Another game that I played extensively at a friend's first, didn't get it for myself until well after we got a Gamecube for Melee. I'd sadly missed Mario 64 entirely until the DS remaster, so going from 2D Mario to this felt incredible. I still think FLUDD is one of the coolest "main mechanics" in a Mario game, and I'd love to see him make a comeback.

I know there's only a few levels total, but I really liked how big and sprawling they felt. It was also nice that they (sort of) felt like real locations on a resort island, like a beach, amusement park, village, etc. Obviously there's still wacky Mario contrivances, but it felt more thematically cohesive than most Mario games. The voice-acting for Bowser remains hilarious, and the final boss was really not what I was expecting but certainly novel. I don't think I've ever gone hardcore enough to actually 100% this game, those blue coins did turn me off it. But I always enjoy just breezing through this game getting the main sprites in each level and beating Bowser!

I'd only seen friends playing Warcraft II before, but my oldest brother was pretty into them. He really loved this when it came out, and eventually installed it on my PC too. I think I may have already started playing WoW when I finally played this, so it was pretty rad seeing the characters, locations, and abilities that I knew from that and where they originally came from.

The different factions are interesting and unique, and I really liked how different their campaigns felt too. Arthas's downfall and turn felt like a more fleshed-out version of the Kerrigan plot from Starcraft, and I enjoyed getting to know more about the Horde since I was an alliance player in WoW. The build to the final battle at Hyjal felt really epic. Solid game, I started replaying the game on the remake in 2020 but didn't stick with it. Still want to go back.

I wasn't really aware of what MMORPGs were when this got announced. Fortunately the same neighbors that had introduced us to Super Mario RPG and Kingdom Hearts were, and were very excited that the next Final Fantasy would be one. My brothers and I got interested after hearing more about it, and gave it a shot a little ways after release. Unfortunately I found it a little impenetrable, even though I believe it was more user-friendly than plenty prior MMOs. Getting to choose from classic FF jobs and focusing on that, teaming up with other players to fight monsters and all, that all sounded fun. I also liked being able to subclass to create different combos. But the pace of leveling just felt too slow, and too dependent on finding groups of people to always be doing stuff with that I didn't stick with it for too long. I know plenty of people sing the praises of some of the expansions, and with the Trust system they've added I often think about trying to give this another fresh shot. But my free time isn't what it once was these days and my backlog is only growing, so it's a little unlikely. WoW a couple years later is what really got me into MMOs, and then FF XIV (ARR) came along and was exactly what I was looking for.

I remember when Oblivion came out, and a number of my friends got super into it. I don't think I'd heard of Elder Scrolls before that. I got it to give it a try and got a ways into it before getting too bored and dropping it. I saw other people online having that reaction, and the response was always: "You should totally try Morrowind, it's much better." I was curious enough to give that a shot too, hoping Oblivion was just the less-interesting entry in the series. Morrowind was definitely better, but it really solidified for me that this series was not for me. The quests at least felt a little better to pick up and then explore how to complete them, still didn't love the first-person gameplay. Characters and story just felt too drab and lifeless to really hooky me. Of the 3 Elder Scrolls games I've played, this one probably seemed like it had the most going on, but I still couldn't stick with it after a handful of hours.

First seeing the TV commercials for this, I had no idea what to make of it. I was right around the age where I was less interested in seeing the new Disney movies coming out (didn't help that their 90s renaissance was petering out and they'd be in some doldrums until Princess and the Frog), although I was a big Disney's House of Mouse fan still. Combining them with Final Fantasy-looking characters (and actual Final Fantasy characters) sounded like a real strange mix. Fortunately our neighbors who were even more into JRPGs than we were got it and absolutely loved us, told us we had to try it. Try it we did, and yeah it was 1000% my jam.

I don't know that I'd really played many action RPGs before this, mostly just stuck to turn-based/tactical ones. The notion of still picking your attacks/magic/items from a little menu in the corner but while freely running, jumping, and dodging around was just the coolest shit. The platforming segments felt a little awkward, especially before getting high jump or glide, but I got the hang of it.

I loved Sora immediately, and he's remained one of my favorite video game characters ever since. The main story was kind of hard to follow as a 10-year old but I got the broad strokes of it. And it helped that the Disney worlds were mostly based on movies I was already a fan of. The ending was a real trip, and I had no idea where the story would go next.

The combat started out pretty simple but as you got more abilities it started to feel really special. Boss fights are extremely memorable, especially towards the end. The 1v1 with Riku is probably my favorite still. Loved the coliseum, especially just how long and varied the Hades Cup was. And the reveal of 1v1-ing Sephiroth at the end was awesome.

Great game, kicked off one of my favorite all-time series. 2 and 3 definitely surpass, but this one is still a joy to revisit. I can't wait for 4 to get a release date so I can do a nice trilogy playthrough to refresh (maybe throw in BBS too!).

My brothers and I had loved Dark Forces, but been a little disappointed by Jedi Knight (outside of the wacky LAN multiplayer we enjoyed). When my oldest brother got ahold of this though, he and I had an absolute blast with it. The gameplay felt extremely refined, and for a long time it had our favorite lightsaber combat ever. The story was interesting, and I loved seeing a post-ROTJ Luke as a Jedi master. The force powers felt great to use, and platforming around levels as a Jedi was terrific. Lots of fond memories, probably the high point for the series. Jedi Academy has equally fun gameplay, but was never as memorable to me as this one.

