1y ago

What game holds a special place in your heart?

We all have that one game that holds a special place in our hearts. What game is it for you?

For me, it's Metal Slug. Growing up, every Monday, my parents would drag me to the laundromat after work. As a kid, it was a pretty boring, but I had my toys, origami books, and coloring books to keep me entertained. However, my favorite thing to do was playing the Metal Slug arcade machine with my dad.

My dad was great at the game, and he taught me how to play. Though I improved, I could never keep up. When I'd inevitably die, he'd let me take over his side to let me have a bit more playtime. My favorite part was when he'd share stories from when he lived in another country and would go to the local arcade.

Those moments are cherished memories, and even today, whenever I visit an arcade, Metal Slug is the first game I play, despite still being terrible at it haha

Honorable mention goes to Mario 64, another game that holds a special place in my heart. I got an N64 from a garage sale, and playing Mario 64 while at home, with my mom's "chore" music in the background ignited my love for gaming

132 comments

Outer Wilds, I refuse to elaborate because it will ruin the experience.
- I have yet to play it and every time I see someone bring it up in a comment or video I instantly close it haha.
  I love going in blind into new games and I've heard this game is a great experience
  
  PLAY. IT.
  
  I can confirm that going in blind is a great way to enjoy it. I played it for my book club, having never seen a trailer, screenshot, or even recalled the text.

Two come to mind.
First is Monkey Island. It's the first game I ever finished all by myself. The opening scene with the theme music still gives me goosebumps.
The second is Daggerfall, the first game I devoted an ungodly amount of hours to. I spend all my time exploring every nook and cranny of that world, playing the tourist, borrowing huge amounts of money in some tiny country with no intend on paying back, splurging that money on houses, boats, clothes, armor and whatever else I wanted :)
- On a similar note, Full Throttle is my favourite game ever, and has been since I first played it. I love everything about that game.

Sid Meier's Pirates! I played it so much as a kid. Now I'm 43 and I played it a couple of months ago. It's still a great game!

Probably a lame answer, but Minecraft for sure. No other single game has stuck with me this long, and I have so many good memories of playing it over the past 12 years. Sure there are franchises like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing I come back to every time there's a new entry, but Minecraft has been this continuous thing that's just always there, and I can never really stop playing it for more than a couple months before it brings me back.
The only other piece of media that's stuck with me so long is a book series that's still getting new releases every year or so.
- Modded Minecraft is like a drug
  
  Actually technic pack would probably make this list for me. No modpack, Minecraft or otherwise, has transformed a game in such a way I love.
  Probably the reason I got into Satisfactory so much when I tried that out.
- I love going back to Minecraft once or twice a year.
  I have so many good memories in that game and there are friends I made while playing Minecraft Hunger Games that I still talk to today and I met them back in like 2013.
  Whenever I first started playing I took the PVP route, but now I mostly play survival with friends. I truly love that game

SOMA. Go in blind.
- This one's the game that lives rent-free in my head and is impossible to evict even though I'd like to sometimes😅

Life is Strange. For me it was the most emotion I ever got out of any medium ever
- It's crazy how much of this game was exactly what I needed. I had lived not far from the Oregon coast during the time this was set. Spent a lot of time there. I left a couple years before this game out, just long enough to start missing it deeply. The visuals and the dialogue especially were so on point that it was deeply nostalgic for me. The story about losing and reconnecting with friends, the nerdy shit, all the anxieties, even the animist undertones, I connected with all of it. This game is even a big reason why I started following voice actors, as I was so impressed by Ashly Burch in this role. Chloe is why I played Before the Storm and the Farewell episode, too.
  This is the closest a game has ever felt to being tailor-made for me. It was a step on my mental health journey. I started journaling after playing this. And I started moving on.
  
  I'll definitely check it out now! You make it sound like a great game

Planescape: Torment
The game changed the nature of who I am.
- I'm surprised and delighted to see this so high up! This was the first RPG I ever really got immersed in, and what an incredible ride it was.
  What can change the nature of a man? This game, apparently
  
  Updated my journal

Borderlands. Couch co-op with my brother was pretty much what videogames was to me as a kid, and borderlands was always our favorite. I can't wait to have a platform I can play borderlands 3 and the tiny Tina game on with him over the Christmases when hes back in town (I know they're not quite as good, thats perfectly okay)
These days, hollow knight is also genuinely very special to me. I don't think there's any game I hold in the same kind of place of reverence
- Batamas geo

Spiritfarer. I don't think I've ever cried harder while playing something than this.
- Oh god, "Spiritfarer" can break a person.
  The soundtrack really hits you deeply, too.
  
  Never played the game, but I do love the soundtrack
- The only time i cried harder was while playing RiME, and part of it was how unexpected it was. That spiritfarer got to me was kind of expected from the start, still dived in head first.
- I played this after losing both of my maternal grandparents within weeks of each other a couple years back (they were both in their mid-90s and one of them brought COVID home) and Spiritfarer really helped me process my emotions and get through everything. Some of the characters reminded me of them in various ways, which was touching and cathartic. What a beautiful game.

Sim city 2000

Star Control 2
- It's so good, although I think I only ever got about 20% through. I should try again now I'm older and wiser(?).

There have been so many great games but I don't think I've had as much fun in video games than I did in Minecraft or Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
- BC2 was so damn good holy shit. My guys have war stories from that game lol
  
  Sadly the BF series hasn't been the same since.
- I still remember my first Minecraft worlds. I first played it on my iPod, then on my PC a couple years later.
  I fell in love with the game twice. I think that it is my most played game of all time.

Tekken 3. The first game I got for my PS1 as a kid and the only one I had for a while.
I didn't behave a memory card so I must've unlocked every character at least 10+ times because the power went out or my mom discovered I left the PlayStation on.

Street fighter II
growing up with line ups of kids playing sfii in the arcades, leaving your quarters on the cab in a line to figure out who’s next, and when someone finally beat that Asian kid (who knew every move you’d make and always picked chun li) who played for free all day beating everyone else was finally beaten and the cheers and the whooping and sometimes even the real fist fights over it.
Street fighter ii was an absolute phenomenal moment in gaming

Capitalism 2 It's one of the older games, but it's pretty good at learning to understand supply chains and costing
- Bold to praise capitalism on Lemmy

Disco Elysium. It's like a rich, dense cake frosted with depravity and layered with melancholy and hope. The VO work combined with the delectable dialogue really can't be beat. You'll know within the first minute if it has you.

Any of the PS1-era Crash Bandicoot games.
My dad, my older brother, and I would spend hours playing those games with each other. Dad wasn’t the greatest gamer, but he was always patient enough to get my brother and I a ton of lives so we all could play without worrying too much :) Still got those discs in good condition too, just played them again with my dad a few months back for the first time in forever!
- Those games were some of the first games I really bit into as a kid. They were great. Just hard enough to be a real challenge for me when I was like 6ish.
  
  I went back to them not too long ago and they're still a challenge for me lol
  Even the remasters got some hate for their difficulty even though I don't think they changed it. Great games though and they have so much character. The animations are top notch even to this day
- Oh wow this is top 5 for me as well. Whenever I first got my switch lite I played through the crash remasters and I loved every second of it
  I also still have the PSX disks even though I don't have a PSX but that's okay haha

Ghost Squad, also an arcade game.
For roughly 3 years of my life in college... after class, I'd go to the local arcade, spend $1, play roughly ~1 hour of the game... beat my old high score and go home. I did look up world-records and I'm a nobody on the world-record list, but I was #1 through #50 on that machine on the high score list, no one else at that arcade could even take out my #50 score.
SNES -- Super Mario World. I got to the point of ~12 minute speedrun, also no where near record-breaking world record or anything, but I'd like to think I'm better at that game than most people. Before college, my routine when I got home was to speedrun the game and beat it within ~15 minutes.
Factorio is probably the "long running game" that I put a lot of effort into.
The only games I ever reached "advanced/expert" level in were BlazBlue, Puyo Puyo, and Tetris. I wish I had the guts to actually go to a major tournament for Blazblue (the most popular of the three games I reached expert status into...). I'd expect that I probably was strong enough to qualify for Evo but I wouldn't expect to be in the top 32 even... just barely a qualifier. I was a regular training partner / punching bag for a few top-of-the-USA players on my friends list. I would lose 80%+ of the time but I was strong enough to occasionally eek out a victory vs top-level play (though you're never quite sure if the expert is feeling bad and letting me win, lol). I did play at some local tournaments though and knew I was near top of my state/local neighborhood at least. So I think I qualify for the expert ranking, though there is a huge tier of difference between "top of USA" and "top of local tournament".
EDIT: In terms of USA players, I'd regularly qualify for Puyo Puyo and/or Tetris tournaments. But I'm not top10 or anything crazy. Of course, USA-play is much weaker than overseas players. I'm not that good with regards to speed, only ~1 minute 40-line clear, but I think my downstacking and opening-theory is stronger than most people in Tetris and I can regularly beat faster players than me. Note that Puyo Puyo Tetris is a relatively slow Tetris game so top-tier PPT players are only ~40-seconds 40-line clear in this game, there's a lot more focus on downstacking efficiently since line clears are so slow.
I can sometimes 14-chain in solitaire Puyo / training mode, though my style is mostly harassment / beginning to screenwatch at the midgame for Puyo. Again, expert level in USA, but only maybe "advanced" as far as Japanese players go. I'm relatively bad at chaining but I think my midgame is good enough to qualify me for the expert level. I never outchain players of equal ranking to me, but instead perform crushing power-2 or other harassments while they're vulnerable on the 2nd level.
I also tried to reach advanced levels in Starcraft: BW and Age of Empires 2, but alas, I'm not that good at RTS. I'd say the games are still close to my heart due to the many hours / months / years of practice I put in, but I'm a nobody in these games.

