Sid Meier's Pirates!

I played the original when it came out on PC in like 1987. A friend of my dad gave me a copy, but I didn't have the manuals or map or anything that came in the box, so in order to figure out how to get around the Caribbean I had to crack an encyclopedia to a map, and that got me both interested in maps and also in reading the history of all these places I'd been to in the game.

I still play the 2004 remake of that game a few times a year.

Chrono Trigger

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego. Played it as a child together with my mom. She had all the worldly knowledge, but at the time I was the only one who could speak/understand English, so teamwork was key. That game meant hours of educational fun for the both of us.

Age of Empires 2 is my most played game ever and extremely nostalgic. Conquerors was next to flawless especially with fan made AI that didn't cheat resources. I liked to play sometimes with friends co-op against one brutally hard AI. Most of my time was online pvp matches, or making and scripting custom maps to post on AOE Heaven. MSN Zones first, then GameRanger when that shut down. A little bit (still hundreds of hours) when Forgotten Empires picked it back up too until I got overwhelmed.

While I love all the new expansions except the few mid ones, I think it's too bloated now for PvP. I don't want to memorize so many nations. I had a similar problem with Dead by Daylight and to a smaller extent, TF2. I got filtered I'm just too old to dump so many hours into a game now to keep track of all that shit, and not for a lack of free time actually in my case.

But I love the new SP campaigns!

Dune 2. It was the gateway drug that turned me playing computer games into a full blown addiction for a bunch of my family.

Relations camped out waiting for a slot to satisfy the urge for months until they could scrape together the cash to fund an appropriate PC to run it themselves at home.

Elderscrolls 3 Morrowind. Used to play it all day on my 13" black and white tv

Zelda - Link to the Past. I had so much fun playing Link Between Worlds.

Space Invaders and Phoenix. We had the cabinets in our movie theater

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

Hitting a tree with a good stick.

Might and Magic 7: For blood and honor

Super Mario Bros 3. It was the first video game I'd ever played. That was my gateway drug.

I used to know that game like the back of my hand. Any time I pick it back up, it feels like visiting an old, childhood home.

I suppose monopoly. It was the only game we really played. We also played trivial pursuit, but it was questions for my parents mostly.

I did get the question once of "What company was snoopy a mascot for" and answered "get met" which they were shocked and asked how I knew, and it was a brief appearance in a Bloom County comic, which they had the anthologies of so I read them all.

Pokemon Blue on Gameboy

Mancala. omg I still remember learning how to play in Kindergarten and I'm almost 30 now. This game was probably my very first addiction.

Quest for Glory and Kyrandia!

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the patrician's 4X.

It's just so ideologically diverse and deep, and so quotable too. Plus, you can use how much you agree with Miriam as a litmus test for maturity, lol.

The Star Wars arcade game.

Any of the cluefinders games, or gizmos and gadgets. Plenty of other edutainment classics do it too. Outside of edutainment, only NHL2000 and Halo: CE come to mind.

Secret of Mana. Played it with friends like crazy. One even had the extension thing to connect 3 controllers - guess where we hung out most of the time.

Sunset Riders SNES.

Spore

Legend of Mana and Megaman Legend. Can we get a legend 3, capcom?

Ultima 7

Stronghold, the isometric one

Sonic the Hedgehog 3. I wish I could say Sonic 3 & Knuckles but we weren't swimming in money so I very rarely got a new game (and just to add, I never threw controllers or punched TVs either because mommy wouldn't just buy me a new one if I did that).

I did rent out Sonic & Knuckles occasionally though. But I can practically picture the early level layouts of Sonic 3 in my mind like they're familiar streets that I grew up in.

-Operation Wolf Dad would watch me play. He would bring other people to come in and watch how good I was. -Mario Golf Dad would play with us, he even kept a spreadsheet, on grid paper, to track his stats. -Ultima 3 First game on a PC. Mom got it to play with me and my little sister after Dad died. She couldn't figure out how to get it to work. I ended up playing it alone years later, but only after learning enough MS-DOS to figure out how to even get it running. CD..

Hug your parents. Play with your kids.

You know you’re old when most of the answers involve video games from one era or another.

The first video game we owned was a Coleco Telstar, which came out in 1976. It had a whopping 3 games:

• hockey
• handball
• tennis

Basically all were just variations of Pong…

Handheld Zelda link's awakening for the Gameboy hits me the hardest as it was the first I owned myself bought with my first jobs mowing lawns and delivering papers.

Console, NES contra watching my older brothers get way further than I could at the time & teach me the Konami code

PC xwing, I had a f16 flight stick and my siblings would play splitting weapons/shield/engines distribution to a copilot and the pilot flying and aiming. That mission where you have to fly back and forth protecting the Corvette from imperial attacks from both sides jumping in and out of the area was peak retro space combat gaming.

X-Wing

TIE fighter

Secret of Mana

Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past

Super Mario Sunshine and Pac Man 2

At the risk of sounding ancient: Lifeforce on the NES.

Sonic adventure, honestly most sonic games.

Kingdom hearts would be but I never gave it the chance to be nostalgic because I never stopped playing em lol

I got a few.

N64 command and conquer I can still hear the commando blowing up logo and saying that was left handed.

Ocarina of Time

Skies of Arcadia

And kotor, but for some reason I remember the pazak mini game more than anything else.

Minecraft, it will always be minecraft. Its the only game I can't help but come back to every year atleast