Brave Fencer Musashi

1998, age 16


This game represented a growing-up moment for me in terms of how I perceived games.  I somehow developed this notion as a child that a game on one console always had an equivalent game on another console.  I do not know where I developed this logic, but it was a basic assumption I held for ages.

I was looking for something Zelda-ish on the Playstation, and picked this up as a rental thinking it might be a good bet.  Afterall, it had a sort of cartoony sword-wielding character in a fantasy setting.  The gameplay, of course, was entirely different - a tunnel-ish linear path with no deviation.  I was bummed, but this game taught me two things:

1. No, games aren't guaranteed parallels across consoles
2. When I thought I wanted something "zelda-ish," I immediately thought of setting, character, and aesthetic.  Playing this game taught me that what I really wanted was a sort of open-world gameplay with lots of side quests.  I think after this experience, I started thinking about games more in terms of how they played instead of how they looked.

Tagin Dragon

1990, Age 8

I have always loved dragons, and when I was a little girl, games where you played as the dragon were few and far between.  Thus when I saw this game at the rental store, I was very excited about.

This was also the first game that so disturbed me with its depiction of violence that I was turned away from the rest of the game.  The premise is simple: you play a dragon crawling around a maze with other dragons, and you have to bite them on the tail.  When you bite them twice, they die, and turn into a dragon skeleton before disappearing (as I have attempted to capture in the image).

Something about going for the step of showing the dead dragon's skeleton was too much for 8-year-old me, and I found its depiction unsettling.  This was amidst plenty of games with more direct forms of killing, and later games with guns and blood that don't move me at all.  It's certain subtle details that push things across the line for me, and this game was my first experience with that idea.

Silent Hill 2

2001, Age 19

Though I enjoyed this survival horror game all around, and though I thought Pyramid Head was a delightful monster, there is one very specific memory I have from this game that I learned from.

Sadly, I also find it rather embarrassing, and it definitely ages me.

It was when I first played it, probably at my then annual D&D and Survival Horror Game night with my old high school cronies, and I hadn't played very many Playstation 2 games up to that point.  The opening cutscene brings you in on the main character and ends with him staring into a mirror.  When I first played this, I sat patiently, waiting for the cutscene to continue.  My friend who brought the game had to prompt me that this was gameplay, and I was shocked and somewhat delighted when I moved my character around in what (at the time) I felt was cutscene caliber visuals.

Of course, looking back on it now, the graphics aren't so impressive.  But this stands out to me as the exact moment in my life when I felt the shift of visual fidelity in games, and subsequently the role of cutscenes.  Before, cutscenes were rewards.  They were breaks after long spans of gameplay that you worked for, and relaxed and enjoyed watching the characters rendered like you pictured them in your mind as you played the low-poly versions.  Now since the visual quality is more homogeneous between gameplay and cutscenes, they don't really fulfill that anymore.

Will I ever again experience that startled moment when the game surprises me with visual fidelity?  Who can say!

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee

2002, Age 20

If the NES Godzilla was an example in failure of fantasy-fulfillment, this Xbox fighter stood out to me as a resounding success!  It got straight to the core of what fulfills the fantasy of being Godzilla: duking it out with other monsters and knocking down some buildings as a byproduct.  I could really tell that every animation, every visual effect, and every piece of polish that went into this game served a unified goal.

I'm assuming there was some manner of single player progression, but my only experience was with the 4-player melee mode, which was just a big old monster brawl and tons of fun.  Whereas the NES Godzilla padded its (lackluster) monster vs. monster fights with tedious levels fighting small attackers that made you feel puny instead of powerful, this game jumped straight to the heart of things, and even when you were losing a fight you still felt like a big badass monster, since you were crushing your surroundings in the process of losing.

Godzilla: Monster of Monsters

1989, Age 7

When I was a little girl, I was a big Godzilla fan (as evidenced here).  I remember being very excited about picking up this game at our weekly Friday night rental store visit - I couldn't wait to BE Godzilla and stomp around and fight other monsters and such!

Unfortunately, playing as Godzilla was super hard compared to playing as Mothra.  Mothra could just fly around anywhere and shoot projectiles.  As Godzilla it was impossible to dodge anything, as he was so big and took up a lot of vertical space.  Fighting other monsters also left a lot to be desired.  I eventually reached a point where I HAD to play as Mothra if I wanted to advance in the game because of her superior mechanics, but I didn't WANT to be dumb ole Mothra.  I wanted to be Godzilla!

