Pokemon (1st gen and 2nd gen -- plus some of the spin-off stuff from that era to a lesser extent) captivated me in a way no other games have before or since. Honestly, I hope nothing ever grabs me that hard again; it's kind of scary how obsessed I was in retrospect.

A number of N64 games also made a big impact on me. Majora's Mask was probably my second favorite game (after Pokemon) for many years. (OoT made an impression too, but I played MM first.) I loved the music in Diddy Kong Racing. I got 120 stars in Mario 64, and when I tried it again as an adult, I really appreciated how short and to the point levels could be (not that I played that way as a kid) -- also the camera in that game sucked. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness kind of disturbed me a bit as a kid, but it's probably the first game I encountered a sort of "New Game Plus" in, which was neat. (People have since told me that's the "black sheep" of the series and that it's really weird that that's the only one I've played significantly.)

Duke Nukem 3D was the first game I modded, I think (very simple graphical stuff). Definitely wasn't age appropriate but I played the heck of it anyway. Didn't really get much into other shooters other than playing through the main game of Perfect Dark on N64 and playing split-screen Golden Eye with friends.

I also played a lot of Sim\ games -- particularly SimCity 2000, SimEarth, and SimTower. Also had a bunch of others like SimFarm and even some of the more obscure ones like SimSafari. Streets of SimCity and SimCopter being able to load SC2K maps was really neat though. Played a fair amount of other city builders and simulation games like Caesar III and Roller Coaster Tycoon too. My parents probably hoped I'd become some sort of business manager. :p

I had a lot of creative tools back then as well which I treated as not-that-different from video games. Various Kid Pix programs (one of which had a bunch of odd video clips integrated -- including a short documentary about jackalopes of all things), Kid's Studio, Digital Chisel, some version of HyperCard, etc. Game Maker -- which I found around the year 2000 back when it was still on www.cs.uu.nl -- ultimately led me to being a professional programmer.

Mega Man X on the snes was my favorite for the console, the day I got to play the first time I managed to beat Chill Penguin, Spark Mandrill and Armored Armadillo. I couldn't for the life of me, for the next 5 or so hours, beat any other boss. That I played that long without any progress probably shows my dedication.

Donkey Kong Country 2 was my second fave. Never managed to "legally" get all 75 kremcoins, or beat all the 5 special stages back then. Hell, even getting to the final world was a challenge back then.

On the ps1, Mega Man Legends 1 and X5. I'm only counting the games I played when I was "a kid" (< 12yo). I still love most Mega Man games.

Not really my favorite, but I never see these games listed in places like this, so I'm going to be the change I want to see in the thread.

Check out Lufia and Lufia II for the Super Nintendo. It's crazy how underrated these ended up being, and how good they were. I've played them semi recently, as SNES games go, and the second one still holds up well. The first is good, but feels a little more dated.

Metal Storm, Super Mario 3, Street Fighter 2, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Jet Moto, Final Fantasy Tactics

Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, that one Robocop game for the NES, Sonic The Hedgehog and a top-down strategy shooter for the Genesis/Mega Drive that I can't remember the name of.

• Battlefront & battlefront 2 first and foremost for sure. Classic battles for socializing, space battles for crash fun, single player galactic conquest

• Battle for Middle Earth 2. Big improvement over 1 and you could play as anyone, although Men was outrageously overpowered

• Unreal Tournament 1999

• Starcraft: Broodwar. We were shitty turtle players, but so much fun

• Warcraft 3 (mostly dota, twilight's eve, and TD)

• CS 1.6 and CS:S

• Mario kart double dash

• super smash Bros melee

• Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones

• Pokemon Emerald

They don't make games like that anymore, but then again, it is definitely 75% nostalgia and the good times with friends that I had during those years instead of the actual games.

Now we are stuck playing CS2 online getting rolled by kids on shitty comp servers with 100+ ping 1 day per month or so because there is a 7 hour time difference now. Because online games without sweaty, toxic communities are pretty far in between. Miss the days when video games were fun lol

Lasting impression top 5:

Great Gianna Sisters, Last Ninja 2, Castles, Loom, Moraff's World

Jumpman and Loom (Commodore 64) really stand out.

X-COM: UFO Defense (1993) Fallout 2

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. The open-world gameplay melted my adolescent brain after growing up on NES games. I haven't stopped playing such games since, and I still go back and play them again occasionally.

Go for the eyes Boo!!

Ooh, there were a couple of them.

• Pokemon Blue/Yellow/Gold

• Theme Park World (never see this mentioned anywhere??)

• Diablo II

• Warcraft 3

• Mario Kart Double Dash

• Super Smash Melee

• XG2 (Extreme G 2)

• Screamer 2

• F-Zero GX

• Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit

These are the ones I can remember right off the bat, might add some more if I remember them.

• Contact Sam Cruise
• Robin O The Wood
• Kokotoni Wolf
• Back to School
• Killed Until Dead
• Head Over Heels
• Batman

and about a hundred more, probably. These are all on the ZX Spectrum. No one else start out in the early 80s with a Spectrum or Commodore 64 or Dragon or whatever?!

Looks like I'm one of the oldest here (Pacman guy presumably older)...

Rollercoaster Tycoon 1, 2, and 3 when I was quite young. In my teens it was Minecraft.

Mario RPG, half life 2, and Halo 1, those are easily my top 3 games.

Pokemon Blue

As a kid, probably Lode Runner. It ran on my pc. Some arcade games were fun. I enjoyed Asteroids. Colossal Cave, and the Infocom games like Planetfall were fun too. Though what really hooked me was Doom. It was the first real 3d FPS game and it blew my mind. It's been my favorite genre ever since.

When I was a kid, I felt pretty confident no video game would ever top Dragon Quest 4 (known as Dragon Warrior 4 to me, at the time).

It has been since surpassed, but I do still think it's pretty damn excellent.

Other big games for me were Ultima Online, later World of Warcraft.

Prior to those MMOs though, I was a big MUD (multi-user dungeon) player. I used to connect to Arythia.org via zMUD or old telnet and spend hours at a time playing and chatting with people in the entirely text-based proto-MMO

Edit: typos and a clarification added

The game that had the single biggest effect on my current taste has to be Another World.

• Prince of Persia
• Contra III
• Blackthorne (by blizzard)
• Freelancer

Two games on the C64: "The Castles of Dr. Creep" and "Elite". The first was a jump-and-run platform game with incredibly simple and lowres graphics, but perfect for two cooperating players. The second was the absolute classic space game by Braben and Bell.

Pong.

• Wings of Fury
• Populous
• F/A18 Interceptor
• Pool of Radiance
• International Karate+
• Jetset Willy (also Blagger, Monty Mole series and other similar games)

syphon filter and syphon filter 2. The multiplayer against my cousin where we just ran around and throw grenades at each other was just pure fun.