bazooie's Top 10 Favorite Games!

M.E. has a fun post about her top 10 favorite games (defined on a purely subjective level). I really identify and agree with her observation of how her favorite games correspond to personal connections. It didn't take me long at all to come up with my top 10. So here are my top 10 favorite games in order of hours played (shortest to longest)

Maniac Mansion 2 - Day of the Tentacle: Frozen Hamsters! Time Travel! George Washington's Wooden Teeth! I fully credit this game with my knowledge of computers. My desire to play this game gave me the motivation to learn how to bend DOS to my will in order to get this game to play correctly on our 386 with 1 MB RAM. Oh how I bent it.

Space Quest 2: Vohaul's Revenge: I was the primary player, but it took my whole family to solve this game. I still remember my Mom, sisters and I spending weeks trying to figure out how to cross a bog with a man-eating monster.

We <3 Katamari: Boldly, definitely foolishly, I took this on my honeymoon with a PS2 as an attempt to get my new wife into games. Now Lindsay and I have fond memories of the music, and learning how to steer a katamari together (after much arguing on which direction to go). This game enhanced our communication skills!

Toe Jam & Earl: I loved playing this as a lad with my friend Jason Marlis, and even now I play with Lindsay. It used to be so hard to resist the urge to open every unknown present! I would always end up scrambling the gifts and dying early. The randomly generated worlds, and focus on escape rather than combat make this game still fun.

Halo: I hated this game at first because it was so SLOW compared to the PC shooters that I played. But Halo magically broke down the 'nerd' wall, and brought my roommates and friends into the hardcore gaming world. We had late night house meetings discussing strategies on Blood Gulch, and went through hoops and hacks to play online. Joyous celebrations, and loud arguments all stemmed from our experiences with this game.

Street Fighter 2: This game changed my life. I had a competitive nature already, but when SF2 came out, it gave me a community and a vehicle to feed my competitive side (turned me into a monster!). Despite being 10 and 11 years old, Jason and I could hold our own. That fact alone broke down a lot of self-esteem issues I probably would have had, and changed my paradigm of what age meant.

ATV2 Ice Hockey: This remains the only game that I ever worked on that I continue to play. The Ice Hockey mini-game in ATV2 has the perfect proportions of skill and randomness to make for one of the best competitive multiplayer games of all time. Patrick Connor and I have spent easily over a thousand hours playing this game head to head, and it doesn't get old. He just left to work in Maryland. I miss you, Pat.

Diablo 2: This was my first RPG ever, and it sucked me and my life away. This game taught me how to be efficient with my time. Seriously. I was the biggest slacker before Diablo 2. In fact, I stopped playing it because in the grand scheme of things, it really was a waste of my time since I didn't play with friends. Eventually, Pat and I had bots play Diablo 2 for us, and sold items on Ebay.

Counter-Strike: When I started as a tester at Crystal Dynamics, I was invited to play CS with the dev team during lunches. They were good. I sucked. As co-workers laughed and sent me screenshots of my avatar getting knifed and blown to bits (I'm looking at you Benny and Billy), they had no idea how much my internal competitive monster was stirring. I played religiously until I was top tier at work, and I was hooked from then on. Useless Trivia: I am one of the guys getting yelled at in the legendary song by Kurt Harland, The Terrible Mr Grimshaw.
 
Tekken Tag Tournament: This game truly is a part of me. It's competitive, it's technical, and plain fun. Without Tekken, I wouldn't be in the industry, or wouldn't have half the friends that I know and respect now. I've easily spent thousands of dollars and hours on this game, and I love it despite it's many flaws. It has become a method of communication between myself and anyone I play with: all over the US, in Korea, and in Japan. I started playing because it looked cool, and I continue playing because of the community.