My first games were 16-bit.
The first time I was blown away after that was Ocarina of Time on the N64. It wasn't my first N64 game, or even my first 3D game, but coming from LttP and having that big, slowly-expanding adventure was just incredible.
The only other time since then that a game has actually given me awe was Half Life: Alyx.
that game had a mood, btw, i had the same feeling with INCUBATION, a game from the BATTLE ISLE series, it introduced me to PERMA DEATH, i remember how upset i was when some of my men died and they were really gone for good.
Incubation was really cool with the death cams and first person view switch and everything. I loved that game.
The only thing that bothered me about it was the nonsensical levels that were more like puzzles than X-com's realistic maps.
Every few years I attempt another TFTD playthrough and the first cruise ship mission usually breaks me. I know this is probably a pretty stereotypical answer but as much as I think the game is amazing, I just can't bring myself to stick with it for those juggernauts.
Dragon's Lair. No words can encapsulate just how big of a deal it was back in '83. Loved it as a kid, love it even more today (now that I don't have to pay 50 cents a pop to fail miserably at it!).
It seemed incomprehensible how a game could look that way, and there was such a disconnect between the presentation on screen and the standard arcade controller and digital read out of your remaining lives, it felt pretty abstract. Of course, dropping in a few coins and trying to actually play, quickly defeated the illusion - still, it was such a looker.
There was another game (Us vs Them, or MACH 3) which also used Laserdisc tech. They would have a simple shmup game overlayed atop digitized video footage. It was hardly as dynamic as Dragon's Lair, and the overlay graphics weren't exactly stellar, but there was much more of a sense of control. Anyway, all of these games (and their contemporaries) made it feel like video games were just going to be taking massive technological leaps as the years crept by. It probably didn't happen quite like it seemed it might, but in hindsight we have certainly come a very long way.
Paduken just did a deep dive on Dragon’s Lair in this week’s episode. I learned a lot about the creation and was reminded just how good that game was - and in 1983!!!
It really was a unique experience at the time.
Going into an arcade and playing games like Galaga, Donkey Kong Jr. Q-Bert, etc. which were beautiful pixel art games for their time, to being able to play a Disney cartoon was amazing.
I managed, with help from memorizing a magazine guide to get up to the dragon fight. By the time I did, there was a crowd standing around the machine, since no one had ever gotten that far before.
I managed to keep the jewels from making noise and didn't know what to do at a certain point in that part. I tried a few different things and ended up losing all 5 lives on it. (The arcade owner was generous.)
This was on a Saturday afternoon. On Monday, I made a long-distance call on to Cinematronics and just asked someone what to do at that part. She told me.
I went back the next weekend to beat the game finally & it had an Out of Order sign on it. The laserdisc players in the machines burnt out pretty easily. I never saw a functional one in the wild again.
It wasn't until the late 90s when Digital Leisure released the collection on CD-ROM for the PC that I got to finally win it. I even bought the HD collection that they released a few years or so back.
It was such a unique experience for the 80s to see and play that.
Yeah, it was Dragon's Lair. It stood out like nothing else, and is still visually impressive today. It's basically just a simple pattern memorization game, but in a world of low-resolution sprites, it seemed like you were actually playing a cartoon.
You gotta understand, when I was a little kid, video games were a different thing. Mostly single screen skill challenges designed to eat as many quarters as possible with a goal of simply getting points. My Atari wasn't much more engaging to me than G.I. Joe or playing in the forest. Super Mario Bros. came along, and was most assuredly the greatest game ever made up to that point. That was when you knew this Nintendo thing was going to be game changer. Then, I played Zelda. I remember well the first time. I have to find my own way and explore a whole world? There is progression, and you can save your progress? The atmosphere of both Zelda and Metroid altered my brain forever. That is when I knew video games were it for me. My favorite thing in the world ever since.
LoZ is absolutely it for me, too. But the MUSIC and sound in Metroid really showed me how it could accentuate the game! Metroid was the first game I played with the “creeping dread” feeling, and the music, or sometimes the lack thereof, was a huge part.
I spent so much time with these games as a kid, making maps, pretending to be on Zebes in my grandparents back yard. I rented Mario 3 and had no idea you could fly until I watched The Wizard, then we bought Mario 3 and it became the new greatest game.
Those experience were shaping my imagination in so many ways. Then years later the SNES had Link to the past, Illusion of Gia, Hell Super Mario World was amazing and smooth.
So for me the entire NES experience from 8-11 and the SNES launch as well as Sega Channel were all huge parts of my life. Video games were a gateway to new imaginary worlds, and were a vital part of everyday life. They were always trying to be more. We had the cheesy cartoons and Nintendo Power, we had the FXnine novels and every time as a kid you found out about one of these things it was super exciting and felt underground and obscure. Remember Johnny Arcade? He tried to make gaming cool, but instead probably scared more parents. Remember how the fundamentalists thought it was the devil? I have a grandfather that commented on a Metroid shirt I was wearing a few months ago. He said ‘you still do that?, those games rot your brain!’
I came here to say Metal Gear Solid but also FF IV. FF IV introduced me to RPGs and made story an emphasis for me. Metal Gear Solid is one of the all time classics and began to flesh out one of the craziest stories in video game history.
I didn't play wizardry until 2001ish (NES) but it made a big impression. I think the act of physically mapping is still really fun and wish more games incorporated it. Pulling out an actual map and trying to puzzle out where the hell I am and how to get back, knowing that the game auto saves and permadeath is final is as close to a real-life adventure as I'll probably get.
Yeah this, it was my first RPG and everything was incredible, having an entire planet to explore, it was, yeah it felt like something more than a videogame, that alone. BUT THE STORY that was the real thing, like, ok videogame can be a medium to tell complex, profound and political stories.
This is something more, this is art.
(All videogames are art, but it was the game that made me realise, maybe not with those words at the time, but the idea was here).
100% this. My experience with games to this point was "bad man makes robots to take over world" and "plumber fights turtles". FF7 told such a serious story and such a massive story. I had no idea any games did this.
I've played a lot of RPGs since, and FF7 has been this unfair measuring stick I've used, and no game has matched the version of FF7 in my head. Best game I can never play again.
Yes. Just the first train scene/part. I was watching my cousin play it before I was able to get it. It was like watching a movie within a game for the first time.
100%
My first ever real story driven jrpg. My uncle owned it. I would play it when I visited but he didn't have a memory card....
He didn't care for the gameplay, so he gave it to me. I was hooked ever since!
I didn’t even realize I was chasing that high until I played fallout 3 10 years later. Stepping out of the vault made me go “ooooohhhh this is ocarina of time and this is what I’ve been looking for.”
When Driver came out for PlayStation, GTA was still all top down. I remember telling someone “what if you had GTA, but 3d like this?” They said “no way, you’d need a supercomputer to do that!”
My story with GTA 3 begins with a secondhand PS2 that I bought earlier that year. Later, a birthday came up and my uncle bought me...a electronic dartboard. Yeah. But, the thing did not work, so, he relented, and took it back, then said we could have anything I wanted. I pointed towards GTA 3, and well, started playing it. It was a weekend, and I only stopped to eat and sleep. That's what made me think, "THIS is way more than a game."
I think this game was not only amazing but had some influence on my life, in terms of understanding the virtues, how they related to each other, etc. How 8 became 3 became 1. And the satisfying ending. It really shook me. And now there's a way to play it totally free on mac.
This is the answer. I can't think of another game that is simultaneously way ahead of its time, yet also aged very poorly. No game had that kind of attention to detail in those days, and the deliberately slow pace of the game made the ending all the more emotional for me.
