Finally finished up my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 and started a new playthrough two days later, ha ha! I did not find Gale at all in my first run, so I got him this time around and am traveling with a different party. Still having a ton of fun with this game, and I’m excited to explore parts of the story that I missed the first time around!
Also about halfway through a third playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, siding with the Black Eagle house this time around.
Pokemon (1st gen and 2nd gen -- plus some of the spin-off stuff from that era to a lesser extent) captivated me in a way no other games have before or since. Honestly, I hope nothing ever grabs me that hard again; it's kind of scary how obsessed I was in retrospect.
A number of N64 games also made a big impact on me. Majora's Mask was probably my second favorite game (after Pokemon) for many years. (OoT made an impression too, but I played MM first.) I loved the music in Diddy Kong Racing. I got 120 stars in Mario 64, and when I tried it again as an adult, I really appreciated how short and to the point levels could be (not that I played that way as a kid) -- also the camera in that game sucked. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness kind of disturbed me a bit as a kid, but it's probably the first game I encountered a sort of "New Game Plus" in, which was neat. (People have since told me that's the "black sheep" of the series and that it's really weird that that's the only one I've played significantly.)
Duke Nukem 3D was the first game I modded, I think (very simple graphical stuff). Definitely wasn't age appropriate but I played the heck of it anyway. Didn't really get much into other shooters other than playing through the main game of Perfect Dark on N64 and playing split-screen Golden Eye with friends.
I also played a lot of Sim<Whatever> games -- particularly SimCity 2000, SimEarth, and SimTower. Also had a bunch of others like SimFarm and even some of the more obscure ones like SimSafari. Streets of SimCity and SimCopter being able to load SC2K maps was really neat though. Played a fair amount of other city builders and simulation games like Caesar III and Roller Coaster Tycoon too. My parents probably hoped I'd become some sort of business manager. :p
I had a lot of creative tools back then as well which I treated as not-that-different from video games. Various Kid Pix programs (one of which had a bunch of odd video clips integrated -- including a short documentary about jackalopes of all things), Kid's Studio, Digital Chisel, some version of HyperCard, etc. Game Maker -- which I found around the year 2000 back when it was still on www.cs.uu.nl -- ultimately led me to being a professional programmer.
Damnit I was hoping I was in fast enough to be the Morrowind fan girl post but you’ve already mentioned it lol. Still play Morrowind, my favorite game, and the primary reason I’m in the game dev field.
I wasn’t even the first, someone else posted it also while I was typing my answer.
I didn’t even re play it that much. I think in the end I probably have more playtime on Oblivion. But much better/stronger memories from Morrowind. It was maybe because I had less video game experience to compare it with, but this one clearly left a big mark on me. I still have incredible goosebumps when “the road most travelled” or “nerevar rising” sounds start playing from my playlists.
The gameplay maybe clunky compared to today, especially to combine weapon and magic. But everything else was so amazing for the time, and some part are still much better than recent games.
I even had a talk with someone at an “ai in game dev” conference who took as an exemple the way the diary/quest log of Morrowind was working.
Mario RPG was my favorite (yes Im eating good right now). I like describing it as a toy, there are so many things to be done for no other reason than to have fun, enabled by the fact you're a platformer character in a 3D fantasy world. You cant jump onto the store's counter in other RPG's of the time, but you get to in this game, and you're rewarded with being scolded by the shopkeep. You can jump on all the NPC's, on wedding cake, pianos, hyperactive kids, all the beds, catapults. Jumping is often times your response to NPC dialogue.
I'm thinking about the games I played in my childhood that influenced what I like to play now, so it might be only halfway relevant to the question.
First monster collector: Pokemon Blue. Digimon World 1 was also one of my favourites, because of how real it felt, like a real monster. The one other monster game I really got into as a child was Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, I think I played Cobi's journey. It helped that a lot of my friends were playing it.
First builder: Simcity 3000. Started my lifelong love for city builders, even though I'm not great at them per se.
Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper 2 were my introduction to management sims and also my favourites for a long time.
As a kid I absolutely loved this RTS called Warbreeds because of the ability to graft any weapon onto any unit. Nowadays though I just find such mechanics fiddly, but as a kid it felt so sci-fi. In terms of time spent playing, though, the standout RTS was probably Starcraft.
I also played on a lot of MUDs as a kid. Wheel of Time (but had never read the books), Discworld (but had also never read the books), Aardwolf and I think one or two others. I was amazed at how it felt like I could do so much (even though most of the "free" actions were just emotes.
My first graphical MMO was I think Maplestory, which was a huge part of my social life as a kid. I think I miss the feeling of being part of a big community than the MMO experience itself, honestly. Nowadays when I try getting into MMOs it feels like that feeling of being a part of a giant community of people is gone.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne