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Your all time favorite video/computer game is... [what]?

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Your all time favorite video/computer game is... [what]?

from JoeUser Forums
With a recent and coming surge of fairly well rated/reviewed video games coming out for the Xbox 360, and of course with the very well done and highly enjoyable GalCiv II by StarDock having come out in the last few weeks, it seems that there's a wealth of riches in the area of video/computer games.

Bethesda Softwork and 2K games' highly praised Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion just came out, and many are raving about it (both for PC and for the Xbox 360), though the required hardware for playing the game on a PC is pretty steep (at least if you want to play it with all of the graphical bells and whistles turned on), but I'm not intending this article to become a "the pc is better for gaming" or "consoles are better for gaming" fan-boy (or -girl) bashing fest.

The point here is for the reader to think through their own history of video gaming, on PCs, in arcades, on video game consoles, handhelds, etc., and then tell everyone what their favorite game(s) is/are. It doesn't have to be a current game (though I'm sure StarDock would love to hear/read that it's GalCiv 2, there's is no real correct answer here).

I can think of a few games along the way that I really enjoyed, some that I might really like to see updates of, or at least have available to play again. Those are the kinds of games I'm talking about. Games that you have very fond memories of, and which you'd love to play again, and again, and again, or at least to get one more great chance to play again.

Have some favorites of your own, toss them out here, and tell us all about them, or at least why you really like that game.
gaming
30,789 views 54 replies
Reply #51 from JoeUser Forums Top
I had a love affair with Europa Universalis 1 and 2, I bought other paradox games but I never liked any of them as much as EU, though I have yet to give Victoria a fair shot.


Did you frequent the EU2 forums at Paradox? I was/am Bismarck over there.
Reply #52 from JoeUser Forums Top
I started an AAR or two over there, but I never could get the game to stop corrupting my autosaves by crashing while saving them... That's one of the reasons I like Stardock... their games don't crash, and have great AI. Same name over there, have to go check that out again...

To stay on topic, I forgot about the space combat game Allegiance. I didn't buy it, but I believe Microsoft let the community have the source code when they stopped maintaining a way to play online... and it's an online only game. Wonderfully done, a game with teamwork as a must... It's hard to get good at it though.
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #53 from JoeUser Forums Top
sounds like Crusader Kings to me... hehe.
Reply #54 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wow, lots of great responses, and many great games listed along the way.

Now that I have a few minutes to sit, think, and type (not necessarily in that order ), I'm ready to work on listing my own favorites.

Showing, perhaps, just how far back I go (Old School, Baybeeee!), I can remember many classics along the way. I'll give a shout out to the original Space Invaders (stand-up arcade game). It was a very simple game, yet it was highly addictive. It had the addictive music/audio to go with it, and help edge up the tension as you stood at the console frantically moving the joystick back and forth.

Now long after came the original Asteroids. A great game in it's own right, and one which sucked many quarters out of my pockets.

Frogger, Millipede/Centipede, and a few others in that same series were also quite fun. One in the same general era (late 70's, early 80's) was Gorf. A mix of several games really, including Galaga/Galaxians, and a few more. Even mixed in some Tempest style gaming. The best thing about Gorf was the pre-recorded "Sensors detect another coin in your pocket" that would be emoted when you finished a game and were standing and staring at the screen in disbelief at having been bested in the game by the relatively simplistic a.i. Highly insulting! Another in the mix from that time frame was the original Robotron game. Blocky graphics to be sure, and yet also very addictive and alluring.

Another personal favorite, one of my all time favorites, was the old Missile Command. I fed that game literally dozens, if not hundreds of quarters. Defend the cities and bases. Seemed easy enough, at least in lower levels, but get through about 12 - 14 rounds and the pace would get so fast and frenetic as to drive one a bit crazy. I give it a bit of extra credit for breaking ground in using the trackball, being one of the first games to do so.


PC wise, I cut my teeth very early. One of the first games (other than the original 'Adventure' game, and games I could type in and run myself from the old book of Basic Games) I played on an Rat Shack model 1 computer was a great game that was a precursor for games like Civ, Sim City, and others: Santa Paravia and Fumaccio. You would run a small empire, making decisions that affected the economy, causing growth or loss of citizenry, and trying to protect your own country. Again, it was easily an inspiration for many games which followed and used the every decision has an impact, intended and unintended, type games.

Some later games I enjoyed on the PC (other than very modern history) were the old XOR Football (great game actually), and later the great PC game Rogue (by Epyx games). Rogue was a very polished version of the old game Net Hack. Rogue was part of the reason I moved into the PC world, and away from the world of the C= Amiga (though C= mismanagement of the Amiga product line played a large part in that move too ).