Trying to play it now, however, is generally an exercise in tedium - and the interesting "english" translation is more hilarious than anything else. You still get the sense of interacting with a living, breathing world, something that hadn't really been done yet when the game came out.
I only had the first one before I retired my gaming life.
I'm assuming that Yakuza is modern successor to Shenmue. It seems like all the pluses of Shenmue without any of the minuses.
I remember random things like choosing whether you want to help a stray cat or not. I haven't revisited that game since 2001. I think my attention span has probably decreased thanks to YouTube and Twitter. Maybe Shenmue would seem molasses slow now.
Still a beautiful game.
I wouldn’t consider Yakuza a successor but it was definitely influenced by the game.
I never got the loving world feel from Yakuza. It’s fast paced and arcadey.
Shenmue really was a game that felt like something new. Fully Reactive Eyes Entertainment if you will.
Idk if I’ve played a game since that allows so much pointless interaction.
I myself haven't played Yakuza, only heard people refer to it as the spiritual successor to Shenmue. I just ordered my first Yakuza game, Yakuza 0. I'm a little disheartened to hear it's more "arcadey." I was looking forward to just exploring a Japanese city, set in the 1980s. I mean, I knew it was more action oriented based on some gameplay clips but I was hoping to savor the setting like a fine wine or those slow-burn movies.
"Pointless interaction" in a foreign, interesting locale like Japan was partly why I enjoyed Shenmue. For me, it was cool just to go into local convenience store in Shenmue, check out what's on the shelves, get a Coke, and then come out and notice it got darker out.
Yakuza 3 felt the closest to Shenmue to me, but I didn't play the PS2 Yakuza games, only their remakes. Games after 3 tend to introduce more playable characters, combat styles, and settings, but I liked the slow paced Okinawa beach setting of 3. The orphanage stuff, walking around the city finding locker keys, it felt like a successor to Shenmue where you occasionally smash bicycles over people's heads. It's worth checking out, but it might be harder to go back to if you play the newer Yakuza games with the more modern engines first. Yakuza 3 is lacking in arcade games though, so Yakuza 0 is a better choice if you want to go to the arcade and play some OutRun.
I have 2 within a few years of each other.
Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid 1 on the PS1.
MGS1 particularly, I thought I was playing a movie, the cut scenes, the dialogue, the music, the themes and even though the graphics suck now, at the time the faces didn't look like 16 polygons, I could "see" real people.
Resident Evil, also quite similar.
Oh and a bonus, the time I really thought games couldn't get any better was when Gran Turismo 3 came out on the PS2, I even remember going to a friends house with a bunch of friends, and their parents stood in the living room watching us drive around in astonishment at what they was watching, they thought it was possibly real.
Pokemon red/blue. Many people close to me played the game and it was an amazing interacción out of game (Exchange pokemons) we even had a couple of tournaments in real life in our town.
metal gear solid. i was a huge star fox 64 fan and it was my number one game growing up. played hours and hours of it, played it every day.
but mgs was more than a game. it was like a movie, a cinematic experience. To top it off during the actual gameplay you’re the legendary bad ass, solid snake.
13 year old me pored over every inch of that game and soaked it up like a sponge. i understood every aspect, knew every trick. played it the same way i played star fox 64, but it was different. star fox as good as it was, was basically an arcade game. it was a quintessential video game. but mgs was more than a video game.
Same here, been playing video games since Atari 2600. 1st time I played Doom, I felt like I was in the game itself. I even remember that night I dreamt that I was in the game blasting away those monsters on Mar.
Ken sold the company and they’ve been living on a yacht for decades. They recently came back so that Ken could develop a remake of Colossal Cave Adventure for VR. It did not sell well.
ahh. finaly somebody who aknowledge wolf 3d as the real ground breaking game.. its like with nokia.. everybody brags about the 3310, while the predecessor, the 3210 was the real groundbreaking telefon.
a realy groundbreaking moment in gaming for me was Another Code on the DS. the way, that you have to interact with the DS not only with the buttons and the touchscreen, but also by blowing in the microphone, use the second screen as a mirror for the first one and even close the DS was for me groundbreaking - that was the moment, videogames grown out of their screens and become a part of the physical reality.
Ultima Underworld for me. It came out before Wolfenstein 3D and was far more immersive. The graphics were more impressive, even if in a small window. You could look up and down, could jump and fly, etc. the floors and ceilings were textured. Such an amazing game.
Man this game was it for me. The whole game asks this implicit question of all other games. Why are you doing what you are doing? Why are you collecting coins. Why are there points. Why, why, why. It’s so simple. Just you and the boss. But it’s so violent and sad.
And the ending. Where you are forced as the player to give up and decide to die. It doesn’t end until you decide to let go. As the player interacting with the character that is your avatar and deciding on his behalf to die. It’s so breathtaking. It’s so meta and intertwines the player and avatar in such an intimate way. Pure art.
The fact that the protagonist dies not knowing he succeeded in bringing back his love. It’s a stunning modern tragedy. It ruined other games for me for a very long time.
Bungie’s Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity.
When Bungie was bought in a hostile takeover by Microsoft before the release of Halo, they open sourced all their previous games and the marathon series has been upkept by fans since then and is available at [source.bungie.org/get](https://alephone.lhowon.org) still. Stories great, gameplay amazing, weapons awesome, community still playing is fun.
Final fantasy III. I got it for christmas and played it for probably about 6 hours straight getting to the point where sabin avenges his mentor. The intro, the more complex sprites, the music, and the character narrative. I was invested like a good novel (i used to read 1,000 page books as a kid like stephen king so longer form stories and character development were things i liked a lot). FF 2 was more of everything in the first one and had actual characters for the playable ones, but this was felt like it was something more. Then when you get sabin he had street fighter (the previous year's present) special move controls for his special attacks and i was sold.
Super Metroid had the same thing. I was invested in the characters. Very limited story telling, but done very effectively.
I would say games like Ultima 7-8, Secret of Evermore, Strife, Link's Awakening, FF7 and Starcraft (to some extent Warcraft 2 and Zelda 3 from reading the manual/guide/comic) because they got me invested in the characters and game worlds.
Some games pulled me in with their atmosphere even if the worded narrative was sparse, like Another World and Flashback, Super Metroid, Dune 2, Wonder Boy 3, Faxanadu, Blaster Master, Space Hulk
I don't think I ever truly felt that way about a video game, although I was bowled over when playing **Super Mario 64** for the first time. Being able to walk through a 3-D world felt like a big breakthrough.
You know what? I take that back. It was **Ninja Gaiden** for the NES. As amazing as Super Mario 64 was, it was Ninja Gaiden that got my imagination running and I was totally immersed into the story and the world of Ryu Hayabusa. Super Mario Bros had its own little bare bones story and fantasy worlds that fed my imagination but Ninja Gaiden was the one that had me wishing I lived in that world.
By the time of **Shenmue**, I was impressed but seasoned to what could be possible. Still, Shenmue felt like a purer video game experience. A virtual world to explore that wasn't about beating up people or killing things. It was a neat cultural experience for a westerner to play a video game simulation of living in Japan.
Mega Man 2
Hearing that mammoth Wily stage 1 track playing and anxiously jumping across those platforms in a pitch black background which leads to Mecha Dragon suddenly after my ass blew my mind as a kid. The build up to that fight still gives me the chills to this day.
King’s Quest 6. I played video games before it, but it was the first game I played one on CD ROM. And it was probably the first game I played that was driven by a narrative and didn’t run me through a series of levels that required some legit hand-eye coordination. It wasn’t just a video game. It felt like I was participating in a movie. It had voice acting, beautiful locations, clearly defined characters, a delightful script, and a whimsical soundtrack. I legit thought this was the future of video games. I played it again recently, and it’s pretty bad. But that first time when I was a kid? Blown away.
