I'm sick of thinking about decisions and choices and figuring myself out. Instead, here is a list of the top 13 games that changed my life as a child and continue to affect my personality and integrity at 25 years. Please keep in mind this list is organized CHRONOLOGICALLY and not in order of most influential to least or vice/versa. I've also taken the liberty of excluding such games as The Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Space Invaders because of course I played those. Everybody did. For most of us it was a school requirement. Also, the number of computer games I played as a kid is ridiculously immeasurable. But these select games rise above the other hundreds of arcade, RPG, text-adventure, combat, strategy, board game, and adventure games I spent my days playing from the old Mac in my dad's office on rainy afternoons. And most evenings. And some mornings.
1. Lode Runner
This is the first computer game I ever played at home. Basically, you are armed with a jackhammer and you go around busting holes in the brick for robbers to fall into so you can grab their gold (making you a robber robber). The brick is creepy because it regenerates after about five seconds. The robbers can usually pull themselves out of the hole the first time, but if you set two holes next to each other and the robber climbs out of one hole just to fall into the next hole, the brick will regenerate onto the fallen robber and smash him dead. Unfortunately, once a robber is killed, he will reincarnate and fall from the sky anywhere on the screen. This can be used to your advantage or not. You can run, climb, fall, and swing across wires. To reach the next level you have to touch the ceiling of the screen, which won't be available to you until all the gold is retrieved. I remember beating my dad's high score on a Sunday afternoon when I was seven. My whole life changed. My dad never played Lode Runner again.
2. Zork
I was a huge fan of the text adventure game genre. I had about thirty-five games, each with their own folders of saved games. I had a stack of printer paper I kept underneath the desk that I charted maps on and wrote magical words from my various weathered, worn, tattered, shiny, and vellum scrolls. I almost put Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as one of my top influential games, but Zork I'm afraid wins over just because I had to play Hitchhiker at my neighbor's house, but I played Zork daily at home and was eaten repeatedly by grues because my lantern ran out of oil. I never finished Zork and sometimes attempt it online in order to procrastinate figuring out my life. Has anyone ever figured out how to beat this game? At least Hitchhiker had a hint system when you got stuck (HELP: 1. drink alcohol 2. pick up tea and no tea 3. place tea and no tea in potted soil with babel fish still in ear 4. take towel from Ford Prefect)
3.Transylvania
Transylvania was the new age in text adventures--screen shots! I could actually see the vampire before it sucked my blood! It somehow wasn't as scary to run into an angry penguin horde on Transylvania as it was to run into a monkey grinder on Zork when I didn't have a cartoony image to ease my nerves. Although, I do remember a bloody dagger and a noose that I would have rather pictured in my head than seen awkwardly pixelated in black and white. I remember the game would beep when an enemy popped up without warning, usually when I was trying to pick up the bread without dropping the cheese because my inventory was too full.
4. Carmen Sandiego
Not only did I watch the television program daily ("Do it, Rockapella"), but I was a pro at European Carmen S.D. As long as I had an atlas and a couple encyclopedias to guide me, I dropped all kinds of anvils on Carmen's henchmen. I was no gumshoe. Actually, this game usually got pretty boring. But I guess I know my European geography somewhat better than I would have otherwise.
5. King's Quest I
Oh King Graham. You dolt. I hated this dude sometimes. I always accidentally walked him off narrow stairways or into lakes and he'd give this horrible tinny "aaaaaaaaah" that sounded like Minnie Mouse being sucked up a vacuum cleaner. Then the fated pop-up box appeared suggesting I save more often and would I like to Restore, Restart, or Quit? I loved this game because it was a text adventure with more adventure and way less text. But the typing commands were still ridiculous: "take the damn troll's money" I AM SORRY. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND "damn", "troll's", "money". YOU DO NOT NEED TO INCLUDE ARTICLE "the". CAN YOU REPEAT YOUR REQUEST, KING GRAHAM? "make love to troll" I AM SORRY. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO TO THE TROLL? "kiss troll" THE TROLL LOOKS CONFUSED. "kick troll" VIOLENCE NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING. "throw rock at troll" *ping!* KING GRAHAM'S SHOT IS DEAD ON. THE TROLL FALLS TRIUMPHANTLY DOWN THE HILL TO A WATERY GRAVE. YOU EARN 15 ADVENTURE POINTS. Sierra Games in general aren't really my cup of tea compared to LucasArts games, but I have to admit that King's Quest was a forerunner of adventure gaming to come and I owe much to my mother who typed in my requests when I was too little to know how to do it on my own. (Footnote: I also played Kings Quest V in me later years. Better graphics made King Graham's red hat look even stupider.)