MYST. I still think about this game and the sequels weekly. I would sit next to my dad and explore, take notes, read books, and become completely immersed in the worlds of MYST.
- Yes! That little tune at the beginning with the Cyan logo is engraved in my brain.
  I didn't speak English when I played the game and I would call my mom over every time I found a new page and make her translate. But then they were just chopped up words and there wasn't much to translate, and I so desperately wanted to understand because it seemed important.

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
It got me into RTS and the novels as well.
Also David Lynch's batshit insane original movie.
- Also David Lynch’s batshit insane original movie.
  yeah, seeing the miniseries and the new film has given me a lot more appreciation for how fantastic Lynch's execution really was. Still one of my all time favorites and I love the books (er, original herbert, not the son as much).
  If you liked that stuff, check out Herbert's other writing, specifically the Dosadi Experiment and Whipping Star. Any universe that posits a Bureau of Sabotage that fights against the galactic bureaucracy becoming too effective gets my respect.

Psychonauts, basically my first "hard" platformer, I did play Spyro and Crash before by I always had my big brother for the hard parts, Psychonauts was my first time going solo.
Of course there is so much more to that game, the humor, the style, the psychic powers and the challenges, amazing overall game.
- Psychonauts was so awesome. The art and level design are so unique and creative. Only deus ex and portal compare in my book.
  To clarify: they don't compare in gameplay, but in the unique implementation of storytelling and game design.
- The sequel is pretty dope too
- I have it on GOG and I really want to play it before the end of the year.
  I've had it installed on my Steam Deck for a while now haha

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the GameCube. I had rented it during Spring Break one year. I also got sick during that same Spring Break. Playing that game helped me though the sickness and kept me occupied when I probably would've went stir crazy otherwise.

FF7 ps1

Legend of Mana and the Tomb Raider series.

Wing Commander. It needed expensive hardware, like a 33MHz CPU, and some features were disabled when you had less than 1MB RAM but it was worth it. To me, there was never another one like this.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I love arcade racing games, simulators can be annoying sometimes. The graphics were also pretty good at the time. I also really like the customisation options, nothing better than making your car feel really yours.
The OST is very special to me. It helped me form my current music taste. Hell, I still listen to it from time to time. I have also discovered my favourite band, Mastodon, through the soundtrack.
But the best part were the cop pursuits. Oh, the sweet sweet adrenaline from dodging car blocks and SUVs etc. I remember how hard my heart was beating every time I was running away from cops after completing every objective, listening to them communicating on the radio, hoping none of them would be on my way to the nearest shelter.
- I'm guessing you mean the original Most Wanted. That game was excellent. I think the 'special place in my heart' is probably reserved for NFS 3 (which I played the absolute shit out of and was the first NFS game to include cop chases) or the first one just because it introduced me to the series. Most Wanted though was the last good NFS game in my opinion. I lost interest when Underground came out, but when the demo for MW was released I played it so much I had to buy the game. The soundtrack was good as I recall; I think it was also the last NFS game where I didn't immediately mute the music.
  And yeah, the police pursuits were really good in that. Hard enough to be a challenge, but not so hard that it was punishing.
- Midnight Club 3 and Little Big Planet 1 & 2 shaped my taste in music a lot. I love the soundtrack to those games

FFVII Deus Ex Baldurs Gate Alpha Centuri Master of Orion (1&2) UFO: Enemy Unknown Homeworld
All the originals
Very few modern games have captured me the way those did back then. It's like trying to enjoy modern music, nothing sounds as good as the stuff your 20s

