A lot of YouTubers who do gaming stuff discuss their favorites. I never actually have in an official capacity, so I decided to make a table here in case you want my opinion, plus I just like expounding on my favorites. The only ordering is by when I encountered them...
| Title/Screenshot
| Description & My Thoughts
|
Pitfall!
1982, Activision (Atari 2600)
| The first video game that ever caught my eye, as a mere baby of at most 2 years old, was PItfall! See, the Saturday mornings in the 80's were cartoons, pancakes, and then as soon as Pee Wee hit the screen, ATARI! Hours of Atari. My mom and gen-x older sisters would play for hours...Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Super Breakout, PITFALL!! And Pitfall was the most amusing to me because it had the most complex graphics of all the games at the time. I'm sure I witenessed adventure, and I did get to see E.T. and Raiders of the Lost ARk in action (this was 1983+ so post-crash Atari is all I've known). I wanted to play so badly and remember my sister handing me the Joystick once when I was three and me failing miserably to even make the jump to the vine. I remember just how friggin STIFF those old CX-40 joysticks were to my little kiddo hands. But in 1989, I got my first ATari 2600 (a 4-switch woody built sometime in 1981-1983), and alas, I started to get the hang of it. Pitfall! has been a mainstay ever since. These days though I prefer it in a HEavy Sixer with a CX-78+ though.
|
Pole Position II
1987, Atari (Arcade)
| The thing about being a kid is you want to drive a car and do adult stuff. Night DRiver on the 2600 got close-ish, but was too fast for my five year old hands, plus we didn't have an Atari anymore at that point anyway (not for a couple years at least). But in the arcades, they had a sit-down cockpit game - POle Position II, the sequel to the harder Pole POsition (which I include with this and is another favorite). Sure, it didn't have the tilty-mechs of OutRun's cockpit, or the realizm of a brake, gas, and clutch pedals and a five speed manual and ignition key like Hard Drivin', but my god this game was fun. I'd buy rolls of quarters - at friggin 5-8 years old - to play this at Aladdin's castle for like an hour or two sometimes, and I Got really good at it (Seaside Course in particular). Shame is, I've never been able to get it working in MAME, and if I had the space, and time, I would go out, and BUY a fuckin' Pole POsition II Cabinet and restore it. I love this arcade game so much. It's a shame you never see it anywhere anymore.
|
Adventure
1980, Atari (Atari 2600)
| It's 1989 and I got my first own console for christmas...a circa 1981 Woodgrain Atari Video Computer System CX-2600 4-switch. And in the box of games, I saw this crazy game that looked like a dragon made out of MAndarin Oranges holding a key on the front cover, with a castle in the distance, and a knight walking out of it with a sword in hand...then I Fired it up and started laughing......"1" in the middle of the screen, I hit "Reset" and go to town to be chased around with what I rightly assumed were dragons, but through they looked like ducks made out of Legos by a 4 year old. Laughable graphics aside, Adventure taught me it's not the graphics, it's the GAMEPLAY that makes a game. A fact my own peers would never catch onto until they were already past the age of drinkin', smokin', and sexin'. I would spend HOURS trying to glitch the game out, and even then, I never found the secret room, which I just now remembered, I think my older sister who loves RPGs told me about it.
|
The Legend of Zelda
1987, Nintendo (NES)
| If I had to cite one game that got me into the NES, it was this. It was 1990 and my oldest sister was babysitting for pocket money on the side of her college education. She would babysit these two rich kids just outside of Beauregard AL who had all the cool shit any 7 year old kid would want. And one of those things of course, was the mighty NIntendo. NOBODY can underestimate just how powerful Nintendo was circa 1990! The almighty NES was THE thing to have at school, and this kid, Brian, had one, and with it, he had this golden cartridge with a shield on it. And here I am, playing what looked to me like "Super Adventure" in a way. Instead of a square, you're a little elf guy, instead of lego brick dragons and a bat, various enemies of all kinds of shapes, sizes, and movement. So imagine how I got sucked into this pretty quick, and right off, I wanted a Nintendo, so I'd get my first NES for Xmas 1991, when I was 8.
