Asklemmy

Star Control II & Secret of Mana

They both set my expectations for how much fun a game can be.

Secret of Mana as a template for what kind of world I want to live in (minus the monsters and whatnot)
and Star Control II as a template for how to write a fun adventure.

Many games cemented my love for video games. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Prince of Persia.... God of War, parents didn't give a fux back then, the pixels weren't that realistic.

Seeing Sonic the Hedgehog as an eyecatcher on a tv in a tv store.

Mario ofcourse. Super Mario World 3 on a cracked playstation.

Spyro

I'd say it set the stage for the kind of games that I enjoy and the amount of effort I should have to put in to get that enjoyment.

I also liked Crash Bandicoot a lot, but it was much harder than Spyro so I would typically gravitate towards the latter.

Most influential... it might be Castle Adventure on MSDOS or something like Alleyway on the Gameboy simply because they were the first games I remember playing. Or an old Mac program like Factory or Maelstrom or Power Pete with which I wiled away many hours. Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament was the first time I messed around with modding and that computer literacy and problem solving certainly had an impact.

I didn't go into any computer-related fields, I just really like video games and they've been both a solo hobby and social catalyst for my entire conscious life. Maybe Super Smash Bros Melee or Star Wars Battlefront 2 or Halo because the early 2000s cemented some of my longest friendships and those were at the forefront.

Falling sand is why I like/crave physics interactions in games

Clash Roayle, wasted too much life time with it.

(was very popular back then)

Kingdom Hearts 2. I think my parents randomly got it with the ps2 slim they got me for christmas or a birthday when I was a kid. I knew nothing about final fantasy or anime, but I absolutely loved disney movies. I don’t really know too well why it got me hooked so much. I had a head injury when I was 15, and have heavy amnesia of my life before it. The fact I remember so much about that time is really a testament to the impact it had on me.

I remember the aesthetic was completely new to me and I thought it was really cool. In hindsight final fantasy characters hanging out in disney movies is pretty weird, but they just looked like really cool guys fighting evil in the background of the movies.

Roxas’ story was also super compelling for kid me, the entire prologue felt dreamlike, emotional, and thought provoking. It was like I was playing a novel. For context, the games I had played up until that point were essentially just pokémon, spyro, smash bros, and mario kart. So the idea that a game could be emotional and have an interesting story was completely new to me.

Now I can see the flaws and oddities in the series, but I still love it and it’s had a ridiculous impact on my life. I sometimes worry a little that if the people in my life played the series they might see the inspiration for so many habits I have now and pretty much my entire sense of style is heavily influenced by the idea of Tetsuya Nomura design blended with disney vibes.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

It had an archive in the game. It detailed the social structure, military structure, customs, and history of the Clans, which you play as a member of, from an outside perspective. I was only 8, but I read through the whole thing, end-to-end. I put an album of it on Facebook for posterity when I was in high school.

I decided I wanted to be like them when I read it. I have a much better understanding of them now, and I do not agree with everything. The concepts behind some core tenants still stand for me. Individuals are valued within the context of the Clan. One's value is based on their contribution to society, but society must value them in order to expect their contribution. If a leader acts in their own interest and not that of the Clan, their subordinates are obligated to challenge them. If the conflict stands, they face in a Circle of Equals. Generally, personal disputes are delayed and adjudicated, but there is a Trial of Grievance if the parties can conduct if they cannot delay. In the real world, I translate these to a value in community, a mandate to not tolerate poor leadership, and good practice in letting cooldown time followed by direct dispute resolve conflict.

Of course, there are questionable things. A caste system, though some Clans allow more mobility than others. Eugenics based on combat prowess for the warrior caste. Promotion by combat for the warrior caste. Poor military strategy based on the concept of honor.

I still consider myself a Clanner, to some degree. Sometimes I try to see if others took it as much to heart as I did, but I am afraid of rejection. I do not know if I could pass various Trials. I know I am too old, now, or at the very least, approaching that. Maybe someday, I will find other children of Kerensky.

Myst, I wanted to write books that linked to worlds. Figured the closest thing was programming.

Civilization 1, patients, economics, frustration.

Doom, was just a shit ton of fun and got me into networking so we could play against each other.

First the settlers 2 and Caesar 3, a bit later and with a lot more impact Guild Wars (1).

