What Game Made You A Gamer?
Whenever I meet a new gamer in person I always ask what they're playing right now and for their thoughts on it. I always find it interesting to hear about games I've may have had an experience with and how those experiences change through the senses of someone else. To put the gamer's thoughts into perspective I'll then ask something along the lines of "What's the game that made you a gamer?" Just about every gamer how a long list of favorites, but there's always a single title that has shaped them into the gamer that they are today. A game that becomes the base comparison for every game they will ever play after, whether they realize it consciously or not. For some, this can be a difficult question to answer, because it essentially asks the person to find that place in time when they weren't a gamer, but someone who just played games now and then.
Speaking for myself, I know there are plenty of games that I devoted many hours to but never really thought much of it. I remember doing a lousy paper route in the rain for a summer in order to secure my own copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, the rush the came from eliminating Ashtar and Jaquio in Ninja Gaiden 2, and being amazed by the visual splendor of Bobin's Transcendence spell in Loom, but I didn't experience these games as a "gamer."
For me, the game that would make me into a gamer was Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation 1. Before this game I had never really considered games a source of entertainment that could rival what I read in books or saw in a movie or a TV show, but the through game's superb animation, voice acting, visuals, and depth of gameplay blended together to be something greater than the sum of its parts. It's been nearly ten years since Metal Gear Solid's initial release (its official on Oct. 21) and the game still continues to amaze when I manage to find some time for replays. I could go on endlessly about what this one game means to me: how it inspired me to start animating, go to art school, and eventually enter the gaming industry. But in short, it all boils down to the fact that this was the game that made me see what gaming could be.
I'm sure you ladies and gents have that special title of your own. A game that holds a very special place in your heart that you'll replay every few months or years, like gaming comfort food. Feel like sharing? Hit the comments section below.
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Posted to Video Games on 7 October 2008
· Comments (49)
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Final Fantasy VIII. Certainly, I played other games long before it, but VIII is really what made me a "gamer".
Super Mario Bros., It was the first videogame I ever played and I was massively hooked and an avid gamer ever since.
Final Fantasy IV. Though it was called 2 at the time when I had it on Super Nintendo. I had experience with RPG's in the past (Dragon Warrior) but this was the first time I really felt connected to a game. From then on the FF series became a favorite and I would never stop gaming.
the Atari 2600 & 7800. Galaga, Moon Patrol, Combat. good times. . . .
Mario Bros made me gamer.
Warcraft 2 made me PC gamer.
The game that never gets old for me is civ2, first game I played 12 hours a day for a whole week.
Ninja Turtles on NES, first game I got, definitely made me a gamer.
As I mentioned yesterday in the Wii-kly update, Shining Force 2 is the game that made me into a gamer. It was my first RPG, so it was the first example I had of a game with a gripping story. The battles were also very strategic, which was a change from the games I had been playing like Vectorman and Battletoads.
I didn't know what kind of game Shining Force 2 was at the time, so I set out to research and discovered that it was an RPG. Upon more research I found other RPGs, which led me to all sorts of games ranging from Ocarina of Time, to Harvest Moon, to Skies of Arcadia. Trying to find other games like Shining Force 2 led me to be the gamer that I am today.
Final Fantasy VII. Classic in everything it represents....I remember standing at Toys R Us in Manhattan...waiting for the clerk at the Video game Window (back when you used to buy games by taking the ticket and then picking up at a window)...so excited...staring at the case....LOVE IT!
I've always been a gamer since the age of 5
First game that really made me play for hours was the Atari 2600 title Phoenix
But the game that moved and keep me playing was Silent Hill and Resident Evil series
btw silent hill homecoming brought tears...end of a series i presume...that game sux
My earliest games were the first two King's Quest games. Not only was I hooked on games for life, I rapidly learned how to read and write, necessary to interact with the parser interface.
Aside from that, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger got me addicted to console RPGs, an addiction that persists to this day.
Now that's a good question. Super Mario Bro 2 was the first game I played for a high score. Street Fighter was the first game I felt I absolutely had to buy. But I think it wasn't until Unreal Tournament and its online matches (CTF Facing Worlds FTW) that I became a gamer (it's the game I compare all FPSs to and the reason I despise every remake of the original game).
RIVER RAID for the Atari 2600 was the game that got me hooked
@Purplerose:
FFVIII did it for me, too. Funny, I thought I'd be the only one to say that! lol
My brother's going to hate me for saying that if he ever saw it, considering the innumerable amount of times we'd linger around a Blockbuster waiting for a game to return or the countless late hours we'd play Battletoads or The Lost Viking or Goldeneye together...
...but, yes, it was definitely FFVIII that made me a gamer. ;P
Goldeneye 64. It MADE me into a gamer. Pure and simple
I was always a gamer. I come from "gamer stock," my father being a computer programmer who introduced us to Load Runner when computer screens were still monotone.
But what game can I say really made me feel like an official Gamer? The answer is simple: Secret of Mana.
Secret of Mana did many things that I had yet to experience before in a videogame.