This was my first experience with a game where I felt forced to choose gameplay advantage over fantasy fulfillment, and it just broke any sense of immersion.  It made me sad.  Godzilla, I hope I am able to learn from you and not do the same to my players if I can help it.

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.

Illusion of Gaia

1994, Age 12

This game had a lot of things going for it to keep me entwined. I was most fascinated by its use of "real world" places in its setting, and when I encountered a place I did not know about (like the lost continent of Mu) I would seek to look it up and learn more about it. Something about the references to lost civilizations in human culture made the game feel particularly grounding for me.

On top of that, it had a great and varied story, and a pretty exciting transformation mechanic that served itself well for both combat and puzzle solving. It also had very lulling music, by which I mean every time I would go to my friend's house to play it while she watched, she would quickly fall asleep.

Adventures of Rad Gravity

1992, Age 10

The one thing I remember about this game was seeing it in the rental store, getting excited that the whole game would be played upside-down, and then being bummed that you only played upside-down in one level. It was a decent and silly platformer otherwise, but I wanted more of the goofy mechanic.

This probably marks the very beginning of me being intrigued by games with unusual or quirky game mechanics, so for that it is significant.

I can't remember for sure, but I think your robot spaceship companion betrayed you at some point? Not sure, I just remember reaching a point in the game where I literally had no idea how to progress, which made me abandon it with a bad taste in my mouth.

Friday the 13th

1989, Age 7

The biggest takeaway from this game was a simple use of sound design. When you were out wandering the park, and Jason was nearby, there was a little discordant tone that would play.

It was jarring and unsettling, and gave me my first feeling of sound-induced stress in a video game, which I don't think I experienced again until the radio in Silent Hill.

Mappyland

1989, Age 7

Mappyland was one of those games that I would frequently get on our usual Friday night trips to the rental store. It first captivated me because it was about a mouse and some cats, and I liked animals.

The thing that drew me back again and again was the music. It was addictive. It would get in my head, and I couldn't quite remember how one song or another went, and I'd have to go rent it again to be satiated.

I remember being delighted over how the cats were themed to each level (the tropical level with the huts, pictured above, was my favorite. I was so surprised and delighted when you got to go inside the hut! I would often draw pictures of this land). I was also totally in love with the happy little dance the kittens would do around the catnip lures you placed for them. Such a joyful 8 bit animation!

Gameplay wise, it was bizarre that you were safe from the cats if you were both on the trampoline, and it created very high stress situations of timing when to sneak off or onto them.

Flashback

1993, Age 11, then again in 2007, Age 25

When my brother and I rented Flashback, the box did not come with instructions. Not having the internet at our disposal, we had NO idea what the premise of the game was, which ended up giving it an irresistible mystique. The fact that our character had lost his memory seemed eerily convenient, and that shared quality of not knowing what the hell was going on really drew me in. I totally empathized with the character!

The most distinctive thing about the game was that the character animations were rotoscoped, so there was a weird fluidity to him as he ran, jumped, and hoisted himself onto ledges that gave the whole game a lot of character. Of course this sometimes lead to a series of humorous mishaps, as fudging the controls in stressful situations made your guy put his gun away when you intended to shoot it, turn around and climb down a ledge when you intended to run forward, or roll forward and off a cliff to your death when you intended to jump.

We took it all in good humor, though. The realism of the rotoscoping on the guy made the mishaps absolutely hilarious.

Snake Rattle n Roll

1991, Age 9

This may have been my very first simultaneous cooperative video game experience! I distinctly remember playing with my brother, and all the joys of working together and frustrations of accidentally killing one another.

I remember being very drawn to the world itself. I loved it, and used to imagine having adventures in the checkboard world inhabited by secret sewer covers, shark infested waters, and various kinds of pibbleys.

Geist

2006, Age 24

Oh, Geist. Poor Geist. Poor, poor Geist. This poor game tried so hard to appeal to two audiences: the FPS audience, and the environmental puzzle/adventure audience. In this attempt, I feel it excluded BOTH audiences.

I loved the puzzley parts, and the idea of having to use the environment in order to scare a person or animal enough so that I could possess them, but then I'd get to the shooter parts and was annoyed. I wanted to get back to the puzzle part! I imagine the shooter crowd was bored and annoyed with the puzzles, and just wanted to get to the shooting.

Columns

1992, Age 10

I first played Columns on the Game Gear, then the Genesis, and I still play it from time to time (purchased off the Wii channel).

The thing about Columns that made it stick to me more than its contemporary, Tetris, was how quick the reversals were (which came from groups of diagonals being counted). You could get yourself in a serious mess, and one fortuitously placed column could start a chain reaction to get you back on your feet.

