So, it took me a long time to find my favorite game for the Amiga because the version I played of Star Trek is not exactly the one you will find if you look up the 25th Anniversary game. What you’ll see is the updated pixelated graphics version of the game that released on Steam in 2015. While yes, it is still a dated game, the image stills are redone to be better suited for newer systems. It was hard for me to find because all I remember of the game are small snippets where you’d beam down the Away Team or the alien chick you had to appease before you could continue or solving the runic puzzle that took us forever to figure out. The image you see here is from the original game, not from the 25th Anniversary, but it is the same game. Also, there are so few images of the original out there which is why I struggled to find the right game.
Either way, my family is full of Trekkies (not Trekkers, Trekkies!) and we have watched/read/consumed tons of the series. I grew up with TNG but the original series still has some iconic episodes. And even as a kid, handing any of us a video game about Star Trek is going to be played. It’s not a question, it’s fact. And this love of Star Trek exists throughout my family. It has been a staple for generations! (No pun intended. Generations was a hilarious movie. “REMOVE PLANK.” “Number One, that’s retract plank, not remove plank.” “Of course, sir.”) Yeah, so this is definitely my favorite game on the Amiga ST. What can I say? I like my puzzles!
For many of us, this is where it all began. Prince of Persia in 1989 was a very interesting sort of game. It was a side-scrolling platformer which appealed to me because of its departure from other games. What makes it one of my favorites is more basic than people might think. It wasn’t really the gameplay or the compelling character. It was one of my favorites because it was developed and published by Broderbund Software. I knew of them because they had released Mavis Beacon, a popular keyboarding game for kids to teach them how to touch type. This company also released Loderunner, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Stunts! (A game many people don’t remember), SimCity, and Myst. Oh, how far the apple does not fall from the tree… Anyways, Broderbund had my number as I played all of the aforementioned titles. But more over, Prince of Persia was a fun and challenging game at the time. I’d spend so much time trying to get past different areas because platforming is hard! It was the first Prince of Persia game released and I was willing to take a shot at it.
Nick:
PC – 1980s: GATO
The only computer I owned in the 80’s was a Tandy 1000, and
the game I spent most of my time on was GATO. My uncle actually owned this
machine first (this will be a recurring theme – miss you Uncle Ken); but he
later decided he wasn’t using it as much as I would, so he gifted it to me
before the start of school that year. With it came a few different games, but
the tense submarine simulation GATO was far and away my favorite. There was
something oddly creepy about playing this at night with the lights off,
creating my own little Hunt for the Red October as I would go deep underwater
trying to avoid mines or rise to the surface and take on various boats while
exposed. The sense of isolation and tension were palpable to me back then, and
it was certainly memorable.
PC – 1990s: Diablo
It would be years between my Tandy 1000 and my next PC,
which I did not buy until the summer of 1996. There were numerous games I
plugged at. If I tossed an honorable mention in here, it would be for Magic:
The Gathering by Microprose. Fallout would be right behind it. However, neither
of those games could hold a candle to the ridiculous number of hours my wife,
my friends and I all sunk into Diablo. My wife did not even consider herself a
gamer, but it was not an uncommon sight for me to come home from classes or work
back then to find her glued to the machine, hacking away at enemies. We only
had one computer – it was a battle of wills to see who got to play late into
the evening most nights.
Arcade – 1980s: Double Dragon – Nothing ate my quarters
quite like this game did. The intro theme song blaring at the arcade was
absolutely kicking, and the gameplay just felt so much better than anything consoles
could offer at the time. Even when it was ported to the NES and SMS, it was
clear how many compromises were made. Better yet, the first time my buddy and I beat the game together and realized we had to fight one another to ‘win
the girl’ at the end? That was a cool
moment that we both remember (we had beaten it solo before then – not in co-op.
We were unprepared for that showdown). Oh… I won.
Arcade – 1990s: Street Fighter 2
Sure, the future flavors of Street Fighter Hyper Super Duper
Spiffy edition were technically better, and Motal Kombat was a rush in its own
way, and I loved everything about Tekken when it released – but Street Fighter
2 paved the way. I had never heard of, let alone played, the original Street
Fighter back then (having played it in collections since? I didn’t miss much).
Street Fighter 2 however, was phenomenal. I lived in a college town. The 7-11
and Malt Shop each had cabinets for this game, and there were lines forming at
it. I initially really liked Guile, and Blanka was the first one I beat the
game with, but it was Ryu that later became seared into my muscle memory. I got
good – really good. As in people putting down their quarters for ‘next’ to play
me good. I probably was never great – but my memories of this cabinet are still
incredible.
Atari: Pitfall
I’m not going to differentiate between the 24 flavors of
Atari, because as a small child I really didn’t know the differences between
the one my grandparents had or my uncle had. What I do know is I played a lot
of different games, but there was something about Pitfall that kept me coming
back to it over and over again. Something about the pits, the swinging vines
and variety of enemies made Pitfall seem like there was just more to it than a
lot of the titles back then.
TI99/4a: Parsec
Most people didn’t even know this was a thing, let alone
play any games on it. It was however, my first console. My parents bought it
for me for Christmas and it had a couple of interesting aspects to it. One, it
was something of a lightweight computer, complete with BASIC. It was how I
first learned to write code. It also had oodles of copycat games like TI Invaders
and Muchman (clearly riffing off Space Invaders and Pac-Man). However, the
standout game for me and my father was Parsec. This was a challenging
side-scrolling shooter that threw waves of enemies, bosses, the need to refuel
and the risk of overheating as you shot, all while leveraging the console’s
Speech Synthesizer that created crude but unique audio events that sounded
spoken.
Sega Master System: Phantasy Star
This was one of my first roleplaying games ever, and I was
absolutely hooked on it as soon as I started to play it. Due to how much more
popular the NES was than the SMS at that time, Phantasy Star did not get nearly
enough attention until its sequels came out on the Genesis. Still, Phantasy
Star was an addictive, and at the time, deep roleplaying game that I sunk a lot
of time into.
Nintendo Entertainment System: Final Fantasy
My uncle bought me my NES for Christmas the year it
released, and I played so many, many titles that finding just one is so
challenging. This was by far the hardest console for me to try and pick a
favorite out of. I lost hours of my life to so many classic titles such as the
Zelda games, Contra, Punch-Out! (back when it was Mike Tyson’s), Metroid,
Dragon Warrior and so many more. At the end of the day though, Final Fantasy
was a game changed for me. It was not my first RPG – there had been others such
as Ultima: Exodus and Dragon Warrior – but Final Fantasy just hit different. I
went back and replayed that game at least four or five times, just to try out
different class combinations and to make sure I left no stone unturned (I even
walked that stupid bridge a zillion times to spawn Warmech – only to get my
arse handed to me by him and encouraging me to come back after leveling up
much, much later). I could easily do a top 20 favorites with a paragraph or two
about all of them, but in the end, I think I logged more time with Final
Fantasy than any others, and it changed how I looked at video games.
Game Boy: Tetris
This feels like a simple or shallow answer, and there were a
ton of games that I enjoyed on my first handheld gaming system, but Tetris just
always felt right here. The graphics were never an issue, it was an easy game
to pick up and put down, and it was one my dad would play with me too, which
gives it a bit of extra sentimental oomph for me. I never really got into the
various different flavors of Game Boys in the later years (though my kids did),
so my experience is with the OG system only.
Article
by Robert, Pierre-Yves, Richard, Susan N., and Nick
