what games were a part of your childhood?

so, which games did you absolutely love when you were little? it can be anything, from commercial games, to demos, to flash games.

for me, i never got to have any consoles growing up, so i was stuck with just a windows xp computer and a gameboy advance. but, still, i got to grow up with games that even to this day i love.

- zoo tycoon 2. i played this game all the time. i had all the expansions (except one), and i really liked to watch this guy called stalker2k7; he made sort of mini-horror series using modded content and the first-person view. it was really cool at the time, and is pretty much what got me into modding in the first place. plus, making zoos and taking care of animals is just fun.

- rollercoaster tycoon 3. this was another game i played all the time when i was younger. making rides and designing parks was just incredibly fun for me. but, the part that i enjoyed the most was just making 'death parks'. basically, i would design rides with the sole purpose of crashing them. but, as i matured, i started to take the game more seriously and actually build legit parks. in sandbox mode, of course.

- simcity 4. you can probably see a trend of me liking games that let me build stuff. so, this game is amazing. even today, it remains one of my favorites (even if i don't play it very often). the fact that you can build a city however you want, without limits, just amazed me. though, the best part was just putting nuclear power plants all over the place and setting them on fire :p

- petz 5. i just really like animals, they make me happy. plus you can mod the game, so that was an added bonus for me :)

- spore. god dammit i don't care what anybody says, i love this game. this was the dream game; it's as if it was made specifically for me. i remember seeing commercials for this on tv, and i was in awe at how cool it looked. you can make your own ANIMALS!? that was my two favorite things combined! then, for christmas of 2008, i got the game. i played it, and dear lord, i was in shock at how great this game was. you could make your own cells? your own animals? then go into space? hell yeah! ...then five years later i found out about all the cut content and i got sad /:

- need for speed hot pursuit 2. i know, the pc port isn't the greatest, but i still love the game regardless. me and my brother played this game quite a bit, and we loved it. the cars, the tracks, the music - all of it was great.

- half-life 1 & 2. i never played it when i was little, but i saw my brother playing it quite a bit. i loved nearly every part of it: the violence, the guns, and my favorite, the creatures. boy, i loved the creatures. my brother had cinematic pictures of the aliens as his desktop wallpaper, and they looked awesome. but the one that sticks out in my mind, and i actually have a copy of, is this:

- a whole slew of sierra adventure games that i don't wanna take the time to list cuz i'm lazy

- everything on stickdeath.com. my mom didn't want me playing violent video games, so i just played games on stickdeath when nobody was looking :p

how about you guys? what games did you grow up with?

Sega Genesis was a big part of my childhood. Sonic The Hedgehog, Vectorman, Mortal Kombat, Earthworm Jim. Ah the 90's.

I was a huge fan of the Mechwarrior series growing up. Played them all from 1-4. Heavy Gear 1 and 2 as well. It really sucks that the mech sim genre died out. Aside from those, I was also big on Duke3D and Shadow Warrior. Good times.

Tomb Raider Anniversary. On our laptop it ran at like 5 FPS but I loved it.
All sorts of Disney games, especially one about Alladin, that was awesome. And it ran well. Nasira's Revenge I think it was called.
A stupid Naruto MUGEN game. I could play that for hours.
Sonic 1-3. I never completed any of the three though. There was also Pocahontas, Toy Story and some other games, I was smart enough to download a Sega Genesis emulator.
Pinball that came with WinXP.
Snake on my phone... :] ahh Nokia 1110i.
A card game called Hardwood Hearts. We didn't know the rules and just randomly mashed cards, but it was fun.
Zuma! Both Deluxe and Revenge.

But the first game of my childhood was... wrong, MS Word. We had an old-ass laptop (our dad bought it in the late 90-s, so it was about 10 yrs old), and it was broken as hell, the CD drive didn't work, the floppy drive was obsolete, half of the standard Win98 programs were just plain missing. So, what did the 6-year old me and my sister do for entertainment? After coming back from kindergarten, we'd plug the damn thing in, open Word 97 and draw random crap with shapes and WordArt. Oh, also I recall writing stories. Like "we woke up then we went her then we went there".
Later our dad bought a new laptop and I've lost track of the masterpieces written by the 6-year old myself. A shame.

