I should preface this list by saying that a lot of it comes from nostalgia and I'm well aware of that. If I played some of these games for the first time today, I probably wouldn't think so highly of them. But this list isn't about quality or what is the "best," this is just a list of the games I love.
This game is crazy simple. It's walk to the right and beat dudes up. I got this game at a swap meet when I was like 5 or 6 and I instantly fell in love. Friends coming over? Play Ninja Turtles. Saturday morning and mom's not up yet? Ninja Turtles. Saturday morning and mom's up and not watching TV? Ninja Turtles. This game is just really simple button mashy fun.
I watched a bit of Dragon Ball Z as a kid and kind of enjoyed it, so my nana bought me this game for the GBA. At that point, Pokemon was the main thing I played on the GBA but this game blew my mind. It was kind of like Pokemon in the way it looked, the way you walked through towns/interacted with people and all that, but leveling up different characters and fighting/shooting dudes was so much fun. I probably beat this game at least ten times when I was a kid, I just couldn't stop playing over and over to level my guys more and more. It was my first action RPG and definitely one of my favorites.
This is my favorite Gears game in the entire series. The movement is so fast compared to the other games and the online multiplayer is right up there with Call of Duty 4 in terms of how much fun I had with it.
I don't care what anyone says, I love this game. I love 50 Cent and I love G-Unit's music and I like games where you shoot guys and this game has all of that. Blood on the Sand is better than this game in pretty much every way, but I like this game more.
This game is stupid. It is so incredibly stupid that when you play it in a room full of your friends, you can hardly breathe because everyone is laughing so damn much. It's that dumb.
I love the Saints Row series, but this one is my favorite. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about this game that I love. It's just pure fun.
This game started something crazy in video games. Six years later, people still attempt to duplicate what this game did in terms of multiplayer, but none do it nearly as well. This was my first real online multiplayer shooter and will always be my favorite. My friend brought it over to my house and I started playing and sat there for about six hours straight without even realizing it.
I heard about this game from some kid in my class and he told everyone it was the best game ever, so I asked my mom for it. I got it and played it, and after I finished it, I finished it again. Then I finished it again. Then I did the Ada campaign. Then I did that again. I absolutely love this game.
Playing GTA 3 with my older cousin was the coolest thing ever. I remember getting the game at Target with him and taking it home and being blown away at all of the stuff you could do. Vice City and San Andreas are two more of my favorite games, but GTA 3 just sticks out in my mind.
I put this because I can't decide which game I like the most. I haven't actually played the HD collection, but the original games will always be my absolute favorite platformers.
I didn't really play Mario when I was a kid. I played my first Mario game when I was like 10 or 11 years old so my first side scrolling platformer series was Donkey Kong Country. My mom and I would play co-op and she was actually way better than me and it was crazy to me. The floating skull boss in the lava was the hardest thing ever but my mom could beat it like nothing. She doesn't play games anymore so this game and that whole experience are really really special to me. Oh yeah and the game itself is also super good.
I was pretty much the only kid in my elementary school who was super into hip hop and Gamecube which is kind of surprising looking back at it but that's not the point. The point is that this game is awesome. The single player story is really stupid but in a really cool way. The fighting is fun and the ability to throw Snoop Dogg out of a window or throw Busta Rhymes into a ring of fire or throw Method Man in front of a train are some of the best things you can do in a video game. This was one of the first games that I went through and actually beat over and over and over again to start over after I had already done everything.
OH GOD THIS GAME. It is so damn good. Monkey Ball was alright, but oh man Monkey Ball 2 is fantastic. It's such a simple idea and the game is really easy at first but expert mode in this game is one of the hardest video game things I've ever even tried. It's just so damn fun and challenging and pretty much anyone can play and enjoy it.
So like I said before, I loved Pokemon as a kid. This game was a dream come true for me and playing it with my cousin will always be one of my favorite video game experiences. The mini games were also super fun and I played them recently with a few friends and had a blast. This game is just awesome.
When I first saw my older cousin playing this I just about lost my mind. I absolutely LOVED 007 and the fact that there was a fun 007 shooter made me so incredibly happy. My cousin showed me a level where you crawled through vents and came across a guy in the bathroom. He then showed me that you could SHOOT HIS HAT OFF OF HIS HEAD and I completely lost it. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I instantly fell in love with this game. I don't remember this game for the multiplayer like a lot of people who freak out over it because I wasn't in a college dorm, I was five. The single player was fun and the fact that it was 007 was enough to make me freak out over it. My first FPS and one of my favorites.
The Pajama Sam series will always be near and dear to my heart because my first game memories were made with Pajama Sam. These games were simple but they weren't stupid easy and they were just really funny and entertaining. There's a certain charm to this series and all of the other Humongous games that brings a smile to my face even to this day. Growing up, I didn't really know how big these games were or how many people played them, but seeing how the first one has been remade twice proves that this isn't just a nostalgia thing, these games were actually awesome. This is the game series that got me in to Video Games.
The Pokemon series is special to me because it was my first RPG series. I loved Pokemon cards, I watched the show, I had a single Pokemon magazine that I read through at least once a week. I loved Pokemon. These games combine this thing that I love with my favorite genre of video game and make greatness. These games are all similar in gameplay and exploration, but there's just something about the feeling you get when you're at the Elite 4 with a team of six level 80 Pokemon that you raised yourself that makes me happy. Emerald stands out to me because of Rayquaza. I like Rayquaza.
There's just something about this game that I can't exactly describe that makes it one of my all-time favorite games. Part of the reason for that is probably because It came out when I was 14 and every game I played was awesome to me, but it's mostly because of the way this game makes you feel when you play it. This was my first Fallout game so I didn't really care about the change from the isometric view of Fallout 2, I just saw an awesome looking first/third person action RPG. I was so incredibly excited for this game before it came out and when I started playing it on launch day, I created my character, left the vault, and was completely blown away. I had played a whole bunch of open world games before this, but being told something along the lines of "find a city" when you walk out into a post-apocalyptic wasteland is super cool to me. I didn't actually know to go to Megaton, so I went out and explored instead of going straight ahead. I found a bunch of cool stuff and then was killed by a guy with a flamethrower and I didn't save so I was sent back to the vault exit. Normally I'd just turn the game off out of frustration from something like that, but this game is different. The atmosphere, the combat and the exploration just feel right and come together to make one of the best games I've ever played. I played New Vegas when it was released, but it didn't even come close to Fallout 3 in terms of my enjoyment. Like I said, I don't know what it is exactly, I can just say that I absolutely adore this game.
The racing is fun and the crash mode is the best one of the best ideas to ever be in a game.
I've played this game for probably well over a thousand hours at this point. I LOVE this game. It's so simple but it's just so fun and addictive. I'm ranked crazy high in all of the modes at one point I was like 69th in the world in pacifism mode. This game is probably the only game I would call perfect.
My nana got mad at me for playing this because the guys bled when you punched them a lot. That was awesome.
My cousin and I were the Royal Rumble dream team. Also Rikishi's butt move was awesome.
My mom and I completed the pokedex in this game. That is so cool to me.
