What Games Were You Playing When You Were 18?

Okay, now what were you playing when you were 10?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/nojF4RVl.jpg)

Hm... for me that was 1990. I had my mess-dos PC at college so here's what comes to mind:
* Wing Commander I - I still get a thrill hearing the takeoff sequence fanfare
* Populous
* Starflight II (?- that was 1989 but I might have still been playing it in 1990)
* Star Control- oh ghod, so much Star Control
* Ultima VI- not up to the standards of the mighty IV or the forthcoming VII

and on the Unix machines at school:
* XTank
* XConq
* Crossfire

I don't *think* I started my Netrek addiction until 1991 or even 1992, but I might have played in 1990. (I scout-bombed for Team Banzai in the INFL; didn't quite have the time/skills for the big league.)

I was 18 in 1993 - Quick check shows I was probably playing:

Sam and Max Hit the Road
Day of the Tentacle
7th Guest
Doom
Myst
Gabriel Knight
X-Wing

Just a few little games

I turned 18 about 1 year after Julian, late in 1985.

Like him, I was playing a lot of Elite (but on my C64).

I had a number of other C64 games, like Rocketball (which caused the premature end of a number of joysticks). My friends and I were still playing a lot of M.U.L.E., and picked up Lords of Conquest when it came out in 1986.

Our group also were playing a lot of AH board games (notably Kingmaker and Civilization).

In the arcade, I could have sworn that I was playing CyberBall, but I just looked and that didn't come out until 1988. When you get old, time dilation seems to get worse I guess.

I was also playing whatever Atari games I still had around.

Lets see, 18...so long ago. I remember Go was all the rage, but this new hotness called Chess was coming into vogue. Seemed rather politically oriented, so of course the teens all flocked to it.

Turned 18 a bit over a year before WoW was released, which makes it a wasteland of prehistoric gaming time in my head.

Played a ton of Diablo 2. Pobably accounts for the majority of my gaming time at that point.

Warcraft 3 too I guess. Maybe still some Westwood games as well, though they were long past their prime. Was mostly into RTS/turnbased strategy in the 90s, and had only started to discover RPGs around this time. Morrowind is a likely candidate. Neverwinter Nights too.

All in all pretty good games, even when looking back. Wouldn't mind playing HD remakes of some of those games.

I'm sure I played a ton of trash games too though, long since erased from memory.
Game demos in video game magazines were still a thing at that point I believe, and I played a ton of awful (but free!) demos in the 90s, might still have done so in 2003.

I forgot about demo discs. I kept as many as I could get my hands on. I literally had a box full of them. I did get some good mileage from demos back then.

1989. This would be with my C-64 and my NES. I had just moved from Oregon to rural New York which was a culture shock. So I spent most of that time trying to adapt to the East Coast.

Here's what I can remember:

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mind Benders. I played that one with a friend I had made in New York, and we almost threw up laughing. The airplane sequence with the stewardess you had to distract with an egg and the microwave oven. OMG, I still remember having to walk out of the room to catch my breath.

Mech Warrior (C-64) - bad infocom game.

Tetris (C64) - No explanation needed.

Sim City - Lame c-64 version.

Neuromancer (C-64) - Interplay

S.T.U.N. Runner - Arcade.

Pipe Dream (Lucas Arts).

A Boy and his Blob (NES)

Blades of Steel (NES)

Mean Streets (C-64) - First Tex Murphy Game

I had a collection of NES games at the time that I still played and various pirated C-64 games.

That's about it. It wasn't until I was 19 when I ended up with a PC which changed things considerably...that's whey Monkey Island, Alone in the Dark, and Out of the World entered my life.

