What Games Were You Playing When You Were 18?

Hrdina wrote:
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

Naw, you just need to git gud, Hrdina!

Hrdina wrote:
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

That's awesome.

I turned 18 in 2001. I wasn't playing any games because I'd been shipped off overseas to med school, lived in a dorm run by nuns and didn't own a computer.

I don't miss it.

Boy, that was short!

Eleima wrote:

I turned 18 in 2001. I wasn't playing any games because I'd been shipped off overseas to med school, lived in a dorm run by nuns and didn't own a computer.

I don't miss it.

Boy, that was short! :)

I think your story sucks more that SpyNavy's. That's quite the feat.

^ Uh huh, sure... 'nuns'. Probably an NDA thing. Bene Gesserit are secretive like that.
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JeremyK wrote:

I was 18 in 1998. AKA one of the best years of gaming known to man. Looking back they're still amazing.

Metal Gear Solid
Half Life
Grim Fandango
Xenogears
Ocarina of Time
Baldur's Gate
Suikoden II
Final Fantasy Tactics

18 in '96, but that didn't stop '98 from being a stellar gaming year at 20 -- every one of those is gold, Jerry! Gold!

Eleima wrote:

I turned 18 in 2001. I wasn't playing any games because I'd been shipped off overseas to med school, lived in a dorm run by nuns and didn't own a computer.

Please tell us of a few gaming memories prior to or following this nun patrolled prison. Any last hurrahs before being shipped off? How about the first or the best video game memories after?

The sorrow is too much!

Having dealt with angry nuns in elementary school, I'd rather deal with drill instructors..

Recreational Villain wrote:

^ Uh huh, sure... 'nuns'. Probably an NDA thing. Bene Gesserit are secretive like that.

Ha!! I wish it was that cool.

RnRClown wrote:

Please tell us of a few gaming memories prior to or following this nun patrolled prison. Any last hurrahs before being shipped off? How about the first or the best video game memories after?
The sorrow is too much!

Before leaving... Probably Baldur's Gate 2. My first indepth RPG, which was actually a gift from a friend, and I played that a LOT before I left.
Got my own laptop in fall of 2003, I think, but I can't really remember what I was playing at the time. Mostly old stuff, or stuff I'd picked up in the bargain bin. Can't be sure. Adventure games from the nineties. Replayed a lot of favorites, too. Friend had recommended Daggerfall, but I bounced right off it.
Best video game memories once I had my own rig set up, the very first one I built (2005 I think?)... There was this phase in 2005-2006 during which I ran two accounts for MMO THe Realm Online and ran and sold dungeons, that was awesome. I'd picked up Oblivion in a Best Buy bargain bin when I flew back home (must've been 2006 or maybe even 2007 - so I was actually closer to 24-25 by then). Oh dear me, Oblivion, my first Elder Scrolls game, for real. Spent hundreds of hours on that one, probably cracked the 1k mark, but I can't be sure.

jdzappa wrote:

Having dealt with angry nuns in elementary school, I'd rather deal with drill instructors..

Why not both? -sheepish grin- A little nun-dispensed discipline builds character. Also helps with RUHEAWL/u. Life skills people.

IMAGE(https://gamerpick.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wasteland-1-The-Original-Classic-PC-Launch-Announcement-Screenshot-1.jpg)

Much better. Happiness is restored! Thanks, Eleima.

Baldur's Gate 2, eh? What a sendoff! I assume it's good as I have only played the original, and that was great. Multiple runs yet I've never got to the final battle, thus I never feel prepared to move onto the sequel.

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game, too. I only had the console version which had a levelling issue which made monsters all but invincible. Maybe it was a PC issue, too? Likely easily patched if so. Stoopid console!

RnRClown wrote:

Much better. Happiness is restored! Thanks, Eleima.

Baldur's Gate 2, eh? What a sendoff! I assume it's good as I have only played the original, and that was great. Multiple runs yet I've never got to the final battle, thus I never feel prepared to move onto the sequel.

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game, too. I only had the console version which had a levelling issue which made monsters all but invincible. Maybe it was a PC issue, too? Likely easily patched if so. Stoopid console!

I love Baldur's Gate 2, and I think it's far superior to the first one, but you know what they say, rose colored glasses and all.

The GameCube came out a day before my 18th birthday, so I was playing Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2, and Super Monkey Ball for two weeks before Pikmin and Smash Bros. Melee came out. Finished Pikmin in a single massive 16-hour session and then played Melee for about 6 years.

Eleima wrote:
Recreational Villain wrote:

^ Uh huh, sure... 'nuns'. Probably an NDA thing. Bene Gesserit are secretive like that.

Ha!! I wish it was that cool.

RnRClown wrote:

Please tell us of a few gaming memories prior to or following this nun patrolled prison. Any last hurrahs before being shipped off? How about the first or the best video game memories after?
The sorrow is too much!

Before leaving... Probably Baldur's Gate 2. My first indepth RPG, which was actually a gift from a friend, and I played that a LOT before I left.

Talk about diving into the deep end of the pool. My first few years of college were spent without a pc or console, but I was able to get my gaming fix at friends' apartments. I can't imagine having no access to games, then suddenly finding Baldur's Gate 2. It would be like discovering nirvana (not the band).