First of all: ever since I was born I worshiped my older brother. I thought the world of him even when he only saw me as an annoyance bent on breaking all his toys. Secret of Mana was the first opportunity (and last for a very long time) where I got to play WITH my brother, fight along-side him to progress through a wonderful fantasy adventure instead of fighting AGAINST him in the likes of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. I still fondly look back on all those boss fights where we would practice and coordinate his attacks with my spell-casting. I can't express the delight I felt in finally finding something we could both do together that he look forward to just as much as I did.
It was even tailored visually to my family! My brother was always the tall, brown-haired boy who liked to play the warrior or paladin. I was the sprightly gay boy who loved all things magical. He played the main hero and I played as Tiny, the red-headed sprite. Hell! We even got to incorporate my younger sister into the lot from time to time- she was, and still is, a beautiful blond-haired girl with blue eyes, which matched the princess perfectly.
So there we three would be, fighting through an epic adventure filled with magic, fun and tragedy. No game before or since has filled me with as much nostalgia, and no Mana game since has managed to capture the perfect feeling of camaraderie and cooperation that Secret inspired in my often-at-odds siblings and I.
It was also the first fantasy-based, RPG-esque game I ever experienced. Before SoM all I ever played were fighters, racers, or Mario-type platforming adventures. I never knew there was a genre out there that incorporated my nerdy love of fantasy novels with my obsessive passion for videogames. Having discovered this I never looked back.
My love for the RPG genre wouldn't solidify until later where I fell head-over-heals for Final Fantasy 7, but Secret of Mana is the origin of my fanboy nature concerning videogames, and Squaresoft more specifically.
So there is my rambling answer.
The first of the Ultima series was what first got me hooked. I still have nightmares in the style of the game's "graphics"...
Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 (which is truly one of the worst arcade-to-console translations ever) made me a gamer at the age of 4. Simple as that...
David Crane's 'Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns' on the 2600 made me a gamer. I sweated for weeks to finish that game, loving every moment.
But then my friend comes over and I say "Ooh! You gotta try this!" he'd never seen it before, but finished it in 20 minutes flat. I was crestfallen.
But also impressed.
I had to have more. I had to have that experience of exploration. Of immersion.
I was hooked for life.
Final Fantasy VII
Many games came before this and many after, but this is the game that had me enraptured.
I love you FF VII
I can't remember a time that I wasn't a gamer. When I was about 3 or 4 we were hooking up the Magnavox Odyssey and taping those plastic covers up on the TV screen. It was something my dad could do with us when he couldn't get out of bed. I didn't understand what was going on, but I liked the tennis and haunted house games.
Then someone brought a minicomputer with a lightpen Lunar Lander game on a green screen to some church bazaar I was at, and I played until I won a couple times and the owner wouldn't let me play anymore. Then an arcade opened up next to the Friendly's at the mall, and they had Depth Charge and Space Invaders and Sea Wolf, and I was a total goner. We got the Odyssey 2 when it came out, but by then I was gaming in every available minute.
So I guess I'm one of those rare people who literally grew up with games, and games grew up with me too. If I had to pick a single game, I guess it would have to be the first one ever sold, the Magnavox Odyssey and its tennis game.
i had the colecovision and a 2600 when i was very young. i had the first nes on the block. i've been playing since i was about 4 or so.
the game that finally did me in, and which remains, for me, the pinnacle of the storytelling art in gaming, is final fantasy 6.
i've been a final fantasy fan for as long as they've been around - i had the first one when it came out, and have played through and loved (almost) every iteration since. if it has the words "final" and "fantasy" somewhere in the title, chances are pretty good that i own a copy of it somewhere.
but 6 - my god. i got it for christmas one year when i was down in dallas visiting my uncles, and we hooked up my snes to an old tv. i remember playing through the rafting sequence with banon after everyone else had gone to sleep for the night - turning the uematsu score up as loud as i dared because i couldn't get enough of it. and kefka! what can i say about that most masterful of video game villains that hasn't been said already?
final fantasy 6 is the apotheosis for me - the others are great, in their own ways (hell, i even love 10-2 for its cutesy j-pop charm), but, for me, nothing matches the storytelling heft and emotional depth of 6.
Super Mario Brothers 2
i remember as a kid when this first came out getting so excited to go to my friends house because he had it and i didn't and we would play it all day long. after that i was able to get my parents to buy me an NES with mario 2 along with some other games and i have been hooked ever since.
Mega Man X. It was the first game I ever really loved.
Growing up in a console-free home, all my early games were on the PC and mostly of the 'Adventure' genre. What really kicked off my gaming and collecting of games was the original Kingdom Hearts. I then quickly moved on to Final Fantasy X and its sequel immediately after, and the rest is history.
I played all the NES games and all, but I wasn't a REAL gamer until... hm... Dick Tracy. That game frustrated me to no end and I just kept playing it and playing it. I HAD to conquer it. And I never did.
The first Resident Evil
I'm going to have to go with FFVIII as well. That was the first RPG I ever played, and it introduced me to the concept of story-telling in games.
