Why do you love games? Answer with a game.

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Nov 25, 2013
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First read this: http://www.edge-online.com/review/half-life-review/

I read this review in edge, in print, in 1998 in the back of station wagon, while moving away from the best friends I ever had. I felt like I had nothing and lost everything and had to make friends all over again, all on the cusp of my junior-high insecurity. I was my own doctor, and this was my typical junior-high end of the world self-diagnosis.

I bought the game at a Wal-Mart in Hope, Arkansas. I played it. It was one of the most surreal experiences I have had. I played it on my grandparents' computer. My sister and I were staying there, caught between Maryland and Texas, while my parents were doing post-navy house hunting. Half-Life had characters, action, a plot, mystery, and sadness. It was art and it was the first time I was able to appreciate art. The first friend I made in Texas had just bought this game. We would get on an IRC chat, play through a chapter, and talk about it. AOL was lame. IRC seemed like last internet frontier for a 13 year old. I would workaround the AOL app, and dial directly into the AOL servers so that I could play online. When AOL laid the hammer down on that misbehavior, I became more nerdy and convinced my parents to ditch AOL, mostly because my dad didn't understand what the hell I was talking about and I was the family's literal internet gateway. We got an internet service that let me dial into an ISP through windows networking. I played TFC with dial-up lag and loved ever ms of it.I bought a hardware modem. I installed Linux. I uninstalled Linux. I built my own PC with money I scratched together from Christmas, birthdays, and my part-time job at Eddie Williams. It was ghetto. It was beige. It had a TNT2. It caught on fire once. My parents don't know about this.

I love games because they are fun. But I also love games because I had to learn to play them on PC. Maybe this is a result of jank, but dammit if I don't look on dialing another computer to play command and conquer fondly.

I love games because of Half-Life.

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Why do you love games? Answer with a game.
 
I love games because of Half Life 1, Tyrian 2000, Super Mario World, Star Fox and Zelda. There was more than 1 game that made me love games.
 
I love games because NFSII, Goldex Axe, Another World, Subspace/Continuum, Diablo 2:LOD, Red Alert 2.
 
I am old enough I can trace my love of PC games to Wizardry I and Ultima I ... having the D&D style experience in the comfort of my home without having to hunt up a group of people was great ... completing Ultima at 2:30 in the morning after a marathon gaming session was very memorable :D

On the console side I loved our Atari 2600 but it was my friend's Intelivision that was the preeminent gaming experience of the day ... we loved the talking game B-17 Bomber ("that was onnnn target") and the race horse game and Utopia almost brought us to blows trying to win :)

Later, I got the enjoyment of playing Famicon and Super Famicon with my kids and introducing them to PC gaming (they love to play Football Manager and Total War Shogun 2 right now) ... the most interesting story there was my middle son was playing The Sims when he was about 8 ... he had named his Sims baby after his older brother ... he didn't speak English so he came into the room where I was watching TV with his mom and asked her something in Thai (she told me the social worker had come and taken his baby away in the game and he wanted to know when the baby was coming back) ... I told her that the social worker didn't bring the baby back and he burst into tears (after being chastised for giving him a "bad" game by his mother I then went to help him play the game and get his baby old enough to turn into a Sim) ... there was also an amusing episode when they built their first Sim house and forgot to buy a phone (so when the stove caught on fire the Sim was running around screaming in Simlish and couldn't call for the fire department) ... wow, I am either a really crappy Dad or a really good one :eek:
 
The two games that started my obsession with gaming were Super Mario Bros 3 and Doom, even though the latter scared me at the time. My dad and I got a Simpsons mod for Doom at a computer convention (the fun old days of buying mods on floppy disks!), and then I was hooked.
 
I was recently reminded why I love video games so much, and I can say with certainty...

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Gold Box D&D - Pool of Radiance, played on 5 1/4 inch dual disk drives and my IBM XT Compatible PC. Yes it was badass, turbo mode went from 8 to 12 MHz!!!
 
1998 was such a great year in pc gaming, Half Life, Ultima Online, Myth II: Soulblighter.

For me getting into pc gaming was actually inspired by school.

We had a computer in school and the teacher had games on it, mainly we (the kids in my class, we'd take turns/watch each other) would play Oregon trail and Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego over and over over.

Using computers int he mid-late 90's I thought myself most things about them, The mishaps of getting AOL and NOT dialing into a "local" number and my parents getting the phone bill that was 400 bucks, which they were NOT happy about.

Then having them take it away until I finally convinced them to get it back but through a non-aol service that had a local number.

I played plenty of games prior to it, but Ultima Online was the clincher for me, that game that you played and you had so many great memories/fun adventures playing it. Even still talk to people that I met through it (one of them even posts on hardforums :p).

So for me it would be Ultima Online.
 
