they kill all the merchants and take the town. No more quests, no more supplies, no more game. That really added weight to death that games like Contra simply didn't have.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Donkey Kong Country. I was playing that before I could read. It was also the first game I actually beat and my first introduction to a 2 stage boss fight. When that final boss came back to life at the end, I literally dove for the controller which I had set down in victory. But at the end of the day, I was victorious...

 

[solemnwar]

The one that started it was Unreal Gold, which got me interested in FPSs... but I really only liked FPSs that were like Unreal, which weren't many of them... but I liked games like Prey and I kind of liked NecroVisioN. I would probably like Cryostasis if it would run nice on any of my computers *sigh*

But what REALLY got me into gaming was Dragon Age: Origins. It will forever be my most favourite game and the reason why I am eternally a Bioware whore.

 

[Goro]

Moon Patrol. A dinky little side scrolling arcade cabinet. That was my gateway game. I've always had a problem with arcade machine use... Then River Raid, Mario and more Mario... F-Zero and Mario Kart. And then, GoldenEye. Me and my high school buddies spending hour after hour trying to get that next unlock. My name is Fat Tony and I have no problematic all with my games use!

 

[King of Asgaard]

Mine was Spyro too. It was the first game we'd gotten for the PS1. It was Christmas and I was 4 years old. My family were worried that I wouldn't be able to get the hang of it. Much to their surprise, I grasped it far quicker than expected, and thus my gamer life was born.

 

[Shocksplicer]

I was obsessed with games long before I had any way of actually playing them, as my parents wouldn't give me a console or the pocket money to get one. However, the game that opened my eyes to how incredible games could really be was definitely Morrowind. I remember playing it for the first time and just thinking "Wow. This is incredible."

 

[StriderShinryu]

For me it was probably the first couple of Zelda games and Castlevania 2, all for the NES of course. They weren't the first games I played way back then, but they were the first ones that really made me think about games in a "wow" sense to the point that I was studying them and thinking about them outside of when I was actually playing them. They became touchstones to me that I still compare games to even today.

 

[MetalDooley]

Super Mario Bros on the NES.I had dabbled with games a fair bit before that in arcades and on things like Atari 2600 and C64 that my friends owned but then one christmas my parents got me a NES with the SMB/Duck Hunt double cartridge and I was hooked.My brother and I used to spend hours just playing SMB over and over

 

[Astoria]

I can't say which game originally made me a gamer because I can't remember. I know I used to enjoy playing the Spyro and Crash games but where all started I'm not sure because I know I've been playing Nintendo 64 games since I was about 5. The game that revived my love for them though was Fallout 3. The most I guess advanced game that I'd played up until that point was the Oddworld games and I'd had other interests distract me so I had no idea games could be anything like that and it blew me away. Since then I've been trying to play anything and everything but Fallout 3 still is and probably always will be my favourite.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

Twisted Metal and the original Grand Theft Auto. My uncles wanted my mom to have a boy and instead they got me so they made me as boyish as possible. I loved it though, twisted metal became a big thing in my gaming life and my uncle and I still play the original whenever I visit him and my aunt.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't think there's any one game that did it for me, but by the end of the NES era, I was pretty well hooked.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

I remember playing an assortment of educational games and the odd platformer like A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 on my parents' computer when I was small, but it wasn't until I got a PS2 for Christmas at age 11 that I started thinking more about video games and considering them a primary hobby. The reason I wanted a PS2 in the first place was Spyro the Dragon. A Hero's Tail was my first game on the system, but it wasn't until I bought Sly 2: Band of Thieves from a department store on a whim that I was really drawn in and wowed. Sly 2 opened my mind to the possibilities. There have been a number of games in my life that have influenced how I view the medium (heck, even my life itself), but I have to give Sly 2 the credit for making me a gamer in the first place.

 

[FPLOON]

Damn, I basically got ninja'd the fuck out...

I was going to say Rayman Advance for the Gameboy Advance, but that was my first game as well as my first unfinished game...

I was also going to say Rayman 3 for the Gameboy Advance, but despite completing that game 100%, I don't think that solidify myself as a gamer to me...

So, I'll just say that Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube was the game that made me a gamer, which is funny to me because at first, I was only playing this game out of spite for someone else who would not shut up about how awesome the game was... But seriously, it was the first game I ever invested most time in comparison to the other games I've had beforehand, the first game (with an actual end to speak of) to be played more times than I could count at this point, and the first game that I ever went in deep discussions over with others who have played this game as well...

Granted, this wasn't my first [J]RPG (especially if you're counting Pokemon Ruby, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, or even the NES Zelda games for the Gameboy Advance) at the time, but this was the game that kept me up late at nights, leveling up my team, experimenting with their EX skills, doing various sidequest because my curiosity got the better of me most of the time, and other random stuff for shits and giggles, basically... I played Symphonia more times and with more hours clocked in overall than Pokemon Ruby, which was the most social game I was playing among friends beforehand...

Overall, that feeling of playing something for hours on end, actually discussing not only the gameplay, but the story, characters, and sometimes themes with friends, and even finding out about others games in relation to having that feeling overall is why I consider Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube the game that made me a gamer...

Although, I do want to add that despite that being the turning point that made me a gamer, I did not know about the "gamer" label until three years later after beating Tales of Symphonia for the first time, in which someone from the video game club in high school pointed it out to me that I was a gamer... So, there's that...

 

[bigfatcarp93]

I had played other games before this, but it has to be my favorite game of all time that made me truly love the medium:

Spoiler

Fuck the Combine.