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What's your gaming background?


Roald Adriaansen
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I am interested in knowing what everyone's gaming background (and current for that matter) is (and not just because I'm a games student :P Although it is partly why).

I got into gaming rather late compared to most, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't have access to, not until early 2000's did I get started, the most memorable ones being;
Empire Earth
Jack & Daxter series
Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle
Gran Turismo 3 & 4

A few years later in highschool a friend showed me Morrowind (which also brought me into modding and is one of the reasons I have pursued game development as a career), Rome Total War and EverQuest - let's just say I didn't sleep much for the next few months and to this day I still play the first 2 mentioned.
Oblivion followed but it never had the same impact on me the way Morrowind had.

Around this time I also discovered EvE, (2006'ish?) and I saw a world where anything went, this took up the majority of my gaming for the next several years and as of today I still play as a solo "semi-insane" pvp'er, all funded through my market manipulations/projects.
Civilization IV modded multiplayer (Fall from heaven) I'm don't even want to know how much time have been spent playing..

As I progressed into university gaming habits changed a bit, I actually needed to study (well a little at least :P) to get good grades, and also for research I discovered many games which I may have otherwise overlooked.
Along with EvE I needed an MMO which required less time intensive periods, which got me into World of Tanks and a little bit of League of Legends.

Company of Heroes game we run every now and then with many from the university and as an RTS is favourite currently on the market.
Gran scale Supreme Ruler 2020 and Europa Universalis 3 have also consumed massive amounts of time (both multiplayer).
The Witcher and Witcher 2 have become some of my most favourite RPG's, Witcher 2 truly impressing me.

Minecraft taught me that you should never judge a game before playing it, I probably spent thousands of hours on that.

Which was followed up by Dwarf Fortress, a game I have never lost more sleep over.

Other recent indie games that I love are AI War, Space pirates and Zombies, Magicka and Dungeon Defenders.

Now I'm also here ^^


What about all of you?
Jayle Trigger
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Back to the days of Chrono Trigger. For me, the most memorable game from way back when.

A few mentions of the past would be;
Lunar Silver Star Story 1/2
Tactics Ogre (SNES)
Final Fantasy 9/10
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4/6/7
Azure Dreams
Star Ocean 2
Uncharted Horizons 1/2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Theme Hospital
Valkyrie Profile 1 <-- Probably 2nd most memorable of the past...

MMO History: (As in played more then a month...)
Lineage
Ragnarok
Lineage 2
Aion
Rift
Star Wars: That new one with the Smuggler (2 months only though)

More recent mentions:
Rome / Medieval Total War
Demons Soul
Dark Soul (Backlogged though..)
Valkyria Chronicles
Tropico 1 <-- El Presidente for Life!
Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops/Peacewalker (Gotta catch em all... I need another one of these in my life.)
Monster Hunter (All the PSP ones.)
Left 4 Dead 1/2 (I still play this on PC every week, many hours have been spent here... and more will be spent. I really only play the co-op campaign, no versus.)
Dwarf Fortress (Awesome)
Aurora (DF version of a 4x Space game)
Elona (Disturbingly Awesome)
Liberal Crime Squad (Awesome)

There is probably more... but that is the list of stuff I remember now...
Josh Millard
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I fell hard in love with the NES when I was maybe seven, that started the whole thing. Family got an Amiga 500 a bit later, lots of fun, great-looking European games on that thing while it lasted. PC when I was maybe 14, discovered the internet and MUDs/MOOs with that, also fell in love with X-Com, tried my hand at making DOOM WADs. Start of several years in which I was primarily a PC gamer.

Quake deathmatch in college, then Counter-Strike and a side of Day of Defeat, glory days of LAN pickup games when there was always, always a couple servers populated on campus 24/7. Probably cost me a couple passing grades.

Got into roguelikes around 2000, fell hard for Nethack. Between those and X-Com I've got a serious love of turn-based games; various Tactics titles fit the bill too. (Been playing Valkyria Chronicles just recently, finally, and it's a nice twist on that genre.)

Came back to consoles a few years ago; lots of 360 stuff, PS3 more recently. I love survival horror more than the genre sometimes really deserves. But a lot of time goes to random indie PC/Mac/web games at this point as well.

Video games definitely a seriously definitive part of my creative and cultural history and perspective on the world.

At the risk of being gauche, I feel like this is a reasonable place to mention a blog I run, Mapstalgia, that's an open-for-submissions collection of people's drawn-from-memory maps of video games:

http://mapstalgia.tumblr.com/

It's been a hell of a lot of fun to curate; if you're inclined to try and draw something up, I'd be happy to see it in the site's inbox.
Scott (Admin)
RJ: Ratan Joyce
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Stone Age:
Super Marios, Tetris, Contra, many more SNES ones.