Geez there are so many. The magic of seeing Pac Man in a department store for the first time and becoming instantly hooked on video games. Seeing the "awesome" and and incredible gameplay of Pitfall on my Atari 2600. Seeing One on One (Dr J vs Larry Bird) on the Commodore 64 for the first time I will always remember. I couldn't believe how incredible the graphics were and the gameplay looked almost real (this was like 1983).

After 30 years of gaming, I think the biggest thing was when I first discovered Doom on the Playstation 1. Me and my uncle (who's just a few years older and more like a brother) were at Blockbusters looking for something new to rent for our Sega Genesis. My uncle said he wished they had something that was just shooting. I walked passed Doom and recalled an article I'd read in a magazine and how the military was using Doom for training. I mentioned this and we figured what the hell. We rented a PS1, a copy of Doom as well as a copy of Need For Speed (the very first one) and headed home. We were amazed! Neither of us had ever seen anything like it. The music, the immersion, the atmosphere! We were instantly hooked and played til 6AM. I went home and came back that night after work and we were up til 6AM again playing.

I still to this day have a copy of Doom and Final Doom and my old PS1 and still play. It has to be the PS1 version too because the PC version had shit sound effect and music and that was what made the game for us. It added so much to the atmosphere.

So yeah, I've got 30 years of gaming under my belt but it was the first time I fired up Doom that really changed everything and made me a lifelong gamer. I still love the start up sound of the PS1 because it instantly reminds me of those nights and the "magic" we felt and how excited and amazed we were relishing every new level.
 
We rented a PS1, a copy of Doom as well as a copy of Need For Speed (the very first one) and headed home.

I definitely played the original need for speed ( I think it even was called "Road and Track Presents: Need for Speed?) on 3DO.
 
I love games because of Sonic, Super baseball 2020, Pokemon Blue, gauntlet, Shining Force 2, Chrono Trigger...

The list goes on my god. I think I was 4 or 5 when my uncle came to live at my house for a while and he gave me and my brother this big box that contained like 30 nes games and the system. My life was never the same after that. :D
 
Wolfenstein was my first love

Starcraft 1 replace it

pepper in a COD1, RaveShield, and maybe some 1942

nothing these days does it for me, I guess I got old.
 
I still have fond memories of the original computer classics:

Long before Wolfenstein had 3D graphics there was Escape from Castle Wolfenstein (with Sprites)

“You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” (and if you don't know where that comes from then you deserve to be eaten by a Grue)

Gaming was so much fun back then since the PCs were so new ... I can remember the wonderful transitions we got to make:

CGA to EGA to VGA to Super VGA to XGA and beyond
3D accelerators
Soundcards
CD ROM
LCD panels

and so many more ... and with some of the new technologies looming the future is looking just as bright
 
Tecmo Bowl

Too many broken NES controllers to count...

Later it was Tie Fighter and then Final Fantasy 7. More recently Half Life and BF2.
 
all the dooms, all the quakes.. all the UT's... The Elder Scrolls 1-5 ... and cant forget the entire Serious Sam Series. and dont laugh too hard but the entire You Dont Know Jack series.
 
Soldier of Fortune 2.

Not my first game by a long shot, but fun single player with a crazy damage model no one has come close to since. Single player actually played just like multiplayer which was a blast and loaded with skins and custom maps.
 
The Mega Man series was my bread and butter when I was a little boy.

Ghost Recon made me want to get into PC gaming. and when I finally did, I loved that game very hard.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is probably my true answer to why I love games/what I love about videogames.

Demon's Souls reawakened my hope in the industry.
 
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XCom: Enemy Within

No game has brought me closer to playing in the sandbox with my action figures. Even more so than Company of Heroes did.
 
Learning from my cousin (who was 10years older) how to edit the autoexec.bat in dos to allocate enough memory for Doom to run on a 386.

That was pretty much the beginning for becoming a computer hardware nerd and a was one of several titles to really concrete my love (addiction) to gaming.
 
Got hooked on the earliest arcade games,then the C64. Doom turned me on to computer gaming,as well as doing my own upgrades.These days,I'm addicted to open world shooters like STALKER and Fallout.
 
Super Mario Bros. 2. Played Atari before that, but I was like 2 years old so I don't have much recollection of it. First addiction was Sim City for Snes.
 
This is HQ to all available units. We have mechs down at nav Gamma. Bravo cadet reports four subjects on site. Bandits are hostile. Repeat. Bandits are hostile.

MechWarrior 2. It introduced me to online competitive gaming. My life was changed forever with that intro movie. It led to me competing nationally for years until I stopped playing BF1942.
 
Hard to say. Commander Keen? Wolfenstein? Kings Quest? Star Control? So many good memories.
 
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I have far too many favorites from over the years to list, but Ultima 7 popped into mind - so I'll roll with it.
 
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