Ico on PS2 by Fumito Ueda.
I binged the game over a long weekend whilst suffering from flu, my partner at the time picking it up from Blockbusters based on the box art alone.
The mood of the game, its lighting, the mysterious setting and circumstances, paired with being ill was already quite the experience. But what completely caught me off guard was a simple but rather genius mechanic.
As to not spoil the game (too much), throughout much of Ico, you lead another character around the game by holding their hand. This is implemented as holding down R1.
I can’t explain it but it was an emotional experience when you had to get go of R1. The risks, the worry, and the longing to hold your follower’s hand once more.
Binging the game, you do a lot of hand holding, but you truly feel it in your hand too; that comforting tension of gripping the controller, squeezing R1, and holding a digital hand.
I appreciate it’s not an accessibility friendly mechanic but I still think about how meaningful holding a single button could be in a game.
Ico proved to me that “games” can be art, designers can be auteurs, and that the medium can be more impactful and evocative than absolutely any other.
- Team Ico's games are without doubt some of the best possible examples of the unique storytelling power that games have. They take full advantage of how different it feels when you're an active participant in something that happens in the story, even if you aren't making a decision about where the story goes
  It's Shadow of the Colossus that holds a special place in my heart among the three, but I'd love to go back to all of them for the first time again
- There's nothing better than finding a game whose game's atmosphere perfectly fits what you're going through in life
  A game that did that for me was Kona. I don't even think it is that great of a game honestly, but the mood/vibe of the game captured me and made me fall in love with it.
  I still even remember the scented candle that was lit while I played that game and every time I see the game on my catalog I instantly get reminded of the scent.

Like others have said. Hard to pick one.
I had an Age of Empires demo disk that I played through dozens of times before actually receiving the full game.
Crash Bandicoot for PS1 on Christmas day at 7 years old is definitely a core memory.
But more recently I've really enjoyed games that have a good blend of story/gameplay or that really nail a theme. Subnautica was an awesome experience to play (dark room and good headphones are recommended for the first time playing through), Portal 2 because it was so unique (I played #2 before #1).

I bought Continue?9876543210 because I thought it sounded interesting and had about $10 to burn.
I thought it was hauntingly beautiful, and I got hung up following Jason Oda after that. I think he's got great instincts for video game design, even if his last game Waking still needs polish (but is also gorgeous). I'm actually afraid he's thrown in the towel, having tried to bite off more than he could chew, but I hope to keep seeing new works from him anyway. Solo indie game development is a kind of hell I assume.

Halo 2 basically got me through hurricane Katrina

I didn't see it mentioned so..
Original EverQuest. Up to Rise of Kunark expansion specially.
It was my first MMORPG. I miss the way I used to feel playing it! Miss having to camp spawn points and actually talk to / interact with others to share resources and camps etc.

Gain ground and shadow run on the genesis. Fable on xbox

I don’t think I could possibly pick just one.
Playing Civilzation: Call to Power, together was one of the first shared activities I ever did with the woman who is now my wife.
When I was in middle school, my dad made me a text-based game (mildly Roguelike, even, if I recall correctly) set at school centered around going to classes and solving puzzles/collecting school supplies.
Years ago, I made a game myself for my then-girlfriend to play that secretly just an elaborate proposal wrapped in a video game.
Honorable mentions would go to Xenogears, Metroid 2, Ur-Quran Masters, and obscurities like Rollin’, Tranquility, and Omega, which collectively ended up defining my taste in games, more or less.
- Wow, I was not expecting to read Civilization: Call to Power in this comment section. There are so few people who even mention the game!
  If you're not in there already, there is a Discord for the Call to Power games you should totally join: https://discord.gg/qwe83zjXES

I’ve been chasing the high of Asheron’s Call my entire adult life.

Minecraft. I didn’t have the best home life growing up and it was where I was able to escape to.

Dear Esther made me realize games can be beautiful. The soundtrack is fantastic too.

Lords of the Realm II
It was my favorite game as a kid, and I still enjoy playing it today. It was perhaps the first game that I could do about as good or better as my older siblings, and I loved playing with the various settings and features.
An honorable mention is Sim City 2000, which we took turns playing. I don't play it anymore though, so it's more nostalgia and less something I actually play. I now play Cities: Skylines as a form of homage to those memories.

Secret of Evermore (SNES). The atmosphere, the gameplay, the characters.. It's an absolutely awesome game.

Warzone 2100
Nexus the Jupiter Incident
Ground Control
Homeworld 1
Supreme Commander
Gris
- SupCom <3
- Do you mean Homeworld
  
  God damn it, autocorrect... -_-

Alex Kidd in Miracle World for the Sega Master system.
And get off my lawn.

