I grew up on the 90's consoles, so the early going was mostly Sega Genesis with a bit of Super Nintendo thrown in. PS1 was definitely the dominant console for me, as it expanded my horizons a great deal.
As far as the actual games for Genesis: Maximum Carnage is probably the one that stuck out the most to me. Unfortunately, I could never beat it but I had some fun times watching my dad struggle through it and eventually finish it. At the time we seemed to prefer playing as Venom. My young mind thought it was so cool seeing Super Heroes like Captain America jumping in to save us after getting his power up. That Carnage was a pain to beat, though. I remember being very excited when a friend in 2nd or 3rd grade let me play it, though come to think of it the game and console itself were pretty out of date at this point haha.
Sonic the Hedgehog, Terminator 2 Arcade (I think this is what it was called), Streets of Rage, and some other games were pretty fun back then. Oh, and Joe Montana Football. Can't forget about that. Thought it was pretty crappy back then that Joe was like the only guy who was named. Unfortunately my sound screwed up for my Genesis so the majority of my time with the console I played with no audio whatsoever.
Super Nintendo begun and ended with Tecmo Bowl and a little bit of Super Mario World for me. Never did get much into the console, but Tecmo Bowl was some pretty fun stuff.
Playstation is where I really got into games. Man, I don't even remember what my earliest games were but from the time had a choice between Syphon Filter and Metal Gear Solid really sticks in my mind. I was leaning toward SF, but I just so happened to have a demo disc with MGS on it. To put it simply the game was a revelation for me, a pretty good indicator of how, well, cinematic these things can be and it had (and still does) one of the best storylines in gaming. I think it took me a while to get to grips with the fact that you weren't supposed to run around gunning everything down but after I got the feel for it, saw the really cool scene where Snake takes his gear off in the elevator, and by the time the demo ended with the Darpa Chief scene.....well, it was an obvious pick.
In retrospect, maybe I was a bit too young for MGS (I didn't really get the "meaning" of Snake and Otacon's conversation about Meryl's butt among many other more important things, I'm sure) but the game really raised my standards of what I wanted out of games, I think. Also, I'm still a huge fan of the franchise to this day. I've literally grown into adulthood with it. The series is a big deal for me.
Legend of Legaia was another big one for me, being my first real RPG. Grinding was a chore, but the martial arts battle system was quite nice and the story, at the time anyway, was decent enough. Final Fantasy VII and Star Ocean 2nd Story were two other big games for me.
Edit: Don't know how I forgot them, but the Tomb Raider games were absolutely huge for me. Me and my dad used to tag team the games, starting with TR3 first and eventually the first and then second games. The puzzles could be pretty brutal at the time. |