Let's see... First year of college. 1980. Didn't own a computer myself, of course, but I played games on the UMASS Cyber 175 (2x40MHz cpus, 3.072MB main memory (256,000 x 12-bit Words)) remotely at my school campus using a printer. These would be things like Hammurabi, Lunar Lander (a real-time vehicle landing game where you did basic differentials in your head to set thruster burn amounts and durations to land with 0 velocity on different planets), a grid-sector Star Trek game, variants of Advent, Hunt the Wumpus and a home-grown turn-based tactical combat game written by one of the professors. We also had an illicit chat program called "Talk" that started up in early 1981, which was like IRC but initially written with each message being its own file, so the use of storage was immense and cpu-consuming. That kept getting squashed.

The biggest, most hardcore game on the system, though, was Empire. That was *amazing* and games were always full. Updates had to be carefully timed so that players could actually get a terminal as the clock ticked down, since the labs were full a lot of the day.

The big entertainment games were probably Pac-Man (which I sort of liked) and Missile Command, which I loved. Galaxian was great. Space Invaders was still around, Star Raiders, Asteroids was everywhere, Breakout was still popular, Sea Wolf, Night Driver... Lots of stuff if you could find the machines in a campus cafe or something.

No one I knew at school had a console. There might have been one or two TRS-80's that year, but why mess with that when you've got a mainframe to hand?

This is a fascinating thread! Loving all the entries so far! As for me, I was 18 in 1991, which was still when I was primarily playing space games and flight sims exclusively, so I was likely playing (I had to look up what was out that year)...

  • A-10 Tank Killer - Still one of my favorite flight sims, since it covers my all-time favorite airplane.
  • Chuck Yeager's Air Combat - I played the everloving crap out of this one.
  • F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 - I still prefer F-19, but I played a lot of this one too.
  • Hyperspeed - Essentially the same game as Lightspeed, but it's a great game so this isn't a bad thing.
  • Megafortress - Amazing and detailed bomber sim that's one of the very few modern bomber sims ever made. The last mission was SUPER BRUTAL, but the book upon which this game was based was great.
  • Red Baron - Was totally tooling around in this.
  • Rules of Engagement - This and its sequel still are some of the best games of their kind, and I played the crap out of them.
  • Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - I also played the everloving crap out of this one.
  • Starflight - I did a second playthrough around this time.
  • Wing Commander - I was doing another playthrough of this too I'm sure to prepare myself for...
  • Wing Commander II - Still one of the highlights of the series. This is likely the best game in the series even though IV is my personal favorite.

Man I had a lot of time in 1991.

I was 18 in 1998, but I wasn't playing games at that point. I really didn't play video games between 1993 and 2000, when emulating A Link to the Past got me back into them.

1994. The tail end of my Amiga years means I would probably have been playing...

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/1Ki5cqt.jpg)

Spoiler:

Dune II
Xenon 2
Syndicate
Speedball 2
Lemmings
Eye of the Beholder
Frontier Elite II
Gods
Chaos Engine
Turrican 2

Lots of Bitmap Bros and plenty of sequels thinking back.

I know that Speedball 2 gameplay holds up because I still play regularly on the Vita!

'95 - off to Uni and very little gaming until a couple years later when I purchased a few games for a newly aquired Mac clone and moved in with a PS1 owner...

Veloxi wrote:

This is a fascinating thread! Loving all the entries so far! As for me, I was 18 in 1991, which was still when I was primarily playing space games and flight sims exclusively, so I was likely playing (I had to look up what was out that year)...

Man I had a lot of time in 1991.

LOVED A 10.
I remember getting a heli sim back in the day that came with a Jane's manual. I think it was named Jane's something...Oh Longbow! Apache Longbow! Was fascinating the detail put into it. 1996.

In 1994 I was mostly neck deep in Magic the Gathering, and Vampire The Eternal Struggle (after Gen Con). I honestly spent about 40 hours a week playing it.

I have fonder memories of TIE Fighter though which I played enough to cause me to take a long video game break.

groan wrote:

LOVED A 10.
I remember getting a heli sim back in the day that came with a Jane's manual. I think it was named Jane's something...Oh Longbow! Apache Longbow! Was fascinating the detail put into it. 1996.

