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purplecatThe rules: Don't take too long to think about it. 15 games you've played that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends.
I got tagged on Facebook, as usual I'm not tagging, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you so wish.
1. Chucky Egg
In which you were a farmer in a very basic platformer and you had to collect eggs from vicious maniac chickens, no really! IIRC some friends of my parents had it and we got to play it when we visited them at Christmas. We must have visited at other times as well since I recall getting quite good at it. I acquired it under emulation a few years back. Terribly disappointing and I was useless at it!
2. Elite
We had two games on our early PC at home. Elite was one of them. Oh! the pain of learning how to dock with space stations. Our version didn't have missions, I gather other people had versions which did have missions. Wow!
3. Lemmings
The other game we had on our early PC. John McCarthy (the man who came up with the term "artificial intelligence" allegedly) has proposed Lemmings sd a drosophila for AI, by which he means that the physics of the lemmings' world is very simple, but unstated in the rules. Part of beating the game is figuring out the physics. He proposed it as a good test case for an AI, could it learn lemming physics? When McCarthy gave this talk to us at Edinburgh he also demonstrated Lemmings. He wasn't very good at it. My entire interaction with John McCarthy, giant of AI, has consisted in giving him hints on how to play Lemmings.
4. Final Fantasy VII
A bunch of us from Edinburgh used to go and stay in my mother's cottage on the West Coast of Scotland for holidays and one year JW brought FF7 and a playstation with him. I'd had no idea that computer games could have actual stories up until that point and FF7 is a pretty amazing introduction to the genre.
5. Arkham Horror
We play this pretty much every new year with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
claraste and family. We tend to play cooperatively with much shouting of "doom" as the counter creeps upwards. We play by Mr. claraste's custom rules which he insists make the came quicker and easier to win. Some of us are not entirely convinced. One year we will even be finished by midnight.
6. Mah Jong
Another game I only played as a child at a friend's house. And another game that has turned out to be rather less interesting as an adult.
7. Racing Demon
We used to play this with my grandparents. My grandpa used to fake (I think) a total inability to play. I remember fixing his deck for him in the hopes he would win. I've successfully played this once or twice with my nieces and nephews, though its attraction depends on the competing entertainment available.
8. Civilisation (Computer Version)
Every so often I play Civilisation compulsively for a week or two. I keep the level firmly on easy, since I don't like the idea someone might attack me. B. occasionally suggests that, instead of thrashing the computer mindlessly, I should maybe turn up the difficultly level a notch. I remain unconvinced.
9. Baldur's Gate
B. and I had huge fun playing two Baldur's Gate co-operative games on the playstation. The game itself is pretty mindless, but playing it together mostly meant that didn't matter. We also played and enjoyed Champions of Norath which was very similar, though with an even sketchier plot.
10. Urban Dead
I've been playing this for five years, and ended up briefly running one of the larger groups in the game. Considering it's about as low tech as an online game can get, and it would be difficult to invest more than about 5 minutes per day in playing it, the five years is pretty impressive.
11. Magic The Gathering
I joined the Edinburgh Roleplaying society, GEAS, just as Magic the Gathering was launched. We played it a lot for a year or so. Strangely my interest waned almost immediately I acquired roughly enough cards to build any deck I wanted. I feel there is a life lesson in there somewhere.
12. Wheetabix Doctor Who Game
I'm running out of steam here. So I've picked a game that is more for the surrounding nostalgia than the actual game enjoyment. I'm not quite sure how we acquired three wheetabix packets, plus the game tokens they contained. Our family certainly never ate Wheetabix, and this was long before I could have been considered a Dr Who fan. Never the less we had three game boards, two of which were duplicated but which nevertheless could be fitted together into a kind of uber-game and a number of interchangeable encounter pieces. It's really a basic roll-the-dice, win-the-race game, but I still have it in the cupboard upstairs.
We're into roleplaying games from now on. I'm not sure if this is cheating since, by and large, it is the GM and not the system that makes such games memorable. However I'm running out of other games that truly stick in the mind, although honourable mentions should go to Monopoly, Minesweeper and miscellaneous playing card based solitaire games.
13. Nightfall
Nightfall was a live vampire game that was run in Edinburgh. It was, briefly, intensely complicated and interesting until it all fell a apart largely, I believe, because the GM never wanted anything to be resolved and so started negating hard won information.
14. Oxrandir's Shadow in the South
This was a Runequest game set in Middle-Earth. It was the first time I'd played an RPG where there appeared to be genuine decisions that hinged upon character rather than, you know, should we take the left-hand passage or the right hand passage? And of course, I'm still friends with many of the people Oxrandir brought together for the game.
15. NC's Chill game
I could pick almost any game NC ran in Edinburgh. He had a great ability to put together clever plots, with resolutions that depended upon character decisions and, at the same time, to generate a genuinely tense and creepy atmosphere. I'm picking the Chill game because everything in that seemed to come together particularly well. And because B's mild-mannered librarian character got to say "I suppose I had better leap through the window and garotte him".
