"This game was my CHILDHOOD"

[Meowstic Royalty]

What games have ever made you say that? The games that blew your mind so much that you still love them to this day as they hold such a special place in your heart. Your reasons may be different, it could have just been a way to pass the time or maybe it had a story so heart wrenching it reduced you to tears. Either way, it's a game you'll always remember for the beauty of what it was.

And before I rattle off my own, I'd like to give the obvious warning, SPOILERS ALERT.

1. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness



If there were a game to perfectly describe my childhood in video games, it's this one. This game tore my heart to pieces, the plot was that painful yet so beautifully gripping that you had to see how it ended.

And the ending bought me to tears. Seeing my character, the hero, disappear into the nothingness and pass from one world to another, five minutes after SAVING THE WORLD BY SACRIFICING HIMSELF, and then witnessing my partner fall down and CRY. It hurt, and even when Dialga revived me I was still crying tears of HAPPINESS. This game is relentless and I fell in love with it.

But then plot twist, DYING and then resurrecting isn't even the ENDING. In fact that's only half of the entire plot.

After that is a chain of events that eventually lead up to your poor innocent Azurill friend falling asleep. The worry comes from the fact that he'll be sleeping forever if you don't do something.

Turns out Darkrai was behind everything and you're forced to go INSIDE of Azurill's dream for a way to wake him up. After witnessing an illusion of Cresselia that meets you and makes you believe you're supposed to die and STAY dead this time, you have to go to the Dark Crater to fight Darkrai and his minions head on in an all out battle to the death with the fate of the world in your hands.

This game was the perfect combination of cute, badass and heart wrenching, and remains my favorite DS game to date.

And I'm not even going to start on how much of a disappointment Gates to Infinity was compared to this gaming masterpiece.

2. Mario & Luigi - Bowser's Inside Story



The reason I loved this was just.

Honestly, being able to control a being of brute force from the inside is something you don't see every day. And even in times where Bowser was in danger to the point of surely inevitable demise, you take charge in the Rump Command to revive him and somehow make him absolutely ginormous in a few incredible battles against a castle, a propellor tower a TRAIN, you name it.

But honestly, what made me love this game was the final clash.

Bowser against his own dark incarnation. After everything seems lost, Fawful has what he wants, the Dark Star fortifying his power and Dark Bowser there as the stronger, doomsday counterpart to your own character.

The final battle is a clash between both of the brute forces and both of the controllers. Bowser and Dark Bowser fight, with the dark form using attacks that seem to be supercharged versions of your own, even attacking you with your own shadow minions with the highest attack stat in the game. After that, Dark Bowser collapses. But Fawful revives him EVERY TIME.

Punch your enemy in the belly and he spits Fawful out. Inhale the little bugger into your body and switch to taking control of Mario and Luigi to defeat him. Take out his glasses and then his appendages to watch him collapse into the ground, and try not to die in the process from his insane bombardment of death you have to intercept with hammers and your own face. One slip up can easily lead to losing the battle outright.

And after ALL THAT, THE SHEER FEELING OF SATISFACTION when you teach Dark Bowser some manners with your FISTS is unparalleled. This fight was HARD, like any final fight should be. And it remains my favorite boss fight ever.

3. Elite Beat Agents



I don't have as much to say about this, other than it was honestly just an amazing arcade game combined with rhythm and beautiful music that kept me hooked for years. It didn't exactly have a huge plot like the other games, but the two final songs are INSANELY hard on the higher difficulties. One beat messed up would usually lead to a "Mission Failed" screen. And you can feel the adrenaline inside of you ready to build up and explode out of every orifice.

This game was fun as hell. It's a shame the sequel was cancelled due to poor sales of the first one. This game deserved more love.

[Kpyna]

Pokemon Ruby
Pokemon is one of my favorite franchises of all time, and even though I'd say I loved Gen 2 more than Gen 3, I gotta say that Ruby just had so much more of an impact on my childhood. Pokemon was getting huge, and this was one of the first games where I could battle someone that wasn't my brother. I also filled up Ruby's timeclock, which is how much I played. As well I went to events like Pokemon Rocks America and stuff and got some sick pokemon from those events. Also, it led me here and this site did play a part in my later childhood.


Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
I've never met anyone else in my life in person who has played this goddamn game! And it's awesome! Best platformer I've ever played. You all are missing out. The games that came after were average at best, but Ty WAS AMAZING. Essentially the antagonist is a Cassowary named Boss Cass who hates warmblooded animals, especially Tasmanian Tigers, and he sends away all of Ty's family and Ty is the last remaining tiger who needs to save them all. He uses boomerangs to take out Cass's croonies and some parts of this game can be HARD so prepare yourself. Namely one part of the last battle is liable to drive you insane, so if you play this game, beware for that moment. I love the way the game was designed just through and through and its one of my favorite platform games of all time to this point. I really really wish the sequels lived up to the hype this game gave me.


Crazy Taxi
Taking people to Kentucky Fried Chicken in record time. Also what I feel got me into punk rock music as a kid because the soundtrack was like two songs by The Offspring and Bad Religion on loop.


Halo
When I was 9 and my brother was 11 my uncle decided this would make a great christmas gift for me and my brother because we loved 007 Agent Under Fire. My brother and I were very appreciative and I remember we both though the game even on Normal difficulty was really hard so we played through it together. My mom didn't like this game as much as we did, but I think from her perspective the game wasn't too demeaning to women (which she found 007 to be) and she didn't mind the violence so much because my brother and I were the siblings who came close to killing eachother on multiple occasions anyway. The aggression was definitely better pointed at aliens. I remember playing the last level for like 3 hours straight with my brother and when we beat it we went nuts.


