I will finish this later.
I liked my friend Shane's blog post on the games of his life, so I've recreated this list for myself, and worked to evaluate it using metrics that I find to be meaningful to me.
Shane chose to break his games down into a variety of numerical values (years published, score on metracritic, prevalence of common elements, that sort of thing). I'm no good at statistics so you get stories instead.
10 Impactful Games (in the order in which I played them)
King's Quest 4
King's Quest 6
Wizardy VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
Quake
Sam and Max Hit the Road
Ocarina of Time
Baldur's Gate
Grim Fandango
Puzzle Pirates
BioShock
King's Quest 4
This was the first videogame I ever played new. I was maybe 8 or 9. Previous to this, my grandfather had given us a box of random floppies--shareware and stuff he'd played before (See Bane of the Cosmic Forge). It's one of the first videogames that has a female protagonist, and I have a distinct memory of my grandfather loading up the game and saying to me, "Look at how beautiful Rosella is!"
She was kind of orange and her eyes were two blue pixels. She wore a pretty dress and the game was made by a lady, and I don't care what anyone says, when I look at this game, Rosella is still heartbreakingly beautiful to me. My grandfather always made sure that we had his hand-me-down computer, and he obviously cared enough to go and find a game that felt like it was especially for me.
It took my brother and I forever to finish this game. I made rudimentary maps of the cave. And, at the end (SPOILER), the guy who was an ugly hunchback turns into a handsome prince and proposes to Rosella, and she says NO, because why would you get married to a dude you had met like 3 times, and besides, she had to go save her father! Love it.
King's Quest 6
Man, my brother and I wanted to play this but we needed a mouse AND a new hard drive because it took up 100MB (!!!). My grandfather came and put in a brand new hard drive and the RAM we needed. I remember saving up something like $60 to buy it. Very Exciting. I was 12.
Main character was a dreamy dude! He goes and gets shipwrecked because some chick in a mirror is pining for him (or something). The details are not important, but I remember being so happy with this game because it was Super Romantic. She's all up in the tower and he sends her messages with a bird and everything! Plus, more fairy-tale fantasy stuff, and bad jokes. These are great when you are 12.
In retrospect, both of these King's Quests were full of bugs and unreasonably illogical the way most of Sierra's adventure games were. They still stand up as a major point of my childhood.
Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
This was really my real first taste for D&D-style fantasy. It took my brother and I about two years to finish it, working together. Time often moves faster for your characters in this kind of game, so by the time we'd escaped from the enormous tower/castle/dungeon/whatever it was, our 5 dudes had spent a good 5 or 6 years without seeing the light of day.
Eventually, we escaped and emerged into the sunshine! Sadly, the outside world looked exactly like the inside of the dungeon--stone walls and floor--except there wasn't a ceiling. Thinking about this still pisses me off, a little.
Quake
I never actually played this game, but another one of those indelible,sad, childhood memories is of sitting with my brother while he played this and we listened to Pearl Jam's Ten. For a long time, this was how I spent time with my brother. I currently don't have much of a relationship with my brother, I'm not really interested in playing Quake, but that Pearl Jam album has REALLY held up well.
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Oh man, then we got a CD-ROM. I have no idea how we acquired this game (probably our grandfather), but it was rude, obnoxious, and silly. As I think back on it now, it was probably pretty instrumental in developing my personal sense of humor, along with Steve Purcell's comic book versions of the Freelance Police.
Oh, Bosco's Guns, Liquor and Baby Needs. You were all a bodega should be. With the exception of Grim Fandango, I'd say that this is probably the game most worth picking up and playing again. In its heyday, Lucas Arts was glorious.
Ocarina of Time & Baldur's Gate
(There's a bit of a break here chronologically. My brother moved out of the house to go to school, and my grandfather visited us less because we moved away from the farm and our new house didn't have a guest room. I didn't really get into a game again until I went to college.)
I played both of these obsessively my freshman and sophomore years. Then I failed out. Not the fault of these games, of course, but I was very unhappy at the time, and I latched onto these as something to do that didn't make me feel miserable.
