Do you have a particular game that you associate with a significant moment in your life? It could be a game that got you through a hard time, or a game that represents the days when life was simple and the gaming was good.
I’ll always have fond memories of Assassins Creed II and Brotherhood, AC 2 I played when I’d recently got married and we were renting our first place together. I’d connect my PC up to the new 40" LCD TV we’d bought and enjoy the sights and sounds of Venice.
Brotherhood I actually won on MyGaming and it was soon after my son was born. I would take the shift until midnight and would play AC: Brotherhood into the night.
Age of Empires III - I had recently gotten back into gaming after finishing my studies, so my then girlfriend (now wife) bought me a boxed copy of the game. I would spend hours on my laptop playing it with her watching, asking questions and commenting on it.
Skate - We just got married and I bought an XBOX 360. We stayed in our first apartment that we bought and didn’t have much furniture. The song “Surrender” by Cheap Trick would play often and eventually drove my wife mad. We still laugh about it to this day when we hear the song.
Dune II - Going way back, I just fondly remember the game from a primary school friend. Her dad used to play it in their study, which was more of a sewing room / storage room / laundry, but the computer was propped up between loads of books on a little desk in the corner. Eventually another friend of mine across the street from also got Dune II and we played it for hours on end in his very cramped study. I didn’t have a PC capable of playing the game at the time…
Mortal Kombat 1-3 - One of my best friends ever and I used to play this a lot. We would always come together and cramp over a single keyboard and play it for days on end. We’d eventually reach stalemates in the game where we had counter tactics for every character we used to choose. The matches were always close and ended on a coin flip.
Duke Nukem 3D: my first proper introduction into FPS’s as well as got me my taste for Co-op and competitive (my brother and I would pla deathmatch or we’d coop)
Civ1: Basically helped me pass a lot of my primary school without needing to actually study
Everquest. I still fondly remember being on a late night raid with my US guild and having to quit the raid when we had to rush to get my wife to hospital for my first kid. All my guildies were wishing us well as I left.
Probably Kings Quest 1 - 4 on a more ‘historical’ level. My dad had just bought a PC after months of my brother and I hounding him. So it was our very first PC and my brother and I played those games day in day out - back then you didn’t have guides if you got stuck.
On a more recent level, probably Modern Warfare 2 - I had got my first real gaming PC, had recently joined MyGaming and met lots of awesome people who I’d always see during games. It’s also the first game I persevered through - only starting playing it WAY after release so I was one of the only players that hadn’t reached prestige levels yet.
It was the first game i actually completed, and there was a bunch of people behind me waiting to play and just went on and on and actually finished the game, the world warrior was the first iteration of street fighter 2 so it was much harder than the more balanced champion edition that game out afterwards. i still have an obsession with street fighter and i own probably close to 30 different street fighter titles on various platforms.
Soul Edge Arcade version
i was in primary school back in 1996 and me and my friends went to a corner shop and the game was standing there in the corner running in demo mode and i was blown away by the graphics, at that time i was only exposed to nes games (golden china etc) and megadrive games and never had i seen a game so mind blowing, yes i had a pc back then but it was a shitty 386 and the only games on there was the windows card games and dos titles like cd man and rockford.
it was a game that always stuck with me and when i was in high school back in 2000 my friend told me one of the shops at the local mall has a copy of the playstation version i immediately went and purchased it. and i still have it in my possession.
I want to say half life but it was actually duke nukem 3d, the first imersive 3d first person shooter game that i have played and that was primarily because it was included free on those internet starter pack discs and on the mweb one there was shareware copies of doom, duke nukem 3D, redneck rampage (you can shoot chickens in that game) etc and doom was actually underwhelming compared to duke with is quotes and all the interactive stuff within the game world and also in duke nukem bullet holes appeared when you shoot into the holes unlike in doom.
Megarace: this amazed me and everyone in my family when we played it. It was on our first PC with a CD-ROM drive and it featured FMV cutscenes, great music and fun gameplay.
Mortal Kombat II: my cousins introduced me to this game around the time we got our first decent PC. It was probably the game that got me into fighting games.
Quake II (demo): This was on a CD bundled with You magazine. Everyone in school bought that mag just for the demos and stuff on it. I played it endlessly and everyone talked about it. I think there was a cool pinball game on it too.
UT99: these were good times for me and my mates in school. The Q3 vs UT rivalry was real! This was the game that got me into competitive FPSs.
UT2004: A few NAG forum members started a weekly UT session every Friday night. I joined in and loved it and won many of the matches. A few of the players urged me to join voice chat on Mumble but I was too shy. I eventually did and got to know the other players better, eventually meeting some of them irl. They are some of my closest friends now. All this happened at a time where I was a bit depressed so it was significant in helping get through that.
Valkyria Chronicles: this game was a gift which already made it special but I also got it after I finished uni, so I was filled with relief and ambition. The game itself is one of my all time faves.
Great topic. I could add a few more but I think I’m overlapping special games with those associated with significant moments a bit already.
There has been a few games that were played during significant times in my life, for good and bad. But there are 3 games that stands out.
Fifa 99 - I played this game during the summer holidays. That holiday was me playing so many games, UT99, Counter Strike, Half Life, Quake 3 Arena. But Fifa was the one that I was playing when a friend came over for a sleepover. We spent the entire night alternating games playing as Aston Villa. We played all through a Premiership League that night, and it was amazing. That was also the last time I spent time with this friend, before he stabbed me in the back and became the biggest asshole to me.
Titan Quest - I played this game to death during the worst time of my life. I won’t go into the details, but things took a turn for the absolute worst in my life. The only thing that kept me same was Titan Quest. I finished the game 3 times, on progressively harder difficulties. I then restarted and played with different characters.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I got this game when I bought my Switch. I was in Australia by myself, and while I was busy doing a bunch of stuff, it still left me with a lot of free time. At this point I was feeling very jaded about gaming, and for a while felt like I’ve not really played a game that had that same magic that games has when I was a child. Well, that was until I played BotW.
I had the same feeling of rediscovering the childhood magic of games when I played Super Mario Galaxy. That’s one thing Nintendo does better than anyone else to this day.
Medal Of Honour: Frontline
I was playing that around the same time my girlfriend suddenly up and left for a new life in the UK. …okay then.
Mercernaries
First game I fired up in my own place right after getting married
Singularity
Played this while healing after a tremendous downhill skate wipeout. I couldnt walk properly for 2 months.( Will never skate again f&*(k that. )
