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The Top 10 Games That Made Me The Gamer I Am Today
By Cameron Sorden | March 3, 2008
I’ve been doing a lot of rather “heavy” posts lately, so I thought I’d mix it up with something fun. Today I’m going to talk about the top ten games which have really shaped my expectations about what makes a game “fun.” You could also call this a regular top ten “favorite games,” I suppose, but that’s not entirely accurate (since your favorite games change over time). Rather, this is a list of the ten games from my childhood and teen years which I look back on with a heavy sense of nostalgia and still play from time to time. They were great back then, and they’re still great today. I’ll explain what was so interesting about each of them as I go down the list.
In no particular order (since how can I really compare them?), the top ten games which made me the gamer I am today:
1. Earthbound (SNES) - This is one of my earlier RPG favorites (you might recognize the main character, Ness, from Super Smash Bros). If you’re not familiar with this game, here’s the plot synopsis (read it, it’s crazy). There were so many technical things that were refreshing about this game: a seamless world, a modern setting, isometric perspective. But what really sticks out in my mind was the zany setting of the game. It had a vibrant, colorful, startlingly realistic world (at times), with all sorts of supernatural and occult elements popping out for you to do battle with. Fighting zombies, aliens, and dinosaurs before taking a trip to the bakery to get a few HP-restoring croissants was absolutely priceless, and towards the end of the game you start exploring some very spiritual and metaphysical questions about the nature of reality and Ness’s experiences. Whoever made this game was doing a lot of drugs (I guarantee it), but I’m really glad they did. It was worth it.
2. Fallout 1&2 (PC) - Fallout and its first sequel were eye opening experiences for me. I had no idea that games existed with this much freedom and complexity. I remember the friend who introduced me to the game describing it as “a PC game where you can do anything, kill anyone, take drugs, and have sex.” While that sounded pretty interesting to my 14 year-old self, what I found was so much more than that. The cheery 50’s style set in the dreary post-apocalyptic world was fantastic, the moral complexity of the game was amazing, the story was deep, and the world seemed enormous. The random encounters were meaningful and memorable, and the best part was that you could just go play the game without worrying about the story. Fallout, of all the games I’ve played, is the game which has come closest to the experience of a pen and paper gaming session, and I love it for that.
3. EverQuest (PC) - This list wouldn’t be complete without EverQuest, because if I hadn’t played it, I probably wouldn’t be here writing about online games right now. I had played online games before in a variety of formats, but EverQuest was the first game which materialized a seemingly living, breathing world around my avatar. This game sucked away more than five years of my life, and I still go back about once a year to play around and reminisce, but I don’t regret it for a moment. Some of my best gaming memories are just running around random dungeons with my brother, killing stuff and constantly being in fear of our lives (since one bad move in EQ could get you killed and death sucked in a way that modern MMOG gamers can’t comprehend).
4. Final Fantasy 3/6j (SNES) - This is the game that started it all for me. It wasn’t my first RPG (I had watched my uncle play FFII for hours on his SNES and even tried it a time or two myself), but it was my favorite and most memorable game. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved the deep and involved story. I liked how fast and painless combat was. I liked rounding up your party again in the second half of the game and exploring all the little nooks and crannies for secret weapons, secret magic, and hidden storylines. But it was also the little fun things that really made the game for me… Relm’s antics, Shadow’s mysterious past, Terra’s personality issues, and Locke’s cavalier attitude which conceals his painful past and ties into a current love story with Celes (not to mention the freaking opera scene– brilliant!) were the the parts that summed into an absolutely fantastic game experience.
5. Chrono Trigger (SNES) - What’s not to like about this game? It’s hard to argue this one. If you were a fan of SNES RPGs, this is on your short list of great games. It was pretty much the technical pinnacle of RPG gaming on the Super Nintendo– great graphics, sound effects, music. Throw in super-memorable characters like Marle (whom my fiancee hates), Magus (bad-ass magicians for the win), and Frog (I still get shivers when he gets all heroic and cleaves the mountain with the Masamune), a wild, time-traveling plot which spans all of human history plus the future, and themes of sacrifice and rebirth, and you have the formula for an experience which is almost universally recognized as fantastic.
6. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC) - If I had to pick a second game which came closest to emulating the pen and paper experience, it would be Morrowind. Initially, I hated this game for any number of reasons: Little direction. Slow start. Too many choices without clear explanation during character creation. I played it for a few days and forgot about it. Years later, I went back and played it again. This time, I got past the initial quests and started getting into the storyline.
What I found was a game with a story so engrossing that I still go back and play through it every two years or so. The ultimate revelation that you are the reincarnated hero of legend (hope I didn’t just ruin the game for you) was masterfully executed. You have a noticeable impact on the politics and major houses of the game world. The story and adventure on into the expansions was fantastic (I loved Tribunal). Best of all, there are little side stories and quests all over the map that have nothing to do with the main story. Running away and talking to your enemies were viable alternatives to simply killing them, in many cases. Then there were the easter eggs like becoming a vampire and joining the clans, while doing their whole set of quests.
Many people argue that Daggerfall or Oblivion are better, but Morrowind was the pinnacle of the Elder Scrolls experience for me. The fact that it has an active modding community years after its release and that with the right mods that game still looks fantastic by modern standards are just icing on the cake.
7. Final Fantasy Legend II (Game Boy) - It’s one of the many Game Boy Final Fantasy games that aren’t actually Final Fantasy games (it’s SaGa 2 rebranded for American audiences as a marketing move), and I believe that this may have been my first encounter with an RPG. While Final Fantasy 3/6j is what really hooked me on RPGs, Final Fantasy Legend II is the game that initially exposed me to them. The difficulty of the game is considerable, the leveling system is quite frustrating (you’re reliant on random skill-ups based on the abilities you use), and it’s easy to screw yourself by choosing a bad party composition at the start of the game, but the fact that it has a cool story, crazy replay value (different party make-ups), and it’s a portable RPG all make up for it and add up to a really fun game.
8. Avernum (PC) - I discovered Avernum about the same time that I was playing Morrowind all the way through, and it’s the game that gave me an appreciation for indie developers. Jeff Vogel proved to me that it’s ultimately the quality of the game and not the graphics which make a gaming experience great, and his Avernum series is a very strong game experience. It’s got depth, fun, replayability, and story to the nth degree. Whenever someone is looking for a new game they’ve never tried and they’re an RPG fan, I point them towards Avernum and tell them to ignore the graphics and play the game. This is another one that I go replay every few years.
9. Diablo II (PC) - Diablo was great, but Diablo II was downright brilliant. The first time I ever built/bought a new PC, it was for this game. Diablo II was the game that really made me a Blizzard fanboy (long before WoW strolled into town), and I’ve spent countless hours of my life on Baal runs or leveling a new Sorceress build to try. The beauty of this game was in its simplicity– it wasn’t the game that mattered. It was the random number generator, guided by fate, whose fickle hand might reward you with the sweetest of green, gold, and yellow items, or the disappointing thud of a white or blue item. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know what I’m talking about. The itemization and stat-chasing mini-game that Diablo II was really centered around was the experimental model that drove World of Warcraft’s current, far more refined stat-chasing game. It was addictive and ridiculously fun then, and it’s addictive and ridiculously fun today.
10. Unnamed MUD (PC) - I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the MUD I played (and I really looked), but whatever it was, it’s another game which shaped a lot of my ideas about online worlds. I remember how “alive” and cool the game seemed, with all the neat spells and emotes people were throwing around, and how mysterious and fun it was to explore the sewers under the city or the ancient temple east of town. The thing I thought was coolest about the game was that when you got to maximum level, you could restart the game as another class, while keeping your current abilities. It led to some pretty cool multi-class options, with the highest level players being Warrior/Mage/Priest/Rogue super-hybrids (and no one cared about balance– we were having fun!). Without this game as an example, I probably never would have found my way to EverQuest (which was basically a graphical MUD) or liked it nearly as much.
