• Space Invaders I feel like I should include one of the classic games I played in the 80s. You never forget your first, and I played this more than any others and it influenced my career as an adult. However I think 10 mile hike, burger time, breakout and pacman are better.
• Heroes of Might and Magic 3 My room mates would hotseat games while watching movies. A lot of fond memories
• Factorio Probably played more than any other game
• Golden Axe Warrior Not to be confused with Golden Axe. This was a Zelda clone on the Sega Master System. One of the best games on that platform IMO.
• Boulders gate 1 Besides golden axe warrior the only other RPG I really got into. Unfortunately I wiped my hard drive with a game that I had been playing for months and I just couldn't get back into it after that.

By pure numbers, mine has got to be GTA San Andreas since I only had a PS2 for the longest time. I think that might be why I kinda hate games now? Buying a new game and you get maybe a couple dozen hours if you're lucky kinda sucks. Oh it's just a campaign of like 9 missions? And the missions are pretty linear? idk man, might be worth like $10 but definitely not fullprice $60 or even half off $30.

Pokémon, wow, final fantasy tactic advanced, harvest moon, civilization I guess ?

Most important?

Morrowind.

I was already playing it, when a pack of dogs killed my two geese. One had a broken neck, the other had its guts spilling out.

I'm convinced that Morrowind helped me through my depression, and prevented me from becoming suicidal.

But I also like Drakan: Order of the Flame, Little Big Adventure 2, Dune 2, and Warcraft 1.

• Dune 2, C&C and RA
• Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3
• Pokemon gen 1 and 2
• Warcraft 2 and 3
• Diablo 1 and 2

Lots of honourable mentions though.

• Doom, Doom 2 and Hexen
• Sonic 2, 3 and Knuckles
• Wow
• Counterstrike 1.6 and Source
• Half life and all the sequels
• Xmen and Xmen 2 (Sega)
• Gta 1, 2, 3 and Vice City
• FF7

Lemmings. Prince of Persia. Doom. Tomb Raider 1. Gran Turismo.

1. Lego Island
2. Oregon Trail
3. TMNT for the NES
4. Mario 64
5. Worms Armageddon

Super Mario Galaxy

Red Alert 2

Age of Empires 2

Fallout New Vegas

TES Oblivion

FF VII

Ocarina of Time

Ghost & goblins

Galaga '88

Ninja Spirit

• Civilization 1
• Wing Commander Privateer
• X-wing
• Hanse
• Eye of the Beholder 2: Darkmoon

And then there were games like Pizza Connection (my mother loved playing all parts except for the action sequences, which were my obligation), Aces over the Pacific, Lands of Lore, One Must Fall: 2097, Mortal Kombat, Stars!, Sinistar, Master of Orion 2, M.A.X., Z, Gender Wars (lol the story was utter trash but the gameplay was fun), Metal Marines (I just loved shooting rockets between windows on my desktop)...

And the longer i think, the longer the list gets because i start to remember more, like Syndicate, Alley Cat (i just found out that there is a Remeow Edition for free!, Abuse, Mechwarrior 2, ...

Damn, gotta look into my old archives and go on a retro rampage this weekend

• RuneScape
• soldier front
• MapleStory
• dota
• league of legends

Pretty much every Sierra franchise.

Warcraft, C&C, Street fighter two turbo, and final fantasy!

• super mario world
• doom
• age of empires 2
• RuneScape
• world of warcraft (only started it as young adult though)

• Super Mario 64

• Pilot Wings 64

• Balloons Tower Defense

• Portal 2

• Banjo Kazooie: nuts and bolts (I dont care if it killed the franchise, I really enjoyed this game)

• Commander keen

• Wingnuts

• Burn:Cycle

• Myst

• Duke Nukem (the first one but also 3D)

Wingnuts was a dumb fmv 'dog fighting' game, but when you beat it you could play it again with silly dialogue. I also remember when setting up the sound card the test audio was a guy saying 'ah veiners, just ze vay I like zem!' In a bad German accent.

Burn:Cycle was an fmv adventure game that I adored, it also came with a sound track cd and a little packet of leaflets based on in game stuff that was really cool. I still listen to the ost on occasion

• Sims 3

• Skyrim

• Animal Crossing New Leaf

• Cities: Skyline

• Sims 2

So I don't really feel that old when reading the notes, I do however apologise to anyone having an age crisis reading this.