I got tagged on Facebook, as usual I'm not tagging, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you so wish.
1. Chucky Egg
In which you were a farmer in a very basic platformer and you had to collect eggs from vicious maniac chickens, no really! IIRC some friends of my parents had it and we got to play it when we visited them at Christmas. We must have visited at other times as well since I recall getting quite good at it. I acquired it under emulation a few years back. Terribly disappointing and I was useless at it!
2. Elite
We had two games on our early PC at home. Elite was one of them. Oh! the pain of learning how to dock with space stations. Our version didn't have missions, I gather other people had versions which did have missions. Wow!
3. Lemmings
The other game we had on our early PC. John McCarthy (the man who came up with the term "artificial intelligence" allegedly) has proposed Lemmings sd a drosophila for AI, by which he means that the physics of the lemmings' world is very simple, but unstated in the rules. Part of beating the game is figuring out the physics. He proposed it as a good test case for an AI, could it learn lemming physics? When McCarthy gave this talk to us at Edinburgh he also demonstrated Lemmings. He wasn't very good at it. My entire interaction with John McCarthy, giant of AI, has consisted in giving him hints on how to play Lemmings.
4. Final Fantasy VII
A bunch of us from Edinburgh used to go and stay in my mother's cottage on the West Coast of Scotland for holidays and one year JW brought FF7 and a playstation with him. I'd had no idea that computer games could have actual stories up until that point and FF7 is a pretty amazing introduction to the genre.
5. Arkham Horror
We play this pretty much every new year with
claraste and family. We tend to play cooperatively with much shouting of "doom" as the counter creeps upwards. We play by Mr. claraste's custom rules which he insists make the came quicker and easier to win. Some of us are not entirely convinced. One year we will even be finished by midnight.6. Mah Jong
Another game I only played as a child at a friend's house. And another game that has turned out to be rather less interesting as an adult.
7. Racing Demon
We used to play this with my grandparents. My grandpa used to fake (I think) a total inability to play. I remember fixing his deck for him in the hopes he would win. I've successfully played this once or twice with my nieces and nephews, though its attraction depends on the competing entertainment available.
8. Civilisation (Computer Version)
Every so often I play Civilisation compulsively for a week or two. I keep the level firmly on easy, since I don't like the idea someone might attack me. B. occasionally suggests that, instead of thrashing the computer mindlessly, I should maybe turn up the difficultly level a notch. I remain unconvinced.
9. Baldur's Gate
B. and I had huge fun playing two Baldur's Gate co-operative games on the playstation. The game itself is pretty mindless, but playing it together mostly meant that didn't matter. We also played and enjoyed Champions of Norath which was very similar, though with an even sketchier plot.
10. Urban Dead
I've been playing this for five years, and ended up briefly running one of the larger groups in the game. Considering it's about as low tech as an online game can get, and it would be difficult to invest more than about 5 minutes per day in playing it, the five years is pretty impressive.
11. Magic The Gathering
I joined the Edinburgh Roleplaying society, GEAS, just as Magic the Gathering was launched. We played it a lot for a year or so. Strangely my interest waned almost immediately I acquired roughly enough cards to build any deck I wanted. I feel there is a life lesson in there somewhere.
12. Wheetabix Doctor Who Game
I'm running out of steam here. So I've picked a game that is more for the surrounding nostalgia than the actual game enjoyment. I'm not quite sure how we acquired three wheetabix packets, plus the game tokens they contained. Our family certainly never ate Wheetabix, and this was long before I could have been considered a Dr Who fan. Never the less we had three game boards, two of which were duplicated but which nevertheless could be fitted together into a kind of uber-game and a number of interchangeable encounter pieces. It's really a basic roll-the-dice, win-the-race game, but I still have it in the cupboard upstairs.
We're into roleplaying games from now on. I'm not sure if this is cheating since, by and large, it is the GM and not the system that makes such games memorable. However I'm running out of other games that truly stick in the mind, although honourable mentions should go to Monopoly, Minesweeper and miscellaneous playing card based solitaire games.
13. Nightfall
Nightfall was a live vampire game that was run in Edinburgh. It was, briefly, intensely complicated and interesting until it all fell a apart largely, I believe, because the GM never wanted anything to be resolved and so started negating hard won information.
14. Oxrandir's Shadow in the South
This was a Runequest game set in Middle-Earth. It was the first time I'd played an RPG where there appeared to be genuine decisions that hinged upon character rather than, you know, should we take the left-hand passage or the right hand passage? And of course, I'm still friends with many of the people Oxrandir brought together for the game.
15. NC's Chill game
I could pick almost any game NC ran in Edinburgh. He had a great ability to put together clever plots, with resolutions that depended upon character decisions and, at the same time, to generate a genuinely tense and creepy atmosphere. I'm picking the Chill game because everything in that seemed to come together particularly well. And because B's mild-mannered librarian character got to say "I suppose I had better leap through the window and garotte him".