This list encapsulates the PC games that I grew up with - titles that weren't always the latest, but they ran on our humble setup and goddamn if they weren't some of my most revered gaming days.
My first co-op experience, played in tandem with my brother on a 386. Bub and Bob are some of the most memorable sprites I know. It's charming, but gets fiendish as shit, and it showed me how rewarding teamwork in gaming can be.
I was always a spectator with the Sierra games, but goddamn I loved them. For the first time, I was seeing games that weren't a total abstraction of reality. The fiction was something my mind could explore and expand on, even though most of the writing would have gone completely over my head.
Essentially my first racing game, also played alongside my brother. Only this time we were pitted against AI tipped suspiciously in favour of the titular (and non-fictional) driver. Kickstarted a love/hate relationship with frustratingly cheap AI that endures to this day. I was rubbish at the game, but after my inevitable disqualification it was always thrilling watching my brother duke it out with Iron Man. A desperate bid for both of us to finally see the elusive next track.
I watched some of the Lucas Arts adventure games as a kid, but for whatever reason they never left the impact Sierra managed to. Space Quest's intergalactic high-adventure shit was a goddamn dream, and at the time the humour was far more apparent than Police Quest. Can't explain why, but there's something about the third one that really endures.
Doom's an obvious choice, but what can I say? That shareware floppy of Knee Deep in the Dead ($5 at Clint's Crazy Bargains!) kinda changed my world. Wolfenstein sparked something in me for the genre, but Doom pioneered atmosphere. To this day it still has the ability to fill me with dread. And by the same token, it still has the ability to make me feel like a fucking badass.
Mario Kart for the shareware generation? Probably. It also marks some of my earliest efforts at being shitty at cart racers. I was usually relegated to sabotaging AI head on - the fact that I could even drive the wrong way seemed pretty noteworthy at the time.
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