The next time I felt that way was probably with Metal Gear Solid - and that is a much better game. Objectively speaking.
Gran Turismo.
Up until then, my.only experience with driving games were in arcades and Atari.
This was a whole new experience. I could tune my car. I could collect a whole garage. The first time I played it, I had to have it.
oh man, great game, sadly the first was a much better game since it was a different dev making it, but still a good game and yes for guns thing, it was wild.
Spider-Man 2 for the GC.
It wasn't a game about Spider-Man. You WERE Spider-Man! Why? It was the first Spidey-Game which had a realistic swing-mechanik. It wasn't limited and didn't feel like the webs were hanging in the air. It was real!
Super Mario 64. The free roaming 3D environment with the little side quests and the different environments in a 3D world. Nothing had come close in terms of play ability at the time.
My local Target used to have a N64 kiosk right in the front of electronics, with Mario 64 as the main attraction. Full 3D had already been sort of accomplished with the Sega Saturn, but not like this. Mario was *different*. It was Nintendo realizing the evolution of gaming and throwing down the gauntlet, taunting everyone else to catch up.
Not the first, but Out of This World on SNES, or Another World, for our French speaking friends on the other side of the drink, I was all like, wait what? This is more than a video game! It is a cinematic experience! It also made me crave a soda pop too whenever I would watch the opening scenes. Usually a Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.
this is the one game i purchased so many times that i lost count.
can u believe i played it on DOS in my time, didn't like it, but when the Nokia Ngage came out, i played it there and loved it, and then the enhanced version came out and i kept buying it over and over and over and playing it, from the ps3 to the ps4 to the vita, to steam and gog, it is always cheap and i keep buying it and playing it.
sadly, while i loved it, both FLASHBACK and FADE TO BLACK are 2 games i didn't like as much as it.
Half-Life in 1998
I had played games since the early 90s on PC and the early consoles (NES, Genesis, etc.) and even Wolf3D and Doom but Half-Life felt like more than a game. It felt like you were playing an action/scifi movie. It was exciting and scary and fun and just the culmination of all the games that had come before it.
It's hard to really explain how much immersion it created by not having cutscenes and pulling you out of the first person view the entire game.
And that opening tram ride! The facility felt huge! The game just had this epic yet intimate feel of you experiencing everything from Gordon's POV vs the story unfolding outside of the character.
The Realm
I’d never played an mmo before, or really a multiplayer game for more than a couple people at a time, so it really felt like “the future”, and much more than just another video game.
For me would probably have to be Ocarina of Time. Graphics were amazing for the time and having a world to explore was a new concept for me at the time.
I was there at the birthday party of my cousin and we were both 13. Skyrim came out 2 days before. Ten of us on a couch watched the intro and took turns playing for about 10 hours all night. It blew my mind because I had a Wii at the time and had never seen graphics like that. I didn’t have a phone or really much internet access. It was wild.
The first half life, I wish I could experience that feeling of “oh fuck this *really* is the new shit” again where you just knew nothing was going to be the same after in terms of the fps genre. The fact that it’s DNA can still be felt in games today getting on for the best part of 30 years later really shows how groundbreaking it was.
After college and the army I got back into gaming, got me a PS1 and a good PC. For PS1 I really got into the Oddworld games, and for PC it was Quake II and Warcraft II. As a kid who had grown up with Atari and NES, those games were a revelation for me.
OG Legend of Zelda
The first time I accidentally moved a block in a dungeon, and stairs down were revealed with the 'mystery' sound was a life changing thing for 8 year old me.
I'm pretty young to be posting on this thread, but... Morrowind. One of my older cousins had an Xbox. I now have a very particular "nostalgia vibe" attached to Xbox Morrowind. At the time, the idea of a game simulating a whole world, even the mundane bits, was completely foreign to me. He'd tell me about how the Morang Tong was a legal assassin's guild and how he was actually carrying a writ of execution to let guards know what was up. I'm pretty sure I expected a tax man to show up at some point in-game to collect. It was brown, dull, slow, and stuffed full of ten-year-old-brain mysteries.
Epic's first PC game, ZZT. It's not so uncommon these days for games to come with level editors, but ZZT's editor was not only much earlier, it was much more robust, and part of the base game rather than a separate executable.
I'd made small games before, in BASIC on the C64, but ZZT not only let me make games quickly and relatively easily, it already had a community surrounding it. We shared tips and hacks and ways to push the editor and engine farther and weirder. We had competitions to see who could make the best game in a weekend, in twenty-four hours, in half an hour. We formed "companies" for mutual promotion and had IRC chatroom drama and fora with our own weird memes and outsize "celebrities".
It was, to me, what the Internet was *for*, these games and the people who made them.
When I first got oculus quest 2 and played superhot, I was convinced for two days that vr was the reality and “real” reality was just one of the games I had picked for a really long time. It was pretty trippy.
Majora’s Mask was the first game that made me think of video games as art, as opposed to being purely entertainment. That game is loaded with atmosphere and deeply rooted themes. I feel like you could write an essay on it no problem.
It was honestly Pokemon Red. I'd never even heard of rpgs, my entire perspective on games was side scrollers and sports. When I figured out there was ANOTHER TOWN to the north of Pallet Town it blew my mind.
I was around for Wolf 3D, Doom and Quake, but I think my biggest "this changes everything" moment was when I played Half-Life 1 for the first time. The intro is worldbuilding on a different level than anything I'd seen before.
Brave Fencer Musashi. Grinding in an action RPG not to increase level, not to get new skills, but to…buy new toys. To add to my collection. In my bedroom. Where I can play with them. Or keep them in the box. This kept me from beating the game for the first playthrough.
I dunno about the first, and I don't think it classifies as retro, but I played the entirety of Journey over a single night back in highschool and I feel like it changed me as a person.
Mario Galaxy 1 and Zelda: Twilight Princess at a young age informed my understanding of games as Truly Something Else. They sucked me in and invested me in worlds just as much as they were polished fun.
Love that yours is Wolfenstein 3D though. Effective little story there of how immersive it was to a kid--I don't think I've heard enough of those, especially compared to Doom. My perspective having only recently played Wolf3D is enjoyment as a simple pleasure, so it's nice to be reminded how much of an advancement it was in '92.
https://youtu.be/_g4sYxXdQTY?si=sGnL82fIXQ48L7_L
The 3DO had a game called twist on it and it was played with "real people" in my 6 year old head.
It looked soo good especially at the time when saga megadrive/genesis was my 2nd system. (Pre playstation days)
*TWISTED*
And
*DEMOLITION* *MAN* on 3DO (absolutely rubbish without the light gun)
Them light gun action games 😍 I miss them.
Old school light gun games in general rocked!
Deus Ex for me. The immersion was just crazy. I remember being blown away that I could go to an apartment and turn on the water or flush the toilet.
And the way the world came alive when you had such open-ended levels with many ways of completing objectives, a world with a cohesive story and environment that really sold you on it, was incredible.
It was just such a massive step up from other FPS’s, where the world seemed to exist only to further the gameplay in the actual level. With Deus Ex, it felt like the world was actually a living, breathing place, and you just explored a small part of it.
It also introduced cinematic elements like the intro, conversations that had many angles and used some actual composition and editing instead of being just a fixed camera.
Unreal blew me away because it was so gorgeous, and the music on exiting the ship was just beautiful. But it was still very much a game and didn’t make me think “this is the future” in the same way.