Shane chose to break his games down into a variety of numerical values (years published, score on metracritic, prevalence of common elements, that sort of thing). I'm no good at statistics so you get stories instead.
10 Impactful Games (in the order in which I played them)
King's Quest 4
King's Quest 6
Wizardy VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
Quake
Sam and Max Hit the Road
Ocarina of Time
Baldur's Gate
Grim Fandango
Puzzle Pirates
BioShock
King's Quest 4
This was the first videogame I ever played new. I was maybe 8 or 9. Previous to this, my grandfather had given us a box of random floppies--shareware and stuff he'd played before (See Bane of the Cosmic Forge). It's one of the first videogames that has a female protagonist, and I have a distinct memory of my grandfather loading up the game and saying to me, "Look at how beautiful Rosella is!"
She was kind of orange and her eyes were two blue pixels. She wore a pretty dress and the game was made by a lady, and I don't care what anyone says, when I look at this game, Rosella is still heartbreakingly beautiful to me. My grandfather always made sure that we had his hand-me-down computer, and he obviously cared enough to go and find a game that felt like it was especially for me.
It took my brother and I forever to finish this game. I made rudimentary maps of the cave. And, at the end (SPOILER), the guy who was an ugly hunchback turns into a handsome prince and proposes to Rosella, and she says NO, because why would you get married to a dude you had met like 3 times, and besides, she had to go save her father! Love it.
King's Quest 6
Man, my brother and I wanted to play this but we needed a mouse AND a new hard drive because it took up 100MB (!!!). My grandfather came and put in a brand new hard drive and the RAM we needed. I remember saving up something like $60 to buy it. Very Exciting. I was 12.
Main character was a dreamy dude! He goes and gets shipwrecked because some chick in a mirror is pining for him (or something). The details are not important, but I remember being so happy with this game because it was Super Romantic. She's all up in the tower and he sends her messages with a bird and everything! Plus, more fairy-tale fantasy stuff, and bad jokes. These are great when you are 12.
In retrospect, both of these King's Quests were full of bugs and unreasonably illogical the way most of Sierra's adventure games were. They still stand up as a major point of my childhood.
Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
This was really my real first taste for D&D-style fantasy. It took my brother and I about two years to finish it, working together. Time often moves faster for your characters in this kind of game, so by the time we'd escaped from the enormous tower/castle/dungeon/whatever it was, our 5 dudes had spent a good 5 or 6 years without seeing the light of day.
Eventually, we escaped and emerged into the sunshine! Sadly, the outside world looked exactly like the inside of the dungeon--stone walls and floor--except there wasn't a ceiling. Thinking about this still pisses me off, a little.
Quake
I never actually played this game, but another one of those indelible,sad, childhood memories is of sitting with my brother while he played this and we listened to Pearl Jam's Ten. For a long time, this was how I spent time with my brother. I currently don't have much of a relationship with my brother, I'm not really interested in playing Quake, but that Pearl Jam album has REALLY held up well.
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Oh man, then we got a CD-ROM. I have no idea how we acquired this game (probably our grandfather), but it was rude, obnoxious, and silly. As I think back on it now, it was probably pretty instrumental in developing my personal sense of humor, along with Steve Purcell's comic book versions of the Freelance Police.
Oh, Bosco's Guns, Liquor and Baby Needs. You were all a bodega should be. With the exception of Grim Fandango, I'd say that this is probably the game most worth picking up and playing again. In its heyday, Lucas Arts was glorious.
Ocarina of Time & Baldur's Gate
(There's a bit of a break here chronologically. My brother moved out of the house to go to school, and my grandfather visited us less because we moved away from the farm and our new house didn't have a guest room. I didn't really get into a game again until I went to college.)
I played both of these obsessively my freshman and sophomore years. Then I failed out. Not the fault of these games, of course, but I was very unhappy at the time, and I latched onto these as something to do that didn't make me feel miserable.