Larian Studios Forums General Chat Games that made us gamers

Hi folks, as we (I!) struggle with impatience through the last 80 or so days before BG3 release, and as the old BG games or other cRPGs have such warm places in many of our hearts … and as I enjoyed getting occasional glimpses into folks’ gaming pasts from mentions in other threads like the ones on what else we’re playing … I thought it might be fun to reflect on the games that most influenced our love of gaming and that perhaps shaped the sorts of games we most enjoy today.

So, what were the first games you played? What games first blew you away and made you the gamer you are now?

If there’s any interest in this thread, I’ll share mine too.

I like this thread. May not get many posters, but I'll post my story.

My very first RPG on computer, which also happened to be a game that blew me away, was BG1. Before that I had played D&D and other TTRPGs quite a bit, but my video gaming was entirely limited to wargaming. Even that was very minimal because I had no money and couldn't afford my own computer, so I got to play video games only on friends' computers. In 1998 I was finishing up my grad school, and a good friend and fellow grad student was raving about this new cRPG that had just been released. As luck had it he needed me to house-sit for him, which allowed me the use of his computer while he was gone. I started playing around 7 pm, and did not stop until the sun was coming up the next morning. What especially hooked me was the beginning of BG1. Leaving the safe walls of Candlekeep and "venturing forth" with my father felt so very safe, and I was expecting things to start out nice and easy and happy. But as we all know, things went a very different direction, and that just set the mood and tone and my emotions for that game thereafter, because all I wanted to do was to hunt down you-know-who and pay him back.

BG1 introduced me to cRPGs, and that's why the BG franchise has a special place in my heart.

I have to say that the first game I ever played was Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I remember being completely captivated by the colorful world and the sense of adventure. It sparked my interest in gaming at a young age and set the foundation for my love of video games, especially RPG

Thanks for sharing . As promised I'll chip in too.

Our family got a computer when I was a kid, though it wasn't a gaming powerhouse like the Commodore64 or even a ZX Spectrum, but a nice educational BBC Micro. We did nevertheless have a bunch of (probably pirated) arcade classics for it, but for some reason the games that really grabbed me were the text based adventures. I know I played a bunch, but the only one that really sticks in my mind was The Lord of the Rings. Partly because I loved that I could become one of the four hobbits and set out with my friends for Rivendell. And partly because I lost all my inventory when loading the second of, iirc, four cassette tapes it came on and could never finish the blasted thing. I'm totally going to try it using an emulator now I've thought about it again.

My teenage years were given over to ... other stuff ... so it was only at uni where one of my mates had one of these newfangled (to me) PC thingies and I watched with envy as he played, in particular, party-based RPG Wizardry VII and point and click adventure Day of the Tentacle that my interest in video games was revived.

I didn't play either of those games myself until years later (DotT was reissued a few years back and I reckon stands up remarkably well, for Wizardry VII I'd guess you probably need to have been there). But when after uni I lived in a shared house with access to a PC, the first games I chose to play myself tended to be RTSs and sims. Sim City 2000, Civilization II, Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park were the first games I recall playing lots of.

It was only when the PlayStation was released and I read reviews of this game called Final Fantasy VII that I returned to RPGs. And so when this new party based RPG called Baldur's Gate was released a year or so after I'd played and adored FFVII, I thought of that and back to Wizardry VII, and probably also to the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon I'd enjoyed as a kid, and decided to give it a go. So I created my paladin, rolled the dice for stats (probably just once without changing them as I had no idea what I was doing) and ventured forth ... and fell in love with the game, the setting and the genre.

First game I remember vividly?
Spear of Density/Wolfstein.
First cRPG = either BG1 or Might&Magic VI.

I would say that these were hard years but at the same time golden, as I now remember how I used to go to computer clubs where I could play for a few hours...

I have been gaming since I was a toddler - early years were are more about the platform than an individual title. When I was about 3 my Dad brought home Comodore64 that was decommissioned at work. Lots of fun stuff there.

The game that really dragged me into gaming was Baldur’s Gate2. It was a title that made me splinter from my older brother tastes and follow my own. It was first game that felt like immersive world and story to me, rather than a toy. What followed was year of playing and replaying any RPG I could find - all Infinity Engine games, Fallouts, Arcanum. Really though most of my high school I played almost exclusively RPGs and Tomb Raider games - the fascination with TR games came from unlikely place - a clunky TR clone named Indiana Jones and an Infernal Machine.

I also have to shoutout DosBox through which I discovered some amazing classics, when our family PC became unable to run modern titles (I beat Jade Empire on what must have been 10 FPS it was a laggy slideshow) like prince of Persia, Another World, Flashback, Pirates1, UFO: Enemy Unknown.

So are you excited for inXile's Clockwork Revolution?

My first game was contra.