Thank you for this thread, I feel like a kid again. :]

A lot of Sega Genesis games, and some Atari 2600/7800 games mostly. World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comes to mind specifically because I played the crap out of that as a kid. Also Pitfall!, Robotron, Cyborg Justice, Herzog Zwei, and the first two Sonic games.

Also, you know, Doom.

I also have very, very fond memories of playing Ninja Gaiden, S.T.U.N. Runner, and Aliens in my local arcades. My mom was very cool about arcade games, and would take me and let me play in there quite often. I guess in some ways, my childhood memories of arcade games is more important to me.

- All of the Sonic games on Genesis
- Vectorman I & II
- Sub-Terrania
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario World
- Adventures of Lolo
- Doom, of course
- Pokemon
- Diamonds (weird puzzle game on the PC)
- Phantasy Star Online (in my teens by this point)
- Armored Core (also a bit later, but this was a huge game for me)
- Unreal Tournament 99

There are a ton of other games that I played at friends and relatives that I loved, but these are the ones that I remember the most.

I see a few classic systems, but let me take you all the way back to the Intellivision era with Astrosmash, BurgerTime, and Locomotion.

Next, the same year the NES was released, there was the Atari ST home computer with Deja Vu, Zany Golf, and Speedball.

And of course, the NES had Zelda 1 & 2, Mario 3, Mickey Mousecapade, Wizards & Warriors, Shadowgate, and Contra.

SNES took a fair bit of my time with Zelda 3, Sim City, Super Mario Bros, The Magical Quest, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

Sega Genesis rivaled it with Kid Chameleon, Golden Axe, NHL '94, The Addams Family, and Toejam & Earl.

But Sega CD was top dog with Lunar, Sonic CD, AH-3 Thunderstrike, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Microcosm, Night Trap, Flashback, Ecco 2, Road Avenger, Puggsy, Soulstar, Lunar 2... yeah, I pretty much lived off this system for a few years :P

During that time, I was also transitioning to PC games with Doom, Doom2, Heretic, Hexen, Warcraft 2, and Worms.

After that, my console era ended and I've been exclusively with PCs ever since.

bzzrak said:

Zuma! Both Deluxe and Revenge.

Jeez. Way too addictive.

Every "just a quick gauntlet run" turned into at least 2-3 hours.

And it worked especially well with the game music off and my own music playing in the background. For whatever reason, Tristania's World of Glass became one of my official Zuma soundtracks. Maybe all the glass balls shattering reminded me of it.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the sound stopped working entirely about a year ago, and now it gives a fatal error when I try to load it at all ("expecting levels tag"). I'm on Windows XP, so it's not like some system or driver update could cause it, and I never once changed the directory or anything in it, so whatever.

I never did get the full version of Revenge either. I played the hour-long demo and knew it would consume my life. Maybe it's best I didn't get it.

WOLFENSTEIN 3-D, one of the very first PC games for me, along with Supaplex. Doom (in the form of Ultimate Doom) came much later, even later than Star Wars Dark Forces.

PS2 exclusives, Neo Geo classics like Metal Slug, Art of Fighting, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Street Fighter, Gran Turismo 4, DBZ BT, Armored Core 3 SL, Sly 3, Newgrounds Rumble, Heli Attack 3, Super Mario Bros flash games, Need for Speed Carbon, Prince of Persia Sands of Time, there's more, but overall these are the ones i remember the most.

Here is a list of games I've started playing since I was 5 in chronological order:

[from 2005 - 2007]
Super Street Figther 2
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters
Ninja Warriors Again
Tony Hawk's Underground 1 and 2
Unreal Tournament
Civilization III
Deus Ex

[by 2008]
Double Dragon 2
Ducks Tales 1 and 2 [Nes]
Deus Ex: Invisible War

[by 2009]
X- Men vs. Street Fighter
Doom 1 and 2
Doom 3
Battlefield 1942
Call of Duty 2

[by 2010]
I started playing Zdoom by this point almost nightly for around a year
Blood

[by 2012]
Blood 2: The Chosen
Half Life (1, op4, and bs)
Call of Duty MW1
CoD Black Ops II

Extreme Assault ++++, Fury ++++, Doom and Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen. Then Quake when I was 5-6. Quake 2, Hexen 2, then Timesplitters for the PS2, as well as Gauntlet for N64 and Gauntlet Dark Legacy for PS2. That's about it

I was a huge board game freak but no siblings to play with so times were tough in that regard. I invented so many board games and never got to test them.