|
Bigfoot
1990, Acclaim (NES)
| Bigfoot, the original Monster Truck - it will ALWAYS be the original monster truck. And in these times of corporate oligarchs, I mucho appreciate that Bob Chandler and the Trents, instead of turning BIgfoot into some major corporate bullshit conglomerate, kept it in the family instead. So they still have my respect even if the rest of the industry has kinda' become a joke. This was the first NES cartridge I opened, before I opened the actual NES TBH. And let me tell you, as a massive Monster Truck racing and Bigfoot fan at the time, I was DETERMINED to beat this game. And now, it's probably my best game on the NES besides Mario 3 and the Dragon Warrior games. The graphics are pretty good, the music is pretty good (Though I would have loved a 8-bit rendition of Craig Palmer's "Deadlines" or "Myriad of COlors" by Mark Shreeve), the controls are an acquired taste, especially teh Decathlon-style button mashing side scroller events, but my god, once you get used to it, and figure out how to "Eddie-Van-Halen" the D-pad, this game becomes still challenging, but on two fun levels, the actual game itself, and then seeing how far you can push Bigfoot in each event. See, the in-game A.I. never uses it's shifter, it just pumps nitrous, and blows engines....me? I'm rippin' down the track doing 70mph in Bigfoot #5 in 3rd gear and getting air more like BIgfoot 8. I think the NHRA or MTRA would have kicked me out for the way I drive....scaring everybody...getting 9 feet of air on 10 foot alaskan tundra Firestones during the Yakima Hill Climb.
|
Super Mario Bros. 3
1989, Nintendo (NES)
| Super Mario Bros. 3 cannot be under-estimated. EVERYONE loves this game. This is the famous game that outsold the Beatles, and probably left people recognizing Mario and Luigi more than John, Paul, Ringo, and George! I remember renting this one from Blockbuster at least 2-3 times before I finally got it on my 9th birthday for $80. That's right, $80, Peach Tree Mall ripped us off with some bullshit about a "memory shortage" (which had passed 2-3 years earlier). I still have my old copy with a rattling piece of plastic inside it from when I threw the cartridge once when I was 10, and it still works. Super Mario Bros. 3 would become one of those games I keep coming back to revisit. Whether it's just a nostalgic fun-run, or me breaking out the GAme Genie and making the game look like some kind of Mushroom Kingdom Apocalypse Fever Dream with yelling toads and new Night Time scenarios. Also, guys, if you have a girl whose into video games on a date - BRING THIS OUT! Trust me, I don't know how many nights between...*ahem*...we've had crazy rounds playing this on two player. EVERYONE likes Super Mario in my experience.
|
Super Mario Land
1989, Nintendo (Game Boy)
| A girl on the school bus, Ashley, had this game, and me being a consummate "Mario Freak" at the time, I just had to get a Game Boy and get this game. So I went in halfsies on the whole shebang on my 9th birthday for a DMG-001 Game Boy, and this game. And I wore smooth spots into that Game Boy playing this until Super Mario Land 2 came out. HAving MArio on a portable in 1992 was something to behold! It may not have been color, it may have needed a small country's GDP in AA batteries ( played so much I got a WEEK out of the thing, which was better than the others I hear), but Mario on the Go! I'M IN!! Remember, this was the 90's. There were no cell phones unless you were bougie, the internet was in like, 35% of American households at best, and required a computer the size of a TV that plugged into a wall and a phone line! All we had, for digital entertainment when a TV and an NES or SNES wasn't available, and you wanted your mario fix, was a Game Boy. And the graphics were tiny...mario was smaller than a friggin ANT! The screen was under 2" big, and the color of urine after drinking a bunch of blue Gatorades (don't ask me how I know this), and had no backlight. So many a ride to Florida, I was playing Super Mario Land with a flashlight in my mouth.
