So, I’ve said more than once on this blog that I’ve never been too much for nostalgia. What I’ve always meant by that is that I don’t let nostalgia for something in my past shape my opinion of something in the present/future. In terms of stuff like games, movies, and shows, that just means that I’m alright with deciding that a newer entry in a series is now my favorite one, even if I had a lot of fond memories of the older installment. That sort of thing, you know? I also try not to let nostalgia blind me in terms of not being able to recognize and address faults in older things that I used to, or even still might, love.
That being said, literally no one on the planet is immune to nostalgia, and we all have things that we loved when we were younger. Especially for hobbies like video games. Every gamer has the games that they played when they were little, that helped them grow to love the hobby in the first place. Well, in that spirit, let’s take a look at my Top 10 Nostalgic Childhood Video Games, the games that turned baby-me into who I am today!
(Also, I had such difficulty picking only 10 games that I’ll probably do another one of these lists someday!)
Let’s begin!
10) Sunset Riders
Despite only being about thirty minutes long, I sure put a lot of time into Sunset Riders back in the day. And, yeah, I pretty much only played this game with the infinite lives trick that my brothers taught me, but still! I’m very fond of this quick, arcade-y, fast-pace side-scrolling shooter. It’s got some varied levels, some absolutely jamming tunes, and some surprisingly fantastic and energetic boss fights given the era, particularly the final two. And as a plus, the short length of this game means you don’t have any excuse for not giving it a try one day should the opportunity arise.
9) Mario Kart 64
It’s not my favorite Mario Kart game anymore (I genuinely think the creative team-up gimmick of Double Dash takes that honor), but I have some really special memories of this game. In particular, one time I was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and he, his brothers, and I all came up with the idea of playing Hide-And-Seek in Mario Kart 64. By taping a thin strip of paper to the television we could hide our positions on the in-game map, and then the goal was to hide somewhere on each track (usually by taking advantage of the camera to best block our position). Obviously, some maps worked better than others, but it was still a blast, and we played for hours straight! From that point on, Hide-And-Seek in Mario Kart 64 became a tradition whenever I was over at his house!
8) Mario Party 2
Still the all-time best Mario Party game, even this many years later, to the point where modern-day Mario Party games tend to refer back to this one the most (whether it be through reintroducing this game’s boards, or including mini-games from this entry). I still enjoy quite a few other Mario Party games, but I really do feel like this one is the best, even putting nostalgia aside. But yeah, I’ve got a lot of fond memories with this one, from my childhood all the way up to just a few years ago, which was the most recent time that I played. The memory that stands out the most to me is when my friend got a star, and the new star happened to be exactly one square before the one I was on, meaning I just barely would miss it. In despair, I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand, except my hand also hit my nose while doing so, and of all the rotten luck I ended up with a nose-bleed! Whoops!
7) Pac-Man World 2
I’ve brought this game up more than once on this blog before, so it shouldn’t be a total surprise to see it here. Is it the best game in the entire world? No, it’s not, owed largely to its relatively short length and its brutally-challenging difficulty. But I still vividly remember the birthday where I got this game as my present (and also the Saturday morning hike that proceeded the visit to GameStop, a childhood routine of my family’s). It was a struggle of Herculean proportions for my child self to beat this game, as I didn’t really excel at gaming until my later teen years, but it was a very joyous occasion when I did complete it for the first time years after receiving the game (which of course is funny now considering the game takes roughly only three or so hours to beat).
6) Halo 3
To this day, I still haven’t actually played the story mode of Halo 3 (something that I definitely hope to change someday). But in terms of the multiplayer, this is the Halo game that I have the most fond memories for. There are plenty of times that I’ve played it and had a blast, but the highlight absolutely has to be an all-night-gaming session that my youth group at church did one Friday-Saturday. Only three kids (including myself) showed up, and as such it was relatively easy for us all to remain entertained with Halo 3 alone for the entire twelve-hour gaming marathon. Every game mode imaginable, custom matches with ridiculous rulesets, you name it and we played it. Sure, I went to bed that night haunted by the beeping sound of your shield regenerating, but it was worth it!
