Any games you wish you grew up with?

finkrat, 10 months ago

I was a console kid and wish I had more exposure to the beefier DOS/PC games available in the 90’s, lots of gems

PhantomPhanatic, 10 months ago

I feel like I almost completely missed out on PC gaming from the late 80s to the early 2000s. I played a few mil-sim games from Novalogic and Jane’s but that was about it.

I wasn’t exposed to an FPS until half-life was a few years old. My first real gaming PC was built for Half-Life 2.

I totally missed Doom, Quake, Descent, Diablo, System Shock, Deus Ex, Wolfenstein, Fallout. I didn’t even know about Elder Scrolls, Myst, Riven, Maniac Mansion (or any of the other Lucasfilm or Tim Schafer games like it).

I did catch some lower spec games like Sim City, StarCraft, Worms, etc., But it seemed like none of them really caught my attention longer than a few hours. I was mostly interested in SNES and PS1 around that time I guess.

simple, 10 months ago

Kingdom Hearts feels like a series I would be all over with considering how much I loved Disney and liked Final Fantasy. Shame I never really got around to playing it.

kratoz29, 9 months ago

Tons of them!

I was a child when we had something like the gaming industry established already so there were already some true gems out there, but as a child I grew up playing child games, also started with the PS1, my first game was Grand Turismo, and yeah 6 years old me did not like it, also DBZ Ultimate Battle 22, this one was my jam, until many many years later I realized it sucked lol, but what can I tell, I played some shovelwhere and Disney games, although I think they were fine, I never played big titles like MGS or FF VII for example, and my favorite game from the PSX that I replay even today is Toy Story 2, no regrets.

wesley, 10 months ago

I always always always wanted to play Final Fantasy after Final Fantasy 7…but I was super poor and couldn’t get a Playstation.

GlennMagusHarvey, 10 months ago

I wish someone had shown me the ropes to get into WRPGs (and other genres that I have yet to really familiarize myself with) back in the day.

There’s a lot of really neat stuff in the genre that seems hard to get into without taking the time to learn how to make the most of it. Maybe it’s that I’m now an adult and I know a bit too much, but I’ve had problems like sitting down with Neverwinter Nights 2 and then realizing that I should go research character builds before I start playing the game. And then, of course, that just means I forget about playing the game for another year or two.

And this isn’t even anywhere near the most obtuse game to learn. There are very complex games (particularly some sim games) that really seem like they’d be great fun if only I actually knew how to play them, but I don’t.

bozo, 10 months ago

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Just totally missed the boat when they were in the zeitgeist - I ended up loving them 15 years later though.

Saturdaycat, 10 months ago

I wish I grew up with tactics ogre. I just discovered this game a few months ago and it truly blew my mind. I could have been into TRPGs if I had played it.

LeHappStick, 10 months ago

The Elder scrolls

You put it perfectly here

I would have loved to have played it as a kid with childlike wonder

That feeling you get when you play a game you like when you are a kid is something you don’t get again as an adult, I remember the first times I played Minecraft, I remember that sense of adventure and discoverery that sadly I haven’t been able to experience again.

I can only imagine what would have felt playing Morrowind, Oblivion and even Skyrim with the mind of a child.

I know these games are not that old… but hey! I was a child when they came out.

WEAPONX, 10 months ago

I wish i had Minecraft as a ten year old. By the time it came out my i interests were shifted to all the Call of Duty clones and action games.

CarbonatedPastaSauce, 10 months ago

Morrowind was earth shattering when it came out. It looks like ass compared to today’s games but at the time we’d never seen anything that looked that good, with that epic scale of a world, before. It was magical.

mrbubblesort, 10 months ago

One that never clicked with me back when it came out was Halo. Everyone else claims it's this amazing, must play game, but I just couldn't get through it. I even tried again this year and bought the Master Chief edition in t he steam sale for $10, but got bored with it by the time you board the Covenant ship. I really want to know what I'm missing here, but to me it seems like a cookie cutter FPS with the most basic, boring-ass story. Sincerely asking, what makes this game so good?

WaDef7, 10 months ago

I didn't really grow up with it as others but I think I got into it enough that I can try and answer you.

So, the first one was the first game to figure out FPS in consoles that really took off (most likely the first one to do it, but you never know, I might stand corrected). Some people will point out to Goldeneye on the N64 but I really doubt any game was playable on that three pronged controller let alone an FPS.
I remember they did some trickery with the aim to compensate for the stick as an input method, and they also set up the two weapon limit which is now a staple.

Another aspect is the multiplayer, which was great both as a couch split-screen and online; you also had the forge so you could get creative with it.
You know, if you're having fun with your friends that's all it takes to fondly remember everything that came with it, and a videogame can play that role, whether it's actually good or bad.

As for the story, I'll admit the mainline story was just fine for me, not lacking for the kind of game that it is, but halo reach on the other hand really struck a chord with me.

EtnaAtsume, 10 months ago

I was just the right demographic and everything for Halo. Had an Xbox. Had the game. Had 4 brothers to couch co-op with. Was a weird backwards military-obsessed family.