I only played bits and pieces of this at friends' houses when it first came out, and it always seemed cool but intimidating as someone so much more used to Link's Awakening on the Gameboy. After we bought Majora's Mask at its launch though, my brother decided we should go back and play OoT proper and picked up a cartridge. I still prefer Majora's Mask by a good margin, but I can't deny what an incredible game this is especially for Nintendo's first 3D Zelda game. It keeps to the Link to the Past formula pretty closely, but the time travel storyline is a terrific twist on it. Seeing how the world falls to pieces in different ways in Link's seven year absence was a real trip when first experiencing it. The dungeon designs are mostly great (I even don't mind the Water temple, although it was very confusing on first playthrough), and the world felt huge to explore even if now it seems pretty quaint. The day and night cycle was also really impressive to me, and the lock-on targeting made the adjustment to 3D combat so much smoother than many contemporaries. It's definitely aged a fair bit, but it is absolutely still one of the great games of all time, and a pivotal point for the medium as a whole

Master Quest seemed like a dope idea to me when I first heard about it coming out, and I had to try it since I felt like I'd really mastered OoT at that point. The child dungeons went fine, and even the forest temple, but I hit a real wall in the fire temple. Tried it for quite a while before giving up and moving on. I finally came back and beat the whole game on a fresh file years later, and it was a fun time. I'd enjoy seeing this done with other games in the series too.

I'd really loved the original Star Wars Racer on N64, so my parents got us this one when they saw it at the store. It was a big improvement on the technical side, but it didn't grab me quite as hard as the first one. I may have seen Attack of The Clones (the first time I realized as a child that movies could be not good) before we got this game that cooled me on Star Wars a little, or maybe I'd just fallen off racing games by the PS2 era. Anyway, still played it for a while, podracing is still a pretty novel type of racing and all. And I liked getting to whiz by stuff on various Star Wars planets.

This was probably the first Sonic game I'd played since Sonic 3 & Knuckles, so I was thrilled to see it make the jump to 3D. The 3 different gameplay styles were really interesting, as was the splitting of the story into the Hero and Dark halves. Shadow's edginess was very funny to me even as a kid, and I liked the attitude in Sonic's voice-acting. The story is pretty bananas, but I like Sonic games that way. I think the gameplay hasn't held up too great today, but I still have a lot of fond memories. Music is pretty great too, the hip-hop tracks on several of Knuckles's levels are wild.

I think this was the first Silent Hill game I actually beat (I went back to play SH1 proper after), and what an unforgettable experience it was! It's truly amazing what Team Silent were able to do in the early days of the PS2 here, with such an incredible atmosphere and look to the game. The few characters we have are all fascinating in different ways, and the game rewards multiple playthroughs (especially if aiming for different endings) to really absorb the story. The gameplay is pretty classic survival horror stuff, but I was pleasantly surprised how easy I found the melee combat to work with. Boss fights are far between but incredibly memorable. Never before had a game scared me so much but had me absolutely compelled to keep playing. An all-time masterpiece, I don't expect the remake to improve things all that much but I'll check it out.

As a Spyro-loving kid, getting this with our new PS2 for Christmas was a dream come true. After Final Fantasy X this was probably my most played those first few months. A 3D platformer collectathon with PS2 graphics was just the coolest thing to me. Learning how to do rolls into long jumps, or punching off ledges then spin-jumping to gain height was super fun. The game was pretty charming too, I found Daxter really funny and all the colorful characters you meet were neat. The fisherman saying "OOH, here comes a big one!" has been burned into my head since 2001. Definitely got a little confused and lost in the later levels, I thought the game started stronger than it finished. But I still had a darn good time.

I think I was a little dramatic as a child (I guess a lot of us were though). I'd been absolutely thrilled with our PS2, didn't feel like I was missing too much not having a Gamecube. I thought Luigi's Mansion was cute when playing a store demo, but didn't exactly rush out and buy it. When I first played Melee at a friend's house though, I was unbelievably hyped up by it. I couldn't believe how smooth it looked and felt compared to the N64 game, and the humongous expansion in roster. Not to mention adventure and all-star modes. I remember going home after playing it and just feeling crushed that I couldn't own it and play it myself. I was probably morose about it for several days.

A whole video game console wasn't exactly something I could purchase myself as a 9 year old, it usually had to be a Christmas or birthday gift. I think I begged for a Gamecube on my following birthday, but since we'd just gotten a PS2 for Christmas my parents said we had to hold off. Fortunately the following year my birthday was close to Wind Waker's NA release, and there was a console bundle my parents got for me. I loved that game too, but I just had to buy Melee as soon as I could, and I played the absolute hell out of it.

I certainly don't think I appreciated at the time how tight the controls were in this game, and how much potential it would go on to have as a competitive game. I happily moved onto Brawl when that came out, but around the time of Smash 4 I remember breaking out Melee again to play with roommates at the time and I'd forgotten just how well it holds up. I think I've probably played Brawl the most, and I really like Ultimate for just how expansive and varied it is, but Melee is obviously tough to beat for best in the series.

I was a pretty casual Simpsons fan when this came out, always made me bust up when I did watch it though. Not sure why we bought this exactly, I may have just tried a demo at a store and come away liking it (I'd also never played Crazy Taxi). Anyway, it's pretty fun, the main novelty is seeing the geography of Springfield and where they decided to place things relative to one another. The character voice lines are funny, and I got pretty good at a couple of the stages. Variety in cars (from the show) was also cool.

It absolutely blew my mind when we bought this and I realized it was a turn-based Harry Potter RPG. I must have played the story of this over and over, I thought it was so cool. Exploring the castle and grounds felt great (especially the secret passages), collecting the cards and optional spells was a treat, and I appreciated how much of the story they were able to fit in. It was often unclear at first what spells worked best on what enemies, but I eventually learned the patterns. The memory test in Charms class always drove me up the wall a bit, and a couple boss fights felt really punishing (especially the last one). But this is a pretty awesome GBC RPG