Nostalgic Games and Favorite Games?

[CombatEX]

I got kind of carried away, but I guess that can happen when you're remembering fond memories. Anyway, I don't expect anyone to write an essay, you can just name the titles =P

Over the years I've played many great games, and for the most part I feel games are improving. However, despite all the improvements, there are some games that will always be important to me. The types of games I mean are the ones where little things like hearing a song from the game brings back all kinds of great memories. The games may not be great, but they're special to me.

PRIMARY

It's hard to explain, but what distinguishes these games from the others is that there's almost a sad feeling amongst the happy memories. It's like I want desperately to go back to those times, but I know it can never happen. This 'sadness/longing' isn't there with the secondary games.

- Rayman 2: One of my first real 3D games and I loved the environments and characters
- Submarine Titans: One of the few games I played with my dad that he seemed genuinely interested in
- Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed: Played this with my uncle every time he came to visit

SECONDARY

There are a lot of other great games I played during my childhood, but the connection isn't quite as strong for some reason. I don't know why because I actually enjoyed some of these games more than those above, but I just don't feel as nostalgic about them. I guess that desire to 'go back' isn't really there. These were just fun games, but I've finished them or moved on and that's that.

- Myst and Riven: These were the first games I ever played
- Monster Rancher 4: My friends and I went through a phase where we mostly played this game. The fact that you could get randomized monsters from putting in other discs was awesome. Wish they made a proper sequel...
- James Bond 007: NightFire: Before my friends discovered Halo it was all about this game =P I loved using the grapple hook.
- Super Smash Brothers Melee: I probably played this with my friends more than any other game (well, maybe not more than Halo 3, hard to say)
- Dark Cloud: I loved the city building aspect and branching weapon tree. The dungeons themselves weren't that great, but everything else was excellent.
- Age of Empires II: Played this game a lot, especially messing around with the editor once I had finished the campaigns.
- LEGO Racer: So much fun. Played this with my dad too. It probably would be in the primary group if not for the fact that Submarine Titan's overrides this as my 'videogame with my dad'.
- LEGO Island: This was my first free movement video game (yea, Myst and Riven were just point and click).
- Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge: Played this with my sister so much =)
- Tzar: Burden of the Crown: Not sure what it is about this game that makes it so important to me. Maybe it's the music, the level editor, the demo level that when played in skirmish mode makes a really fun but unintended scenario? Who knows =P
- Anno 1602: I always enjoyed city building games (I did like the original Sim City and Sim City 3000, but at the end of the day I preferred Anno).
- Bugdom: Well... for some reason the computers in my elementary school had this game. I can't remember why, but we would always have some extra time in the computer lab during class so a lot of guys and girls would just play this with the leftover time. My friend and I were the best so we'd always be competing to see who could beat the game while people would gather around us =P haha. I can't remember who managed to get the furthest, but neither of us managed to beat the game just with the school time. Eventually I bought this game many years later and beat it >.<

MORE RECENTLY

These are all pretty old games, so how about more recently? My favorite games more current games would probably be

STRATEGY
- Outwitters
- Starcraft 2
- Warcraft 3
- Shogun 2: Total War
- Anno 2070
- Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery)

FIGHTING
- Dissidia: Final Fantasy
- Super Smash Brothers Brawl

RACING
- WipEout Pulse/HD/2048
- Race Driver: GRID
- Mario Kart Wii (finally a game I can play with my whole family!)
- Hydro Thunder (used to play this with my sister every time we went to the arcade so when it came out on XBOX live we had to get it =P)

ADVENTURE/RPG/STORY
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
- Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Mass Effect 1/2/3
- The Witcher
- The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings
- Deus EX: Human Revolution
- The Walking Dead

FLIGHT SIMULATION
- Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception

FPS
- Halo 3 (well, kind of getting old now but still my favorite FPS)
- Star Wars: Battlefront 1/2

There are actually many other games I've enjoyed immensely but at this point I'm just going to cut it short (or cut it long since this has gone way further than I initially intended). Some of the great games I left out are Journey, FTL: Faster Than Light, Skyrim, Battleheart, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Patapon 1/2, Magicka, Trine 1/2, Advance Wars series, Fire Emblem series, Endless Space... it just goes on and on. So yea, if it's not here, doesn't mean I didn't like it =P I just couldn't list them all.