|
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
1992, Sega (Sega Genesis)
| My go to at Kay Bee Toys, since they didn't have a NES out for some reason (despite about 3/4ths of their wall of video games being NES games), was SOnic 2. Sometimes random kids would show up, and we'd get in 2 player matches. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 was probably one of my favorite games for the Sega Genesis. I even was offered a Genesis at one time, but I turned it down because honestly, the only games I want to play on it are the Sonic games. However, I did own one, and this game, later on in High sChool, bought off my bandmate Zach, so I got my time in with the Genesis at that time, and had one for several years.
|
Super Mario Land 2: the Six Golden Coins
1992, Nintendo (Game Boy)
| If Super Mario Land was the reason I got a Game Boy, this was the reason I flogged the hell out of that thing even after a poor attempt to repaint it into a red "PLay it Loud" model to the point iwas kind of a cool gray/red/relic thing that smelled like cat pee with no screen protector (adhesive let go). Super Mario Land 2 itself was quite an awesome game on the sytem, if not one of the best. And I Could play that for hours. Legend has it somewhere hidden in the back of my truck - for the past 30-something years, is likely my old copy of Super Mario Land 2: The SIx Golden COins! THE Copy. It's probably floated somewhere under that carpeting, to which I'll probably find it replacing the FUel send or restoring the interior one day.
|
The Secret of Monkey Island
1989, Lucasfilm Games (PC-DOS)
| My sister got a 386 when she was in college, running DOS 5.0, and once she and my other sister got their major spoiling of a fucking house they OWNED in college, my oldest sister started sneaking DOS games on her 386. And the first of which was this: The Secret of Monkey Island. Everyone talks about this game now like it's some kind of mega-hit legend that was massive, like a Super Mario Bros. or a Majora's MAsk! Nope! Nobody at school knew what Monkey Island even was. They thought I was talking about that atari-esque educational math game we playeed in the school computer lab where a monkey threw coconuts at the man with a jungle explorer hat in glorious CGA...not this. Remember, this was 1989, the SNES wasn't even out yet. Maniac Mansion had NOTHING on the o.g. Secret of Monkey Island. Here's a 256 color VGA game, with just about every object on screen able to be interacted with, with realistic character portraits...Governor Elaine Marley anybody? Mancomb Seepgood? Dime...is that you? And man oh man, this game was friggin HUGE. Four chapters, three trials, two key dead guys, and a anti-hero Wannbe Pirate! The only sucky part was that 386 had no sound card, which was responsible for me getting into Rock Music indirectly, because my soundtrack was TOp Gun for this, not Michael LAnd's score that I would hear and appreciate much later on down the road (and far more fitting for the story).
|
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
1991, LucasArts (PC-DOS)
| My sister borrowed this from a friend of a friend right after we both beat the first one (I wrote her a hint-guide for the first game BTW, my first hint-guide/walkthrough I ever wrote). This was the first game (and only game), I ever called a hint-line for. As much as I loved this game, one of the most confusing puzzles of all time, was where you had to cheat at this "spin the wheel and win a prize" game from some guy who looks like Cyrano in the alley. You'd walk up to this big green door, knock on it, and some giant hand would hold up odd groups of fingers, saying "if this equals this, than what is this?" - and the answer was the dumbest thing ever....it's the LAST number of digits the guy was holding up! LOL. Monkey Island 2 really ramped up the challenge with various maze-like levels, and various puzzles that required some real outside-the-box thinking, plus Guybrush finally got some guts to be less of a goodie-two-shoes this time.
