RetroGaming

Final Fantasy 7 or 9, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Phantasy Star Online

Minecraft, specifically Beta 1.7.3.

Portal 2 and Undertale the true pacifist run

There are many games that I loved and would enjoy playing for the first time, but I'm going to pick Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. My reason being that I spent the vast majority of the game waiting for it to morph into a spiritual successor of Super Mario RPG back when I first played it, rather than giving it a chance to stand on its own as a unique and hilarious game. My preconceived idea of what I hoped the game would be really hurt my initial enjoyment of it.

For a runner up, I'll mention Kirby's Dream Land 3. In the days of Blockbuster rentals, I'd rented Kirby Super Star first, so it took me a while to get used to the more traditional Kirby powerup system where copied abilities only do one type of action each.

StarCraft's campaign was a masterpiece. I get to include Brood War here too.

94 NHL Hockey on Sega. That game blew my mind then after years of playing pretty bad ports of hockey games like Ice Hockey and Wayne Gretzky's hockey on NES. I was hooked from the very first moment and played the franchise for years until they got into 14 buttons and FPV. The older overhead version was peak for me.

Learning Team Fortress 2 for the first time as a teenager was such a crazy fun experience.

Hotel Dusk.

If I were to experience it as I am today (and judge it versus games with modern graphics etc), I'd pick Ori and the Will of the Wisps. It quickly became one of my all-time favourite games, and I finished it three times in a year when I discovered it. Beautiful in so many ways.

Half-Life is probably the game that has had the biggest impact on me, though, so that would be my pick if I experienced it as I did around 1998.

Wings for Amiga, flying in WW1 and a cool story between missions. Everything I know about ww1 air battles, I know from that game :)

I have seen no mention of Planescape Torment, so there you go.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

The story has so many great twists and turns even up to the very end. There was a distinct point about 75% of the way through when I came to the realization that I had to binge the rest of game. Even if it meant I got zero sleep that night, I had to see how it ended.

It was so good I wish I could experience it again blind.

Bioshock. I am sure you can just replay it. The twist at the end... I wish I could relive the surprise again.

That'd have to be Metroid: Zero Mission and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Two of some of the only games I actually 100%.

Spyro the Dragon as I was back in the day. That game has always been so magical for me.

I agree with lots of what's already been said and haven't got much to add to those extant conversations, so let me try to add in some that I've not seen:

RuneScape is a candidate. I started way back with RS Classic (the sprite-based one!).

Oh, and Dwarf Fortress too. That began in 2009.

Achaea and/or Lusternia are way up there but I don't imagine anyone but me can share the experience.

Oh, as well, Mount & Blade: Warband. Quite the adventure(s).

I don't really game anymore. But this thread did dredge up some memories, old and new.

Thank you.

Half-Life 2 and Shining in the Darkness.

FF6, FF9 and Links Awakening

Might and Magic 3

F-19

Wow

Half-life

Dishonored

Space Invaders

Asteroids

Pitfall

Read dead redemption 1. A masterpiece.

Quake 3 Arena. Or more specifically OpenArena + baseq3 and other mods like ratmod. Most fun I have had playing a game ever.