I imagine Eleima working out her cloistered pent up gaming desires with a chaotic neutral party that left a trail of destruction and broken npc hearts wherever it roamed.

Running Man wrote:

Talk about diving into the deep end of the pool. My first few years of college were spent without a pc or console, but I was able to get my gaming fix at friends' apartments. I can't imagine having no access to games, then suddenly finding Baldur's Gate 2. It would be like discovering nirvana (not the band).
I imagine Eleima working out her cloistered pent up gaming desires with a chaotic neutral party that left a trail of destruction and broken npc hearts wherever it roamed. :)

Bolded part was actually the other way around. But yeah, was definitely frustrating. And I missed Anomen something fierce.

Another who was 18 in 89.
I took the calculus AP exam ON my 18th birthday.

Played lots of Populous on the PC at home.
Played Cadash at the arcade with then-boyfriend. We were looking up old arcade games just the other day to show our son what "old-school" gaming was like (missile command, berzerk, Dragon's Lair, gauntlet).
And then at college, Prince of Persia on my monochrome laptop. I remember thinking how gory it was when we saw it on my roommate's color monitor. The reflection of the blood on the chopping blades!
Also during that year was Sierra's Hero's Quest which led to me being late to a final exam because I wanted to keep sleeping and told myself it'd be fine, I could juts go to an earlier save. Oops.

Eleima wrote:

Bolded part was actually the other way around. But yeah, was definitely frustrating. And I missed Anomen something fierce. :D

*sigh* I'll get the hang of reading one of these days...

I turned 18 in 1997. I got the N64 and a PS1 the year before. Played a lot of multiplayer Tekken 2 and GoldenEye 007, at least until I started getting way better than everyone else in my circle of friends and they lost interest in playing against me.

Tekken is probably my favorite fighting game series and Tekken 2 was a great entry in it. Only topped by Tekken Tag Tournament IMHO (I haven't played most of the latest entries). I haven't played it in years though but I imagine if I played it now I would probably find it to be very slow and clunky.

GoldenEye 007 was a game that changed the industry. It wasn't the first console FPS game and despite many peoples opinions it wasn't even the first good one (Doom on 32X was pretty good) but it was one of the first to really have mainstream success. I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes the last time I tried. It is a blurry muddy poor-controlling mess compared to modern FPS games.

Final Fantasy VII was a big game for me this year. Think I played through it twice. Similar to GoldenEye 007 I am totally unable to go back to this game now. Maybe if I tried one of the HD versions it wouldn't be so bad but the plot of this game is a real mess as well. I used to be a huge FF fan but this game sort of signaled the end of that for me. I feel that the 16 bit games held up much better than any of the early 3D era entries did.

Mario Kart 64 is another game we played a lot in multiplayer. Sadly this is the last Mario Kart game I put any significant amount of time into (haven't owned a Nintendo since the N64). I bet it would still be fun today. Nintendo was somehow able to get better looking results out of the N64 than everyone else so this game might not induce headaches.

Another game I had fun with this year was Blast Corps. Doubt it would hold up now.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was another decent FPS for N64 except for the fact that you were basically swimming through pea soup the whole game. Great control scheme though (look with the stick and move with C buttons, basically Southpaw) so much so that I always used something similar in other N64 FPSes and even used Southpaw schemes for years on other consoles until I finally ran into a game I really wanted to play on the OG Xbox that didn't have a Southpaw option (Deux Ex: Invisible War). This game didn't hold up a few months after it was released so there is no way it would now.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. OMG need I say more. Great then and great now. I have played through this game a number of times since then.

Star Fox 64. I was never a big fan of the SNES Star Fox but this version was pretty cool. Not sure if it would last the test of time though.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a very neat platformer. It was very frustrating at times though. Played this with friends and we passed the controller back and forth. Doesn't stand up anymore.

Riven is another game I spent a lot of time with. Played it co-op with a friend on his Mac. Doesn't stand up anymore but would be awesome if they were to remake it in full 3D with VR support.

Colony Wars is probably one of my favorite space shooters ever. It was a real visual tour de force for the time. Who would have thought that just adding some random particles would make such a difference? Doubt it holds up anymore but I would love to see it rebooted.

Tomb Raider II. This might be the 800 Pound Gorilla on this list. I wasn't a big fan of the first game but I loved this one. My friend Bryan and I were basically racing each other through it. We worked in the mall at stores right next to each other so we saw each other almost daily and could compare where we were in the game. Doesn't hold up at all.

Another game I had fun with this year was Blast Corps. Doubt it would hold up now.

I actually played Blast Corps the other night, and you'd be surprised how much fun it still is. I honestly think it's one of the few games on N64 which aged well. It's dumb, simple fun, and it didn't try to push any 3D boundaries too far. It could have existed as a 2D game, but used the N64's technology really well.

Goldeneye, on the other hand...At the time, sure, it was amazing. But go back to that game now and it feels absurd by today's standards.

And regarding Turok, have you seen the recent PC re-release? I played the game a lot on N64 and loved it (I was about 10 at the time), so nostalgia might be clouding my vision, but it's not bad! I was impressed how playable it was with a keyboard and mouse. You still have that obnoxious fog, and the mazes are still annoying, but they've made some great tweaks here and there. It honestly feels pretty good to play, even today.