5) Super Mario Galaxy
This is still my favorite game in the Mario series, and probably my second-favorite 3D Platformer of all time (nothing will dethrone Hat in Time). There’s just something so perfectly charming about this masterpiece, and it’s not uncommon to see games even today borrowing ideas from this foundational title (like the recently released and very good platformer Astro Bot). 100% completing Super Mario Galaxy was probably my biggest achievement in gaming during my childhood, and I also distinctly remember it being the first time I ever cried at a video game (poor little Luma sacrificing himself to save the galaxy, RIP). The Nintendo Wii era was where I first started to really hone my skills as a gamer, and this game was a prime example of that.
4) Super Smash Bros Brawl
It may be the black-sheep of the Super Smash Bros series, but there’s no understating the impact that this game had on the franchise (and on me) in so many different ways. It’s where I truly fell in love with Smash Bros, all thanks to my obsession with playing as King Dedede (and his silly little song-and-dance he does during his ultimate attack). The hours-long and cutscene-filled story mode is awesome, there’s hundreds of optional challenges and trophies to collect, and I loved being able to make my own janky stages and play the pinball minigame. This is also where the legend of White Marth began, which is a silly joke amongst my friends wherein the game decided to make us fight Marth in his white outfit alternate costume three matches in a single play session, despite the computer-player set to Random (so this statistically should have been near-impossible). And he beat us each time, thus creating his unshakeable legacy.
3) Sonic 2
It’s come up more than once on this blog that I’ve got a fair few problems with the Sonic franchise, and yet still manage to more-or-less enjoy most of the games in the series. My love-hate relationship with the series began with Sonic 2, though I did play the original Sonic the Hedgehog first (and even back then never really liked it). I did vibe with Sonic 2, though, and put hours and hours into many failed attempts at besting Doctor Robotnik and saving the day, only managing to finally do so years later in my teens. This game’s riddled with flaws like all Sonic games are (cheap deaths, frustrating obstacles, getting no rings during the two-part final boss fight), but I really do love it regardless. Also, I’ve got fun memories of playing the co-op with my brother as part of the Sonic Mega Collection on the Xbox, a game collection I put many hours into.
2) Shining Force
Even if I didn’t play this game a crazy amount when I was younger, it deserves a place on this list just because it served as the gateway to my love of the Fire Emblem series years later. But I did play it a lot as a child, and man was I bad at it! My brain couldn’t even remotely wrap itself around the idea of stats and equipment and gaining levels and using items, and all that other RPG stuff. I just moved the little people around and prayed that I would win. And, somehow, I blundered my way to the third-to-last fight in the game, only to finally hit an insurmountable wall because my main character (who I’d hid in the back of every fight) was too weak to survive battle. And while you’d think having my twenty-hour adventure end in permanent failure would’ve soured me to this game, I never lost my love for it over the years, and finally conquered it a few years back (achieving great success with the best character, Mae). Nowadays, I’ve dabbled with the remastered GBA version, which is a real treat!
1) Super Mario 64
There’s obviously only so much that you can remember about your childhood. That’s just the way that memories work with regards to our forming brains as children. So while I can’t technically be 100% sure, as far as my recollection goes, the first video game that I ever played was Super Mario 64. The Nintendo 64 in general was my gateway console to the world of video games, with most of my childhood devoted to real bangers from that system (as obviously evidenced by a few other games in this article), but Super Mario 64 was always my favorite.
Does it hold up today? I mean, not in some ways, obviously. It’s not a looker, and Mario can feel a little weirdly slippery at times. But it’s shockingly competent overall, and still provides an incredible amount of fun even compared to more contemporary entries in the series. I vividly remember spending hours just running around the castle aimlessly, being too young to actually understand how to win. I remember bumbling into secrets and feeling like a mad genius, getting scared by the spooky mansion level, or discovering that the height at which you jump into the Wet Dry World painting actually affects what level the water starts at. I also clearly recall the day my brother beat the game, me going ‘oh man now I want to beat it too‘, and finally managing to do it months later.
Wahoo!
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 