One true classic on the original PC was a neat little puzzle game put out by some poor engineer in the Soviet Union. A game we know as Tetris. That game has been a time waster for so many of us all it's clearly in the top of many gaming hall-of-fame lists.


I had the pleasure of playing some fairly fun games on the old C=64, and later the C= Amiga. On the C=64 I remember well the great game (though it was frustrating for me to learn to play) M.U.L.E. I see it on many lists above. Deservedly so. There was also the old Dr. J vs. Larry Bird game that I remember fondly. Graphics that are laughable by today's standards and even by standards of several years ago, but still quite fun.

The original Cinemaware games were ground breaking for their graphics and animations, though the game play was very simplistic and repetitive.

There were several ground breaking games on the Amiga, a great machine that was poorly managed by it's corporate parent company (Commodore, many people laughingly called Commode Corp.). To this day I miss the fun times playing on those systems, and I really miss the hundreds and thousands of dollars spent on the systems One of the best games, and one which broke some ground (as I recall) was Earl Weaver Baseball. A great game for 'seam heads' A great way for even the most non-athletic to play ball Another triumph on that system was the great game which helped 'make' Bethesda Softworks: Gridiron! It was perhaps the first football game which involved real physics in the game play. Though you only had a top down view of Xs or O's on the field (all O's actually, different colors for each side, etc.), you could see where your runner was being 'dragged down' by the defense, or was breaking away from a tackle. You had to imagine the action in many ways, but you could also see it and sense it well based on the display you were watching. The developers (reportedly) later went on to become involved in the Madden football series.


Console wise I've had the pleasure of cutting my teeth on the ancient old Pong systems. I used birthday money and summer job money to help pay for the first Pong system my family had. We played it on an old black and white TV set that was given to the family. My parents wouldn't dare let us use it on the 'good family TV' for fear of burning images onto the screen. Later the family got (as a Christmas present) an Intellivision system. For it's day, it was quite cool, though if you saw the games now you'd laugh at the very crude graphics and sounds that were state of the art at the time.

I skipped over/through the original Atari systems, and as somewhat the C= fan-boy, ignored the Atari made competition systems for the Amiga. I did however get a ColecoVision system with my wife when we were first together. The graphics on it were great for the time, and the games were quite true to their arcade counterparts, including the same flaws and repetitive patterns. Donkey Kong was great on the system, though my wife and I had our own favorite: Ladybug. A very fun game which was nice and simple to play.


More recent history has been spent on the Sega Genesis, then Super Nintendo (SNES), and then later the Playstation series, and now the Xbox (up to the Xbox 360). There were many great games on those systems. The original Joe Montana Football on the Genesis was great fun. Some of the more ground breaking favorites were Sonic the Hedgehog. It showed just how good a home console system could be. Later there was the great Donkey Kong Country series, which again showed how good a console could get. Crash Bandicoot on the Playstation was also quite nice.

In the mix of those consoles, a relatively revolutionary gaming system came out and helped set the standards for much of what we all see now. The 3DO system. I never owned one, but had a friend that did. John Madden football on the 3DO system looked so realistic at the time as to have players thinking they were watching a live NFL game. There was also the Atari Jaquar system, and a great game on it as well: Aliens vs. Predator. Again, the graphics helped demonstrate just what consoles were capable of. Unfortunately both systems had problems with price points and a bursting of the gaming market bubble. Thankfully though, they did help establish some standards that we see today.


More recent favorites, and some of my all time favorites were the Diablo series by Blizzard. With Diablo II, Lord of Destruction, a true classic was born. I made many friends playing the game, and played it for countless hours. While I always hated the Player Killer aspect of the game, I loved the hardcore game where dead was dead. It made players very cautious, and kept up a tension level that was hard to match in other games.

I've also enjoyed Sim City in it's various iterations. Quake on the PC took Doom to new levels, and Duke Nukem-3D was great fun too (I still remember the great line at the pinball machine 'don't have time to.....') The sports titles on the consoles have gotten better and better, and of course PC games continue to get better too.


Have I picked just one game? Nope, sorry. You'd have a hard time nailing me down. It's just not that easy. I like many different games, though I suppose you can see from comments here that I may tend to favor sim type games. I enjoy the Sports titles, more in the sim area though, and less in the arcade area. I could name quite a few other games along the way that I really liked, but I'd better give the Joe User and other StarDock based servers a rest and save a little room for others to use in giving their own choices.


I will say again that I believe Galatic Civilization 2 is a great game, and incorporates many of the aspects of some of my most favorite games. It's simple enough to learn to play (even for slow learners like me) and gives many hours of game play in any one game. Truly a bargain at the price. I can see in a few years that GalCiv2 will show up on many 'hall-of-fame' games lists, and will deserve the honor for sure.