What game had the biggest impact on your life?
What game had the biggest impact on your life?
If you dive deep into the Nostalgia Quarter of your brain, what do you find?
I had the pleasure of moderating a panel for the Games industry in London this week. It gave me the opportunity to lead with the ice breaker question of: “What game had the biggest impact on your life?”.
There was also an explainer: It need not be a game you even played. Perhaps it had an impact for another reason?
Here I also remember a great variant of this question that my good friend Chris Melissinos poses (This one will give you all the nostalgia feels). The starting point is the same: Find in your brain that game that you have memories of, perhaps from your childhood….
When was this?
Where were you?
What was the occasion?
Who was in the room with you at the time?
How were you feeling?
Take a few moments, close your eyes, and try it out. And if you’re not much of a gamer yourself, why not try it with a memorable piece of music? The first CD, vinyl or tape that you owned?
I have two answers
When I answer this one myself as part of my ‘flavour slide’ when presenting, I tend to flip flop between two answers depending on my mood at the time.
The first would be the classic Star Raiders on the Atari 400. This game was released in 1980, which meant I was 3 when it first came out and it was a few years after that before I got to experience it! However, I was hooked. Space combat. On an actual COMPUTER (you needed to use keys as well as the joystick). Yes, you really did need to read the A4 sized hole-punched manual.
My Dad had got the computer second hand with a bunch of games. Even though some of the other games were somewhat more familiar and easier to play (games such as Pole Position and Centipede), something about the more involved gameplay of Star Raiders grabbed me. You had to deploy strategy on the Galactic Map to protect your bases and defeat the enemies. You had to refuel and repair. There was more to it than just blasting enemy spaceships. This was art!
I later retrieved it from my parents’ loft and the thing still ran (somehow), although the spring-loaded cartridge slot catapulted across the room when first opened. I later donated everything to the National Museum of Computing.
My second answer, and one I can remember the details of a bit better, would be Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64. I was 10 when it was released in 1988.
Before the days of downloading games in mere minutes (There are over 100,000 games available on Steam at the time of writing), games came in boxes. Small boxes. BIG BOXES. Matte boxes. SHINY BOXES. As a result, my first memory of this game was actually seeing that shiny box and it forming a key part of my memory of buying the thing.
I was a geek and into Dungeons & Dragons, so the combination of the shiny box and the game being based on D&D was a perfect storm. I spent many, many hours on this one. The fact it came on four double-sized discs was a memory in itself and speaks to the sheer amount of content in the game. I never completed it, but re-rolled characters by myself and with friends many, many times to explore Phlan, its dungeons and surroundings. You explored the first person 3D world, went on quests and battled enemies (in a neat turn-based way).
I remember the box. I remember the discs. I remember my C64 set up on the white desk in my bedroom. I remember the panic when I accidentally ran over one of the discs with one of the wheels of my chair, but thankfully no damage was done.
This also inspired me to want to MAKE games. As this game had clear RULES, like D&D itself. Characters had attributes. So did items. A dice was rolled to determine results. The was a system behind all of this. A system that could be represented in code.
I’ve had a great love of RPGs ever since, although still trying to find one that scratches my turn-based RPG itch in the same way as my first love.
What about you?
Just writing this has made me realised that my two picks above just aren’t the whole story. Numerous other memories of games have come flooding back, and depending on my mood on any given day, might now take the top stops! Such as Ikari Warriors on the C64 for all those two-player co-op experiences… no, stop, must publish!
Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear the game that impacted YOU the most! And, of course, the story behind your experience…