Side Note

Games that were preloaded on school computers? It's pretty strange now that I think about it, but when I was in elementary school there were quite a few games on the computers. I'm curious if this is the case everywhere or if my school was just weird. It's not like we were ever told to play them, they were just there and if you finished your work quickly you could play them.

- Bugdom
- Nanosaur
- Oregon Trail (It was always sad when Frodo died of dysentery or Aragorn didn't manage to hunt enough buffalo)
- Amazon Trail (Loved this game! Also learned a lot of random stuff)
- Galactic Empire (Only one computer had this but it was a fun game when I got the change to play it)
- DinoPark Tycoon (Actually I just looked at the wikipedia article and apparently there was a school version of this game. Perhaps that's how most of these games found their way onto the elementary school computers. It's still odd that we were never asked to play them though, with the exception of Oregon Trail)
- Odell Down Under (I always had the highest score because everyone would customize their fish and make it really fancy... but it turned out if you just go to the customization screen and start without doing anything your fish will be able to eat coral which never runs out. So instead of having to look around for food/points, you have a never-ending supply of points without having to move =D ez ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

[Gf!sh]

Well, I must say, I'm really a Mario fan, and i probaly spent half of my childhood playing Super Mario Bros and Super Mario 64, followed by a LOT of Super Mario Galaxy (i'm at 241 stars on part 2, can you believe it?) and in between countless hours of Mario Kart (We had once a major tournament on primary school ).

[Promicide]

Wow that is a comprehensive list. You have good tastes. Ill just go by my most nostalgic/all time favs:
Chrono Trigger (still the best storyline written in RPG)
Final Fantasy VII (who doesn't love this rpg? Comes very close to chrono trigger status for me, but trigger is older)
Super Smash Bros Melee (a family thing)
Borderlands (the first game I got my wife to play and love)
Halo 1,2,3/Reach (read all the books too.)
Diablo 2
Warcraft 2, 3
Outwitters (my anytime fix for strategy)

I would do a fancy format as CombatEx did, but this is coming from a phone :/

[TheQwertiest]

I dont really know that much about games to be able to categorize them but these are the games that i played with

Online:
Gunbound
Tantra Ph :'(

Offline/LAN:
Dota map in Warcraft
Counter-Strike
Starcraft (i didnt really excell here as i have no talent in microing)
Diablo 2


PlayStation:
Twisted Metal
Command and Conquer: Red Alert? (not sure with the title but i can still remember the cheat for A-Bomb xD)
Crash Bandicoot
Resident Evil 1,2,3 and 5
Metal Gear Solid
GT 5
Suikoden II :'(

Gameboy:
Pokemon Gold,Silver,Crystal and Ruby (loved the first few pokemon games cause you could clone. haha)

iPad:
Outwitters

[CombatEX]

It's cool seeing what games other people have enjoyed over the years =) And now that you've mentioned it there are quite a few more games I neglected to include but I enjoyed nonetheless.

Super Mario Galaxy, Borderlands, Pokemon FireRed

Super Mario Galaxy was a cool concept and I did enjoy my playthrough. I was borrowing it from a friend though so I didn't play it *quite* as much as you Gfich =) Also, you had a Mario Kart tournament at school?! I wish we had done stuff like that back then.

I played a lot of Borderlands with one of my friends. It was always fun, but he has really strict parents and we were still in high school so the times when our schedules would line up were pretty limited. Took us a LONG time to finally beat the game.

As for Diablo 2, unfortunately I was a bit late to the party on that one. A lot of my close friends had been obsessed with that game, but by the time I got it they had already played their share. One of my friends had even let his account with his paladin torch expire =(

I never really got into DotA, but when I brought up WarCraft 3 I was indeed referring to custom maps. I played a few skirmishes, some of the campaign, and then it was all custom maps from there. Such a huge variety. I mostly played Fortress Survival Alpha and SWAT: Aftermath but there were tons of other great maps too.

