bobquasit | Favorite Video Games

I'm not doing much on Askville any more - to tell you the truth, this bronchitis is killing me, so I'm not doing much of anything - but here's a question I couldn't resist answering.

Favorite video games

As a young child, I played one of the first video games ever made: tic-tac-toe against a computer at MIT. My father was a grad student there at the time, and he took me in to see a demo.
A few years later, I played what I believe was the first arcade video game: Pong. I’ve been playing video games ever since.
I’m not at all sure that I can limit my list to only ten games, though. Here goes:
Old (pre-1990) Consoles
1. Adventure - this early RPG for the Atari was simple, but simply wonderful to play. Find objects, fight (or more often run away from) dragons, deal with a mischievous bat that stole items just when you needed them most...there was even a secret room with the author’s name! There was a rumor going around that there were more secret rooms with all sorts of wonderful things, including an "acid-breathing dragon", but that turned out to be just a fantasy. Years later, someone re-created the whole game for DOS and added in many of those rumored features. They called it "Indenture" because they couldn’t get the right to use the real name. You can download it here.
2. Donkey Kong - My siblings and I begged for a Colecovision so we could play DK. Eventually we got one. The Coleco version was more limited than the arcade version (as is the version currently available for download on the Wii, unfortunately), but we still loved it. If I recall, we also loved Venture on that system.
Arcade
3. Q-bert, Super Mario Bros. - these are so well-known that I won’t bother describing them.
4. Star Castle - a very clever game indeed. It was run on a black & white CRT, but a tinted and patterned gel overlay gave it color. You piloted a small spaceship (rather like the one in Asteroids) around an enemy cannon in the center. The cannon spun out circular shields that had to be shot away, piece by piece. In the meantime, little enemy mines - self-propelled asterisks - would detach from the shields and come to destroy you. Once you had shot enough holes in all the shields to be able to target the cannon, you really had to worry - because that cannon would blast at you through the hole, too!
5. Marble Madness - I was particularly fond of this one because it was so different. The only controller was a roller-ball, and you used it to guide marbles through mazes and over ramps.
6. Dragon’s Lair - the first laser-disc game, this blew us all away when it first came out. Sure, the game play was kludgy; you watched the story and simply provided the needed move (left, right, up/forward, down/back, or sword (button) at the right moments in order to keep the story going. But it worked. It helped that the game was superbly animated by Don Bluth, of course. The ridiculously voluptuous Princess Daphne was also a high point of the game.
Space Ace from the same production team (including Bluth) was also an outstanding and awfully funny game. I spent many happy hours (and hundreds of quarters) playing that game during college at the local pizza shop.
Computer
7. Rogue - Rogue was the father of all computer RPGs. And even though it’s ancient, it’s still a great game. It was made entirely with ASCII characters; you were a little smiley face traveling through dungeons made of dashes and dots, fighting the letters A (aquators that rusted your armor) through Z (I forget what those were). I had friends who came awfully close to flunking out of college because of Rogue; it’s hypnotic. You can download the program here (I should admit that this is my own Rogue site).
8. Warcraft II - I resisted getting into computer RPGs for a long time; they seemed less fun than real roleplaying (yes, I’m a geek). Warcraft II from Blizzard changed my mind. It was a brilliantly designed fantasy game in which you commanded huge numbers of warriors, peasants, and other units to explore, develop resources and capabilities, and crush your enemies. It’s still a great game, and frankly I much prefer it to Warcraft III (I have yet to try World of Warcraft).
9. Diablo I - Blizzard continued their winning streak with the incredible Diablo I. This fulfilled the promise of Rogue. While in Warcraft you commanded armies, in Diablo you played a solitary hero battling through dungeons to destroy the title character. Free play on Battle.net expanded the fun (despite flaws), and set the stage for the current craze of MMORPGs. I fired up D1 again not long ago, and it’s as fun as ever. I’d say it compared favorably with Diablo II - Lord of Destruction, despite the latter’s far greater size and sophistication. Needless to say, I’m looking forward eagerly to D3!
1990s Consoles
10. The TurboGrafx-16 was an unjustly neglected console. Its graphics were ground-breaking, and many of the games for the system were simply outstanding. Alien Crush is generally agreed to have set the stage for modern video pinball games, and the Alien-inspired design was memorable. Bonk’s Adventure was a charming, funny, and remarkably well-designed adventure game in which you played a little cave boy fighting dinosaurs; particularly notable was the ending of that game, which was one of the most satisfying endings I’ve ever seen (as opposed to Splatterhouse, also on the TG16, which had one of the LEAST satisfying endings). Lastly, Military Madness (Nectaris in Japan) remains the only wargame I’ve ever seen that really worked as a video game. It’s brilliant; you guide military units (various types of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat vehicles, and aircraft) across the moon in a series of battles against the computer or a human opponent. Fortunately ALL of these games are now available for download on the Wii. There are emulators and ROMs out there too, of course.
Modern Consoles
11. Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 was a three-dimensional revelation. I DREAMED about that game for months after I first saw it. Those who didn’t grow up stuck in 2D games can’t understand the impact of bursting into the full freedom of three dimensions felt. It seemed like magic...a quantum leap in video gaming. And it was so well-done! Even now, it’s an outstanding game. My son is playing the updated version on his DS at this moment, and we have the classic version downloaded on the Wii.
The colors are bright and clear, the game is incredibly deep and layered, and controls are...well, you soon forget that you’re pushing buttons on a controller and feel as if you ARE Mario, instead. The effect is so strong that I’ve actually gotten butterflies in my stomach when swooping while wearing the Flying Cap.
12. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - The Nintendo GameCube didn’t get the respect it deserved. It featured some outstanding games (all of which can be played on the Wii). And Wind Waker is the best of them, in my opinion - in fact, it might be the best video game ever made. That’s ironic, since I was disappointed when I received it as a gift. It used a cartoon-like animation style that made it seem like a game for young children, and the early stage of the game lacked any way to fight or do anything. I put it aside and forgot about it.
But eventually I took it out and gave it a try. It turned out to be astonishingly good: huge, exciting, well-plotted, with great gameplay...I can’t praise it enough. I’ve played all the Zelda games since, and Wind Waker is still the best in my book. As in most of the Zelda games, you play Link as he tries to stop the evil Gannondorf and rescue Princess Zelda. Just an incredible game.
The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess for the Wii is also an outstanding game, with a surprisingly moving love story. But it’s just not quite as fun as Wind Waker.
Whew! I’ve thought of some more games. But I’d better end it here, because I’m in danger of running out of time!