The top 5 games that defined your childhood

[atarilovesyou]

What, you mean childhood ended at some point?...hmmm:

 

1. Chopper Command (VCS)

2. Asteroids (VCS)

3. Donkey Kong (CV)

4. Turbo (CV)

5. Frontline (CV)

[Dr Manhattan]

Atlantis

Adventure

Seaquest

Aztec Challenge (C64)

Super Mario Bros

[+atari2600land]

1. Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Was probably the first video game I ever played not on a Commodore 64 as a learning tool. Remember tons of fun with the Game Genie my parents bought me. I don't remember my first time beating the game without the Game Genie, but when I did, I must have been pretty excited.

 

2. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

I remember playing this one tons of times and not beating it, but it was fun anyway. Now I can beat it, but only with a stockpile of reserved lives from the level 7 fortress!

 

3. Tetris (Nintendo version, NES)

I remember being quite good and constantly beating my dad and all other family members on one-on-one matches to see who could get the most lines. I bet I'm the only one who thinks it's better than the Tengen version (which stops you every 30 lines which is quite annoying.)

 

4. Super Mario World (SNES)

I remember playing this a lot, along with DKC and Super Mario Kart when they came out. The SNES must have been a birthday present from 1991, which was odd because I saw a picture dated X-Mas 1990 of my sister posing with an NES box.

 

5. Mario Kart 64 (N64)

I was about 16 years old and was having great fun with this game, to which this day I call the greatest game ever made, rivaled only by Mario Kart DS. The internet was just forming, and I remember seeing pages of info with cheats and stuff for this one, as well as Super Mario 64.

 

So that's what I was doing video-game wise for the first half of my life.

Edited February 15, 2013 by atari2600land

[doomwaves]

1. Wizards & Warriors - NES

2. Wolfenstein 3D - DOS

3. Major Stryker - DOS

4. Zelda - NES

5. Commander Keen 4 - DOS

[MegaManFan]

1.) Pong.

 

It's the first "home console" I ever had, and we played it 'til it fried, which is probably why I could never talk my parents into getting anything else. (Who can blame them? Their only experience probably cost a couple hundred bucks, only played one game, and died. Doesn't make an Atari, Intellivision or NES seem like a good investment.)

 

2.) Space Invaders.

 

Yes I'm that old. They had a cocktail cab at the place my parents used to go to for Sunday brunch after church. I loved the bacon, the fresh strawberries and the orange juice fountain but HONESTLY they could have set me at that cocktail cab with a fistful of quarters and I could have cared less about breakfast. Once I got a Commodore 64 I made a point of getting their knockoff version.

 

3.) Pac-Man.

 

Pretty much the only game I can think of everybody in my family would play. Occasionally I could get dad to play Donkey Kong with me for a while, but Pac-Man was the one everybody would have a go at whether at home (on a Commodore floppy) or on vacation (every pool arcade had one).

 

4.) Mega Man II

 

The entire reason I wanted a NES. I played the game once for 5-10 minutes at somebody's house while my parents were chatting with their parents and it literally changed my life. I rented a Nintendo over and over again just to play my way through 1, 2 and 3 and beat them. It fuelled a lifelong obsession with Mega Man games and related materials.

 

5.) Galaga

 

The game torments me. I'm either bloody awful and die in a minute, or I have a brilliant and get the double ship and go for 10 levels and more. It's that whole challenge of trying to perfect my technique and do better that has always kept me coming back, then and now.

[+thegoldenband]

If I restrict it to my pre-teen years, then my list would look something like:

 

1. Combat (Atari 2600) (alternate: Circus Atari)

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600) (alternate: Pitfall!)

3. Galaga (Arcade) (alternate: Robotron: 2084)

4. Dungeons of Daggorath (Tandy CoCo) (alternate: Downland)

5. Mega Man (NES) (alternate: Castlevania)

 

I listed alternates because to some extent it's more about the role each game played for me: Combat for my first experience with home video games; Raiders of the Lost Ark for my introduction to games with a specific goal other than scoring; Galaga as one of the first arcade games that had lasting resonance for me; Dungeons of Daggorath as my first real RPG/adventure game; and Mega Man as one of the first really difficult games I ever beat.

[atarilovesyou]

It's almost like this thread needs subsections, lol...childhood (preteens), teen years, adult (19+) and Modern (last ten years).

 

Too much work! It's hard for me to define the games during an era, considering it's always the games I owned that I loved most...although my first games were always on friend's systems as my folks were convinced video games were a waste of productive time after the CV...lol, oh well, till the NES the Christmas of 89 anyway (in a way, there 'were' right...but hey, I loved video games a LOT for a LONG time...lol).

[Tr3vor]

 

3. Tetris (Nintendo version, NES)

I remember being quite good and constantly beating my dad and all other family members on one-on-one matches to see who could get the most lines. I bet I'm the only one who thinks it's better than the Tengen version (which stops you every 30 lines which is quite annoying.)

 

 

I also like this version of the game more.