Saw a post on Twitter that made me think of some of my fav childhood games. I learned how to use the home computer at a pretty young age and there are some vague memories of games from when I was even younger, but outside of big names I struggle to remember them.
Rollercoaster Tycoon was not a game bought for me. My mom used to be a bit of a PC gamer back in the day. Mom hesitated to let me play it at first just bc he thought it might be too difficult for me, but I was able to catch on to the basics. I also played a lot a lot of Zoo Tycoon, but RC Tycoon did come first.
I remember playing all of the Magic School Bus PC games at the library as a kid. They were all fun, but I as an animal lover the Rainforest one stuck with me the most.
I was always begging my mom at every scholastic book fair to buy me Catz. I can't remember for sure if 5 was the version I had, but I think it was. It had where you could breed the catz. I got it in a two pack that had Dogz as well, but I played Catz way more.
I've played a lot of Barbara's games over the years, but Pet Rescue was my favorite. I replayed this one so many times. My other favorite was Barbie as Rapunzel. It had almost 0 to do with the movie. You went through the castle and got decorate the rooms. Played basically like Project Makeover but without having the match game part.
Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel (1989): Many of the magic tricks that would go on to amaze the world in Myst can be seen in a more experimental form in this open-ended, non-linear, story-free exploration game. The surrealist freedom to go wherever you wanted, and to loop back to previously visited locations via surprising connections, made it very hard to know when you had found everything, making the game world feel, to my child self, like it was much larger than it actually was.
Wing Commander II: Wrath of the Kilrathi (1991/1992): I don't think it's an accident that so many of these games are sequels. The experiments by developers in their initial games were paying off in the second round, right at the moment personal computers were exploding as a market. Prior to the release of Doom, early flight and space combat sims offered some of the more intense and immersive action experiences on desktops, but more importantly, WC2 aspired to a cinematic style of storytelling whose potential was obvious to anyone paying attention. It wouldn't be until the explosion of FMV games in the CD-ROM era that we would collectively realize that maybe it would take a little while longer for Video Games to be the new Movies.
Star Control II (1992): I hardly need to lionize how big a deal SC2 was, given that you can play it for free thanks to the support of a decades-old fandom. More than just being a superlative game of its era, however, SC2 undoubtedly planted seeds in the minds of one-day game developers. It's genuinely strange mix of cartoony arcade action, deadpan humor, and grim musings on topics like slavery and genocide felt less like a tonally inconsistent mess and more like a bunch of distinct, polished games that happened to be living together in the same apartment.
Master of Orion II: Battle At Antares (1996): As much as the 90s offered a dense forest of compelling and franchise-launching strategy games to lose oneself in, it was MOO2 that I played until the wheels came off. Probably the first game I accidentally played until dawn, it polished the mechanics and aesthetic of its DOSier predecessor to a mirror shine. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that Alpha Centauri was a richer, deeper game, and that Starcraft had wider appeal and a higher skill ceiling. But at the time, MOO2 struck some magic balance where I could effortlessly sink beneath its surface and not come up for air for hours.
Pokémon Ruby (and also Emerald and to a lesser extent Sapphire, all of which I owned) was basically the Pokémon for me. Most of my favorite Pokémon are from Hoenn (Grovyle, Swampert, Skitty, Jirachi, and Latias are standouts, but there are too many for me to spend time listing them all), a lot of the trainer designs resonated really well with me (I had a HUGE crush on the aroma ladies as a kid), and I was the perfect age for the series when I finally got my copy, which was also the first game that was ever really mine instead of shared with my older brother (the same goes for my GBA SP; we shared the N64 and Gamecube for obvious reasons, but also the GBC, and the GBA that I somehow managed to lose, which is also what precipitated us both getting GBA SPs). I'm always confused when people say the GBA sounds awful, and RSE's music is a significant contributor to that confusion.
