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)_/¯)