Bronze Age:
Raptor, Veil of Darkness, Alone in the Dark, SimCity, FF2/4/5/6/7/8, MUD

Iron Age:
Civilization, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Europa Universalis, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.

Modern Age:
Hundreds of MMO's that I can't remember.
ryan hofmann
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Bay 12 brought me here :)

I play dwarf fortress too.

My list:

Metroid
Super Metroid
Mario
Sim Earth (wasted many hours with that)
Civ 2-5
Age of the Empires 3
Star Wars Empire at War
Nethack
Dungeon Crawl

And many more obscure Rogue Likes

EDIT almost forgot the console games

Halo: All except Reach and 4
GTA liberty city 3 and 4
Pokemon (All)
Star Wars Battlefront

I can't finish this list

Currently
UFO Alien Invasion (Freeware XCOM)
Europa Universalis 3
Crusader Kings 2
Victoria 2 AHD

Done?
TOTAL WAR SERIES
Al White
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Late gamer myself, but: Civ III & IV, Age of Empires III, Age of Mythology, Starcraft, Elderscrolls: Morrowind, Neverwind Nights

What do they all have in common? They can all be played on my aging MSI Wind netbook! But, I do hook up to a 22" display.

Just downloaded Fallout this past week free from GoG. Looking forward (backwards?) to it!
Andrew Turner
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Populous, Railroad Tycoon, Civ (I, II, IV), Alpha Centauri, MOO (I, II), Panzer General, Imperialism II, X-Com, Europa Universalis (I, II), Wesnoth, Dwarf Fortress. Those are the ones I spent far too much time on and kept coming back to. I should probably also mention Elite (showing my age there)
Christopher Fowler
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I started with gaming back in the early nineties, when I was five or six years old. My first system was an Atari 2600 my mother bought at a flea market in the Bay Area, my games were the likes of Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Breakout. A year or so after that my brother and I were given Sega GameGears and a Sega Genesis. I started getting into platform and puzzle games like Columns, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bubsy. I really didn't know anything else.

Then after my parents got divorced and my mother, brother and I moved to Northern California, I got into roleplaying games. My mother didn't let me play Dungeons and Dragons like I wanted to, but she did allow games such as Traysia, Might and Magic, and Fatal Labyrinth. Then when the first generation of Pokémon came out when I was in the second or third grade, I got a shiny new GameBoy Pocket and a copy of Pokémon Blue. I'm still a Pokémon fan to this day, and most of the games I play are roleplaying games.

Fast-forward to Junior High in or around late nineties to the middle of 2000, a friend of my mother's gave my brother and I an old Tandy personal computer. With it came a copy of Space Quest II and Kings Quest III. I loved playing those games even if I could never get past the first few scenes. Then a classmate gave me an old PC with a PII processor, Windows 95, and copies of SimCity 2000 and SimLife. I was hooked on SimCity 2000, even if all I did at the time was build things then send the space monster out to destroy them.

Within the span of a couple years later my brother and I got another computer, and then another after an incident with SpySheriff bricking the previous one on a rainy Winter's night. It was a PIII that was capable of playing The Sims and Warcraft II. I also had gained access to the internet around this time, so I tried playing and roleplaying in a few MUDs as well.

Then came the induction of a GameBoy Advance into my gaming arsenal, and with it a Fire Emblem. It was the first game that had introduced me to the concept of permadeath, and I still play it to this day, albeit on an emulator. After that I was in High School, and I had gotten interested in roguelikes like ADOM and designing games with OHRRPGCE and RPG Maker 2000. I never managed to make anything until my times with Ren'Py years later, but that's another story.

After my graduation in 2005 I had managed to get into more modern online games, albeit dinky and indie ones like Illarion, RPG World Online, and Legend of Mirage Online. I also had started downloading SNES ROMs and managed to try out games like EVO:Search for Eden and Shadowrun. A year later I got into college and was prompted by the crowd I was in to try out games like World of Warcraft and Everquest II. I have since quit both of those games due to a general disassociation with that group, but I digress.

After some trouble with my mother and brother I moved out and into my own place a few towns over. Once I was able to afford the costs of internet I got back into gaming. I primarily played games like Mabinogi and Asda Story, MMORPGs and such. However, eventually I stumbled upon the beauty that is Dwarf Fortress. I was hooked, almost immediately, and have since begun attempts at making content for said game. Like the game development I did with Ren'Py, that is another story.