Played it a bunch. A BUNCH. But while I enjoyed it, it didn’t really leave any kind of impression. I thought its story was shallow and its characters unremarkable caricatures even at age 13. Years later when I saw people going on about how DEEP its world-building was and how BADASS Master Chief was and how ICONIC the game was I was just kinda…nonplussed? Whole game was just mediocre to me. I mean, that’s not to say I didn’t like it or whatever, but it wasn’t groundbreaking for me the way it was for (apparently) many others.

Make of that what you wish!

PhantomPhanatic, 10 months ago

I missed NES games almost entirely. I was exposed to Super Mario (at friend’s houses for a few minutes at a time) and literally nothing else until decades later. I would have liked to have played the greats like Mega Man, Metroid, or Zelda.

I think I really would have liked to have played Zelda the most. I loved ALttP but imagine I would have loved the first one a lot too. It’s really hard to go back now when my experience of newer games sets my expectations. I still get frustrated today trying to navigate and survive when playing it.

I also completely missed out on Sega, but to this day I still don’t feel like I missed out on much.

mrbubblesort, 10 months ago

Take it from someone who was around back then, you didn't really miss much. The NES revitalized video gaming and brought the industry back from near-death, but the SNES/Gensis era was truly the golden age of gaming. Maybe because the tech NES was so limited or something, but most of the early franchises back set the stage for greater heights, but other than Super Mario 3 nothing is really worth going back to. Zelda, Super Metroid, Sonic, Final Fantasy, Mega Man X, Contra, Tetris, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Castlevania, Phantasy Star, Chrono Trigger, Mother 2/Earthbound, F-zero, Star Fox, Donkey Kong, etc etc etc etc all REALLY got their start, and became what they are today, in the 90s with the SNES and Genesis

HiddenRetro, 10 months ago

For me it’s anything TurboGrafx-16. I eventually bought one maybe 7 y wars ago but almost all of the games are ridiculously expensive, so I ended up selling it.

Thwompthwomp, 10 months ago

I only remember that system having a cool looking racing game, and that game where the kid bonks stuff with his giant head.

Those games were super expensive back in the day too!

zikk_transport2, 10 months ago

Half Life series

garyyo, 10 months ago

Final fantasy 7. But for a different reason. I tried playing that game many times wayyy after it’s release but I just couldn’t get into it. But I got really big into final fantasy 6 and I got really big into other JRPGs, so it wasn’t that the gameplay was bad just that the 3d graphic hasn’t aged well. But I also played some pretty crusty PlayStation 1 games back in the day, so it’s not like if I didn’t play it at the right time I wouldn’t have loved it. But just cuz I didn’t play it around release, cuz I didn’t know about it I was a kid, kind of missed out on an entire thing.

I like the remake but, I don’t think it’s the same.

QuarterlySushi, 10 months ago

While I think it would have been easier to get into FF7 at the time of release, I did try at that time, and actually never finished it until maybe 6 years ago. I had played 4-6 and subsequently 8 multiple times, but 7 never grabbed me the same way. I know it’s a bit of a “you had to be there at the time” game, but I don’t think being there at the time guarantees enjoying it either.

ArchTemperedKoala, 10 months ago

I played it as a kid using gameshark because my dad just got me one so I used it on everything I played…

Took the challenge out of it, but thinking back kid me would’ve been stuck somewhere somehow…

Didn’t think it was all that tho, I liked Suikoden better still…

The one sure thing I’ve picked is my girl preference since then has been Tifa Lockhart like haha

GlennMagusHarvey, 10 months ago

My friend lent me his copy of FF7 PC, and I tried playing it – albeit after I played earlier FF games.

There were two problems. First, it was…kinda weird compared to earlier games. Sure, the steampunk vibes began in FF6, but we didn’t have Literally An Evil Megacorp and Literally Eco-Terrorists fighting over Something That Feels A Lot Like An Analogy For Nuclear Power. That was a whole nother level. Nothing wrong with this per se, but it just felt like something quite different. Neat, but just not the same FF I was used to.

But, perhaps more importantly, the game just kept crashing. I kept going as far as I could, but the game just wouldn’t progress past the introduction to the Gold Saucer.

alvvayson, 10 months ago

For me, I recently played Earthbound for the first time on the Switch after seeing J.J. McCullough rave about it nostalgically. I can’t believe I had a SNES as a kid and missed out on it, but I guess I might have tried it and didn’t like it. I was probably a bit too young when it came out.

For the rest, I really wish I had BotW/TOTK as a kid. Even as an adult, the level of Immersiveness that these games have is amazing.

TORFdot0, 10 months ago

Earthbound is such a great game. I didn’t have a lot of snes games as a kid so this one kind of eluded me at the time but I just recently played it and loved it. I did not like JRPGs as a kid (still don’t but was able to still enjoy it as an adult) so maybe it’s for the best I had to wait to experience it

mgiuca, 10 months ago

King’s Quest and Final Fantasy.

KQ I did go back and play through the entire series about a decade ago and had a great time. Final Fantasy I’ve just recently got into with 7 (original) and 8 but I don’t have the patience to finish either. I would have if I’d have got into it back in the day.