Favorite games

This list is ordered by design, not because I prefer one game over another, as most of them not even belong to the same genre. I didn't have a chance to play many of the console games since PC is my platform of choice, but as a kid I used to own different consoles such as Atari 2600, NES, Game Boy and Sega Mega Drive 2 and played some arcade video games too.
 
This list is work in progress and so some games might come and go, but I will try to merge comments with other titles if possible.

List items

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  1. Quake

  For most people Doom or Doom II defined the genre, but for me Quake was one of the first FPS games. Though I did play many of the earlier shooters such as Wolfenstein 3D, only Quake makes me come back for more even after 14 years of its release. The only modern game that deserves in my opinion to be called a Quake successor is Painkiller.

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  2. Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

  Back in the nineties I've spent many nights destroying every single tree, gold mine and oil blur in single player campaign. For whatever reason I was more concentrated on harvesting as many resources as possible than actual story of the game or even war aspect. Since then I've adopted a pretty silly strategy of playing RTS games: get all upgrades first and hope that the opponent won't strike first. Thanks to that, I can barely win against PC in any sort of skirmish in modern RTS games.

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  3. Mortal Kombat II

  This was my first game on Mega Drive 2. I remember how I came home, picked up some video game magazine with cheat codes and made the game play itself. Of course the best part was playing it against my friends, who didn't have a chance to practice and so I beat most of them easily. Even tough MK3 was better in some aspects, I never did like it as much as I did like MKII. Years later I had a chance to play MKII on an arcade machine and it felt like the game was a real bitch and AI was cheating all the time. Still, the Mega Drive 2 version defined fighting genre for me (yes, I don't really like SF).

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  4. Shining Force II

  I had a faulty cartridge with this game. Even after replacing the battery several times, it couldn't hold my saved data for more than 4 hours, so I had to have the console turned on all night and while I was in school. To bad that I figured that part about battery after I've been through about 1/3 of the game. Quite possibly it was my first RPG also (I have some memories of something like Wizardry or Might & Magic), so all that leveling up, getting better gear and new party members excited me a lot and that battery bit was really frustrating and annoying. Still I enjoyed the game much.

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  5. Beyond Oasis

  Another good example of game being bitch to me. I believe I've played the Japanese version of this game, so I had no idea what the story was all about. As I didn't own SNES and didn't play Legend of Zelda on NES until later, this game was like a breath of fresh air for me, as looking back on my quite impressive Mega Drive collection I don't feel like playing most of those games. I believe I took this game from a friend and had it my possession for quite some time, but eventually I had to return it and completely forgot the title (which was The Story of Thor for Japanese release). I've finally played it again several years ago (this time in English) and a chance to actually understand the story in greater detail. Thanks to the game's map system I wasn't lost even the first time I played it, but actually understanding what the hell is going is more exciting most of the time.

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  7. Streets of Rage 2

  TMNT II didn't define the genre for me for long time, since in about half a year I saw SoR2 on Mega Drive. SoR II was more brutal, had fantastic soundtrack, great visuals and original cast of vigilantes (well, it was my second beat'em, so I didn't know that most of them follow almost the same rules). First part of SoR which I played years later seemed like a dull game compared to SoR2 and SoR3 which did bring new stuff to the table, was still less enjoyable than the second part. SoR2 is probably one of the best 2D beat'em ups consoles ever delivered (compared to the butchered Final Fight/Final Fight Guy on SNES both SoR2 and 3 are real gems).