One of the reasons I was interested in giving some comments on the science in Spore is that I am a big fan of video games but rarely have a chance to play anymore. The discussion about Spore (which I wasn't asked to evaluate as a game per se) got me thinking back on the games I have really enjoyed playing. So, just for fun, I have come up with this list of some of my favourite games. Now, these go back to my elementary school days in the 1980s, so bear with me. It's a mix of console and computer games and is a little behind the times as I don't have much time for games anymore. Here they are largely in chronological order.
1. Gorf, Advanced Dungeons&Dragons, Baseball, and Tron: Deadly Discs
Included for nostalgic reasons, these are some of my favourite games from the first consoles we owned when I was very young. Gorf on the Commodore VIC-20, and then Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Baseball (Yer out!) on Intellivision. My father and I played baseball until our hands hurt (not hard on the awkward controllers). I once (and only once) got 1,000,000 points on Tron: Deadly Discs and got to see the Guardians. (Just outside this list: Astrosmash).
2. Super Mario Bros. (I and III), Metroid, and Legend of Zelda
My cousins are part Japanese and had Nintendo at home two years before it came out in North America -- when it finally arrived, I had to get one specifically to play Super Mario Bros. Later, I went to see the crappy movie The Wizard just for the advance footage of Super Mario 3 (worth it) and I spent $80 of my tips from working as a busboy to get it as soon as it was released (worth it). And no, I don't need warp zones to finish either of them. Absent from this list: Super Mario 2. Metroid and Zelda also consumed many hours of my youth.
3.Tetris
I pretty much got a Game Boy just for this game, having become hooked on it in the arcade. Easily one of the greatest games made.
4. Wing Commander (I, III, and Prophecy)
I don't usually like flight sims, but space ones I do. We played this game a lot in high school. So much, in fact, that we once left Wing Commander running on a computer in one of the classrooms, but managed to convince the teacher that it was a screen saver. It only got better with WCIII. Mark Hamill as Blair? Awesome.
5. Mortal Kombat
My buddy and I could finish this on one quarter when we were undergrads (yep, games used to cost 25c). Of course, we spent a lot more getting to that point. FINISH HIM! (Over, down, over, high punch).
6. Doom (I and II)
Not so scary now, but back then playing with the lights out and the sound up was a challenge.
7. StarCraft
This game is still popular and there is even a professional league dedicated to it.
8. Perfect Dark
This game was great for playing with my brother on his Nintendo 64. For starters, you could be on the same team and fight simulated agents. Is anything cooler than a laptop gun?
9. Warcraft III
This realtime strategy had amazing cut scenes and extraordinary gameplay along with an exceptional story line.
10. Halo
One of the best selling games ever, and for good reason.
Ok, your lists?
Comments
Since I am a little older the games are too. My only desktop experience was a TRS-80 model II at school and in college I used a Univac 1100/62 - neither of which were anything for games, beyond the simple stuff I wrote. But in 1985 I got an Atari 800XL which was far ahead of its time. So that's where my gaming begins ...
Super Bruce Lee - I did martial arts, this video game was about martial arts. Sort of. They made a lot of weird games for this machine, but some of them ended up being gold.
F-15 Strike Eagle - Wireframes! Didn't matter. It was terrific. I ended up buying every flight sim out there up until about 1995 but this was my first love. It was also the first game that would really put Hall of Fame designer Sid Meier on the map. After this he would go on to do Pirates, Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, which all make most older gamers' lists.
Silent Service - Some games can't be improved on just by better graphics and this WW2 sub game tops them all. Meier did that one too.
The Atari ST
Dungeon Master - I tried it later on the PC and it wasn't very good. The Atari ST had two things superior to PCs until the 386 - and one, the Yamaha DSP for music, is still better today. Intel architecture is just not good for timing. The graphics in the ST for gaming were way ahead of their time. And this was just a terrific game for it.
King of Chicago - You're a young guy trying to make it in Capone's Chicago of the 1920s. When you have no graphics as a crutch, you rely on gameplay and a lot of these games in the late 1980s had that in spades.
Full Count Baseball - Text based but a nearly flawless simulation engine - except for Wally Joyner being unnaturally good.
There are a lot more that would make a Hall of Fame from the ST but I am trying to keep the list practical
PC
I bought a 386 to play Ultima Underworld. It was the first machine where I could really say a PC had outmatched an Atari ST that was generations older in computer terms. But I stayed for Civilization, specifically ...
Civilization II - It was the only game I ever had to buy a strategy guide for. After a few weeks of having enemy Civ's show up on the border with tanks when I was sporting halberds I needed help.
Wing Commander - ditto what Ryan said. I don't think the 1980s were the golden age of gaming, despite there being a lot of games and methodologies that started then. I think the ealry 1990s were, because the same guys who had focused on incredible gameplay now had better graphics to augment it. Graphics and speed were not the crutches they often are today. These guys took great gameplay and just made it look better.
V For Victory - Could I eventually succeed in "A Bridge Too Far"? Of course. At least then it was the most realistic simulation of large scale WWII ground combat ever produced.
Railroad Tycoon Deluxe - this has never not been on a hard drive of mine.
X-Com - It's tactical, it's strategic, it's an alien bug hunt.
Games others might not agree on, but I like(d)
Return To Krondor - Diehard fans complained because this was too short - well, for people with jobs, that's not a bad thing. I was able to finish this in a few days, which was perfect for me in a post-Christmas break.
Europa Universalis II - In what other historically accurate game can you make the Byzantine Empire a world power? It's also a way to force yourself to learn European history.
Finally, sports games I still play ....
Championship Manager
Front Office Football 2001
The only game on this laptop is Civilization IV. But this is a 64-bit OS so not many older games will run on it. I have another Vista laptop and most of the other modern-ish sports games run okay.