Fast forward once again, this time to a few years ago. My apartment and in fact the entire complex was being foreclosed upon, and I moved to a place my landlord owned a town or two to the north of where I was staying. Somewhere along the way I had gotten ahold of a Nintendo DS, and managed to get introduced to the Megami Tensei franchise through that. I still can't decide if I like Megami Tensei or Pokémon better, because I have such high opinions of both. I had also gotten a new computer and some parts, and have been able to play games like Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Civilization III, and Starcraft, all due to more acquisitions.

I also had gotten into the whole visual novel scene, my favorites still being Saya no Uta, Chaos;Head, Season of Sakura, LEAVEs, and Yume Miru Kusuri: A Drug That Makes You Dream. Once I had internet at my new place I got back into MUDs due to the circumstances at hand preventing me from playing more modern MMOs. My MUD of choice was HellMOO, though I also for a while played Cleft of Dimensions.

A friend I made here also introduced me to Fate, and I in turn introduced him to other games I got into at my previous apartment - Cosmic Break, La Tale, and Dungeons and Dragons Online - as well as Morrowind. And that leads up to this point where I find myself getting into Economies of Scale, this very game itself.

tl;dr I'm an all-over-the-place kind of gamer.
Nin Sandhu
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In the best chronological order I can muster:

Lego
Doom WAD
Chip's Challenge
Monopoly
Magic Carpet
Red Alert
Chess
Age of Empires
Red Alert 2
Fifa 95
Tiberium Sun
Starcraft
Halo 1
Halo 2
Worms
DOD:S
Left 4 Dead
Halo 3
TF2
Forza 3
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Chime
Monopoly Cities
Kinect
Battlefield 3
Joe Danger SE
Cian Kemp
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My first gaming experience was playing Ultima VII on my oldest brother's lap when I was around 7. I don't even remember what kind of computer he had - I just remember the old 5.25" floppy disks. Years later I went back and played the other Ultimas, but VII is still my favorite - probably due to nostalgia. Ultima VI was a close second, though.

Since then I've played probably half the games out there. Way too many to list. Most of the MMOs too.

A few that stick out over the years:

Pretty much all the old Black Isle series. Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment.
Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2
UFO: Enemy Unknown
Neverwinter Nights
Dwarf Fortress (that community brought me here :P)

Lot of the old MMOs too. Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane. Plenty more.

Just realized how old most of my favorite games are. Now I feel old :P
Marc Laird
RJ: MarcAFK

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Anyone here heard of a game called Imperial conflict?
I used to play that alot many years ago untill i got sick of the political agruments and backstabbing, man it was fun.
I used to like finding some backwater planets in teh corner where i could just chill and collect resources and play around with the markets.
The thread in bay12 forums talking about this game brought me here but i love good hard economic simulations like capitalism, also Alpha centauri and dwarf fortress get me rather involved.
D Patrick Michael
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I love DF as well.

I'm 31 years old and come from a long history of computers and gaming. Everything from text-based adventures and MUDs, to strategy games, puzzle games, etc. Let's just say I've probably played just about everything worth playing since the early 90s.
Hajji Pajji
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I realize this game is dead...... Because Scott left his children (again) and we've evolved into demons.... But I find it humorous that I've played the same games as others who love this game.....

My list:
SIM Life
SIM Farm
WarCraft 1 & 2
Kings Realm
Age of Empires 1 & 2
Colonization
Civilization 1-5
Nina Altsori
RJ: Nina Alstori
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Been gaming since age 5,

some of my favorite gaming experiences were on my older brothers C64, with Giana Sisters and Samurai Worriors (AKA Ronin) were my first favorite games, and also the first games I hacked as little kid other games I played were Barbarian, IK+, Wizball and Mutans!.

later we moved on to Amiga 500 of which I have a lot of games that I played growing up among my favorite games were Elvira, Civilization I, Elite II, Oil Imperium, Milennium, Ports of Call, Abandoned Places, Settlers, Knighmare, Lemmings, Sim City, Pirates!, Dynablasters, R-type, X-out, Pinball Dreams and my all time favorite platform game Turrican II. With the promising Amiga CD32 I loved Digger, Pinball Fantacy and Turbo Rocketi (a fun finnish two player game)

in the mid 90ties one finally moved on to PC, were I enjoyed games like Capitalism (I,II and+), ocean trader, Civ II, Alpha Century, Master of Orion II, Outpost, and later games Sims, Patrician III and Dungeons and Dragons Online.

With work and studies gaming have been put on hold for a few years, though once In a while I love cranking up the old C64 or my old PC that one kept around since the golden age. Still have the Amiga 500 too, but it need a new floppy drive to be back in functional order.


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