|
Ultima VI: The False Prophet
1990, Origin Systems (PC-DOS)
| I was 11 year old, it was my birthday, I wake up the next year, now I have Pinkeye, which means a week out of school, and during that week, I have Ultima VI: The False Prophet, which means I'm not going to be bored. Ultima VI: The False Prophet to me was the first RPG that showed me what an x86 IBM Compatible PC could really do! This was worlds away from Ultima: Exodus for my NES - battles take place in the same overworld, as do all the towns. It was literally one of the first TRUE open-world "sandbox" type games ever made. Eseentially, this was my Postal, GTA, and Drive Beyond Horizons before there was a Postal, GTA, or Drive Beyond Horizons. I could spend hours just running all over Brittania for relaxation, beating up enemies to level up and relieve stress, I could be a total bastard and ransack the whole town, or be a pillar of the community. This open-ended-ness of this generation of works by Richard Garriot and his team really showed me what I'd want a PC for. Monkey Island was the gateway, Ultima VI proved out the idea. Every object on screen could be used, touched, looked at, or otherwise manipulated to do something, like in real life. Day-Night cycles made the NPCs feel more alive and real than say, Ultima Exodus where there was no day/night cycle and a "conversation" was just "I am Sherry, I like Flowers" and "Would you like a drink - 3gp".
|
Sim City 2000
1992 Maxis (PC-DOS/Win/MAC)
| Sim City was a game I was aware of, but never played. For some dumb reason, my schools, even the "21st Century Schools" School West Forest, did not want to bother with this classic, educational game about civil engineering. But a friend, William, had this on his dad's Mac (I don't know what his dad did for a living but he must have made some real bucks given they had a Performa 6400/180 tower with a 17" CRT in the mid 1990's). Me and Will would play this for hours listening to the Bee Gees on CD (because the Mac had a CD-ROM drive). Of course, I sought this out when I built CreepingNet 1, and bought it on CD-ROM for Windows 3.1. Later (much later) I found out about the DOS Version, which is my preferred version these days (Creepingnet 486). I find it fun to spin up a game of this and kind of treat it like a family Jigsaw puzzle, just wandering by to play it for a few minutes here and there to kill time.
|
Super Mario World
1991, Nintendo (SNES)
| Another friend of mine, Jonathan, made friends with these middle-eastern kids - Jeremy and Octaw (spelling?) in the townhouses behind my sister's n eighborhood. They were the first kids on the block to have an SNES, and of course, they were playing this quite a bit. Eventually, Jonathan got an SNES, and then I went halfsies with my mom on a SNES that came with a voucher for Super Mario All-Stars when it came out. Being so close to my teen years though, I dont' think I explored or enjoyed the SNES library nearly as much as other consoles that came before, because soon I would pick up the guitar, and then video games would find a spot lower on the rung, though still quite high. Super Mario World to me is a favorite, but it's always felt a little "less" than what Super Mario Bros. 3 was on the NES for some reason, so I'm not as into it. That and it kind of represents how the 1990's felt like a real turning point for the quality for everything, and SMW was the last bastion of that for video games in a lot of ways. Let's face it, aside from 1990-1994, I didn't really like the 1990's that much.
|
Mario Paint
1992, Nintendo (SNES)
| Jonathan got this....and me being an artistic type, I HAD to have it. Unfortunatley, I never got it for my SNES, but I borrowed his copy off/on again. It came with a mouse and mousepad. Just the fact I had something THIS close to a computer in my house was awesome at the time. I also credit Mario Paint with being why I'm an excellent pixel artist. I learned how to dither, make nice repeat patterns that line up, and choose colors that gave a nice effect on screen using Mario Paint. I also spent a lot of time in the music composer having fun and dicking around making crazy tunes. It became even more endearing as an adult as I found out The Brothers Chaps started Homestar Runner on a copy of Mario Paint as kids! I don't mess with it as much anymore since Graf-X II is way more capable and doesn't require extra hardware, but at the time, it was awesome.
|
Super Mario All-Stars
1993, Nintendo (SNES)
| This was the first time Nintendo did one of their "remaster" type things. I got my copy for free with my SNES and I had one of those early cartridges (Which I wish I still had, I heard they are worth $$ these days). Super Mario All-Stars was all three US releases + the "Lost LEvels" - which was the REAL Super Mario Bros. 2 released only in Japan because they thought us American's couldn't handle it's difficulty and because it basically used a Famicom Disk System upgraded engine from the first game. The ability to save (especially in Super Mario Bros. 3) was a godsend and really improved the quality of life when playing these titles, but I don't feel as high nostalgia for this version as I do the original 8-bit versions on the NES.