From the time I got my capable hands on to gaming eh? 1994 is when I did, 1991 for birth.

First few were from the Super Nintendo:
Star Fox , Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, Mario Kart, and Donkey Kong Country

I still have all but Mario Kart and Donkey Kong, whereabouts unknown, presumed stolen since 1998 and onward.

Playstation 1:
Spyro series, Crash Team Racing, Future Cop LAPD, and GranStream Saga.

From which I own physical CTR, and digital dl on PS3, GranStream Saga presumed burned with my fathers garage back in 2008 along with my original copies of Spyro and my multitude of demo discs.

PC:
Heroes of Might and Magic series (2004 is when I got all 3, still counts), Doom (Shareware), Jetpack (demo), God of Thunder(demo), Wolfenstein 3D (demo), and Hocus Pocus (demo)

By 2005, Ultimate Doom and Doom 2/Final obtained, Heroes Complete few years later, everything else in demo department lost. Unsure if everything else has a free variant (legal), I know Jetpack does, but creator hasn't finished 2.

This would be the end of my childhood gaming... Atleast the games I played nonstop). Everything can be expanded upon if this WASN'T a childhood thread. :p

Even though I pretty much only play games on PC these days, I grew up playing a lot of games on my old Super Nintendo. Yoshi's Island in particular is a game that I consider to be one of the best games ever made. Ironically, Yoshi's Islands has one of the most disappointing sequels of all time.

I grew up on NES stuff like Mega Man, Mario, North and South, all that good stuff. My parents got most of the NES games from a yard sale or two, but VHS rental stores still rented NES games, even though SNES and Genesis were out.

I later got a Genesis, Sonic blew me away as a kid, and of course Street Fighter II Special Championship Edition, MK2, etc. On PC I only had a 386 for a while so I could play Doom (a friend brought over a Doom2CD), but I wasn't officially allowed to play it until a few years later (since I was 8 when Doom2 was out).

I loved stuff like the Wolf3D shareware and Duke Nukem 1 shareware, and played lots of adventure games like the Space Quest and Quest for Glory series.

And of course the N64, PSX, Dreamcast, and PC gaming with my Voodoo3 or 3D Blaster Annihilator (Geforce) were good times a few years later.

Gotta love gaming!

I grew up with a PS2 and had a small library of games that I played a ton. The ones I spent the most time with (from when I first started gaming in late 2003-early 2004 to, say, 2009):

Crash Bandicoot 2/3 (never got a chance to play the first one, but 2 and 3 were the greatest. Never got around to 100%-ing them, unfortunately. I don't have a PS4, but the Crash remake thing looks great from what I've seen. Makes me want to go back and revisit them :) )
Crash Team Racing (probably my favourite PS1 game. Still start it up occasionally)
Spyro 1/2 (Spyro 1 was the first game I ever completed to 100% (or rather, 120%). It got to the point where I was able to do so in one day, taking maybe five hours. I played Spyro 3 years later and while it wasn't quite as special, it was still solid)
Dance Dance Revolution (don't remember which one, exactly. I think it was Extreme 2. I do remember that I was in better shape back then, haha).
Need For Speed Underground 2/Most Wanted (the best NFS games, hands down :] MW was also one of the few games I finished as a kid. Those late-game police chases were intense!)
Guitar Hero 3 (played an absolute ton of this. Eventually I could get through most songs on Expert, and the rest on Hard.)

I mostly played NES when I was a kid, I didn't get my hands on a N64 until I was 11? 2002 I think, but I'm unsure when. Anything more modern I only got exposure to while I was at my friend's. I had a decent library but for me the ones I owned/played the most (and still repeatedly play to this day):

Zelda 1 and 2 (Link's Adventure is a fantastic game)
Mega Man 2 and 3 (both are great in their own right)
TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project (Holy fuck this is a great game)
Kirby's Adventure (Recommend the GBA remastered port, really good job on that)
SMB 3

Game Boy, hook me up, because my NES didn't work half the time and I didn't learn how to fix it myself until much later.