It was difficult to plan these occasions but they were always welcome, and I always felt like they were my doing, not just random fate.

Hogan's Alley

1988, Age 6

I don't remember too much of playing Hogan's Alley, other than using the light gun. But looking at it in retrospect gave me two insights:

1) The game ONLY used "cardboard cutouts" of guys, never "real" people. Could something like that fly today? Imagine the training level in CoD4, only a whole game of it.

2) Reading up on it, its use of the light gun was described as a novelty. But I do not remember it that way. Young Lisa brain interpreted the light gun as a perfectly normal input device. We should remember the difference between a new experience and a novel one, and remember that what is novel to us (say the wiimote) can be viewed as something completely normal to a child that is learning it for the first time.

Excitebike

1991, Age 9

Just like everyone else who played this game, I ONLY played in the track-building mode. My friend and I would take turns building a track (while the other one looked away) and then handing it off to the other to play.

There was a certain delight in the creation, watching someone else experience your creation, and then playing something that you knew to be the creation of the person sitting right next to you.

Except when the friend would make an entire track of grass patches.

It taught me that cooperative games don't have to be synchronous nor symmetrical.

Set

2008, Age 26

This game hurts my brain. I find I can only focus on a particular set at a time, and it's usually easiest for me to pick out 3 that are entirely different than to try and find a common feature.

This game does not support playing with newbies and veterans at the same time (let's face it, Andy would have destroyed Cash and me, if he weren't being nice and letting us spot some sets on our own).

Once Upon a Time

2008, Age 26

My favorite card game EVER. The freedom of making up a story from scratch and using cards as a mere guide to one's imagination is quite joyful!

The trick is, you have to play with people who follow the improv rules. People who are more focused on the competitive part of this game than the cooperative one are no fun to play with.

Rock Band

2008, Age 26

Rock Band's awesomeness stems from how connected you feel with your bandmates. It is truly a game centered on helping one another out, and my favorite parts are saving a failed bandmate, and activating star power not to boost your own points, but to lift up someone else who might be struggling. Hooray for cooperation!

Super Mario Galaxy

2007, Age 25

My favorite thing about this game is that Nintendo figured out that "hey, there are some people who like to play games, but they have friends who maybe are not so good at playing games…or maybe their friends just like to watch….what if we find a way to let them be involved too!" I am the best bit collector ever!

Unreal Tournament 3

2007, age 25

I was nervous about playing this, as I hadn't played a PC FPS since Doom II, but I fell into the swing of things quite quickly.

The best thing, of course, about this game was the social context. Playing together in the bullpen as a form of stress relief was an incredible bonding experience, especially since most everyone played (even having never touched a FPS in their lives).

The fact that we were all together in the same room sealed the deal, as the physical aspect of shouting and cheering and people laughing in half-shock when I rambled out obscenities really connected us.

WoW-and-go-Seek

2007, Age 25

Okay, sometimes in World of Warcraft, I like to play hide and seek with friends, okay? LEAVE ME ALONE. It's really quite fun. There are a few house rules: you have to turn off visible player names, no stealthing, no tracking, no /target…but beyond that it's just regular hide and seek, except in WoW.

It even elicits similar effects of normal hide in seek, in that you find the perfect hiding space, then get all giggly and excited while you wait, then goddammit, you have to pee. I love to see what clever hiding places I can find in the virtual world...of warcraft.

I have at least one friend who is horribly embarrassed that I play this. "You're not advancing the game!" he fusses, "it's just a huge time sink!" Oh, yeah, like WoW itself isn't just a huge time sink? Hmph!

Peggle

2007, Age 25

This game introduced to me the incredible power of gratuitous, candy-like feedback. Who wouldn't want to play this after how good you feel when you get extreme fever?

When I'm feeling down, sometimes I just play a round of Peggle just to feel better about being alive.

Spectacle might be the least important of the Poetics, but it sure can release the endorphins.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

2007, 25

This board game is brilliant! It has so many tricksy, exciting elements. One is that you build the playing board as you go, drawing and laying down tiles to represent rooms of the house, so it can be different each time you play.

Another is how it is split into 2 phases...the haunting and pre-haunting, and how each time you find a new omen, the likelihood of the haunting becomes greater and greater. It makes each haunting roll more and more intense and exciting.

Lastly, the post-haunting game play can be vastly different each time, depending on a variety of circumstances (the omen that triggered the haunting, the room you found it in, which character found it, etc.) Plus, any game that has a traitor is fine by me.

To sum it up, it is extremely versatile and has great replay value!