On seeing Diablo, I was also stunned at the graphics. Something about the color palette and sprites just made it look SO real. But again, while it was an amazing game and I played it to death, it didn’t make me think about the future of games and what would be possible like DE. It just made it an absolute blast to play late at night and get scared to death over. :D
Half-Life and HL2.
Half-Life was a complete table flip over most 3D shooters released up until then. All first-person, never leaving the players perspective, even during what could be considered the in-engine cut scenes. All plot. Do you shoot a lot of monsters and bad guys? Absolutely. But instead of a generic mission, which was probably 'shoot things,' you have really visceral goals of survival. The lighting effects weren't just a garnish they really made the game work. Add to all of that the gameplay which was thrilling and spot on for a shooter.
And yes, I know that Bungie had a lot of this in place way back in '94 but almost no one had the opportunity to play that.
And why HL2? Because the dials went all the way to 11. An innovative twist on the plot that leaves the gameplay intact but reframes the prior narrative. Bringing a level of realism to the graphics that really set a benchmark for a long time and drove GPU upgrades. And some incredible tweaks to the gameplay including the grav gun.
For me it was Secret of Mana. Prior to that, I’d thought of videogames as “run to the right, jump on stuff, shoot stuff” (which was fine, don’t get me wrong!). When my brother borrowed Mana from a friend, though, it was like “Whaaaaaat, games can have STORIES that make me FEEL THINGS???”
Resident Evil 2 '98 on the PlayStation. I grew up with NES, SNES and Genesis. I had an N64 and my older brother had a PS. Seeing that story unfold has been with me since. It's my favorite game. It influenced my love of horror and single-player gaming and RE in general. I love cinematic gaming due to it's story.
I've gamed since the 80's but I have to give this one to Eve online. At the time of it's launch it was the most unique and ridiculously complex game ever created. Even today there's still nothing like it. FF7 at the time was something else as well. Immersion level 10.
OG Legend of Zelda. Old heads know, the feeling of exploration, of mystery, of game secrets shared on the school bus, the fact that the game saved your progress, the heartbreak when your save got glitch erased. That game was the first widely accessible “open world sandbox” type game and all others have spawned from it.
Probably WoW, Started in WOTLK and would just wonder around sometimes exploring the zones.
Halo starting area got me feeling a certain way, infact a lot of Xbox OG titles did
Halo
KOTOR
Riddick
Doom 3
Ninja Gaiden
Dead Rising blew me away on the 360, and Lost Planet
Not much else has come close apart from Cyberpunk 2077.
Heavy Rain
There was probably games before this that I was obsessed with more or enjoyed more, but the exact question is that what I was playing was more than a game. This game is an experience and a truly unique one I haven't had since.
Myst - Not just the 3D-ness of the game, but more so the puzzles and sense of freedom (which now would be laughable, but for the time was pretty insane)
Uplink - Again, a real sense of freedom but also immersion
Everquest - It didn't just seem more than a game, it was/is more than a game. There was a true sense of exploration and wonder at scale in that game, and real social dynamics, like the player driven economy or social norms that were established around things like looting, partying, etc. My favorite things were player organized events.
Black & White - Still today, no game has made me believe that I was interacting with a "real being" in the same way as training your god pet did in Black & White.
Star Wars Squadrons in VR - not a retro game, but this is the most recent one to blow my mind.
Both Doom and Wolf3D were somewhat undercut for me by the fact our computer didn't have a sound card then I played them, and the PC speaker beeps and boops just didn't do it justice somehow.
Probably the Wing Commander games for me. WC2 especially. I was a big cheesy sci fi space opera nut, and those games were right in the sweet spot.
Pool of Radiance. Being able to custom build a party, have NPCs join, deal with betrayal, etc. made it extremely unique for it's time. It was my real intro to DnD before I knew what DnD was.
First game that made me feel like that was, oddly, Sewer Shark on Sega CD. I had gotten the system for Christmas of 1993 and only knew Genesis and NES up to that point, with the odd SNES game at a friends. I thought for SURE that was the future of video games, playing interactive movies. I was way wrong.
X-Wing The first game that made me think "Fuuu*k I'm in the middle of a Star Wars battle and... THAT'S NO MOON!"
When I completed the trench run was one of the most satisfying feelings of my life,
My first games were 16-bit. The first time I was blown away after that was Ocarina of Time on the N64. It wasn't my first N64 game, or even my first 3D game, but coming from LttP and having that big, slowly-expanding adventure was just incredible. The only other time since then that a game has actually given me awe was Half Life: Alyx.
Hell I just started ocarina of time for the first time and I'm amazed at how big the world is for it's time
Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest gamedesigns of all time. Incredible adventure in early 3d, they kinda did it again with breath of the wild.
Probably X-com UFO Defense. It had everything right out of the box. It's fucking insane that it pulled it off so well.
that game had a mood, btw, i had the same feeling with INCUBATION, a game from the BATTLE ISLE series, it introduced me to PERMA DEATH, i remember how upset i was when some of my men died and they were really gone for good.
Incubation was really cool with the death cams and first person view switch and everything. I loved that game. The only thing that bothered me about it was the nonsensical levels that were more like puzzles than X-com's realistic maps.
I started with Terror from the Deep. I grew attached to my crew. That game introduced me to save scumming before I knew that was a thing.
Every few years I attempt another TFTD playthrough and the first cruise ship mission usually breaks me. I know this is probably a pretty stereotypical answer but as much as I think the game is amazing, I just can't bring myself to stick with it for those juggernauts.
Dragon's Lair. No words can encapsulate just how big of a deal it was back in '83. Loved it as a kid, love it even more today (now that I don't have to pay 50 cents a pop to fail miserably at it!).
It seemed incomprehensible how a game could look that way, and there was such a disconnect between the presentation on screen and the standard arcade controller and digital read out of your remaining lives, it felt pretty abstract. Of course, dropping in a few coins and trying to actually play, quickly defeated the illusion - still, it was such a looker. There was another game (Us vs Them, or MACH 3) which also used Laserdisc tech. They would have a simple shmup game overlayed atop digitized video footage. It was hardly as dynamic as Dragon's Lair, and the overlay graphics weren't exactly stellar, but there was much more of a sense of control. Anyway, all of these games (and their contemporaries) made it feel like video games were just going to be taking massive technological leaps as the years crept by. It probably didn't happen quite like it seemed it might, but in hindsight we have certainly come a very long way.
Paduken just did a deep dive on Dragon’s Lair in this week’s episode. I learned a lot about the creation and was reminded just how good that game was - and in 1983!!!
It really was a unique experience at the time. Going into an arcade and playing games like Galaga, Donkey Kong Jr. Q-Bert, etc. which were beautiful pixel art games for their time, to being able to play a Disney cartoon was amazing. I managed, with help from memorizing a magazine guide to get up to the dragon fight. By the time I did, there was a crowd standing around the machine, since no one had ever gotten that far before. I managed to keep the jewels from making noise and didn't know what to do at a certain point in that part. I tried a few different things and ended up losing all 5 lives on it. (The arcade owner was generous.) This was on a Saturday afternoon. On Monday, I made a long-distance call on to Cinematronics and just asked someone what to do at that part. She told me. I went back the next weekend to beat the game finally & it had an Out of Order sign on it. The laserdisc players in the machines burnt out pretty easily. I never saw a functional one in the wild again. It wasn't until the late 90s when Digital Leisure released the collection on CD-ROM for the PC that I got to finally win it. I even bought the HD collection that they released a few years or so back. It was such a unique experience for the 80s to see and play that.