Pokemon gen 1 and 2, though gen 2 was remarkably better, and stands out to me more than gen 1.
Warioland! The first one. Fucking great.
Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons. Even if you aren't a zelda fan, you are doing yourself a disservice not giving these a playthrough!
Mega Man Battle Network 3. I recently bought another copy of this game and gave it another play through, for a GBA game this is a lengthy title (with experience, knowledge, and skill it still took a solid 35 hours for a main play through, and there is tons of post-game to do) and solid-as-fuck game play, can't recommend it enough.

Otherwise, while I was at my friend's, typical stuff you know, Mario Kart, Duke Nukem 64, Golden-eye, Perfect Dark, Smash Bros, etc.

Grew up on PSX:

Twisted Metal

Silent Hill

Resident Evil

Aaaand, my buddies had all the good N64 games.

Let's see:

• Doom
  
• The Neverhood (anyone heard of that pc game?)
  
• My family's NES, Sega Genesis, and Atari 2600
  
• My Gameboy Advance which I had since I was seven
  
• The MAME arcade emulator!
  

All of these mede me the old soul I an today.

Xyzzy01 said:

Let's see:[list]

Doom

The Neverhood (anyone heard of that pc game?)

Same here. Although I never successfully completed the Neverhood, got close though!

Naturally the other classic FPS games were part of my childhood such as Blood, Duke Nukem etc. I have some brief experience with Amiga games like Golden Axe, Turrican series, Robocop etc etc etc (all Amiga games were hacked for cheats).

Crash Bandicoot 1-3 + Crash Team Racing.
Need for Speed Underground 2.
Rayman.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 2-3.
Sly 2 + 3.
Tekken 3.

I was in love with the PS1.

Doom 1 and 2, Pro Skater 3, I can name a few more like Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (PS2).

-Doom II: Hell on Earth (no surprises there)
-Spyro 1-3
-Crash Bandicoot 1-3 + Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash
-Tekken 3
-Croc
-Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3

Yeah, mostly PS1 games. Good times.

Having played it for a few years over at friends' houses, I bought a Commodore 64 in the mid-80's (I was 13 I guess), for which there circulated a ton of games , albeit rather simple and short-lived ones by today's standard. Some favorites include:

Forbidden Forest
Way of the Exploding Fist
Killer Watt
Black Knight
Karateka
Spelunker (a buddy made an editor for this and we made our own levels)
Enchanter
The Eidolon (first first-person game I played)
Racing Destruction Set
The Hobbit
Green Beret
Mercenary
Cracker's Revenge
Barbarian
The Last V8
Thrust
Delta
The Sacred Armour of Antiriad

Before and alongside the C64, there were the arcades. Some favorites from that era include:
Space Invaders (first videogame I ever played - at around 8 years old)
Asteroids
Qix - first ever RTS?
Space Invaders (pinball)
Phoenix - first "epic" boss fight?
Xevious
Donkey Kong
Black Knight (first multi-storied pinball machine)
Ghosts'n Goblins
Arkanoid
Double Dragon
Gauntlet
Rygar (I wasn't a kid anymore by the time this came around, but its my favorite arcade game of all time - I played it enough that I comfortably beat the world record score printed in C+VG magazine)

Manic miner
Chuckie egg

There's many more I'm not remembering at the moment but these are the game that significantly impacted me.

90s—late 90s
Super Mario Bros. (NES)
Duck Hunt (NES)
Double Dragon 2 (NES)
Sonic 3 (Sega)
Jurassic Park (Sega)
MK 3 (Sega)
Doom Shareware
Ultimate Doom
Doom 2
Quake Shareware
Tomb Raider (First PSX game)
Resident Evil 2
Twisted Metal 2, 3, 4
Duke Nukem: Time to Kill on a demo disc, I played it so fucking much it was insanity. I wanted the full game so bad, but my dad wouldn't buy it.
Mortal Kombat Triology
GTA (PC) at my sister's house. I stayed up all night playing that shit, blown away. I remember looking over and out the window and realizing it was morning.
GTA2 (PSX), later in life when I finally got my own PC and a fresh copy of GTA2 I was floored by the lighting and how different it made the game.
Quake 2 (PSX), played a fuckton of DM with multitap, another game that floored me with the differences between PSX and PC versions.
Rainbow Six (PSX)