Hank Campbell | 10/26/08 | 20:22 PM
T. Ryan Gregory | 10/27/08 | 05:03 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE-hzubUJss
Summer Games, and many others whose names I cannot remember off the top of my head.
If you don't know it, you really need to check out MULE. You need a few players, and its more fun when you pirate the game and have to figure out the rules yourself.
Todd Oakley (not verified) | 10/27/08 | 12:57 PM
In college, when one of my dorm buddies got a Nintendo system, I avoided many hours of studying by playing and watching others play Super Mario Bros. I didn't invest the obscene amount of hours required to get very far in the game on my own, however. I had to rely on other "more seasoned" players to see what some of the upper levels (and ultimately the end of the game) looked like. One weekend between terms I think we played this game for about 48-hours straight. I thought I would never get that damn theme song out of my head.
I went several years without really having the time to play video games of any kind once I got out of school and started working full time. When I did finally get back around to playing some games on the weekends, I really fell in love with the strategic city-building games. I never liked the graphics in SimCity. But when I saw Caesar III, I was hooked. I have to say, I really enjoy seeing the little citizens of my city walking about working, farming, building, etc. My husband knows that any time he mentions a game he thinks I might like, my first question is, "Are there little people running around?" I also like the follow-up games that used the same engine: Pharoh, Posideon, and Emperor.
But probably my favorite video game of all time is the Playstation2 version of Baldur's Gate - Dark Alliance. It's a typical, "wander the dungeon, kill things and find treasure" kind of game. What makes it unique is you can play it in cooperative mode WITH someone else. It's not split screen, you are actually both in the dungeon, fighting side by side. My husband and I love to play this game together. Before the boys came along, we literally stayed up until 2-3 a.m. attacking monsters and ordering midnight pizza. I don't know why there aren't more game system games out there that offer the cooperative play mode. We're always looking for new ones, but I'm not sure anything will beat the original BG Dark Alliance.
That's me... in the helmet.
Kimberly Crandell | 10/27/08 | 14:54 PM
Baldur's Gate (1 and 2)
Planescape: Torment
I'm a roleplayer til the end and I spent most of highschool swinging a +2 Longsword digitally or in the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons. Who needs girls?
Jedi Knight
Lightsabre. That's all I need to say
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
My sim of choice.
Mech Warrior
When I wanted a break from shooting stuff in space I could shoot stuff on the ground
Star Craft
The only RTS I played regularly because it was damn good.
Super Smash Bros. (all incarnations)
Hours of fun with my friends. The introduction of Mr. Game and Watch in the GameCube version made me unstoppable
Half-Life and Half-Life 2
What's better than playing a theoretical physicist who kills aliens with a crow bar?
Call of Duty Franchise
The D-Day mission in Call of Duty 2 was one of the hardest won levels I have ever played.
The immersion of Call of Cuty 4 was awesome.
Portal
Fantastic story and great game elements.
Bioshock
Crazy-cool story, scary gameplay and a unique game experience.
Crysis
Really open-ended, neat vehicles to drive and you can play it over and over again and never play it the same way twice.
Tyler (not verified) | 10/27/08 | 20:11 PM
Baldur's Gate (1 and 2) Planescape: Torment I'm a roleplayer til the end and I spent most of highschool swinging a +2 Longsword digitally or in the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons. Who needs girls?
Even better ... only play them with girls.
Half-Life and Half-Life 2 What's better than playing a theoretical physicist who kills aliens with a crow bar?
How did I miss this game? The only thing better is actually being a theoretical physicist who kills aliens with a crow bar. But why do theoretical guys get all the fun? Applied physicists do cool stuff too.
Hank Campbell | 10/28/08 | 20:45 PM
And as for Half-Life, theoretical guys get to have all the fun because then Valve doesn't need to provide any real science data; they can just make anything up they want and it's Gordon's research. :)
As for my lists:
* Starcraft, because the Protoss are the coolest race in an RTS game ever.
* Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 1&2, because I love cooperative multiplayer with my friends.
* Baldur's Gate 1, because Minsc and Xan were hilarious.
* F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2, er, because I like being really creeped out by little psychic girls who want to destroy the world, I guess...
* Smash Bros. Brawl. Marth. Nothing need more be said.
And that's all I can think of off the cuff.
Patrick Adair | 06/19/09 | 18:05 PM
2. Super Mario Bros. (I and III), Metroid, and Legend of Zelda
My cousins are part Japanese and had Nintendo at home two years before
it came out in North America -- when it finally arrived, I had to get
one specifically to play Super Mario Bros. Later, I went to see the
crappy movie The Wizard
just for the advance footage of Super Mario 3 (worth it) and I spent
$80 of my tips from working as a busboy to get it as soon as it was
released (worth it). And no, I don't need warp zones to finish either
of them. Absent from this list: Super Mario 2. Metroid and Zelda also consumed many hours of my youth.
My husband recently resurrected my old Nintendo, by following instructions he found on youtube, so we've been playing Super Mario Bros I and III again and again. I love getting the whistle, revealed in The Wizard. Have you ever played Solomon's Key? It's this incredibly difficult game with puzzles--they really made games harder back then.
Jen Palmares Meadows | 10/30/08 | 17:50 PM
My favorite is Multimedia Fusion Developer that is pretty much drag and drop Zelda design!!
Charlie Freund | 10/07/09 | 17:29 PM
To demonstrate my geek bona fides, here are my favorites (many were Broderbund titles)
The Ancient Art of War
Flight Simulator
Cap'n Magneto
Myst
Prince of Persia
Legend of Zelda
Spy Hunter
Starcraft
Ghost Recon
Halo
Close Combat Invasion of Normandy