• Pacman (bar arcade game with joysticks on the top and bottom, my mom worked there so I was often there during the day)
• Civilization 1
• The Incredible Machine
• Super Mario Bros.
• Duke Nukem 3D (Learned the commands to call a friend on my modem and then boot up duke3d.exe and play multiplayer, all from DOS)

Baulders gate on ps2 was my introduction into RPG and a bonding experience with my aunts ex.

GTA 1 was my escape from an abusive house

Tony hawk kept me from getting picked on for my gaming choices

Smash bros had me bonding with my closest friends

NBA street helped me and my brother escape from our parents.

• Star Fox 64, for sure
• Half Life was a very big deal for me. Couldn't finish it when I was 8 because it was too scary, and it felt absolutely amazing coming back at 15 and blowing through it.
• Turok 2 seeds of evil. Didn't play it outside of using the cheats. It was basically a gore Sim for me.
• LoZ series was a very big deal.
• Much later, Armored Core 4 and 4A would make me obsessed with good mech gameplay.

Man, it's hard stratifying games you care about, especially when you have a massive log of them that all impacted you in one way or another. There were a bunch of free Linux games that I have very fond memories of too, like Nexuiz, OpenArena, Abuse, etc. Also a bunch of weird niche games and demos, like One Must Fall and Food Fight and Fur Fighters. It's an impossible task, honestly.

• Zork Zero
• Streetfighter II
• Diablo
• GoldenEye
• World of Warcraft

Just five is so limiting:

Mario Kart Mega Man 3 Donkey Kong Country Jet Moto Final Fantasy VII

Even expanding to ten feels restrictive, alas:

Heroes of Might and Magic 3 The Neverhood Perfect Dark Seventh Guest Earthworm Jim

• Half life
• NFS Most Wanted (2005)
• Heroes of might and magic 3
• Delta Force
• Unreal tournament

My top 5 were (in no particular order):

• Pokemon Diamond
• Star Wars Battlefront: Rogue Squadron (PSP)
• Fossil Fighters
• Skyrim
• FTL: Faster Than Light

In chronological order

1. Breakout
2. Oregon Trail
3. The Secret of Monkey Island
4. Sonic Spinball
5. FF8

There are so many more but these were all big moments. Ugh I didn't even mention the IBM golf game or Carmen San Diego, I think I need to do this list based on the systems we had.

Halo >!because I played it with my older sister!<

Skyrim >!because it reminded me that I like RPGs!<

RuneScape >!because it taught me that I like RPGs!<

Minecraft >!because I played it with my little brother!<

DOOM >!because I was young and too scared to play it myself, but my mom enjoyed gaming sometimes, and watching her play are happy memories!<

Zelda II The Adventure of Link

Super Metroid

Another World / Out of This World

Myst

Doom

Honorable mention goes to Super Mario Land.

• Dizzy (ZX Spectrum), all the games in the series
• Heroes of Might and Magic, played up to 5, but 2 and 3 were my favorites
• Masters of Orion 2
• Little Big Adventure
• Monkey Island, all the games in the series

Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Space Invaders (on an Atari 2600), Tempest and Pitfall!

I can't limit it to 5.

I keep trying to, and it doesn't work, I end up leaving out something that I spent a massive amount of time on and also very strongly impacted my conception of what a game can be.

In no particular order

Command and Conquer Red Alert 2

Caesar III

Spyro

Metal Gear Solid

Gauntlet

Half life/2 should probably be on there, but it still doesn't feel like an "old" game, especially since I play them every year or two, they haven't left my computer since 2010, and honestly I can't see myself not playing it when I'm 60.

In no particular order and with limited time thinking about it:

• Kirby Super Star
• Mario Sunshine
• Sonic Adventure (1 & 2 if I may)
• Guitar Hero
• Zelda: Link to the Past

My first console was a NES I inherited, but the first console gotten for me was a SNES, and the first console I received new in box was a GameCube. PS2 underrepresented in this list although Guitar Hero was on there and that game was wildly important for getting me more interested in music in general.

Lego Star Wars

Discworld

Unreal Tournament

Doom

Halo

-Pokemon Gold (OG)

-Metroid: Zero Mission/Fusion

-SSBM

-Battlefront II (The OG one)

-The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons

In rough chronological order:

Starflyers

Mario Kart

Shadow cities

COD zombies (ios app version)

Minecraft

I'm stopping this list before high school, as I built my first PC and figured out emulation, so I started playing a lot more games.

• Pokemon gen 1 and 2 I guess
• Majesty
• aoe 2
• WoW
• gizmos and gadgets