Game you associate with a specific time in your life

I understand this is a very specific and kinda weird question, but basically, is there a game you just associate with a very specific time and you can't separate it from that time?

For me, I remember spending hours working on my dissertation, getting home very late and playing a few levels of Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack when I got back. It's not a particularly special game but it was simple dumb fun and absolutely loved it during the time but because of the time, it's so memorable and I have a good deal of fondness for it.

So, is there anyone else that has something like that. Like moving to a new city or getting a new job... would be interesting to see if anyone else has a game they just associated with a very specific time.

I beat Wario Land whilst sitting on the john. I was so excited I dropped an extra one.

Marvel VS Street Fighter, that was a height of my fighting and importing Japanese game obsession. The saturn version I had spent around 170 bucks through ebay, just so I could train on it in the afternoon and then go to the arcade at nights to fights in tournaments. When Marvel VS Capcom part 1 was release, it was not exactly the same excitement level I had because the Dreamcast version was dead on accurate. That's when I went down into a more casual fighting game fan, except for maybe SF3 which I did participate in tournaments for, but I never gotten into MvsC2 as much as everyone else.

I think there are probably a few. Mostly reminding me of places I used to live at, which I guess I can't say anything too interesting about. Sim Isle and Fire Power both remind me of two different places I lived.

I guess I inherently associate Descent 3 with the Swedish island Gotland, as I was there on vacation back in 1999 and read all about Descent 3 in the game section of one of our newspapers, while sitting at the tables outside a kiosk (with a Sega Rally cabinet!) near the beach.

Aside from that I don't know, I don't really associate any games with any of the really formative experiences/events of my life.

I associate Bioshock 2 with the time I had acute diarrhea. I would get off just long enough to find an audiolog, jack up my speakers then dash for the loo.

Most recently I have this weird association of playing A Link Between Worlds and marathoning Six Feet Under. So now if I hear ALBW music or the theme to Six Feet Under, I immediately think of the other thing.

Resident Evil Series

- Had good memories from playing the game, I would play them all the time.

- I liked managing my resources wisely.

-It was a pretty scary game at the time. I liked being taking by surprise.

- (I watch porn and I bet you watch porn too) The game got just nasty sometimes.

The early pokemon games, Mario 64, a myriad of Gba games such as metroid fusion and Super mario world advanced 2 (Super mario world), as well as Kingdom hearts are all highlighted time stamps of the best parts of my childhood, all the way up until my early teenhood.

More recently I asscoiate Infamous second son with the death of my 9 year old dog. I played most of the game before any problems arose, but when I was nearing the final parts of the game stuff went down quick and we had to put him to sleep. I finished it afterward, and the event drastically affected my disposition toward that game. Infamous second son is now synonymous with the first time in my life I've had to deal with the death of a loved one.

Rock Band defines the period of my life when I just got out of high school and when I went to college/married my wife years later. I thought I played a lot of games during that time, not really, I just played a lot of one genre which was Rock Band and a little Guitar Hero.

High School is Halo 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas as my friends and I played them all the damn time. Lockout best multiplayer map of all time, and I wish more games had Terrorist Hunt type modes like RS:V had, played the hell out of those two games.

I met a lot of life long friends when I brought my Dreamcast with Mark of the Wolves and SF3 Third Strike to college.

There is good and bad.

Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 2 harken back to the headiest of heady days of my youth. NBA Jam, also.It was good times. ♥

Then around Goldeneye and Resident Evil 2 is when things all turned to shit, family shattered, everything fell apart, all the rest of it. :(

I.........played a lot of Runescape in middleschool. I'm sorry. I also associate sum 41 with that game, because, being in middleschool, I listened to terrible music.

Kirby Super Star with grade school, what an absolutely perfect game. Soul Calibur 2 with high school because that game was really fun when you knew absolutely nothing about how fighting games work.

I associate Star Wars Battlefront 2 with the summer after 7th grade. My friend and I played far too much split screen of that game, but of course those were simpler times when the idea of playing online was foreign to us.

My late teens / early 20's was all MMO's. Dark time in my life man. Dark age of camelot and WoW. Oddly enough, i met some of my best and longest lasting friends from those.

Hmm, one comes to mind.

Diablo 2: LoD. There was a summer break where me and at least one other friend were playing it online together. I remember going to bed at like 6 am every day, waking up at 3-4 in the afternoon, and playing it until bed. Rinse repeat. I don't remember the exact duration that this took place but it's a fond memory, and I like to imagine it went on for at least a month. Being young, temporarily freed from the shackles of school, not being forced into some stupid summer camp situation, snacks and soda scattered around the desk, and having fun.

Rock Band, among many others. Unfortunately most of the games tied to certain parts of my life really bum me out. I have some nice memories of older games from my childhood though. Sonic the Hedgehog and a school trip to France shall forever be tied together fondly.