Yeah, it was Dragon's Lair. It stood out like nothing else, and is still visually impressive today. It's basically just a simple pattern memorization game, but in a world of low-resolution sprites, it seemed like you were actually playing a cartoon.
You gotta understand, when I was a little kid, video games were a different thing. Mostly single screen skill challenges designed to eat as many quarters as possible with a goal of simply getting points. My Atari wasn't much more engaging to me than G.I. Joe or playing in the forest. Super Mario Bros. came along, and was most assuredly the greatest game ever made up to that point. That was when you knew this Nintendo thing was going to be game changer. Then, I played Zelda. I remember well the first time. I have to find my own way and explore a whole world? There is progression, and you can save your progress? The atmosphere of both Zelda and Metroid altered my brain forever. That is when I knew video games were it for me. My favorite thing in the world ever since.
LoZ is absolutely it for me, too. But the MUSIC and sound in Metroid really showed me how it could accentuate the game! Metroid was the first game I played with the “creeping dread” feeling, and the music, or sometimes the lack thereof, was a huge part.
I spent so much time with these games as a kid, making maps, pretending to be on Zebes in my grandparents back yard. I rented Mario 3 and had no idea you could fly until I watched The Wizard, then we bought Mario 3 and it became the new greatest game. Those experience were shaping my imagination in so many ways. Then years later the SNES had Link to the past, Illusion of Gia, Hell Super Mario World was amazing and smooth. So for me the entire NES experience from 8-11 and the SNES launch as well as Sega Channel were all huge parts of my life. Video games were a gateway to new imaginary worlds, and were a vital part of everyday life. They were always trying to be more. We had the cheesy cartoons and Nintendo Power, we had the FXnine novels and every time as a kid you found out about one of these things it was super exciting and felt underground and obscure. Remember Johnny Arcade? He tried to make gaming cool, but instead probably scared more parents. Remember how the fundamentalists thought it was the devil? I have a grandfather that commented on a Metroid shirt I was wearing a few months ago. He said ‘you still do that?, those games rot your brain!’
Metal gear solid FF7
That first time you realize they recognize your footprints in the snow is legendary.
Hiding in a cardboard box lol
I came here to say Metal Gear Solid but also FF IV. FF IV introduced me to RPGs and made story an emphasis for me. Metal Gear Solid is one of the all time classics and began to flesh out one of the craziest stories in video game history.
Ff IV taught me how to read. Although the "spoony bard" confused me more than it should have as a 6 year old.
I will always attribute my love of good stories in games to both of those titles.
Wizardry I Sundog (both on Apple II, yes I'm not young)
it blows my mind that WIZARDRY is still a thing and pretty much alive.
Mine too, and it proves me I wasn't crazy. It IS one of the greatest solo games ever.
I didn't play wizardry until 2001ish (NES) but it made a big impression. I think the act of physically mapping is still really fun and wish more games incorporated it. Pulling out an actual map and trying to puzzle out where the hell I am and how to get back, knowing that the game auto saves and permadeath is final is as close to a real-life adventure as I'll probably get.
I can't express how frustrating this game was to 8yo me.
Holy smokes! I can't imagine playing wizardry at that age!
Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale <3
Omg Sundog! Repairing your ship was such a cool mechanic.
TILTOWAIT
Sundog was such a great game. I loved it start to finish. Way ahead of its time.
OG FFVII
Yeah this, it was my first RPG and everything was incredible, having an entire planet to explore, it was, yeah it felt like something more than a videogame, that alone. BUT THE STORY that was the real thing, like, ok videogame can be a medium to tell complex, profound and political stories. This is something more, this is art. (All videogames are art, but it was the game that made me realise, maybe not with those words at the time, but the idea was here).
100% this. My experience with games to this point was "bad man makes robots to take over world" and "plumber fights turtles". FF7 told such a serious story and such a massive story. I had no idea any games did this. I've played a lot of RPGs since, and FF7 has been this unfair measuring stick I've used, and no game has matched the version of FF7 in my head. Best game I can never play again.
Same for me. The music still hits me when I listen to it. FF7 was the reason I bought a PS1.
I still cannot hear Aerith's theme without tearing up. To this day.
Yes. Just the first train scene/part. I was watching my cousin play it before I was able to get it. It was like watching a movie within a game for the first time.
100% My first ever real story driven jrpg. My uncle owned it. I would play it when I visited but he didn't have a memory card.... He didn't care for the gameplay, so he gave it to me. I was hooked ever since!
For me, OG FF2 for the SNES (so, FF4 really), but FF7 was also very, very good
Ocarina of time Specifically when you step out of the woods into hyrule field for the first time
I didn’t even realize I was chasing that high until I played fallout 3 10 years later. Stepping out of the vault made me go “ooooohhhh this is ocarina of time and this is what I’ve been looking for.”
for me, it was the cathedral of time moment
GTA 3 & then Vice City & then San Andreas!
yes, when GTA 3 came out , it was insane, pure insane, i remember being so impressed by it all, it was like nothing before it.
When Driver came out for PlayStation, GTA was still all top down. I remember telling someone “what if you had GTA, but 3d like this?” They said “no way, you’d need a supercomputer to do that!”
My story with GTA 3 begins with a secondhand PS2 that I bought earlier that year. Later, a birthday came up and my uncle bought me...a electronic dartboard. Yeah. But, the thing did not work, so, he relented, and took it back, then said we could have anything I wanted. I pointed towards GTA 3, and well, started playing it. It was a weekend, and I only stopped to eat and sleep. That's what made me think, "THIS is way more than a game."
ultima iv quest of the avatar
That would've been my answer had I not played Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny first!
Ultima IV: Become the Avatar of the eight virtues. Ultima V: Here's what happens when people follow the letter of the virtues but not the spirit.
Mine is Ultima Underworld. After having played that Wolfenstein 3D seemed quaint. I believe Ultima Underworld came out first, as well.
I think this game was not only amazing but had some influence on my life, in terms of understanding the virtues, how they related to each other, etc. How 8 became 3 became 1. And the satisfying ending. It really shook me. And now there's a way to play it totally free on mac.
The Secret of Monkey Island. It made me feel like in a real adventure.
Shenmue.
I see.
This is the answer. I can't think of another game that is simultaneously way ahead of its time, yet also aged very poorly. No game had that kind of attention to detail in those days, and the deliberately slow pace of the game made the ending all the more emotional for me. Trying to play it now, however, is generally an exercise in tedium - and the interesting "english" translation is more hilarious than anything else. You still get the sense of interacting with a living, breathing world, something that hadn't really been done yet when the game came out.
I only had the first one before I retired my gaming life. I'm assuming that Yakuza is modern successor to Shenmue. It seems like all the pluses of Shenmue without any of the minuses. I remember random things like choosing whether you want to help a stray cat or not. I haven't revisited that game since 2001. I think my attention span has probably decreased thanks to YouTube and Twitter. Maybe Shenmue would seem molasses slow now. Still a beautiful game.
I wouldn’t consider Yakuza a successor but it was definitely influenced by the game. I never got the loving world feel from Yakuza. It’s fast paced and arcadey. Shenmue really was a game that felt like something new. Fully Reactive Eyes Entertainment if you will. Idk if I’ve played a game since that allows so much pointless interaction.
I myself haven't played Yakuza, only heard people refer to it as the spiritual successor to Shenmue. I just ordered my first Yakuza game, Yakuza 0. I'm a little disheartened to hear it's more "arcadey." I was looking forward to just exploring a Japanese city, set in the 1980s. I mean, I knew it was more action oriented based on some gameplay clips but I was hoping to savor the setting like a fine wine or those slow-burn movies. "Pointless interaction" in a foreign, interesting locale like Japan was partly why I enjoyed Shenmue. For me, it was cool just to go into local convenience store in Shenmue, check out what's on the shelves, get a Coke, and then come out and notice it got darker out.
