The 9 Games That Shaped Who I Am

 

Space Quest - Interest in computers started with --- well, games lol. Sierra's 'Quest' games were really fun and just the idea of typing in a command and making your onscreen avatar do something, felt really amazing at the time. I think this introduced the idea of, instead of just watching an adventure unfold, you could be a part of it. 

Contra - There was this video rental store near my house which I visited, and they had various Famicom's setup and you could play many games. This was one of them. Now while I could cite various other games and there are many, many great NES/Famicom titles, I just remember Contra is the only one you could really finish within a short afternoon, as the 30 lives trick made it possible to see the entire 'story' play out. 

And it's the only one where Schwarzenegger and Stallone teamed up in their prime years to fight aliens! Who doesn't want that?

Sonic 2 - I was one of the few people with a Sega Genesis and Sonic is as iconic as they come. Still remember battling that giant robot at the end and it took a bit of thinking for me to beat that one at my young age at the time. 

Street Fighter 2 - The original, first competitive multiplayer game. This was a monster back in the day. Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox got nothing on how crazy Street Fighter was before. Entire arcades had lines and lines of machines with mobs of people waiting to play. I was there and it was real. 

Daytona USA - The concept that arcade games were unwinnable was something that was broken by me taking a lot of time practicing on the tracks on this game --- on the Saturn, of course. And all that practice allowed me to win on the arcade machine later on. Like Street Fighter 2, I think skllled play became more meaningful because of this particular game. You had to do it over and over again, and you got better each time. And not every drive is the same, even if it's the exact same 3 tracks again and again. I guess it's probably the closest to what it's probably like to drive on a track --- no two drives are the same, even if the race track does not change. That was how Daytona USA was for me, even if it was an arcade game. 

Final Fantasy VII - The eternal debate of whether FF6 or FF7 was better still rages on even in 2026 and beyond. But I think FF7's legacy is really that it created the cinematic, all-in-one package videogame. It combined cinematics, great gameplay, an incredible soundtrack, lots of fun minigames, a great story, interesting and deep characters and many more things all into one 40+ hour package (or maybe more than 40, i guess depending on how you played it). It created the feature list that many games today still struggle to meet even with 200 million dollar budgets. 

Baldur's Gate II - There's a moment in this game where your party gets transported into some alien dimension. There's another one where you can twist the fate of one of the characters from a lawful good one into a chaotic good one due to a major decision point. There's even another one where, you meet some random guy in a bar--- who turns out to be a dragon walking as a human. So many unexpected twists and turns here which haven't been beat to this day. I guess the closest peer to this game is "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" in terms of characterization and story surprises.

Halo: Combat Evolved - Brought FPS to the masses and made the concept of playing a shooter with a controller actually possible. I admit I was skeptical of this at first, but eventually it's now just a normal way of playing FPS titles now. Halo also gets props for the 'combat bowl' style of gameplay where, they put you in an area, enemies come in, and how you take them out can vary from play session to play session. It's something that isn't easily replicated anymore. The Call of Duty games, while popular, are a rollercoaster ride on rails. Halo is a rollercoaster which stops occasionally and lets you choose if you want the fast side-to-side run or the loop=the-loops, and then proceeds to do that over and over again every five minutes. 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - is a game I gave up on, played again after five years, and beat after morning breakfast, thinking that a short practice stint on "Isshin, the Sword Saint" before heading to work might be a good way to pass the time. What proceeded to happen was an incredible 10-15 minute epic battle at 5 o' clock on the morning which I'll never forget--- and thankfully, I got it all on tape (on Youtube/Twitch - https://youtu.be/Vz-6Etz5tpk )