Both Longbow games were just fantastic, truly. Sigh, I miss Jane's sims, as well as fairly accessible yet still gamey flight sims, or as my friend calls them, pilot sims.

RnRClown wrote:

I forgot about demo discs. I kept as many as I could get my hands on. I literally had a box full of them. I did get some good mileage from demos back then.

I put about 20 hours into the MGS2 demo disc that came with Devil May Cry.

For me I recall being more into consoles at 18 in 97' and 98'. Brings back good memories of all the gaming with friends.

Nintendo 64
Goldeneye (many late nights of 4 person death match)
Rogue Squadron
1080 Snowboarding
Madden Football

PS
Gran Turismo (only reason I bought a PS)

PC
Quake II
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Jayavarman wrote:

Hmmmn, at 18 ? That would have been circa 1981. The only games played were on unix machines:
1. rogue https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Rogue_(game)
2. planets (Think Spaceward Ho! but with no graphical interface on an ascii terminal).

Good times,

-Jaya

Have you dipped into Planets Nu? Fellow Goodjer Maq got me hooked on it a few years ago, and I lost several months to it.

1998 saw a lot of important releases, but I didn't play a lot of games at the time, especially after I started college. I did, however, plow through Half Life when I was home for Christmas.

1993 was the year I started getting serious with LAN gaming in shops, so that would be competitive Starcraft and Counterstrike, though we started with Warcraft 2. Grunt-rushing was new back then. Wow. Also did Tekken on the side.

I was 18 in 1999 and while it wasnt 1998, it had a bunch of gems. I turned over to the PC when I was 16 and was pretty much fully converted by 18 even though I had a N64 and Playstation.

PC
Counter Strike- I am 80% sure that this game out around 1999. I played this so much I was Cal-i level during my high school years. While I played it a lot, I don't really have too many fond memories aside from competing in LAN parties for prizes. I was hopelessly addicted where it broke a few relationships because I had to practice instead of going on dates. Yeah.....not a proud moment.
Team Fortress- Oh my god so much team fortress was played. I even installed it on all the computers in my high school computer lab. Still, one of the most fun I had playing multiplayer games
Unreal Tournament- While it may not be as good as 2004 was, I still have fond memories of this since it was my first twitch based shooter. I previously played A TON of Rogue Spear.
The Longest Journey- The last point and click adventure game I've played. I remember having a fractured elbow and was only able to play with one hand so I picked it up at Gamestop when you could get PC games there. I really have fond memories of the art and design of that game.
Homeworld- Still one of my favorite games of all time. Not much else to say here.

N64
Donky Kong 64- Can't say I remember much of this game except that I played it in High School and it was a lot like Banjo. Also that DK rap......"DK....DONEY KONG!"
Smash Bros- Good lord. This game had me and my friends up till the crack of dawn. my brother and I shared the basement so our room was basically a gaming haven. Top 3 N64 games and probably my favorite fighting game.
Jet Force Gemini- Nope nope nope.
Mario Party- Many fights were started during sleepovers because of this game due to last round insane comebacks.

Another kid of 1989. That was a pretty dry year for game playing. The years before and years after I played quite a bit, but five weeks over the summer of 89 spent in Costa Rica playing soccer and then juggling academics and soccer my first year of college left little gaming time. I had a PC at my parents, but no gaming system of my own my first year or two of school. I brought the home computer (IBM XT I think, maybe an AT) with me to school my Junior year and I think I got my SNES in 1992.

I played a ton of Earl Weaver Baseball while I was still in HS. To create your own ballparks and explore historic parks like the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field while playing the best baseball simulation around was great. Golden Axe in the arcade, Altered Beast on a friend's Genesis, Contra and Blades of Steel on another friend's NES, and Tetris are the only ones that stand out. I may have also still been playing Mean 18 Golf. Like Earl Weaver's Baseball, the ability to create your own courses was so fun, even though I never golfed.

I would like to think Earl Weaver holds up, especially in simulation mode. Tetris certainly does.