Halo 1-3

They are some of the best games ever, playing halo 1 for the first time after getting an xbox for christmas hit me like a freight train and to this day my love of fps games is in large part to the endlessly interesting tactics in halo multiplayer and how much fun I had/have learning them.

Playing a big team battle halo infinite match seems like replaying a memory I never actually had in the best way.

Still to this day even if I haven't played halo in years, I will kick your butt.

Earthbound.

The game itself is a quirky but endearing turn based RPG with enduring graphics and score. The game came with a full strategy guide that was set up like a tour guide to the various locations in the game. It was intended to be a companion piece to the story and fleshed out characters and towns. I was so excited to get it as a kid that I measured the box a video rental place with a tape measure and compared it my Christmas presents to make sure one of the wrapped ones was actually it. I replay it once every 10 years or so.

The game was one of the strong inspirations for Undertale.

As a child, has to be Diablo 2. I had no idea what I was doing but I had fun. And it got me into reading, actually. I read some books now and then, but wasn't an avid reader. But when I played Diablo 2, I found out there are books from the Diablo world and got one. I remember when I got home I was like "ok, since I got the book I will read one chapter and then go to playing" - well I didn't turn on the PC for 3 days until I have finished the book. And then went to get more.

Another was World of Warcraft (though I was not exactly a kid by then). It made me fall in love with MMOs, a genre which I still love (though no game holds me today quite as WoW did - still hope for one though). And thanks to it I got to know people I'm friends with to this day.

Wing Commander series. Played a lot of Wing Commander 1 to 5 as well as the spinoff Privateer.

I also spent a good amount of time playing Civilization 1.

Ocarina of Time - it was mindblowing to have the open world at the time (I didn't play Ultima 7 until much later) and the music is incredible.

I would say Age of Empires 2 which was where I first used the name that I still have on here, over 25 years later. Its amazing editor also resonated with my urge to create my own games without requiring programming knowledge that I just didn't have at 11 years old. I went on to create custom content for Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, eventually studied computer science and joined some indie gamedev communities where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still meet in person once or twice a year. I never became a full time game developer but I worked on some stuff part time in the mid 2000s and still do it as a hobby.

DOOM. It blew my mind when i played it. I learned a new genere, how fast paced a game can be and how clever map design makes a good game. I also learned about shareware which lead to a broader interest in the internet as a whole. Later i got a computer with a soundcard and when i fired up DOOM with music for the first time, it felt like a revelation.

Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis. It led me to my favorite genre of...well...anything... It was my introduction to Cyberpunk, essentially. And in a lot of different ways, it's factored into most of hobbies (writing, painting, etc...)

Ultima IV... It had a virtue system so you had to watch your behavior throughout the game to reach the embodiment of 8 virtues (Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility) to be become the Avatar, only after which you could enter the Abyss to finish the game.

It was a lesson on how to be a good person.

Planescape Torment. I don't even have words... That game has been living rent-free in my head for 20 years 🤯

Otherwise Morrowind. It was the first game that introduced me to mods, that made me spend almost as much time looking for mods than playing, and that made me make a few.

It wasn't my first RPG, but playing through Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US) in middle school made me fall in love with music.

I ended up asking my parents for a digital piano and acoustic guitar which eventually spiraled into download ModPlug Tracker to sequent music. I didn't have a powerful computer back then so I'd record one-shot samples from my digital piano and spent a few hours each day trying to create my own music.

I stopped recording around 2012 because I got really sick and music didn't pay the bills. I'm a father now with a 5 year old son and I'm looking forward to sharing my love of music with him.

If anyone is interested, I can share one of my very early tracks and one of my last recordings to listen to. It's one of my favorite things to do, sharing the culmination of my work.

Dwarf Fortress. That's where my mild obsession with technological bootstrapping and self-sufficiency started.

Although I think I was more of a tween or teen when I discovered it. If I needed to be an actual child, it's harder, because Mario Kart and JumpStart influenced nothing. Probably RuneScape; it's fuzzy, but I think that was my first taste of internet culture.

Zork. It's the reason I have any typing skills at all.

ZZT!

This is the game that got Tim Sweeney the cash he needed to develop Jill of the Jungle and then go off of that success to bring Epic (Epic Megagames at the time) into the successful company it became. But I don't care about that because I never played Unreal or Fortnite.