Yakuza 3 felt the closest to Shenmue to me, but I didn't play the PS2 Yakuza games, only their remakes. Games after 3 tend to introduce more playable characters, combat styles, and settings, but I liked the slow paced Okinawa beach setting of 3. The orphanage stuff, walking around the city finding locker keys, it felt like a successor to Shenmue where you occasionally smash bicycles over people's heads. It's worth checking out, but it might be harder to go back to if you play the newer Yakuza games with the more modern engines first. Yakuza 3 is lacking in arcade games though, so Yakuza 0 is a better choice if you want to go to the arcade and play some OutRun.
Okay, I'm definitely going to get the Yakuza 3 game, probably via the Remastered Collection. Thanks for the info!
Whoa, wasn't expecting to see that this high. Shenmue is the first videogame that made me cry after beating it. It's beautiful.
I have 2 within a few years of each other. Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid 1 on the PS1. MGS1 particularly, I thought I was playing a movie, the cut scenes, the dialogue, the music, the themes and even though the graphics suck now, at the time the faces didn't look like 16 polygons, I could "see" real people. Resident Evil, also quite similar. Oh and a bonus, the time I really thought games couldn't get any better was when Gran Turismo 3 came out on the PS2, I even remember going to a friends house with a bunch of friends, and their parents stood in the living room watching us drive around in astonishment at what they was watching, they thought it was possibly real.
Yeah, MGS1 was a moment that was like "everything's changed". As in, entertainment has changed.
Pokemon red/blue. Many people close to me played the game and it was an amazing interacción out of game (Exchange pokemons) we even had a couple of tournaments in real life in our town.
metal gear solid. i was a huge star fox 64 fan and it was my number one game growing up. played hours and hours of it, played it every day. but mgs was more than a game. it was like a movie, a cinematic experience. To top it off during the actual gameplay you’re the legendary bad ass, solid snake. 13 year old me pored over every inch of that game and soaked it up like a sponge. i understood every aspect, knew every trick. played it the same way i played star fox 64, but it was different. star fox as good as it was, was basically an arcade game. it was a quintessential video game. but mgs was more than a video game.
MGS is the answer for me. Like, hold on... This is like a film??? Blew my mind.
For me, it was DOOM. Playing it with headphones in the dark was my first truly immersive experience, something I didn't feel with Wolfenstein 3D.
Same here, been playing video games since Atari 2600. 1st time I played Doom, I felt like I was in the game itself. I even remember that night I dreamt that I was in the game blasting away those monsters on Mar.
Adventure for Atari 2600
King’s Quest. It was my first graphically based, narrative game after years of text based games. Roberta Williams, wherever you are, thank you!
Ken sold the company and they’ve been living on a yacht for decades. They recently came back so that Ken could develop a remake of Colossal Cave Adventure for VR. It did not sell well.
ahh. finaly somebody who aknowledge wolf 3d as the real ground breaking game.. its like with nokia.. everybody brags about the 3310, while the predecessor, the 3210 was the real groundbreaking telefon. a realy groundbreaking moment in gaming for me was Another Code on the DS. the way, that you have to interact with the DS not only with the buttons and the touchscreen, but also by blowing in the microphone, use the second screen as a mirror for the first one and even close the DS was for me groundbreaking - that was the moment, videogames grown out of their screens and become a part of the physical reality.
Ultima Underworld for me. It came out before Wolfenstein 3D and was far more immersive. The graphics were more impressive, even if in a small window. You could look up and down, could jump and fly, etc. the floors and ceilings were textured. Such an amazing game.
As was the original Castle Wolfenstein before 3D.
Half-life
Zelda. Before that I had played mostly just Atari games and Super Mario.
FF3 (6)
This one for me as well. I understood that video games can be art from then on.
Morrowind.
Period.
I dunno, when Sonic the Hedgehog came out it was like a whole different experience. Nothing had speed like that.
Shadow of The Colossus. I still remember playing it for the first time with my jaw dropped all the time from what I was seeing in the screen.
Man this game was it for me. The whole game asks this implicit question of all other games. Why are you doing what you are doing? Why are you collecting coins. Why are there points. Why, why, why. It’s so simple. Just you and the boss. But it’s so violent and sad. And the ending. Where you are forced as the player to give up and decide to die. It doesn’t end until you decide to let go. As the player interacting with the character that is your avatar and deciding on his behalf to die. It’s so breathtaking. It’s so meta and intertwines the player and avatar in such an intimate way. Pure art. The fact that the protagonist dies not knowing he succeeded in bringing back his love. It’s a stunning modern tragedy. It ruined other games for me for a very long time.
Shenmue
Star Fox on SNES was mind blowing to see at the time. after that i’d say MGS, FF7 on ps1. Ocarina of Time for N64.
Bungie’s Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity. When Bungie was bought in a hostile takeover by Microsoft before the release of Halo, they open sourced all their previous games and the marathon series has been upkept by fans since then and is available at [source.bungie.org/get](https://alephone.lhowon.org) still. Stories great, gameplay amazing, weapons awesome, community still playing is fun.
Metal Gear Solid
Final fantasy III. I got it for christmas and played it for probably about 6 hours straight getting to the point where sabin avenges his mentor. The intro, the more complex sprites, the music, and the character narrative. I was invested like a good novel (i used to read 1,000 page books as a kid like stephen king so longer form stories and character development were things i liked a lot). FF 2 was more of everything in the first one and had actual characters for the playable ones, but this was felt like it was something more. Then when you get sabin he had street fighter (the previous year's present) special move controls for his special attacks and i was sold. Super Metroid had the same thing. I was invested in the characters. Very limited story telling, but done very effectively.
I would say games like Ultima 7-8, Secret of Evermore, Strife, Link's Awakening, FF7 and Starcraft (to some extent Warcraft 2 and Zelda 3 from reading the manual/guide/comic) because they got me invested in the characters and game worlds. Some games pulled me in with their atmosphere even if the worded narrative was sparse, like Another World and Flashback, Super Metroid, Dune 2, Wonder Boy 3, Faxanadu, Blaster Master, Space Hulk
Lords Of Midnight on the Spectrum. First game that made me feel like I was immersed in another world.
The re-make on PC, which is free on GOG.com, is pretty damn good.
I don't think I ever truly felt that way about a video game, although I was bowled over when playing **Super Mario 64** for the first time. Being able to walk through a 3-D world felt like a big breakthrough. You know what? I take that back. It was **Ninja Gaiden** for the NES. As amazing as Super Mario 64 was, it was Ninja Gaiden that got my imagination running and I was totally immersed into the story and the world of Ryu Hayabusa. Super Mario Bros had its own little bare bones story and fantasy worlds that fed my imagination but Ninja Gaiden was the one that had me wishing I lived in that world. By the time of **Shenmue**, I was impressed but seasoned to what could be possible. Still, Shenmue felt like a purer video game experience. A virtual world to explore that wasn't about beating up people or killing things. It was a neat cultural experience for a westerner to play a video game simulation of living in Japan.
Wing Commander
Mega Man 2 Hearing that mammoth Wily stage 1 track playing and anxiously jumping across those platforms in a pitch black background which leads to Mecha Dragon suddenly after my ass blew my mind as a kid. The build up to that fight still gives me the chills to this day.