That would have been back in 2006 for me, and I took the opportunity to go back and play some of the M rated games on the GameCube (which was the only console I had at the time) that had come out in the previous couple of years. I specifically remember playing Resident Evil 4 and TimeSplitters 3 during that summer.

In the fall, I was playing Super Smash Bros Melee with friends in college, plus I got Twilight Princess for the Wii when it launched that year. If I got any other Wii launch games, I don't remember what they were.

2004 was a pretty great year in gaming for me.

Drakengard: Pretty clunky game but was still quite fun. I doubt I could do an entire playthrough again.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes: Not a very good remake but I love MGS. I don't think I'd even consider playing it again.
Battlefield Vietnam: I got quite a bit of fun out of the game despite the obvious design flaws.
Front Mission 4:This game rules. I was playing it just before posting this.
Doom 3:This game was best when sitting around making fun of it with WipEout after work.
Armored Core: Nexus: This continued a downward trend in my enjoyment of the series.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: I had fun with it but I don't think I'll ever go back and play it again.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Game of the year and my favorite MGS game to this day.
Monster Hunter: It took me quite some time before I really got into this game but I certainly fell in love with this series as soon as I understood how the game was played. I'm psyched for MH World.

There are definitely other games that I played while I was 18 but those are the releases from 04 and 05 that I know I played while I was 18.

^ Just a friendly 'hallo!' I was starting to feel a bit out of place with the whole age thing. I distinctly remember playing these games around 18 as well. Monster Hunter was a game I bought at...15? Never really understood what was going on as I was playing a Japanese version. A few years later, I bought Freedom Unite on PSP and was absolutely blown away.

Doom 3 was another huge game. I remember thinking it was unlike anything else at the time. Even playing on low-medium settings, it looked crazy-good! The gun moved left and right when you looked, it blew my mind!

1990. I played studying my butt off. Running miles and miles and miles. Push ups until my hands bled. Pull ups until my arms are Jell-O. Uniform inspections and shining shoes. Memorizing a million facts about anything and everything. Running more until we puked. Sweat boxes and drill instructors. Various people screaming at me about my worth to humanity and various other tidbits. My Plebe year at the Naval Academy. It was all kind of a game but it played you.

SpyNavy wrote:

1990. I played studying my butt off. Running miles and miles and miles. Push ups until my hands bled. Pull ups until my arms are Jell-O. Uniform inspections and shining shoes. Memorizing a million facts about anything and everything. Running more until we puked. Sweat boxes and drill instructors. Various people screaming at me about my worth to humanity and various other tidbits. My Plebe year at the Naval Academy. It was all kind of a game but it played you.

Sounds like the sort of game I'd drop halfway through the tutorial. :p

Yeah, that is definitely refund material right there.

SpyNavy wrote:

1990. I played studying my butt off. Running miles and miles and miles. Push ups until my hands bled. Pull ups until my arms are Jell-O. Uniform inspections and shining shoes. Memorizing a million facts about anything and everything. Running more until we puked. Sweat boxes and drill instructors. Various people screaming at me about my worth to humanity and various other tidbits. My Plebe year at the Naval Academy. It was all kind of a game but it played you.

Sounds like you were playing Dark Souls at 18 and I was playing Bloodborne on the Army side. I.e., I've heard Darksouls has the tougher normal enemies and level puzzles but Bloodborne has the toughest end boss. In my case, that would be deploying to the border with North Korea right before my 19th birthday.

SpyNavy wrote:

1990. I played studying my butt off. Running miles and miles and miles. Push ups until my hands bled. Pull ups until my arms are Jell-O. Uniform inspections and shining shoes. Memorizing a million facts about anything and everything. Running more until we puked. Sweat boxes and drill instructors. Various people screaming at me about my worth to humanity and various other tidbits. My Plebe year at the Naval Academy. It was all kind of a game but it played you.

Drill instructors OP need nerf NOW