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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
1991, LucasArts (PC-DOS)
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Ultima VI: The False Prophet
1990, Origin Systems (PC-DOS)
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Sim City 2000
1992 Maxis (PC-DOS/Win/MAC)
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Super Mario World
1991, Nintendo (SNES)
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Mario Paint
1992, Nintendo (SNES)
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Super Mario All-Stars
1993, Nintendo (SNES)
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Illusion of Gaia
1994, Enix (SNES)
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Enduro
1982 Activision (Atari 2600)
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Metroid
1987, Nintendo (NES)
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Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
1985, Origin Systems (PC-DOS)
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Indy 500
1977, Atari (Atari 2600)
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Cruisin' World
1997, Nintendo (N64)
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Cruisin' USA
1997, Nintendo (N64)
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Courier Crisis: The Modern Fatalist
1997, Sony (Playstation)
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Activision Classics
1997, Sony (Playstation)
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Dragon Warrior IV
1992, Enix (NES)
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Dragon Warrior
1989, Enix (NES)
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Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
1986 Sierra On-Line (PC-DOS)
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Twisted Metal 2
1997, Sony (Playstation)
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Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns
1984, Activision (Atari 2600)
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Sim City
1987 Maxis (PC-DOS/Win/MacOS)
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Tank Wars
1991, Kenneth B. Morse (PC-DOS)
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Postal
1997, Running with Scissors (PC-Win)
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Doom
1992, ID Software (PC-DOS)
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Wacky Wheels
1992, Apogee Software (PC-DOS)
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Duke Nukem 3D
1993, Apogee (PC-DOS)
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The Sims
1999, EA Games (PC-Windows)
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Robot Arena 2: Design & Destroy
2003, Infogrames (PC-Win)
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GTA 2
1998, Rockstar (PC-Win)
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Gran Turismo 2
2000, Sony? (Playstation)
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Diablo
1995, Blizzard (PC-Win/Mac)
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The Ultima Collection
1998, Origin/EA (PC-DOS/PC-WIN)
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AD&D: Dungeon Hack
1994 SSI (PC-DOS)
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GTA: Vice City
2002 Rockstar (PC-Win)
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GTA: Vice City
2004 Rockstar (PC-Win)
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GTA: Vice City
2002 Rockstar (PC-Win)
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(Dolphinity) Racer
Ruud Van Geil (PC-Win/Linux)
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Postal 2
2001 Running with Scissors (PC-Win/Linux/MacOS)
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The Sims 3
2010 EA Games (PC-Win)
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New Super Mario Bros. Wii
2008 Nintendo (Wii)
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Five Nights at Freddy's
2014 ScottGames (PC-Win)
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FNaF World
2015 ScottGames (PC-Win)
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Babbdi
2022 Lemitre Bros. (PC-Win/Mac/Linux)
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Pools
2023 Tensori (PC-Mac/Win/Linux)
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Boulderdash
2006 FirstStar/BBG (Atari 2600)
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Dragonstomper
1982 Starpath (Atari 2600 w/ Starpath Supercharger)
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Drive Beyond Horizons
2025 Santor Games (PC-Win/Linux)
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