I also spent a lot of time with the Gamecube Animal Crossing, but Animal Crossing: Wild World holds a special place in my heart for a similar reason to Ruby, in that it was the first time I got to have my own AC town. It also had proper multiplayer, which was a big sticking point for me with the GCN installment (I remember being VERY disappointed when my friend came over and we couldn't play together1). Also it introduced one of my favorite villagers, Whitney, who even at the tender age of 8 or so had me feelin' some kinda way 😳
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is one of those games I was too young to be remotely competent at when I got it, but I loved the Chao Garden (who didn't?) even if I didn't really understand what I was doing, and even enjoyed poorly 'hogging my way around the levels. I also spent a lot of time getting dunked on by my brother in the titular battle mode - I specifically recall one instance of us racing on Radical Highway and I got stuck somewhere, and he asked if I wanted him to put me out of my misery. I, being, like, 7, and thus not knowing what that expression meant, said yes... so he killed me with Shadow's Chaos Spear. (Or maybe Sonic's Sonic Wind? not that it changes much.)
Fun!
Also, my old Sonic OC had a snowboard because of City Escape, so that's a thing. And that's not even getting into all the buttrock, which I listened to a lot once I got some of it on my MP3 player.
Speaking of getting dunked on by my brother in multiplayer games, Kirby Air Ride was a big part of my childhood obsession with Kirby. I remember spending a lot of time in the City Trial Free Run mode with the Flight Star (largely because it was reddish and that was during my "RED IS THE BEST COLOR!!" phase), as well as the legendary air ride machines, just flying around and exploring the city (or in the Hydra's case, zooming around and slamming through the city). I remember a few times my brother hid a Kirby in the city and I'd have to go find it (with paper covering the minimap and the relevant Kirby's part of the screen), like a sort of hide and seek thing. And god, that soundtrack!! The Legendary Air Ride Machine theme is fittingly badass for how tough it felt to pull of getting all the Dragoon or Hydra pieces in a match as a kid2 and how powerful you'd fell when you finally did. That song stuck with me so much that when I got to the Halberd in Squeak Squad and heard this, I absolutely lost my fucking MIND with excitement.
I didn't have room for it up above, but I'd be remiss not to mention Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, seeing as my first D&D character, Valus Azimov Galetongue the dragonborn Fighter, was based on my old overleveled bangaa dragoon, Azimov, and that a lot of my interest in D&D was in the first place sparked by my enjoyment of FFTA. Also I have a decent chunk of the orchestrated soundtrack on my phone right now, and it's on my list of games to maybe stream eventually since I never beat it as a kid. Quite importantly, however, before I ever had my own copy, I loved watching my brother play it over his should (much to his annoyance), and sometimes he'd even let me control a blue mage named Nikolai (not that I ever had any clue what the fuck I was doing). Oh hey, guess who's named Nikolai?
But I'm getting off track.
Also, why the Nintendo Power guide and not the boxart, you ask? Well... when my brother and I were kids, at some point our NP FFTA guide got lost, and as far as anyone could tell it was last seen in my room, so I was blamed for losing it. For years, every once in a blue moon, I'd poke around looking for the damn thing, baffled by how long it'd remained MiA.
Fast forward to... 2019, I think? we were cleaning out my brother's old room so my parents could rent it out to the child of one of my dad's friends while they got their master's degree at a nearby university, and lo and behold... it was under a fucking wheeled set of drawers. VINDICATION!!! (\
/)
Honorable mentions include Mario 64, Hey You! Pikachu!, Mario Sunshine, Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, Sonic Heroes, Mario Kart DS, Fancy Pants Adventure 1 and 2, Nintendogs, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, the Mega Man Zero Collection (obviously), Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, and probably others I'm forgetting.
- I did wind up getting him into Animal Crossing despite that limitation, though! And while we haven't spoken in years and we haven't really been friends since about 2006 or so (no particular reason, just grew apart), he did add me as a Switch friend before I disconnected my old FB account, and as of posting this he has ~135 hours in New Horizons, which is... honestly kinda neat, now that I think about it?
- Especially since my main competition - i.e. my big brother - was 4 years older than me, at a stage where that age gap really matters as far as video games are concerned, what with the extra cognitive ability and motor skills he had over me.