ZZT came with its own editing software. Not just so you could place pieces around the board and make mazes or whatever, it contained a fairly robust scripting language you could use to make all sorts of things way beyond the scope of the original game the editor came with. Whole online communities grew up around creating and sharing these homemade games, first on BBSes and then on AoL fora and eventually on a dedicated website that's still around. Because the game/editor were distributed as shareware, there was almost no barrier to entry, and we were all just churning with ideas about how to break the engine and push the bounds of the software, of gameplay, and if narrative convention.

It was one of the most creative and community-focused times of my life, and fostered my lifelong passion for game design, something I still do as a hobby.

Tales of Phantasia.

At the end, you find out that the BBEG was controlling monsters and waging war against the kingdom to save both your world and his.

You're literally the villian in his story.

The secret of monkey island, the first two. Together with Eye Of The Beholder 2, the legend of DARKMOON.

And of course Leisure Suit Larry (n.1)

Then, probably Full Throttle a bit later.

And indeed, Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld.

Also, Wing Commander 1!

They all defined every other game I enjoyed in the following years. Up to today.

If we don't have to have played it - the Zelda Cdi games, for obvious reasons. My most recent subscribtion is an active YTP channel.

The edutainment games presented by Germany's beloved children's show host Peter Lustig, published by Terzio.

The tie-in video games to both his TV series Löwenzahn as well as the Swedish Gary Gadget (Mulle Meck) books were elevated by his voice clips and I still quote them regularly. They really put a lot more effort into these games than anything I've ever experienced, there was fucking free DLC for Gary Gadget if you visited their website and had your father put some files in the right folder.

The worlds themselves both star an excentric man tinkering on inventions, but while sometimes fantastical they are more grounded that the world of Peterson and Findus. They teach children about community and physics, similar to the book "the way things work" - guess who presented its animated show of the same name in Germany?

Mafia 1. Not only is it still one of the best single player storylines, it's also how I "met" my best friend. My family had just moved between cities and I had to change schools. I obviously didn't know anybody yet and joining a class with existing social circles can be hard. The first common ground I found with someone was this game, as we both had played it and struggled with the same mission ("The Race" iykyk). We hung out after school trying to beat this game together. This is essentially how our 15+ year long friendship began.

I also really got into classic cars because of the game and my future hobbies and career would most likely have been very different had I not played it.

E.V.O. Search for Eden on the Super Nintendo. It sparked my interest in evolution and honestly a fascination about the origins of "things".

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

My older cousins got me into it, and they were the coolest.

My first playthrough took months to finish. I would just roam fighting every enemy, cutting every bush, charge into every tree, sprinkle magic powder on every living being to see if they would transform. I loved that it felt limitless in the secrets and exploration. It's definitely the main reason I'm so into the Dark Souls games as an adult.

Dungeons of Daggorath. I had a Color Computer 2 growing up, while we lived in a trailer park. I was still a little afraid of the dark, and the hallways and first person view with jump-scare monsters were a bit intense for me. I’d have to run from one end of the hallway to the other, to get to the bathroom and back.

The impressive event queue system in that game felt like magic to me, like I wondered what happened to the monsters when you turn the computer off.

I was a “smart kid” but I don’t think I was a smart kid.

(Something something original author, something something signed copy of the original source code on my github)

Toy Story 2 for PS1, it hasn't aged at all, and it looks better than the praised MGS (silly comparison, and graphic style helps the Disney game, but I have never seen praises to that title regarding that field, also I played Toy Story as a kid and MGS as a grown up, that's why I brought this) change my mind.

Probably Sonic Mega Collection because it really got me into platformers and made me into a Sonic fan. Kinda solidified my taste in games a little as I'll gladly take a family friendly platformer like Sonic or other titles like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Yooka-Laylee over an online PVP game like any call of duty because Sonic taught me to love platformers more, even to this day.

Also kinda solidified the fact that I'd rather casually play through a lot of games and not be that guy who tries to be perfect at a game. That caused me to get where I am today where I'll play co-op in a game but avoid full-on PVP with a random group of people because I know they'll mop the floor with me and I'd just end up quitting before giving the game a fair shot.

That would be games like Space Quest, Kings Quest and the like. I'm not a native English speaker. And my dad gave me two dictionaries to look up words.

Learning English at a young age opened a world of possibilities. Playing more games of course like Monkey Island and whatever adventure or rpg game that came out.

But I quickly started to read in English and had no problems communicating with other English speaking folk.

Pretty influential, most of the things I read/listen are in English still. Go there on vacation and whatnot.