My 10 Most Important Games
This is not a list of what I consider the best games of all time, but rather the games that are the most important to me. I think we all have games that we will remember forever for different reasons. These are mine:

10. Dragon Warrior (NES)

When I was eight years old I got my first issue of Nintendo Power. It had a special mini-magazine devoted completely to an RPG called Dragon Warrior. I had never played an RPG before, and the possibility of choosing between dozens of types of weapons and armor sent my head swimming in pre-geek bliss. To this day I can’t remember being more excited for a game. I don’t think I actually beat the game until I was 10 years old, but I spent many sublime hours running in circles hoping to encounter a random Slime and gain a few more precious gold coins.

9. Unreal Tournament

This is the game that made me realize I could create my own video games. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible until I was able to experience what others did using the Unreal Editor. I started off small, doing retextures on existing characters. Eventually I moved on to large maps and new models. Some of my old retextures are still online, like this one at Skin City.

8. X-Com: UFO Defense

I got my first PC when I was fourteen, and this was the first PC game I bought. Everything about this game is amazing, and it still holds up today.

7. Sim City

When you are a kid, there is nothing quite like building an entire city. At the Game Developers Conference in March 2008, Sid Meier talked about the three most important gaming innovations of all time. One of these innovations was games that let you be the creator, instead of the destroyer, and Sim City was the game he used as an example. Of course, in Sim City you can cause plenty of destruction as well, but that doesn’t make for happy residents.

6. Tetris

I think my TI-86 is what got me through high school with my sanity intact. I sat through many classes with my calculator sitting just below the rim of my textbook playing one game or another. Most of the time it was Tetris. The teachers never even noticed the link cable running between my desk and my friend Mike’s desk. Nor did they notice him constantly humming the classic Tetris theme during our games. Those were good times. The first video game I ever created was on a TI-86. It was called Pokemon Sniper, and you can still find it on ticalc.org. Last time I checked I had almost 4,000 downloads.

5. Super Mario Bros

There are a lot of “firsts” on this list, and this is another one. It was the first video game I ever owned, and also the first one I ever beat. I now have it on the Virtual Console on the Wii, and I was proud to have been able to beat it again on the first try after all these years. Then I downloaded Super Mario The Lost Levels and got my ass kicked in every possible way.

4. Super Smash Bros Melee

I can’t say for certain if I have more total hours in this game or Goldeneye (#2 on this list), since Goldeneye doesn’t keep track. But I am guessing it is a close race. After my wife qand I got married in 2003 and moved into our house we started having video game parties every Saturday night. The Gamecube was the system for party games, and Smash Bros was the best of the bunch. My wife only played as Peach, and she could easily beat any guy in the room (myself included). The looks on the other guys’ faces after being brutally beaten by a girl were priceless.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

My wife and I played this entire game together when we were 17 years old and just dating. We were an unstoppable team, only getting really stumped by the Water Temple for a short while. Playing video games is one of the ways we connected while we were getting to know each other. Guys always tell me how lucky I am to have a girl who likes video games as much as I do. And I always agree.

2. Goldeneye

Every other month throughout high school my friend Andy would host an all-night LAN party for about a dozen people. We each brought our computer, and spent the first few hours working through all the usual networking problems, and the rest of the evening and the following day playing Starcraft, Quake 2, Worms, and most of all, Goldeneye.

1. Super Mario World

When people ask me what my favorite game is, this is the game that always comes to mind immediately. I know its not nearly as innovative as Mario 3, as well designed as Yoshi’s Island, or as groundbreaking as Mario 64. I never even beat this game until this year on the Virtual Console! But when I was a kid I spent eight months mowing lawns, doing chores, and babysitting screaming children to earn enough money to buy a Super Nintendo. I had never had that much money in my entire life, and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to gather enough to get a system on launch day. It was eight months of hard work and giddy anticipation, and it was worth every second of it.

I know the experience would not have been as memorable if I had received the system as a present, or if one of my brothers had bought the system instead of me. The system was a product of my blood, sweat, and tears (give me a break, I was 9 years old), and I felt a real sense of ownership over it. And since I was flat broke from buying the system, Super Mario World was the only game I had to play for a while. :)

Cyborg Arm Games

COMMENTS

Comments powered by the Website Comments System ® v1.0