25 Important Games to my Gaming Background

This past Friday we had a really interesting thread going with all the Apex game designers about the collection of important games to your gaming life. I was pretty happy with the list I pulled together and the subsequent reasoning I had for each title, so I figured I’d save it here for re-sharing.

And here’s my off the cuff justifications for why I picked each of these. The games are, for the most part, in order of how they impacted me (to the best of my recollection).

Smurfs on Colecovision - This was the first time I made a character jump on a screen.
Super Mario Bros. - This was the first time i saw smooth scrolling.
Bruce Lee on Commodore 64 - This was the first time i felt expressive fighting.
The Legend of Zelda - This was the first time i felt like secrets were everywhere.
Metroid - This was the first time i really backtracked to accomplish some goal somewhere else.
Dark Castle on Macintosh Plus - This was the first time i used a mouse to aim, and loved the precision it added.
Woflenstein 3D - This was the first time i thought in 3D space in the back of my mind.
Street Fighter 2 (Arcade) - This was the first time i owned a noob, and really caught the competitive bug.
Doom - This continued to expand on 3D, and was quite scary at my age then.
Dune 2 - This was the first RTS i ever saw (Herzog Zwei not withstanding).
Quake - Oh man, we can aim up & down!
Goldeneye - This was the first real local multiplayer addiction.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - This was the first cozy 3D world, it felt soft and fantastic and dreamy.
Halo - This was the first serious competitive game. Friendships were made and lost at Xbox lans.
Starcraft - This was the first RTS with a ranked ladder.
Metal Gear Solid - This was a revelation at what a story told via a game could be.
Half-Life - A great campaign game for sure, but it’s on this list because it gave me Counterstrike.
Phantasy Star Online - This was the first global action MMO that hooked me. Playing through crude translators with people all over the world.
Starcraft 2 - This was more ranked ladder madness. Hit my personal best of Platinum as a Zerg main.
League of Legends - This was even MORE ranked madness, never got above Gold 1. I suspect I’m aging out of physically being able to compete.
Minecraft - Oh, games can be sandboxes? Let me throw nearly a thousand hours at making castles.
Destiny - This game is just PSO but with halo guns. Great fun over a decade.
Rust - All the panic of your first night in Minecraft, stretched out to a two week session. Paranoia while you sleep in real life. Intense.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - The Battle Royale mechanic creates highly shareable gameplay stories.
Escape From Tarkov - Presently at 1700 hours in an early access game, and I truly believe that extraction mechanics are the future.