Better late than never! Happy Friday!
This week’s question is:
What was your favorite video game growing up?
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H.E.R.O. on the Commodore 64
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Battle for Middle Earth 2
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There’s three that come to my mind.
When I was really young, we had an old Atari, and I LOVED playing Pitfall:
Then, when I was old enough to know how to use a PC, the OG Sims:
…and eventually, the MMORPG Gateway Drug:
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Here we pay respects to the Xbox Live Arcade and Indie Game store. Your titles were many, varied, and fun.
Personal highlights for me are a bunch of twin-sticks from Radiangames (dev still makes them; Devastator is his latest twin stick, and he’s working on Instruments of Destruction) and Schizoid, which I think still holds up today as one of the most interesting dedicated co-op games.
The artstyle is great, the level design is awesome, the music is cool. Microsoft took XBLA behind the woodshed in 2024, so all of the games there are lost media. There are ROM dumps out there, but a lot of the games on it use the XNA framework, and the only 360 emulator I could find is Xenia, which doesn’t support XNA (nobody on the team knows how it works, apparently). This includes Schizoid.
Special thanks to E4 and Halo: Reach.
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That would be Diablo (1997) and Heroes of Might & Magic III (1999).
(Instead of unfunny Butcher meme, now funnier Gharbad the Weak gif by Carbot)
I liked The Sims (2000) too.
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How long for growing up….
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Total annihilation: Kingdoms and original
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007 Golden Eye and Perfect Dark!
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StarCraft and of course World of Warcraft
…to name a few
Honorable mentions…
- Rogue Squadron
- Minesweeper
- Shattered Galaxy
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Warcraft 3
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Pacman. I’ve got to the broken level twice but never did a perfect run - I always forget when the ghosts stop being edible after you munch a pill.
Ghosts and Goblins. I recently got to play an original arcade machine and BY CHRIST it makes elden ring look like a jolly little happy piece of cake. So HARD. My first official rage quit when I got to the end and it was ALL A dream and you had to do the whole thing again.
Elite on Acorn Electron. Man that game..
Secret of Monkey Island. Commodore Amiga, what a game.
Tomb Raider PS1. It is hard for modern audience to understand how a female protagonist (vs mario, sonic, etc) made such a massive shift in videogaming plus levels and puzzles were fantastic. This is the first game i remember talking about at work without people thinking we were utter nerds.
Dawn of War - First PC
Guild Wars
Vermintide 1
Vermintide 2
45 years of “growing up” right there.
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If I had to narrow it down, then there’s one game that sticks out like a sore thumb, and it’s one that unfortunately next to nobody I’ve met has ever heard of. That game is Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.
I remember being a sprog and watching my dad play through the first one on the gamecube, then when I could finally hold a controller, playing it through many, many times in good old couch co-op every night after he’d come home from work. I mean I say “play” more like my dad actually playing and 3 year old me just pressing buttons, occasionally annoying him by rotating the camera in the middle of a scrap 
Once the second one dropped we picked it up for the PS2 and we did the exact same thing for years. I think I managed to achieve sentience at that point and could actually play properly too!
Needless to say, words can’t describe how ecstatic I was to see the two of them basically shadowdropped on Steam a few years back.
Anyway I’m stopping myself there before the floodgates of childhood games open otherwise I’d end up typing a post long enough to brick the site 
So yeah, if I had to pick just one (or well, two in this case) to sum it all up as the title of the post asks? It’s Dark Alliance, any day of the week.
In fact, I think I just might start a run now…
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Literally all my family friends. Everyone had a copy of these in the mid 90s with full joystick support.
Most played games in my 90s. Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries had a game mode where it would randomly generate RNG spawn of enemies, types and mission parameters. Very replayable. The campaign had full micro-management of Mech fitouts and not simple stuff like nowadays.
Games used to cost £30 GBP. Had a nice laminated manual, A4 sized box and jewel case for CDROMs, sticker, poster. Really felt the value when unboxed and all the goodies inside. Funny thing is that nowadays this sort of stuff you only get on £100 “Ultimate” edition or something.
But I spent I think around £100 GBP on a Videologic Apocalypse 3D GPU 4MB VRAM to give the polygons actual textures.
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GPU box artwork used to be so cool!
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We weren’t allowed video game consoles growing up, but were allowed to play video games if we found any that could run on our family computers. Oregon Trail on the Apple 2e was a solid favorite.
Other niche Mac games that I was obsessed with:
- Delirium Delirium - Macintosh Repository
- Glider Pro Glider PRO | ClassicReload.com
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age of empires 2 and Stalker shadow of chernobyl
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Diablo 2 Lord Of Destruction and…
Baldurs Gate 2 Shadows of Amn…
aaaand…
Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun
… Tibsun remaster when? xD
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Either one of these three from my kiddo days:
As a teenager (to name just a few):
Honorable mentions:
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Turok 2 Seeds of Evil is one of my favorite games from my childhood, no game will ever top the absurdity of the cerebral bore.
Another game I loved was BattleTanx Global Assault, there is a level where you get to blow up the Eiffel tower
It also had some really cool and wierd artwork for the different gangs in the game
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1990 - Prince of Persia.
My first MS DOS game.
1985 - Neverending Story on ZX Spectrum.
I was too young to play myself but I remember my older sister playing it. It was text based RPG and you would type in commands like “Put jar on floor”
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