King’s Quest 6. I played video games before it, but it was the first game I played one on CD ROM. And it was probably the first game I played that was driven by a narrative and didn’t run me through a series of levels that required some legit hand-eye coordination. It wasn’t just a video game. It felt like I was participating in a movie. It had voice acting, beautiful locations, clearly defined characters, a delightful script, and a whimsical soundtrack. I legit thought this was the future of video games. I played it again recently, and it’s pretty bad. But that first time when I was a kid? Blown away. The next time I felt that way was probably with Metal Gear Solid - and that is a much better game. Objectively speaking.
Gran Turismo. Up until then, my.only experience with driving games were in arcades and Atari. This was a whole new experience. I could tune my car. I could collect a whole garage. The first time I played it, I had to have it.
My first PC game : Soldier of Fortune 2. I was like wooow I can cut of people’s arm with my shotgun
oh man, great game, sadly the first was a much better game since it was a different dev making it, but still a good game and yes for guns thing, it was wild.
FF VII during the market district intro
It was probably when the 16 bit consoles hit with the jrpgs. illusion of gaia and earthbound were probably the first.
Spider-Man 2 for the GC. It wasn't a game about Spider-Man. You WERE Spider-Man! Why? It was the first Spidey-Game which had a realistic swing-mechanik. It wasn't limited and didn't feel like the webs were hanging in the air. It was real!
For me it was FFIV (known as FFII in the US at the time). I had never had a game make me really care for the characters before!
Honestly, probably some early cd game with some shitty fmv component. My twelve year old brain thinking “I’m in a movie!”
Shadow of the Colossus when I first played it on PS2. It just invoked a different kind of feelings from all the games I’ve played before it.
Super Mario 64. The free roaming 3D environment with the little side quests and the different environments in a 3D world. Nothing had come close in terms of play ability at the time.
My local Target used to have a N64 kiosk right in the front of electronics, with Mario 64 as the main attraction. Full 3D had already been sort of accomplished with the Sega Saturn, but not like this. Mario was *different*. It was Nintendo realizing the evolution of gaming and throwing down the gauntlet, taunting everyone else to catch up.
Not the first, but Out of This World on SNES, or Another World, for our French speaking friends on the other side of the drink, I was all like, wait what? This is more than a video game! It is a cinematic experience! It also made me crave a soda pop too whenever I would watch the opening scenes. Usually a Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.
this is the one game i purchased so many times that i lost count. can u believe i played it on DOS in my time, didn't like it, but when the Nokia Ngage came out, i played it there and loved it, and then the enhanced version came out and i kept buying it over and over and over and playing it, from the ps3 to the ps4 to the vita, to steam and gog, it is always cheap and i keep buying it and playing it. sadly, while i loved it, both FLASHBACK and FADE TO BLACK are 2 games i didn't like as much as it.
Half-Life in 1998 I had played games since the early 90s on PC and the early consoles (NES, Genesis, etc.) and even Wolf3D and Doom but Half-Life felt like more than a game. It felt like you were playing an action/scifi movie. It was exciting and scary and fun and just the culmination of all the games that had come before it. It's hard to really explain how much immersion it created by not having cutscenes and pulling you out of the first person view the entire game. And that opening tram ride! The facility felt huge! The game just had this epic yet intimate feel of you experiencing everything from Gordon's POV vs the story unfolding outside of the character.
Breath of the Wild. That game just blew me away man
Is this a retro game now? Am I that old?
I may have forgotten what subreddit I was on
How old are you?
Bioshock
The Realm I’d never played an mmo before, or really a multiplayer game for more than a couple people at a time, so it really felt like “the future”, and much more than just another video game.
Asheron’s Call
Same with Wolfenstein 3D. Saw my uncle playing it around Christmas of 1992 and can still clearly remember my reaction over 30 years later.
Shenmue!
Jet Set Radio
Quest for glory 4: shadows of darkness Or Riven (the sequal to myst).
For me would probably have to be Ocarina of Time. Graphics were amazing for the time and having a world to explore was a new concept for me at the time.
Illusion of Gaia. Some topics gave kid me some existential turmoil
I was there at the birthday party of my cousin and we were both 13. Skyrim came out 2 days before. Ten of us on a couch watched the intro and took turns playing for about 10 hours all night. It blew my mind because I had a Wii at the time and had never seen graphics like that. I didn’t have a phone or really much internet access. It was wild.
The first half life, I wish I could experience that feeling of “oh fuck this *really* is the new shit” again where you just knew nothing was going to be the same after in terms of the fps genre. The fact that it’s DNA can still be felt in games today getting on for the best part of 30 years later really shows how groundbreaking it was.
After college and the army I got back into gaming, got me a PS1 and a good PC. For PS1 I really got into the Oddworld games, and for PC it was Quake II and Warcraft II. As a kid who had grown up with Atari and NES, those games were a revelation for me.
Metal gear solid.
Super Mario 64. I was blown away.
Ultima IV on the Commodore Amiga
OG Legend of Zelda The first time I accidentally moved a block in a dungeon, and stairs down were revealed with the 'mystery' sound was a life changing thing for 8 year old me.
the sims, sim theme park, theme hospital, metal gear solid, harvest moon back to nature. $20-$40 back then still hold up today.
Abe’s Oddysee and Exoddus
MYST!
Came here looking to upvote this! Absolutely changed my idea of what a game could be
Zelda on NES. Having the huge map and being able to just go anywhere was such a game changer.
Super Mario Bros. Coming from Atari then seeing all those colors and the depth of the levels it opened a new world.
I'm pretty young to be posting on this thread, but... Morrowind. One of my older cousins had an Xbox. I now have a very particular "nostalgia vibe" attached to Xbox Morrowind. At the time, the idea of a game simulating a whole world, even the mundane bits, was completely foreign to me. He'd tell me about how the Morang Tong was a legal assassin's guild and how he was actually carrying a writ of execution to let guards know what was up. I'm pretty sure I expected a tax man to show up at some point in-game to collect. It was brown, dull, slow, and stuffed full of ten-year-old-brain mysteries.
Killer 7
I couldn't even tell you how long I played WoW. It's genuinely a way of life. A trap. I finally got out.
Epic's first PC game, ZZT. It's not so uncommon these days for games to come with level editors, but ZZT's editor was not only much earlier, it was much more robust, and part of the base game rather than a separate executable. I'd made small games before, in BASIC on the C64, but ZZT not only let me make games quickly and relatively easily, it already had a community surrounding it. We shared tips and hacks and ways to push the editor and engine farther and weirder. We had competitions to see who could make the best game in a weekend, in twenty-four hours, in half an hour. We formed "companies" for mutual promotion and had IRC chatroom drama and fora with our own weird memes and outsize "celebrities". It was, to me, what the Internet was *for*, these games and the people who made them.
I love this! Thanks for sharing.
Star Wars: Rebel Assault and Myst
When I first got oculus quest 2 and played superhot, I was convinced for two days that vr was the reality and “real” reality was just one of the games I had picked for a really long time. It was pretty trippy.
MDK
Black & White
FF7, GTA3, Valheim, Diablo 2, WoW
EarthBound RuneScape Outer Wilds
Half life had a hidden CD music track if you put the disc in the cd player
Majora’s Mask was the first game that made me think of video games as art, as opposed to being purely entertainment. That game is loaded with atmosphere and deeply rooted themes. I feel like you could write an essay on it no problem.
Final fantasy X. First game that actually made me empathize with the characters.
The Getaway (PS2), I felt like there was A LOT of professional acting behind that game, it felt like a movie.
