As much as I love video games now, I didn't actually get any consoles until I was thirteen and my sisters and I got a hand-me-down N64 (though I guess early teens still kind of counts as childhood, so we'll get back to that in a bit). Even so, between computer games and games I played at friends' houses I have quite a few old favorites. These include:
Putt-Putt Travels Through Time/Saves the ZooOh my goodness, Putt-Putt was my
jam when I was little! It took me a while to figure out the concept of saving and loading games, but for the longest time I would have tons of fun just booting up new games and messing around with all the puzzles and whatnot. It also made it really satisfying on the rare occasions where I actually
beat the game XD Youtuber PeanutButterGamer actually did a series of videos on all of the Putt-Putt games (which made me super happy), and according to him the best ones in the series were Travels Through Time and Saves the Zoo -- maybe that's why I liked them so much? lol
Math BlastersI don't remember which game in this series I owned; it might have been the original? I was pretty much the only one in my family who played it, or at least the only one who played it long enough to figure out how to make anything happen in the storyline rather than just playing the various mini-games. Now that I'm older and wiser I realize that's because my parents weren't going to be interested in an elementary-level math game and my sisters probably didn't care that much about, you know, a
math game, but at the time I was very proud of myself for being the only one who knew how to get the characters' ship fixed. Sadly though, I never could figure out how to win that last mini-game and beat the storyline
My grandparents also had a Math Blasters game, almost certainly a later one in the series from what I recall of the graphics, and oddly enough something similar happened -- I did fine with most of the game, but could never figure out the last puzzle no matter what I tried. (Of course, in that case it was probably that I kept trying to skip to that puzzle and didn't have all the parts I needed or something along those lines from the mini-games -- I don't even remember any of those other mini-games because the puzzle was the most interesting part for me XD)
Roller Coaster Tycoon (or maybe RCT 2, I don't remember for sure)This one I got when I was a little bit older, but I'm sure it's still plenty old enough to count. I had so much fun building up theme parks, and although I never really bothered with building custom roller coasters or the like (I always just went for the pre-made rides when I could), I would still take the time to customize them in terms of things like color and name in order to make an interesting theme. Having grown up near a bunch of major theme parks (I live in the Orlando area), I always found it a weird idea to charge for the individual rides, so instead I always followed the rules I was familiar with and made all the rides free and the park admission higher to make up for it. My friend also had Roller Coaster Tycoon (in her case I'm pretty sure it was 2), and many were the visits where we would play the game of whoever's house we were at together. Despite it being set up as a single-player game, we actually did a pretty good job of taking turns and making suggestions for each other when it was the other's turn.
Dance Dance RevolutionThis game/series was
awesome. Since I could only play it when I was visiting friends who happened to own it, I never got the chance to get particularly good at it, but I still got a good workout and a lot of enjoyment out of "dancing" around to all those upbeat songs. I was actually really upset when Guitar Hero came out and everyone just seemed to suddenly forget about DDR >.>
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho (may or may not be the actual title, I don't remember)This was another game my grandparents had. It was this weird action/puzzle game "based" on the titular Bible story where you go around shooting breakable blocks and killable enemies with music notes, blow up blocks with trumpets and dodge not-so-killable enemies and other such things to reach the end of each room/level. Yup XD I don't think I ever managed to beat the game (apparently final levels were the bane of my younger self's existence, lol) but I did spend a lot of time playing it.
And that's all the most memorable childhood games, I think. I actually had a longer list before, but it had gotten
so long and rambly that I cut a few out to keep this from turning into a complete textwall XD For the same reason I'm going to wait on talking about the N64 games until a later post.
(I feel like an honorable mention should go to Neopets -- while it didn't make the list because I'm much more into it now than I was as a kid (you can thank my later interest in plots, site lore and writing for that), I
did start out in the site back then. I remember playing Chomby and the Fungus Balls a lot and wanting a Chomby XD)