Early 2000s
Resident Evil 3
Diablo 1, first game I 'saw' played online, and it was glorious. Seeing people drop gold on the floor and someone else pick it up was so fucking cool! And ears! I thought about that shit for a whole weekend after I left my buddy's house. I think D2 released a year or two after I saw Diablo 1 for the first time.
Kingpin: Life of Crime
C&C Tib Sun
AVP Gold, I spent many hours playing online later when we got Cable internet.
AVP 2
Swat 3 demo, first game I ever played online (Dial Up)and became very skilled.
Swat 3 Gold
Quake 2 (PC), I first played this with Dial Up on Gamespy, and it was also glorious.
Delta Force 2, I always heard online was fucking awesome but think when I finally tried it I got too much lag, but I played allot of SP. My step dad would sit down with his glass of whiskey and play the shit out of it.
Quake 3
Serious Sam
Unreal Tournament Gold
Gangsters: Organized Crime
I got an Xbox for Xmas but for some reason I don't have such found memories of any games other than Unreal Championship. Halo didn't woo me.

When I was "little"? Let's set the Wayback Machine to the 1980s, then:

• Warlords and Star Raiders (Atari 2600).
  
• Burgertime, TRON: Solar Sailer, and Bomb Squad (Intellivision).
  
• Rogue (PC, Amiga, Atari ST).
  
• Mindwalker (Amiga).
  
• Dungeon Master (Atari ST).
  
• More assorted CRPGs than it's convenient to list, spanning C64, PC, Apple II, and Atari ST. (Don't get me started on what happened to the genre in the 1990s :( )
  

AD_79 said:

Dance Dance Revolution (don't remember which one, exactly. I think it was Extreme 2. I do remember that I was in better shape back then, haha).

This is still one of my favorite game series XD

I started with DDR 5th Mix in the arcade, and DDR 4th mix at home. Later, 6th and 7th mix ended up being my favorites. I played it CONSTANTLY, nearly every day at home and once or twice a week in the arcade, and... well, let's just say there's a reason for my title. But I wouldn't call them part of my childhood since I was in my first year of college by then.

Sadly I don't play it much anymore since it's hard not to annoy neighbors with it when you live in an apartment :-P

MDK
Bomberman
Doom/Doom2(obviously)
Heretic
Hexen
Red Alert 2
GTA
Witchaven
Hocus Pocus(only the shareware though)
Quake 1

And many more that I can't think of right now.

Doom II, Obviously.

Some shareware games that were publised by Apogee Software, like:

• Wolfenstein 3D (It was a registered version, actually)
  
• Death Rally
  
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows
  
• Hocus Pocus
  

And here are more games from my childhood, which are enjoyable enough to remember after those many years.

• Skyroads
  
• Jazz Jackrabbit
  
• Princess Maker 2
  
• Starcraft & Starcraft: Brood War
  
• Age of Empires I & II
  
• Pokemon Gold Version
  
• Simcity 3000 Korea
  
• Roller Coaster Tycoon
  
• Metal Slug X & 3
  
• Counter Strike 1.5 _{"......Ah, those good-old WON.net and POD-BOT"}
  

yukib1t: And I thought your custom title referred to memory xD
--

Still got most of them in a box upstairs, been a while since I played most of them though D:

PC:

Duke Nukem 3D
Monster Truck Madness
7th Legion
Space Cadet Pinball :p
DragonFable + AdventureQuest
Whatever the fuck this is supposed to be...
Delta Force
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
RuneScape (2008-2011, good times)

PSX:
Doom + Final Doom
Duke Nukem: Time to Kill
MediEvil 1 + 2
Gran Turismo 2
Medal of Honor + MoH: Underground
Wargames: Defcon 1
TOCA 1997
Monsters Inc. Scare Island (lol, cool game though!)

PS2:
Medal of Honor: Frontline
SOCOM 3 + Combined Assault (3 more than CA)
Lego Star Wars
Colin McRae rally 2004
Ford Racing 2
Call of Duty: Finest Hour (and 2: Big Red One)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Need for Speed Undergound 1 + 2 (2 more than 1)
Need for Speed Carbon