6. Dark Castle
It doesn't matter what gaming console you're using or what game you are playing on said console--the only way to kill bats is with rocks and it's pretty damned hard. I hate bats. But I loved Dark Castle and spent hours not catching the ropes and running hard into enemies and never actually completing whatever the purpose of the game was. But I always remembered to play the game on Halloween and Christmas because in the opening foyer of the game, a Christmas tree or a Jack-O-Lantern would magically appear. I never knew computer games were real enough to follow calendars and celebrate holidays. That in itself made Dark Castle one of the most influential games of my time.
7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Finally, LucasArts games came into my life at the young age of....seven? Eight? In any case, I loved not having to worry about what to type because this new game format let me point and click on objects and I only had to decide whether I wanted to look at it, pick it up, talk to it, push or pull it, fight with it, etc. You could still die a lot in this game, mostly from fighting Nazis. I finally saw the movie and figured out how to use the red cordon to smash a hole into the library in Venice and after that I quickly beat the game. Again, pixelation can be a terrifying thing and the only thing worse about seeing the Nazi choose poorly and turn old to dessicated in seconds is seeing it happen in 16-bit color with tinny arcade-style music in the background. *shivers*
8. Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Suedo
I actually don't remember exactly where this one is placed chronologically. I just remember spending hours searching the caves and being introduced to my first Monty Python's Flying Circus allusions. This was a weird game, a bit of a forerunner of Myst I think people might say. A lot of exploring and finding different puzzles that sometimes open new parts of cave. This game was also built in HyperCard if I remember correctly, so HyperCard needed to be installed properly to have it work right. This is one of those games I still dream about sometimes and wonder if I could beat all the puzzles now, with my new adult brain.
9. Loom
And finally! A new LucasArts game! Loom changed the way I lived my life. You are Bobbin Threadbare and you are on a search for your mother. So you go around to all the different elders and creatures of the forest saying, "I am Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?" And his mother ends up being a duck. Or something. I just remember getting freaked out by some of the graphics and thinking for the first time that computer games can really be beautiful, even in 16-bit color.
This game was cool because you learned different spells on your magical flute and could make tornadoes and sing people to sleep and all kinds of things. Link's ocarina is a direct plagiarism of Bobbin Threadbare's flute. There's so much of this game I've forgotten. I would give a finger off my left hand to be able to play this game again. Heck, I would give a finger off my left hand just to meet somebody who also happened to play this game and just talk to them about it for a while. I don't why people grew up playing such sucky games as Dr. Mario and Final Fantasy when games like Loom lurked for us all in the shadows, secretive and seductive and mind-altering.
10. The Secret of Monkey Island
And here it is, folks. The number one most influential game on my life. This game defines who I am today and my little sister and I have had long and serious discussions about how playing and loving this game is requisite for anybody either of us considers marriage-worthy. BOTH of us have actually prolonged rocky relationships just because the guys had had some experience with Guybrush Threepwood and his desire to become a pirate. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies have nothing on this game and I swear they even plagiarized the game some when they were writing what good parts of the scripts there are. I spent an entire Primary Program rehearsal at the local stake center writing down ideas from behind a pew on how to get out of the cannibals' hut. I have music tracks from the game on my iPod and I actually listen to them.