Honorable mention: Windwaker. Still one of my favorite Zelda games to date, although I'll admit I need to play some of the more recent Zelda games. Forsaken Fortress terrified me.

[kindtocrows]

I'm pretty sure these were the games that started my lifelong obsession with dragons. But the real reason these games hold a place in my heart is because I used to play them with my mother when I was a kid. Along with Pokemon, these were some of the first games I played, and they're still really fun. Now I'm playing them with my little cousin, so they're one of the first games she's played as well.



Yeah, I actually really liked this game as a kid. My first console was an N64 which this game came with. Admittedly, it isn't a very good game at all, though there is something sort of satisfying about being able to yell at pikachu when it doesn't listen to you and have it actually respond. It's another game I played with my mom, so maybe that's why I have fond memories of it, and still kind of enjoy playing it now.

[Liam]

^Seconding the first three Spyro games, they were absolutely amazing. Still have em aha. Croc legend of the gobbos was wavey too.

Yoshi's story, Pokémon stadium... those sorts.

Super Mario Allstars on SNES was the one though, my parents had it and was the first game I ever played.

[Lord Raven]

Man you guys are young, I played those games as like a teenager or almost a teenager.



This game used to give me nightmares once.  I was four when someone bought me a Super Nintendo and I thought video games were the coolest thing.  (It was a birthday gift from one of my parents' rich friends).  One of the few video games I used to play with my sisters, who thought they were too cool for video games after the SNES era.



Probably one of the few platformers (aside from Castlevania) I can stomach to this day.  It's a whole lot of fun and if you know what you're doing a very quick game to beat.  Another game my sisters played with me, which was one of the few.



Should go without saying.  I had Blue.

[Kerou 犠牲]

I was a SEGA kid so it was moreso these:



played this so many times, it never got old, would happily play now, love it to death



I remember this being so hard as a kid, really enjoyed it though.

Pokémon Red, Digimon World



I don't know why but this was always the main thing I remembered from Shenmue (other than it being an absolutely outstanding game), well either that or the weird Jamaican / American / Asian hybrid character who would sell hotdogs

oh yeah, first game I played without a traditional controller too



oh man such great memories

[Petzbreeder]

Digimon World

Yes!

I also played Monster Rancher, I always liked the different monsters that the game gave you depending on what CDs you used. I made a database of most of the CDs that I own so that I could always get the specific monster that I wanted.

To this very day, I still can't work out exactly how it worked!

[Lord Raven]

oh yeah, first game I played without a traditional controller too



oh man such great memories

You may just be the worst kind of person, but I chuckled.

[SirBlaziken]

I'm going with (besides for the obvious Pokemon main games):

The Mystery Dungeon series: I fell in love with them and beating Time was one of the first games I ever beat.
Elite Beat Agents: I have bite marks in my first DS because I would get so frustrated that I would bite my DS. I'm not kidding.
Kingdom Hearts: The graphics on the final battle for 2 were amazing.
Smash Bros: I had Melee (and foolishly got rid of it), then my brother got Brawl and I was addicted
Guitar Hero: Still love and play it to this day, and the series is getting revived!

[Lord Raven]

That's crazy to me that those games were your childhood.  I'm not taking a shot at how young you are, those were just games that came out as I was growing up.

[Inferna]

Besides Pokemon these are my other childhood games, fyi gold was my favourite.



Like Dragoncat, Spyro was such a huge part of my childhood like wow. Spyro 1 was the first game I ever remember playing at the age of 4. Yotd was my favourite out of the original trilogy and I liked a heroes tail too. After the reboot I never bothered and the less said about skylanders the better lol.

This is probably the weirdest one on my list and I know almost no one else besides my bff who has played it:


It was a Japanese game, the only reason I had it was because my grandad worked offshore and they had a little industry going on for chipped ps1s and games lmao.  It was a side scrolling platformer, you play as a guy who gets turned back into a boy and go on some quest to become a man again and fight lots of crazy bosses. It gets a bit weird near the end and it turns into a fighting game but it was so much fun!

I loved all the usual ps1 suspects like Crash, croc, digimon and toy story as well. Also the lion king was tons of fun??

These are from when I was a little older (9-13)  but still.


This game was so odd, I loved it. I never managed to get past the snow world but it was great on multiplayer, the creatures that hatched from the eggs were so cute. Only game to feature sonic hatching from an egg.



This was the first Zelda game I owned myself, probably why I'm so attached to it. I'd played my cousins copy of Wind Waker on the GC but besides that I hadnt really experienced much Zelda! I've replayed this multiple times, the graphics are great and there's lots of fun puzzles with the shrinking.


This series has consumed so much of my life it's unreal lmao. Started off with this version, and have got every game since.

This is such a funny choice but idc the amount of times me and my step sister played this game only for it to crash after changing the time to get puppies/kittens was too much:


other mentions go to Phantasy Star online, Rayman for gbc, Mario Party 4, Starfox Adventures, Mario Sunshine and Theme Hospital.

[SirBlaziken]

Speaking of Mario Party, Mario Party 7 used to be my game. Also XD: Gale of Darkness was another huge game of my childhood.

They have to do another Gale of Darkness-esque game.

[Petzbreeder]

This is such a funny choice but idc the amount of times me and my step sister played this game only for it to crash after changing the time to get puppies/kittens was too much:

This (and Catz 5) is the very reason I use the name Petzbreeder! 

[Turner]

Aside from Pokemon..


Alex Kidd in Miracle World


Sonic 2


Fantastic Dizzy


The Addam's Family Game


Super Mario World


Donkey Kong Country


Looney Tunes Collector - Martian Revenge

[SirBlaziken]

Would this be a bad time to mention that i've had Yellow, Red and Blue at one point in time (gave Yellow to my cousin who got rid of it, gave Red to a friend, I have Blue)?