As for the Pokemon games, I only really played FireRed and SoulSilver (though actually I got around halfway through Yellow on my friend's Gameboy). I got into collecting Pokemon cards back when there was only 150. I don't really like all these new generations... seriously, Bidoof? o.O Nah, it's all about Nidoran♂ (my friend found that card on the ground at a park and gave it to me, my first Pokemon ever =O Still have it ^^). Anyway, I probably won't be playing another Pokemon game until they release 'Ultra FireRed' and 'Mega LeafGreen' where the original Pokemon take the center stage once again =) Probably won't happen, but oh well, was fun while it lasted. And I still have the full set of original cards =D

FFVII... I really need to play this. I did start playing Crisis Core but stopped for some reason. Same is true of Chrono Trigger. I don't remember disliking them, something else probably just came up. Maybe I should try again ^^

[RandyDogz]

Going old school here, but the early Ultima games were, in my opinion, the benchmark for old school rpg's - spent many hours playing Exodus (#3) on my IBM PCjr. Played Earl Weaver Baseball on that thing too, still one of the best stat-based simulation baseball games I've ever played, along with Pursue the Pennant a card/dice baseball board game.

And even older school....was just recently at my moms and found my bros old Triplanetary board game, excellent space based hex game played with an acetate map and grease pencil :0

Ya, I'm old....+1 rep for anyone who's played any of those lol

Twisted Metal, Metal Gear Solid, and the first couple Resident Evil are great playstation games!

Memories flooding back now....a few years ago I bought an original Nintendo on eBay just to play Ninja Gaiden again!

[TheQwertiest]

(10-30-2012 09:29 AM)RandyDogz Wrote:  Ya, I'm old....+1 rep for anyone who's played any of those lol

Twisted Metal, Metal Gear Solid, and the first couple Resident Evil are great playstation games!

lol. ive never heard any of those first games youve mentioned. xD

oh the PS1 days.. i miss playing Metal Gear.
snake? snake?! SNAAAKE! haha.
I hate how the Resident Evil games have turned out.
after 3 it started going downhill. 5 was fine but its just not the same
with the old RE games.. the thrill of opening doors. lol
I bought Operation Racoon City earlier this year and i was so disappointed.
it sucked like hell. first game ive ever bought that i didnt bother playing.
reluctant to try RE 6 after RE:ORC

[Gf!sh]

(10-30-2012 08:15 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  Also, you had a Mario Kart tournament at school?! I wish we had done stuff like that back then.

Yes, I ended up third (Spiny in final lap of the final race of the final round, can you believe it?).

[CombatEX]

(10-31-2012 01:43 AM)Gfich Wrote:  Yes, I ended up third (Spiny in final lap of the final race of the final round, can you believe it?).

Oh yes I can believe it! Hate it when that happens >.< At least it's never happened to me in a tournament haha

(10-30-2012 09:29 AM)RandyDogz Wrote:  Going old school here, but the early Ultima games were, in my opinion, the benchmark for old school rpg's - spent many hours playing Exodus (#3) on my IBM PCjr. Played Earl Weaver Baseball on that thing too, still one of the best stat-based simulation baseball games I've ever played, along with Pursue the Pennant a card/dice baseball board game.

And even older school....was just recently at my moms and found my bros old Triplanetary board game, excellent space based hex game played with an acetate map and grease pencil :0

Never even heard of those =O No +rep for me =,(

The oldest game I've played was Galactic Empire which came out in 1980. http://macintoshgarden.org/games/galactic-empire On this page it says 1994, but the original came out in 1980. Not sure why it says a different date here. It was ported, so maybe that's the port release date?

[Gf!sh]

(10-31-2012 04:05 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  

(10-31-2012 01:43 AM)Gfich Wrote:  

(10-30-2012 08:15 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  Also, you had a Mario Kart tournament at school?! I wish we had done stuff like that back then.

Yes, I ended up third (Spiny in final lap of the final race of the final round, can you believe it?).

Oh yes I can believe it! Hate it when that happens >.< At least it's never happened to me in a tournament haha

Probaly the worst part: it was on Rainbow Road (BTW Double-Screener version), so i fell off