I’m in my 40’s so I grew up on all the classics like Wolfenstein, Doom, Apogee based games (Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke Nulsen, ROTT, etc) but the game to truly blow my mind came later when I first played Half-Life.
Playing a game which had such a compelling story had me hooked. I felt so invested in the plot and character development.
I'm in the same age group. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are the ones I grew up on as well, but the first game that really blew my mind was Microsoft Flight Simulator 4. It was especially cool to me that I could easily fly around the area I grew up in from the starting position at Meigs Field in Chicago.
It was Lemmings. It's the first game that I saw on an Amiga computer. Adorable game, good music, fun gameplay.
If we're talking IBM PC, I can't pick between Diablo, Doom and Dune 2. I was so young and there were so many games created that would define genres to come.
I played it at a counsin's house when their parents were not home and we didn't even know that "saving progress" could be a thing, so we played through the first 15 or 20 levels a number of times ^^
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division by Monolith Production, before they made moved on to only making Middle-earth games they made some very interesting games, and Shogo was one that I fell in love with. The thing that really blew my mind, is that when you are in the mech parts of the game, which looks and feels like the same first person as on foot but with mech walking sounds and mech weapons, but then suddenly you see teeny tiny humans that shoot at you (sometimes with rocket launchers), literally shrunk down, you could even step on them lol. (and the blood effects on them were a bit comical considering how small they were)
Old enough to have playef DOOM on a 386 but i would say Assassin's Creed. Climbing the buildings to the top looking at Acre with the NPCs down below reacting when i pushed a guard was truly mind blowing to me.
Maybe too retro for "PC" gaming, but Ultima III on the C-64. To have a huge explorable world full of details and people to talk to sucked me right in. Others did a better job later in graphics, size, and details, but Ultima was the first.
It was ultima online for me. Slightly less retro, but damn if Ultima isn't the most slept on truly dead gaming series. So many good games over two decades in the 80s and 90s and then basically shelved since 2000. UO still exists, particularly in private servers, but I would love to see the IP revived in the 2020s. So much potential.
UO would be my next pick in that it blew open the door of the MMORPG concept. EverQuest was next and introduced me to the need for a video card, but UO was simple yet complex at the same time.
For RPGs for me it was Ultima VII - it was the first truly open world game I'd come across, with freedom and so much to do (for the time). I still think it's a great game to play even now.
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