Fatal Frame

2001, Age 19

A group of high school friends and I had a trend of meeting up for an evening of D&D and then a night of survival horror games. Of all of them, Fatal Frame is by far my favorite. It's a shooting game that doesn't involve guns, and has a great high-risk-high-reward structure (the closer you let the ghost get before snapping the photo, the higher the points!).

It's also a game I am drawn to over and over, and have a tradition of playing each Halloween to attempt to level up enough and conserve enough film to survive the dreaded Last Night (haven't succeeded yet). I think the whole camera leveling structure and having to take good photos is what makes it feel more replayable to me than some other games in the genre, even if it's just the illusion of having some sense of creative control.

Yoshi's Island

2005, Age 23

Even though it came out 10 years before, I didn't get a chance to play this game until I was in my 20s. All the better, too, because I think I appreciated it more. The biggest memory I have of this game is how its stylistic art, with its crayon-y background and colors, complimented what the technology was capable of so much better than the first Mario World.

That, plus the focus being on Yoshi (and his kin) as the main character, and the awesome music (which still gets stuck in my head from time to time)

Tetris Worlds

2006, Age 24

There are some games where story is intricately woven through the gameplay, some games where story is a cinematic experience isolated from the gameplay, some games where story is just tacked on, and some games where the presence of story is so baffling that it actually detracts from the gameplay. Tetris Worlds provided me with the insight that adding story doesn't necessarily improve a game.

All I wanted when I picked it out of the used bin was a version of Tetris for my PS2, so I wasn't expecting the ridiculous "narrative" and "setting." Though it startled and confused me, it didn't make the game any *worse,* aside from a distracting little thing bobbing around on the side that may have been a character (for an explanation of the story of this game, see Wikipedia). Eventually, though, the thought of the story made me embarrassed to even play the game.

Maybe someday, somewhere, someone will draw out an elegant and relevant story for Tetris. This game did no such thing.

Joust

1990, Age 8

The draw to Joust was simple for me: you got to ride an ostrich! And the enemies were riding vultures! Awesomesauce! My young brain at the time was not as accommodated to simple twists on conventional traditions, like jousting in the air instead of on the ground, so the novelty of the idea delighted me.

I also remember Joust having a distinctive weight to the controls, and in spite of the primitive graphics and NES controller, I felt like I was manipulating a heavy beast just from the way momentum worked with turning around in mid-air and landing while you were flying at a fast clip. It made the simple world feel very real.

3-D World Runner

1989, Age 7

Most of the things that delighted me about this game were visual. The perspective of going into the world instead of sidescrolling was novel to me for a platformer, and I loved the idea of trying to reach what was depicted in the background (even though they never got closer).

I also felt an incredible sense of freedom with this game, which is interesting since you are constantly moving forward on a rail, so in actuality you are quite limited. It was a combination of the endless horizon and the fact that you could (seemingly) move to the sides to an infinite degree. It seems the game used every trick it could to create the illusion of freedom under its constraints, and it it did so very well!

I also remember thinking the 3-D in the title was referring to the fact that you were moving into z space, and also being baffled by the weird janky color mode which young-Lisa-logic assumed to be "night time mode." It turns out you could actually play this game with 3-D glasses, hm!

Clocktower

2000, Age: 18

My first experience with Clocktower came after a tradition established itself with a group of friends from high school. Every time we'd meet up to play D&D, we'd end the evening with some survival horror game (Silent Hill was the first). I can handle most survival horror. I cannot handle Clocktower.

Jaime, the friend who introduced me to the game, was baffled. The graphics were horrible, Scissorman wasn't THAT scary...how could this game throw me off so much when I was fine with the likes of Silent Hill?

It was two things: the randomness in not knowing when or where Scissorman would appear, and the ABYSMAL controls. This was a first generation playstation game, using point-and-click movement with a d-pad. There was such a disconnect in the controls that it actually worked in favor of the game's scariness.

First, Scissorman shows up randomly, so I'm already on edge, and then when he DOES show up, it's nine levels of panic just trying to get your damned character out of the room and to a safe place. It doesn't matter that Scissorman lumbers more slowly than an old school zombie because half the time you end up accidentally moving TOWARDS him in the panic to try and get away!

Limitations serve the game no better than in survival horror, I think

Soul Bubbles

2008, Age 26

The most impressive thing about this game for me was how well married the interaction was with the medium. The act of pushing around a little soap bubble using the stylus felt incredibly natural and kind of magical.

One weird thing about Soul Bubbles is that you're not controlling the thing on the screen, you're controlling a thing on the screen who controls the other thing on the screen. The fact that they made a potentially tricky indirect interaction feel so intuitive speaks wonders to the amount of playtesting that must have gone into this.