I am not ashamed of my obsession with this game. I rejoice that I know the one way to actually kill Guybrush in the game is to drown him and the only way to kill ghosts is to spray them with root beer. I used to fantasize about being Guybrush's love interest, Governor Elaine Marley ("When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice") and I still laugh at all the strange and various uses for a limitless supply of breath mints and the almost ridiculous lack of uses for a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Actually, I used to have a crush on Otis as well, and my sister and I would laugh and laugh when we found out you could free a rat in the prison cell next to Otis first and Otis would be so upset you went through all the trouble of carrying grog (which eats through metal mugs so you go through three or four by the time you get from the pub to the prison) and then let out a RAT before him. I swear it's funny and totally worth it.
The first Monkey Island is also cool because it has a lot of random close-ups of the characters, little cut scenes that show off just how good LucasArts had come with graphics since Indy and the Last Crusade. The best is the close up of the Navigator's head Guybrush carries around with him to get through the labyrinths of Hell to LeChuck's evil ghost ship (the portal to Hell is a giant monkey head in the middle of the jungle). Seriously. And for the people out there who only played the 3rd and 4th Monkey Island that have come out in the past decade or so, shame on you. Those are equivalent to the new Star Wars compared to the original Star Wars. In other words, they are incomparable. In other words, the new ones suck big time. In other words, I can't let go of this game. This is the meaning in my life. This is my inspiration.
11. Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
And huzzah! There's a great sequel! This time, Guybrush is officially a pirate and he even got himself some fancy clothes and some facial hair. The Guybrush from the first game was very naive and innocent. People told him he looked like a flooring inspector. This bearded Guybrush is still pretty naive, but he's deluded himself into thinking he's pretty tough and worldly. He's sarcastic and selfish and impossibly gullible. He carries everything from spit-soaked maps to very large dogs in his pockets and is still after Elaine Marley who is impossible to find. The end scene of the game shows the evil arch nemesis LeChuck as Guybrush's bully older brother and the whole game appears to be the figment of a little boy's imagination at a creepy carnival (reminiscent of St. Elsewhere's conclusion that Howie Mandel and the rest of the doctors were merely a figment of an autistic boy's imagination with his snow globe).
12. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Though not quite as fantastic as Monkey Island, Indy and the Fate of Atlantis is another game that changed my life and made me a better person. It's the same format as the Monkey Island games except this one is actually really cool because at one point you can decide one of three paths and actually play three different games, a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure story. There's nothing like an old computer graphic Harrison Ford whipping Nazis and digging up artifacts. In fact, this game could have made a good movie....what with the fancy Atlantis sewer systems and the making of orichallum that would give you the power to become a god (which of course the evil Nazi scientists greedily abuse and thereby reach their predictable demise). There's a sassy redhead that Indy has a delightful love/hate relationship with, too. Very sexy. This game taught me how to siphon gas with a hose, too, so that's also influential.
13. Myst
And then LucasArts stopped making great adventure games (Grim Fandango and The Dig are fun, I admit, but they are a dying breed and can't compare to the old classics), so I think it was Sierra that tried bringing the genre back with Myst and then Riven or Raven or some other game that was really only worth playing if you cheated with the three hundred page manual and hint guide that came with the game. The graphics were great for the day....it didn't even matter if you were lost because the scenery was so pretty. I remember just staring at butterflies flying around for an hour because I had no idea where the hell to get this certain code to get to the top of the redwood tree. Myst doesn't have the tongue-in-cheek humor of the LucasArts games I love, but it was interesting and challenging and I even read all the journals in the library and managed to have a crush on the thinner of the two evil brothers who left video messages all over the island. Did I ever beat Myst? I'm pretty sure I did. Dang. Did I? What happened in the end? Maybe we still have a cd of it downstairs somewhere. But I'd probably need ClassicMac to boot it up. Can't I download that somewhere? And whatever happened to great computer games? And ShareWare? What sort of horrible age are my children going to grow up in without these experiences?
Well, if you weren't sure how nerdy I am before reading this ridiculously long post, now you know. Top 13 games I played before I was 13. The end.
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