So many.
Doom, the og, first FPS... we had Wolfenstein 3D before that but it always felt like it was a demo of something to come for me. Doom felt like it stood on its own. I couldn't play it at home, had to go to a friend's house to play, for two reasons. 1. I couldn't run it, and 2. My parents were kinda uptight... they loosened up over the years, but it kept me from a lot of good stuff.
Quake was the next one up really land at least on PC.... we had a lab of Pentium computers at school that were all networked with what I now know is called 10Base5 or 10base2 (not sure which)... it was the first "real" network we experienced, and it was great. At the time those premiums were basically brand new, state of the art machines..... the teacher was cool enough to let us use the lab to play quake over the lunch hour sometimes... so we had quake LAN parties over lunch.
On PC, there were a lot of greats, but nothing too groundbreaking until half-life... but I'm guessing most people experienced that. I'll give an honorable mention to unreal and unreal tournament as well (every version). Bluntly, UT was significantly better than quake arena.
We had a short list of consoles over the years. But I have to take my hat off for final Fantasy (either 3 or 6, whatever you want to call it, the one on the SNES)... which I was obsessed with for a while there. We only had three consoles over the years that I recall... the NES, SNES, and genesis. After that, we couldn't continue to convince my parents to keep buying consoles. I eventually picked up a PlayStation, but that was a long time later.

MYST. I still think about this game and the sequels weekly. I would sit next to my dad and explore, take notes, read books, and become completely immersed in the worlds of MYST.

For some reason, Adventure Quest, yes that old flash game :p.It got me hooked when I was 7yr old and I find myself coming back every now and again.
- AQ3D is pretty fun, never played the OG though, but was looking into downloading it the other day

Definitely Lego Star Wars (original trilogy of course). My brother and I played it almost endlessly on our PS2 when we were children. Later on we got it on both PS3 and 4, and I even bought it in steam a few years ago for the nostalgia. On the computer I naturally use my PS4 controller for it.

In terms of nostalgia, ffvii, but the most moving experience I've ever had with a video game is mother 3.

The Talos Principle for sure, and now i hear they're coming out with a sequel!

Freespace 2, and particularly the Freespace Open mod Blue Planet. Fantastic gameplay and the story/characters/mission design in the Blue Planet mod take a 90s game and make it better than most current ones.

I have two that are forever up in the ranks. First is probably Street Fighter II for NES. Yeah, there was Mario and other classics, but SF2 was probably the first video game where I wanted to strive my damned hardest to get better. After getting wrecked over and over by older kids, I was determined to be good at this game and it was a ton of fun in the process. Thus began my lifelong love of video games.
Second is TMNT: turtles in time for SNES. It was probably the first time I enjoyed an activity with my father. He wasn't around much but on the rare occasion he was, we would play the crap out of this game. He used to play with me until his thumbs cramped up. It's always been a loving core memory of my father for my entire life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_II:_The_Doomsday_Papers
I printed out the certificate it gave me for finishing the game and proudly hung it on my bedroom wall. I guess that makes me an officially certified hacker.

Marathon.

Ya'all too young. LOL.
The game that holds a special place in my heart was Destiny of an Emperor. It was a little-known RPG that came out in the late 80's. It's not entirely obvious from the name, but it was my first introduction to the Romance of Three Kingdoms. I was a little spoiled brat of a kid. Over the years, I racked up about 50 NES games (sure, most were flea market finds, but that didn't make me feel less badass nerdy)... But the one I kept going back to again and again was Destiny. It's what immersed me in story-first RPGs when (oddly) Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior 1-3 didn't scratch that itch.
If you're willing to try an NES RPG, and you haven't, definitely check out Destiny of an Emperor.

The Longest Journey. Wonderful story, great voice acting, beautiful environment.

I'm old and have enjoyed many, many games over the years. However, the one that hit me hardest in the feels was The Witcher 3. The ending where Geralt realizes that he has to let Ciri make her own decisions, scary as they are... wow, it was so well done. It's one of the best examples of how a game can become art on the same level as cinema and literature.
Edit: I want to add another. The first game that made me feel actual dread was the original Quake, especially when played in a dark room. The soundscape was incredibly immersive. I remember literally moving my own head to try to peer around corners.

There’s a lot, but similar to yours, probably the original Killer Instinct arcade version. My parents were in a bowling league every year and I’d go when I was younger. It was on Friday/Saturday nights. They’d give me money for the arcade every time. Plenty of nights where I got to play for a long time only paying once cuz I had got so good at the game. There was only one other kid that could take me down.

132 comments