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This little game was the seedbed for my interest in East Asian history, which led to a BA in that subject and my current endeavor for an MA along the same lines.
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The ultimate version of one of the greatest PC games ever coded. You can lose yourself in this game unlike anything else you've ever tried, which is well and good if you don't have term papers.
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Want to create your own communist police state? Now you can!
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If you happened to be about twelve years old in 1999, this was the coolest goddamn game on the planet. We rented this from Blockbuster and I remember "losing" it just so we'd never have to return it. Best scam I ever ran.
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As much as I loved the original Shogun, that was my best friend's game. I had Age of Empires II on my family's computer, and it taught me the joys of RTS gaming at an early age. I loved playing online in ridiculous Lord of the Rings-themed servers, or in a faux-paintball game with janissaries.
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As much time as I've dumped into the numbered entry into the vanilla Final Fantasy series, that total doesn't even scratch the time I put into Tactics. The story has more depth than any three-dimensional games in the series, the combat is engrossing, and I managed to buy it when you could still find it new for $15.
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The island of Vvardenfell is one of the most evocative settings ever assembled. This game is probably second only to Civilization IV in terms of time spent playing on my list. It taught me there are more ways to do fantasy settings than the knights-and-damsels paradigm, and that you can make up for a lot of shortcomings if you tell an interesting story.
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The first video game my parents bought for me. Technically it was the 3-in-1 combo with Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet, but Mario was the star of the show. This was the first virtual world I explored repeatedly. I've come back to the original Super Mario Bros. many times in the last twenty years, but have yet to beat it. One of my goals this year is to remedy this.
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A lot of things about this game have had an impact on my relationship with the medium. It was, well, a fucking weird Japanese thing that appeared at a point in my life where I was mostly into PC strategy games. Releasing it in the United States was an experiment by Namco, and it was priced accordingly at $20. As such, it marked the first time I identified and chose a smaller, price-differentiated game over other options available; in effect, it was my first "indie" game. It's also one of the most exuberant games ever made, with a great sense of style and a soundtrack that has yet to be overtaken by a long list of sequels, each of which has had diminishing returns for me. It's a game that makes me smile just thinking about it, probably the reason that while I've been able to part with a lot of PS2 games in trades over the years, I will be passing this one along to later versions of myself.
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I was probably allowed to play Grand Theft Auto III at too young an age, and Vice City was in the same boat. But whereas I was not compelled to finish GTAIII until a decade after release, I put in the time on Vice City. I did most of everything. I did the ambulance missions. I did all the real estate nonsense. Never did find all the cocaine packages but maybe someday I'll go back.
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There are other Nintendo games with golf mechanics. None are as good as the mighty Mario Golf on the N64. One of my fondest memories of my dad was him hitting a hole in one out of the blue on a Yoshi-shaped golf course. One of the last things I did with dad and my two brothers before moving out for college was getting in one final round of Mario Golf with the lot of them. The real difference maker is the swing mechanic; in later Mario Golf games the meter just moves too damn fast, whereas this one has a speed that feels just right.
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This is college for me. College was a perfect time for Rock Band as everybody was in close proximity, and everybody was usually down to (drink and) play some Rock Band. 2 had a fuller roster and better customization options, and therefore received the bulk of my time, but honestly this could just as well be Rock Band 1, 3, or The Beatles Rock Band. I had a hot minute where I tried to relive Rock Band fever in 2017 and it turns out finding the right collection of plastic instruments for the right platforms is a nightmare now. I regret not buying Rock Band 4 new as the price has now gone through the roof and it shan't be reissued.
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I bought a Wii right when it was relevant, in January of 2012, largely to play Skyward Sword. I'll defend that Zelda game but it has warts. Super Mario Galaxy, the second game I bought for the Wii, does not. They solved 3D Mario's camera issues by taking control away from the player, and expounded brilliantly on a fairly simple idea: what if we fiddled with gravity a bit? It also features one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time. Galaxy 2 might be a better game, but I have warmer memories of the first entry.
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