So there you have it. Those, I believe, are the top ten games which most influenced my expectations of what a “good game” should be. I would strongly encourage you to give any unfamiliar games on that list a try, at the least. Most of them are either still available for purchase or are easily found through SNES emulation with a little digging. I’m not trying to start a meme here (I loathe memes), but it would be kind of interesting to see similar lists from anyone who’s interested in sharing.
What do you think of my influences, and what games really influenced you?
Topics: EverQuest, fallout, final fantasy, game design, mmorpg, random, reviews, rpg |
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Was the MUD a fairly popular one? Sounds a bit like Medevia, but then again a lot of MUDs were very very similiar.
I never got a chance to try Earthbound, but I still play Chrono Trigger from time to time. Frog = win.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I don’t think so… if I recall correctly, it had a small community of around 100 players at its height. Let me see… what else do I remember?
- 4 classes(F/M/R/P), multi-class available
- There were both levels and skill points
- One main town, adventure areas all around it. North was the plains, west were the docks, east was forests/mountain city (full of birdmen), I forget what was south, and there were sewers with kobolds under the city.
- The first enemy you could encounter were janitors that roamed the city cleaning up non-sacrificed corpses.
- Specific other areas I remember were a PvP-enabled beehive full of dangerous bee people, a forest maze of some sort, an arena (across the ocean maybe), and a gambling area with blackjack hidden behind the inn or something.
- You could hire up to six baby cats from the pet store to accompany you and help you fight on your adventures. This was the most efficient way to powerlevel yourself, and high level players often helped lowbies by buying them such cats.
That’s all I’ve got. I haven’t played it since I was like, 11.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Medievia looks similar to the game I remember, but I’m not sure… a lot can change in 12 years. If it’s not that one, it’s definitely the same or a similar code base.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
That’s interesting that you were put off by Morrowind the first time you played it. I was the exact same - tried to start playing it, couldn’t get into it, put it down and then picked it up again later. The second time I loved it, too.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:02 am
I have to agree on Fallout, it was really awesome, now that I’m cutting through The Witcher, i had a few flashbacks, like sex with quite a few girls on your journey and the moral choices, which are a lot more noticeable than in Fallout.
I kinda missed Morrowind, but i really enjoyed Gothic 1 and 2. Gothic 3 was a beta abomination with more bugs than a bee hive. I enjoyed Oblivion only with some mods that reduced it’s randomness quite a bit, I just couldn’t stomach the fact that every time i leveled up, everything became instantly stronger and nullifying any advancement i made.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
So many games I never played: Earthbound, Fallout, Avernum, Chrono Trigger, MUDs, Final Fantasy.
Sadly, it’s too late to get involved in Final Fantasy games. Though I grew up on Nintendo consoles, it’s rare for me to enjoy a game with Asian aesthetics these days. Dead Rising is the only Asian-made game I’ve enjoyed in well over a year.
I’m anxious to play Fallout 3, considering what everyone’s told me about the older games. I love sandbox games… though the reason I enjoyed Oblivion more than Morrowind is probably that I love action, too. That’s also probably the reason I never could bite onto the idea of a MUD. I love Action-RPGs, but slower RPGs don’t interest me. I did use to enjoy D&D, but the difference between that and MUDs is social… to me, playing with people online has never been the same as playing with a friend.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Your description sounds exactly like Medevia, but for the life of me I can’t think of what base MUD it was built off (work filter pwning my search atm). However, Medevia had tens of thousands of players. I remember getting excited when the Medevia developers started talking about a game that could house hundreds of thousands of players at a time… lol.
Oh well, I have forgotten the name of my favorite Star Wars MUD from back in the day… pisses me off