|
Illusion of Gaia
1994, Enix (SNES)
| I found this game while watching QVC when I was 12. There was this sales guy on there named Jeffrey who was a kid at heart and he was going on and on about this game like it was the most revolutionary thing in the world, lol. I wondered what made this so special. So I had to rent it. And I did, and was one of the first RPGs I got really good at.
|
Enduro
1982 Activision (Atari 2600)
|
|
Metroid
1987, Nintendo (NES)
|
|
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
1985, Origin Systems (PC-DOS)
|
|
Indy 500
1977, Atari (Atari 2600)
|
|
Cruisin' World
1997, Nintendo (N64)
|
|
Cruisin' USA
1997, Nintendo (N64)
|
|
Courier Crisis: The Modern Fatalist
1997, Sony (Playstation)
|
|
Activision Classics
1997, Sony (Playstation)
|
|
Dragon Warrior IV
1992, Enix (NES)
|
|
Dragon Warrior
1989, Enix (NES)
|
|
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
1986 Sierra On-Line (PC-DOS)
|
|
Twisted Metal 2
1997, Sony (Playstation)
|
|
Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns
1984, Activision (Atari 2600)
|
|
Sim City
1987 Maxis (PC-DOS/Win/MacOS)
|
|
Tank Wars
1991, Kenneth B. Morse (PC-DOS)
|
|
Postal
1997, Running with Scissors (PC-Win)
|
|
Doom
1992, ID Software (PC-DOS)
|
|
Wacky Wheels
1992, Apogee Software (PC-DOS)
|
|
Duke Nukem 3D
1993, Apogee (PC-DOS)
|
|
The Sims
1999, EA Games (PC-Windows)
|
|
Robot Arena 2: Design & Destroy
2003, Infogrames (PC-Win)
|
|
GTA 2
1998, Rockstar (PC-Win)
|
|
Gran Turismo 2
2000, Sony? (Playstation)
|
|
Diablo
1995, Blizzard (PC-Win/Mac)
|
|
The Ultima Collection
1998, Origin/EA (PC-DOS/PC-WIN)
|
|
AD&D: Dungeon Hack
1994 SSI (PC-DOS)
|
|
GTA: Vice City
2002 Rockstar (PC-Win)
|
|
GTA: Vice City
2004 Rockstar (PC-Win)
|
|
GTA: Vice City
2002 Rockstar (PC-Win)
|
|
(Dolphinity) Racer
Ruud Van Geil (PC-Win/Linux)
|
|
Postal 2
2001 Running with Scissors (PC-Win/Linux/MacOS)
|
|
The Sims 3
2010 EA Games (PC-Win)
|
|
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2008 Nintendo (Wii)
|
|
Five Nights at Freddy's
2014 ScottGames (PC-Win)
|
|
FNaF World
2015 ScottGames (PC-Win)
|
|
Babbdi
2022 Lemitre Bros. (PC-Win/Mac/Linux)
|
|
Pools
2023 Tensori (PC-Mac/Win/Linux)
|
|
Boulderdash
2006 FirstStar/BBG (Atari 2600)
|
|
Dragonstomper
1982 Starpath (Atari 2600 w/ Starpath Supercharger)
|
|
Drive Beyond Horizons
2025 Santor Games (PC-Win/Linux)
| In the summer of 2024, I was looking for a new "relaxation" game. The genre of wandering around aimlessly has always been fun for me, whether it's the backrooms or just being a total dick in Postal. Anyway, I wondered if there was something like this with CARS in it. Well, lo and behold, a French developer called "Santor" made one: Drive Beyond Horizons. DBH drew me in immediatley driving around in a little Soviet crap car I slapped together in the starting house garage, trunk full of rations (well, soda cans and canned soup), to drive 50Km for an Alien Encounter.
|
|
