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.

Tekken 3

1998, Age 16

A fighting game I was good at! Amazing! I fell in love with this game after the champion among my friends convinced me to play around, claiming they would go easy on me, and I totally handed his ass to him. CONFIDENCE!

This was a game a beginner could play with frantic button mashing and still hold their own against a veteran. That aspect was a big criticism of the game for many people I knew, but to me it was fantastic. It leveled the playing field, and the challenge in playing against new people came from their vast unpredictability. It was merely a different challenge to the game.