Gamestruck4- A Concept Too Big For NiTwit-ters

[Tain]

Here's my shit from Twitter:

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Espgaluda was extremely eye-opening regarding arcade game design. It was the first that I tried for a 1CC on, and I was floored at how fun it was to make tangible progress.

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Crazy Taxi for being peak Dreamcast-era Sega. Saturn and DC were largely what I grew up on, and that stretch of American Dreamcast game releases was a really magical time.

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Duke Nukem 3D got me into modding. My parents bought me a book that detailed how to use the esoteric map editor and dabbled a little bit into scripting. Eventually this would turn into messing with game development.

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Virtua Fighter 5 because college dorm fighting games were the best, and it was the best of them when I was in the dorms.

[Cowutopia]

You know Cal brought up Heroes of Might and Magic 3, but I got in on 2. 3 was the better game, but 2 was the first PC game I could connect to a friend over the Internet to and play with. Very exciting.

3 was probably the pinnacle of the series. 4 and 5 were ok.

Deus Ex was also huge for me and so was Half Life and all mods (cs, dod) but I already was into shooters from Wolf 3d and then Doom.

[kedawa]

It's hard to pick just four, so I'll try to avoid games that have already been mentioned, as I think my experience with Street Fighter II is much the same as what others have mentioned.

Tetris was the first game that I had any desire to be competitive about. Everyone was playing it, and to this day I love the simplicity of it. Playing alone for a better score/line count, and playing head-to-head on Gameboy and in the arcade were all very different experiences, but I enjoyed it all. Tetris was one of my most played games until the fighting game boom lured me away.

Golden Axe was the first arcade game I could finish on a single credit, and it was one of the first games that made me think about teamwork in games. You might think having a second player join in would make the game easier, but without some type of strategy, the other player just makes the enemies less predictable.

Doom made a game world into a real place in my mind like nothing before it. I had some exposure to it through PC owning friends and the computer lab at school, but I didn't really get hooked until I got the 32X port. Even that cut-down version of the game managed to capture the tense, visceral experience of exploring and fighting through a ceaselessly hostile environment, alternating between fearful vulnerability, and being an unstoppable demon slayer. I still know the maps from the first two episodes as if they were places I actually visited and spent time in. It's also the first game that made me take the PC seriously as a game platform. Before Doom, the most impressive thing about PC games were the screenshots of the Amiga versions on the back of the box. Suddenly the number-crunching power of those boring office machines could do something that the custom video hardware of game consoles and "home" computers couldn't match.

Halo was a game I had zero interest in until I actually played it. A friend of mine had an XBOX shortly after launch, and the first time I played the game, we ended up playing it all weekend. The co-op campaign mode, the vehicles, the graphics, and the weighty combat were just perfect for a console FPS. Up until that point, I found console FPS unplayable, having already played Quake and UT on PC. Halo's controls weren't just acceptable, they were actually almost as good as kb&m controls. I still regard the first game as the best campaign in the series, and I have many fond memories of tackling Legendary with a friend or my nephew. It really gave me a taste for sandbox gameplay, and changed my expectation of how a game world could work.
Once I started playing the game on Mac and later PC, it became my favourite online multiplayer game. I spent many sleepless nights playing Halo Custom Edition, and the user generated content kept the game fresh for years.

[SamuraiMoogle]

I seen of those multi game arcade cabinets today and reading some of this thread tonight makes me really miss the old arcade days. Walking/running through the mall to get to the arcade and hearing the games get louder and louder as you got closer. Stepping through the entrance and doing a lap around the arcade to see what’s new was great. Back then you had no idea what was coming out or being made, you just discovered games in person. “Holy shit! Robocop! Ninja Turtles! Aliens! Wtf Mortal Kombat 2 is out!? The gun recoils in Time Crisis!? The cabinet moves in After Burner!

I miss those days