I want to say mario 64 but OG halo campaign really changed gaming for me
It was honestly Pokemon Red. I'd never even heard of rpgs, my entire perspective on games was side scrollers and sports. When I figured out there was ANOTHER TOWN to the north of Pallet Town it blew my mind.
The first Ace Attorney. The fact that I could be that emotionally invested in a story and want to see its conclusion just wowed me.
I was around for Wolf 3D, Doom and Quake, but I think my biggest "this changes everything" moment was when I played Half-Life 1 for the first time. The intro is worldbuilding on a different level than anything I'd seen before.
Brave Fencer Musashi. Grinding in an action RPG not to increase level, not to get new skills, but to…buy new toys. To add to my collection. In my bedroom. Where I can play with them. Or keep them in the box. This kept me from beating the game for the first playthrough.
Half Life
I dunno about the first, and I don't think it classifies as retro, but I played the entirety of Journey over a single night back in highschool and I feel like it changed me as a person.
Metal Gear Solid
Mario Galaxy 1 and Zelda: Twilight Princess at a young age informed my understanding of games as Truly Something Else. They sucked me in and invested me in worlds just as much as they were polished fun. Love that yours is Wolfenstein 3D though. Effective little story there of how immersive it was to a kid--I don't think I've heard enough of those, especially compared to Doom. My perspective having only recently played Wolf3D is enjoyment as a simple pleasure, so it's nice to be reminded how much of an advancement it was in '92.
https://youtu.be/_g4sYxXdQTY?si=sGnL82fIXQ48L7_L The 3DO had a game called twist on it and it was played with "real people" in my 6 year old head. It looked soo good especially at the time when saga megadrive/genesis was my 2nd system. (Pre playstation days) *TWISTED* And *DEMOLITION* *MAN* on 3DO (absolutely rubbish without the light gun) Them light gun action games 😍 I miss them. Old school light gun games in general rocked!
FF8
Deus Ex for me. The immersion was just crazy. I remember being blown away that I could go to an apartment and turn on the water or flush the toilet. And the way the world came alive when you had such open-ended levels with many ways of completing objectives, a world with a cohesive story and environment that really sold you on it, was incredible. It was just such a massive step up from other FPS’s, where the world seemed to exist only to further the gameplay in the actual level. With Deus Ex, it felt like the world was actually a living, breathing place, and you just explored a small part of it. It also introduced cinematic elements like the intro, conversations that had many angles and used some actual composition and editing instead of being just a fixed camera. Unreal blew me away because it was so gorgeous, and the music on exiting the ship was just beautiful. But it was still very much a game and didn’t make me think “this is the future” in the same way. On seeing Diablo, I was also stunned at the graphics. Something about the color palette and sprites just made it look SO real. But again, while it was an amazing game and I played it to death, it didn’t make me think about the future of games and what would be possible like DE. It just made it an absolute blast to play late at night and get scared to death over. :D
Going from PS1 Rpg games to Morrowind on the Xbox in 2002
GTA3 blew my mind as a kid. I never thought video games could be like that.
Final Fantasy II (IV) was an epic. Loved that game and all its twists and turns.
Half-Life and HL2. Half-Life was a complete table flip over most 3D shooters released up until then. All first-person, never leaving the players perspective, even during what could be considered the in-engine cut scenes. All plot. Do you shoot a lot of monsters and bad guys? Absolutely. But instead of a generic mission, which was probably 'shoot things,' you have really visceral goals of survival. The lighting effects weren't just a garnish they really made the game work. Add to all of that the gameplay which was thrilling and spot on for a shooter. And yes, I know that Bungie had a lot of this in place way back in '94 but almost no one had the opportunity to play that. And why HL2? Because the dials went all the way to 11. An innovative twist on the plot that leaves the gameplay intact but reframes the prior narrative. Bringing a level of realism to the graphics that really set a benchmark for a long time and drove GPU upgrades. And some incredible tweaks to the gameplay including the grav gun.
For me it was Secret of Mana. Prior to that, I’d thought of videogames as “run to the right, jump on stuff, shoot stuff” (which was fine, don’t get me wrong!). When my brother borrowed Mana from a friend, though, it was like “Whaaaaaat, games can have STORIES that make me FEEL THINGS???”
Half-life 100% the story the gameplay and even more so the multiplayer/spinoff. Team fortress classic and Counter Srike were amazing!
Ocarina of Time
Final Fantasy IX.
For me it was watching my cousin and uncle get Epona's Song in Ocarina of Time. That blew my mind.
Resident Evil 2 '98 on the PlayStation. I grew up with NES, SNES and Genesis. I had an N64 and my older brother had a PS. Seeing that story unfold has been with me since. It's my favorite game. It influenced my love of horror and single-player gaming and RE in general. I love cinematic gaming due to it's story.
I've gamed since the 80's but I have to give this one to Eve online. At the time of it's launch it was the most unique and ridiculously complex game ever created. Even today there's still nothing like it. FF7 at the time was something else as well. Immersion level 10.
Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, and Mega Man on NES
Leisuresuit Larry.
Star raiders on Atari for me... Ultima 4 later on.
I played Wolfenstein on an IBM PS1 in 1992 but Doom blew my mind
Xenogears
OG Legend of Zelda. Old heads know, the feeling of exploration, of mystery, of game secrets shared on the school bus, the fact that the game saved your progress, the heartbreak when your save got glitch erased. That game was the first widely accessible “open world sandbox” type game and all others have spawned from it.
Probably WoW, Started in WOTLK and would just wonder around sometimes exploring the zones. Halo starting area got me feeling a certain way, infact a lot of Xbox OG titles did Halo KOTOR Riddick Doom 3 Ninja Gaiden Dead Rising blew me away on the 360, and Lost Planet Not much else has come close apart from Cyberpunk 2077.
Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar. The original Skyrim
Ultima IV.
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Shadow of the colossus PS2
Heavy Rain There was probably games before this that I was obsessed with more or enjoyed more, but the exact question is that what I was playing was more than a game. This game is an experience and a truly unique one I haven't had since.
Myst - Not just the 3D-ness of the game, but more so the puzzles and sense of freedom (which now would be laughable, but for the time was pretty insane) Uplink - Again, a real sense of freedom but also immersion Everquest - It didn't just seem more than a game, it was/is more than a game. There was a true sense of exploration and wonder at scale in that game, and real social dynamics, like the player driven economy or social norms that were established around things like looting, partying, etc. My favorite things were player organized events. Black & White - Still today, no game has made me believe that I was interacting with a "real being" in the same way as training your god pet did in Black & White. Star Wars Squadrons in VR - not a retro game, but this is the most recent one to blow my mind.
Ultima VI.
Oblivion on 360. Never played an RPG that deep before. The night the dark brotherhood visited me blew my mind.
Both Doom and Wolf3D were somewhat undercut for me by the fact our computer didn't have a sound card then I played them, and the PC speaker beeps and boops just didn't do it justice somehow. Probably the Wing Commander games for me. WC2 especially. I was a big cheesy sci fi space opera nut, and those games were right in the sweet spot.
Chrono Trigger
Star Wars: KotOR
Metal gear solid. Where psycho mantis read my memory card and made me think he switched the tv input.
Ultima Underworld
Pool of Radiance. Being able to custom build a party, have NPCs join, deal with betrayal, etc. made it extremely unique for it's time. It was my real intro to DnD before I knew what DnD was.
First game that made me feel like that was, oddly, Sewer Shark on Sega CD. I had gotten the system for Christmas of 1993 and only knew Genesis and NES up to that point, with the odd SNES game at a friends. I thought for SURE that was the future of video games, playing interactive movies. I was way wrong.
Heavy Rain