Oh, I got plenty. Some of the strongest ones:

• Rock Band reminds me of my post dropping out of college, partying days
• Halo 2 brings me back to skipping class senior year with my friends and playing Halo 2
• Metroid Prime reminds me of the winter days when I'd come home from wrestling practice and groggily play Metroid Prime
• Super Mario 64 makes me think of the winter my family lived at a beach house up in New Hampshire
• and of course World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck reminds me of the time I set fire to our old house, just to watch it burn...

In High School I was completely addicted to World of Warcraft, so I'd associate that time in my life with that.

A LOT of Nintendo 64 games make me remember childhood - Super Mario 64, Battle Tanks, Super Smash Bros, and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to name the first few to pop in my head.

Edit: Oh, Shenmue is another one that comes to mind - when I was a kid, my parents would take me and my brother to our friends house all the time, and while we were there we'd just play that game a LOT. I remember the four of us would take turns playing in the arcade, and we'd go to the store to enter the raffle in an attempt to win a game console for our character's house. We'd challenge each other in the darts minigame, and occasionally we'd actually try to do the main story. Man, that's SUPER nostalgic to think of. It's not really associated with time, but more with the people I played it with. Whenever I think of them, it reminds me of that.

Halo 3 was my entire summer vacation in 2009.

Pokemon was pretty much my biggest passion from elementary school until the end of middle school.

Mega Man X and Super Mario World are two of the first games I ever played.

Fallout 3 was my drug for a very dark period of my life.

I played through Final Fantasy IX on a PS1 spliced to a 4 inch black and white portable tv while living in a homeless shelter.

Zidane and Co. were my only friends for a while.

SC2 with the first part of university. Not so much anymore. I can't bring myself to play it anymore outside of a game or two every few weeks. I loved it until the expansion. It's too stale and frustrating now. The expansion basically killed my enjoyment of the game. I played thousands of games of Wings of Liberty. Maybe a thousand of Heart of the Swarm at the most. The additions made to the game seemed misguided and have started to negatively affect the pro scene (Look up the 2+ hour games involving swarm hosts and you will understand). At the same time, Blizzard has been ignoring the pleas from pro players and the community to do something about the many more obvious issues (many stemming back to arbitrary patches that were done for no real reason. See the oracle patch and the mutalisk regen patch. Both of those units are problematic right now) and it has led many to quit the game.

I associate both BF2 and Oblivion with high school since I played both for multiple years during that time.

Skyrim with one of my parents getting very sick (they're fine now, don't worry). It came out right when I found out about everything. I played it for 3 weeks before mostly stopping outside of a half hour here and there. I logged over 150 hours in that time. It was pretty obvious I was in need of a distraction to get my mind off things. Now I can't play it with sound because the second I hear any music it brings back bad memories.

GTA: San Andreas with summer in general because I play it every single summer (I am playing it right now actually). It still holds up. Lots of fun.

1. Ocarina of time, I moved to Seattle in late 1998, I was freezing, it was a cold I have never experienced before and during that winter I bought Ocarina and now every time I think about Ocarina and especially when I hear the music I remember that cold.
2. Super Street Fighter 2 SNES a whole Summer vacation in 94 I must have spent the whole time playing Vs with my best friends.
3. Battlefield 1942 I was working with a group of gamers at a place with excellent PC's so after work we would all stay late Clan Up and play for hours (we moved to Planetside eventually). I have never been able to capture the feeling of those long gaming nights.

The last 3 weeks of my summer vacation 2006. My mother went on a trip so I hook up my 15 inch crt into the living room downstairs along with my ps2. I played nothing but Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King from the time that I woke up till I went to bed and it was GLORIOUS.

Childhood (1997 - 2009) - Legend of Legaia, Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears

In 2009 I had a realization that I had never actually finished any of the RPGs from my fond childhood memories without the use of cheats. To me it symbolized the fact that I never did anything unless I knew it was 'safe' and without much risk to my easily-upset mind. So that summer I sat down and had a no walkthrough/cheat-free run of those games on my PSP. It was great to finally get the realization that if you were really interested in a game and spent time on it then even super hard bosses are killable (I was a really poor player when young and tough bosses were the bane of my existence). For me these are my 'classic' games.

Undergraduate (2010) - Resident Evil 4, Dead Space 1 & (later) 2
I had another in 2010 where I decided that I will be brave and face my fears of horror games. I completed Resident Evil 4 HD and Dead Space 1 and 2 (the latter when it eventually came out). I know RE4 isn't much of a horror game but this was also somewhat of a challenge for me at that point in my life. I remember playing RE4 on the PC with my brother when I was younger and just dreading the house defence bit with Luis Sera. We turned the difficulty to easy at that point and finished the game. When I played RE4 in 2010, I had completed it on normal. These games will always remind me of the fun times spent playing games as an undergraduate.