Up until then, I'd only played such things as Sonic, Zelda, and Mystical Ninja. I enjoyed every one of them, but it was the love story of Squall and Rinoa that really drew me in. (Even if it was Quistis that I loved the most...)
Final Fantasy 1—I literally played it on my father's knee when I was three years old, and I never looked back.
I've been playing since I was three. Super Mario Bros. 3.
FFX
I never played video games until house sitting for some friends and it was the only game I could figure out. Since then, haven't looked back.
Golden Axe. I'll never forget that one.
Zork & Kings Quest 1 on the PC & PC Jr.
LOL
Zork & Kings Quest 1 on the PC & PC Jr.
LOL
Super Mario Brothers 3 for NES was my first, but Zelda: Link's Awakening for Game Boy probably made me a gamer. I re-beat Link's Awakening every once and a while. The sticker on the game is pretty faded by now.
Mortal Kombat, 1992, Eastland Mall, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Good Times... :)
Half Life 2. I haven't even played the first one. I spent hours playing Mario 64, the sims, pokemon, zelda, even pocahontas on my game boy pocket (my first system, followed shortly by the N64).
Half Life 2 made me a gamer, though, because it was the first game where I could play the scary parts. My little brother had to play the boo levels in Mario 64, and as much as I want to, I still can't bring myself to play silent hill. HL2 was the first game where I got through the creepy, dark, zombie and monster infested level all by myself.
Super Mario RPG
It was the first game that I ever beat on my own. From then on I was determined to beat every video game I played (as long as the game held my attention, anyway).
Final Fantasy Legend 3 for the Gameboy.
I got it on loan from my stepfather's cousin's husband. I played that thing for three weeks straight when I was nine. didn't even touch the Legend of Zelda game that went with it. the story is what had me hooked.
just kept going since then. love beating that game...
then again, I do still have a soft spot for Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge.
I've been playing games for roughly 28 years now. Arcade, the Atari 2600 Pac Man, then we got the NES & Mario hit :) Zelda soon followed. Mega Man appeared in here somewhere. But Dragon Warrior, that brought my love of RPG's to the forefront. Followed by Final Fantasy. Over the years those 2 series have been the cornerstones of my game addiction.
Before Final Fantasy came out Nintendo Power did a series of preview articles about it. I would gather those issues & read then reread them in anticipation.
I've been playing video games since I was 3 or 4 (Super Mario Brothers was my first taste), but I think the turning point into full-blown gamer may have been The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Before I even knew what a strategy guide was, I bought a gamer magazine because it had stuff in it about the game, including a walkthrough up to the Dodongo's Cavern. One of my proudest gamer moments was when I learned how to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the ocarina. :)
The original Sonic the Hedgehog made me a gamer, though I'm pretty sure I had played my brother's C64 and Atari 2600 before then.
Duck Tales on the NES, first game I ever fully beat, I remember back in the day I used to play games and give up halfway through, but that was the first game I beat from start to finish and man what an awesome game that was.. Back when Disney made REAL games and not licensed crap.
Sonic 1, Yoshi's Island and DKC1 were my first games [and thus my first two gaming game systems].
Those were among the best times, as well as the N64, Dreamcast and PS1 eras. ^-^
Zelda: Link's Awakening
As a kid I got hooked by
"The Legend of Zelda" for the original NES,
"Sonic the Hedgehog 2" kept it going on Sega,
and then "GoldenEye 64" -AND- "Star Fox 64" solidified my status as a gamer forever.
"Jade Empire" on the XBox didn't help, either... lol
There are only 4 games I remember obsessing over.
Super Mario Bros. 3, which my cousin never let me play so i was super envious.
Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion, the first game I uber loved cause Mickey was in it and it was fun.
Megaman 3 on the gameboy, cause Rush is awesome and the cartoon made me love it
Spiderman in Separation Anxiety, having grown up as a Spiderman freak (comics and cards) plus the crossovers and venom and carnage made me go buck crazy for this game.
An honorable mention is The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening DX which actually got me to not hate Zelda games and made me an uber mega zelda freak
But the first game that made me go gaming crazy was Final Fantasy VII which got me constant and Pokemon which solidified it. I can't believe nobody became a gamer thanks to Pokemon.
Star Control! It was a space combat game that combined strategy and combat when players arrived on the same star system. It was on the Sega Genesis. Wow, I just dated myself. I'm old :( hehe
First game I ever played? Super Mario Bros. Too young to even grasp the concept.
First game I was obsessed with? Pokemon Red. During the 90's Pokemon fad.
First game I ever fell in love with? Harvest Moon 64. I think that game truly turned me into a gamer. I haven't experienced anything like it since, and it was never part of a fad or extremely popular. The Harvest Moon series (especially 64) has always had a special place in my heart.
I'm gonna go with The Legend of Zelda. I used to have an Atari 2600, but when I got my NES for Christmas, my eyes were suddenly opened. Suddenly, video games had substance... you were actually accomplishing something when you beat Ganon and saved Zelda.
The game that I credit for my love of story however is gonna go to Final Fantasy VI which was III in the US. It was the first time I put 50 hours into one game save... not to mention it basically started my love affair with Uematsu as a composer.