I learned how to type faster and better in Middle School by playing near constant Black Hawk Down (and eventually Joint Operations) multiplayer over one Summer. You learn to type a lot faster when being shot at than by following a random string of words in those typing programs the schools used.I joined a multiplayer group for the first time with that game, and we had a guy who made co-op missions and that whole experience was easily my best multiplayer memory now. Also I was a beast of a Littlebird pilot and did alright with Blackhawks in Joint Operations. Fun times.

The WWF AKI games on N64, Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy took up a large chunk of my childhood when they came out. I spent so much time playing those games I'd be concerned to know the overall time. Time splitters 2 filled a similar role when I was 13 in the summer of 2003. Had a blast playing it with friends and even by myself with bots. I believe there was an insomniac statistic that tracked how long you had the game on in one session, I believe that number was something crazy like 14-16 hours and other then to eat and use the facilities very little of it was "dead time".

The one that comes to mind more clearly is my time with Fallout 3, early February in 2009 I started spending an obscene amount of time with the game. I bought the game on launch when it came out the previous year but I didn't play as much as I could due to having a part-time job and other things to contend with. In the winter of 09 I no longer had the job, so I had a lot more free time and family problems reared their head. At this time I believe my mother was diagnosed with hepatitis C a few years back and was just diagnosed or would in the course of my months long playtime with the game diagnosed with Leukemia, the medicine she had to take for both these ailments pretty much made her tired 24/7, so she was no longer able to do most things she wanted too or needed to do. So it was a lot of my dad and myself taking care of her, and my father to deal with the terrible medical ills of his wife took to heavy, black out drinking. When this happened, it was sorta up to me to help my mother and periodically check in on my dad to see if he hasn't fallen and hurt himself. My brother made his presence scarce and didn't know how to deal with it.

Fallout 3 helped calmed down the side of me that went "holy shit, what the fuck do I do?" and for the most part kept my mind occupied and calm when I wasn't helping my parents with what they needed. My desire to escape mentally from all that I was contending with was made possible with this game and I was able to immerse myself in the games world. Every day was a sense of wonder and awe, curious as to what I would find in the capital wastes that day. Despite some of the issues I have with the story, writing, and lore bits of Fallout 3 I was able to overlook it for the sense of calm it was able to bring me and allow me to just calm down and not run myself into the ground with all the shit I was dealing with at the time on the daily. Ultimately I think New Vegas is a much superior game, but Fallout 3 came at a period in my life where my ability and desire to get lost in a games world was so strong that I could swear I WAS there. For this reason the game will always hold a special place in my heart. That Broken Steel ending nonsense still makes me annoyed as shit to think about to this day though.

I associate WoW with (almost) everything that went right and wrong in my life after I started playing it in 2006.

Oh yeah.

Basic School - Total Annihilation
Middle School - Yuri's Revenge
Shitty time - Gears of War
College/Now - XCOM / Mass Effect / Dark Souls / Borderlands 2

Still play those last games I listed.

I associate World of Warcraft with the years when I reached the bottom of my depression and how it later woke me up and made me realize things and got me the heck out of my depression by means leaving the damned thing and the sad people playing it every day since launch behind.

Yea a couple. I played a hell of a lot of PGR2 in High School. Mainly the time trials since they were endless. So after a stressful day I would often unwind by just doing laps in PGR2. Halo multiplayer also brings back pretty specific memories depending on the Halo game.

There was a two-week period of having nothing to do and just waiting for the graduation ceremony after the final exams in school (and after knowing I had passed them quite good), and I decided to play Vampire:Bloodlines in that time. The great feeling of freedom after 13 fucking years of school allowed me to get immersed in that game and that world like it never happened before or after. So it'll always hold a very special place in my heart as it really was the perfect fit for one of the most carefree periods in my life.

I played persona 4 around when the endurance run was happening, which was a couple months before I graduated high school. That game has a very melancholic but happy bitter-sweet ending to it, similar to my feelings of graduating and moving on with my life. I guess that's why it really stood out at the time.

Not a specific game, but the summer I bought my 360, after a three year hiatus from gaming, was pretty incredible. I enjoyed almost every game I played. The ones that stood out for me were Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Gears 1, and perhaps Fable 2 for a little while. Also, on my twenty-first birthday, I spent the whole day with my girlfriend and family, then that night I started Bioshock Infinite. The game's first couple of hours were mind-blowing; it was just the cherry on top.

Playing Final Fantasy VII smells like the house my grandparents were living in when I was 10ish.

Mario/Sonic - Youthful Happiness

Metal Gear Solid - Becoming a Teenager

CS - Late Highschool

WoW - Depression

Everything else is too recent to look back on.