I really enjoyed and appreciated that the entire Infinite collection had a proper pause available. I can certainly understand why pausing would be limited for multiplayer, but Larian has never been capable of producing a game engine that, even with the mod communities, had a proper pausing function available.

My first cRPG was Dragon Wars on the Apple IIgs. I was 9 or 10, and I never got very far in it.

The next game that I spent a ton of time in was Exile III

One of the things I've always loved is how D&D and similar rulesets really lend themselves to computers. With tabletop, there's always some degree of "wait, isn't xyz dependent on abc? Just a sec, imma look that up..." and it's really nice to not have to rely on humans for getting the rules right.

The first TT experience was the Night Below Boxed set campaign. The city overview of Menzoberranzan was mesmerizing.

My first dnd game was Cloudy Mountain on the intellivision.

NetHack, Fallout 1 & 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, list goes on... but cRPGs (especially of the DnD variety) have always held a special place in my heart.

Spear of Destiny, Wolfstein, DOOM, Warcraft, Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, UFO

My first game was the Mechwarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy. Not only was it three mecha games, it was three mecha games set in a rich and detailed setting with huge amounts of lore available in the game.

Hi all. My first game was Tetris. I was 5 years old when I first played it. Then came Nes, after Sega, after PC and Playstation.
The first game that left a big impression was Prince of Persia. It's a really dark, complex, and incredibly cool game. The second game, or rather a series of games that left a mark in my heart - a series of Heroes of Might and Magic. I still play Heroes to this day, after so many years. Then I was subdued by Fallout 1 and 2 parts. I still think Fallout is the best RPG. I would like to play the new Fallout by Larian Studios)) It is a pity that this will not happen.
Looking forward to the release of Baldur's Gate 3 more than anything. Never been a fan of the series or D&D games, but I've always been a fan of Larian. The game is already ranked 4th on my list of the best games.
I wish the Larian studio incredible success and hope that players will buy the game on all possible devices - like me. Such developers, who really put their soul into their products, should have all the money in this world. Larian is the last bastion of the RPG.
P.S. I apologize for bad english. I study the language and use translators.

The first PC games I remember playing were Fallout 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and my personal favorite Planescape Torment. From those games came my passion for rpgs, I even started playing tabletop Dungeons & Dragons when I was in high-school.

The first games I played were on the old Nintendo, Sega Saturn, 64, etc. Just tons of random basic games.

I think the first games that really griped me though was on the ps2, went to K-mart and picked it up on a wim no thought just went by the cover. It was called Shadow of Destiny (looks like Shadow of Memory was a rename for it). Interesting side note the demon in the game I always thought was a lady was actually a guy, I didn't find this out till much later.

Vids are still huge for whatever reason so putting them in spoilers.

Did the same thing and picked up Ico, same system ps2. Game was amazing but it was subbed in french or something so I had no clue what they were saying. I just remember at the end I wished there was more.


I keep getting a feeling there was another but I don't remember so I'll post one of my top favs. Dragon Age Origins, it was just the base game on a console no mods and only played the expansion once I think. So it was more so just the base game that was amazing. Not going to bother with a trailer, everyone should know DaO.

Anyway, interesting reads, I'll keep a eye on this thread.

I probably spent a lot of my free or leisure time playing games throughout my life. In my early years I was fortunate that my family decided to get a NES or Nintendo Entertainment System. It was mostly for my older sibling perhaps but I also had some opportunities which was nice. While I was 6 or 5 at the time, I couldn't read that well but the few games we had to start with were a racing game called Rad Racer, Mario Bros, Zelda, Rampage, and Dragon Warrior. Now as a forming youth, it was fun to play these type of games but they all lacked something that couldn't keep my interest; all except Dragon Warrior. Dragon Warrior was my first rpg, a jrpg to be exact. Dragon Warrior is actually Dragon Quest I and it would unknowingly help shape my tastes for RPGs in the years and decades that followed. I had my sibling help translate the menu and I just stumbled my way through the game but with imagination, excitement and perseverance. Unlike a lot of games I actually finished Dragon Warrior I. Which really was a rarity for me as for some reason or another I just lose interest after things get too easy, no more character progression, no more excitement or mystery to solve. Looking back with these somewhat old eyes, it was a basic rpg with not much to it and would feel real boring real quick had I played it again. Coincidentally I picked up and played the recent Dragon Quest for PC and there is much to appreciate for its creative spirit that remains the same to it's IP and satisfying to relive that series again with a sorta of nostalgia. However, I found the game easy and the mood and tone not to my liking. Perhaps I had changed having experienced so much. Perhaps I compare it to my true favorite games.

Not that this was the end of it mind you. Back during this time and for a great while longer, we had rental stores to rent games over here and there was even places to buy used games at. Might and Magic for NES comes to mind with its classic dungeon crawl, the first I had experienced of the sub genre or rpgs. Later on as you would expect I played Dragon Warrior 3, never finished it and then got gifted Dragon Warrior 4 for NES. DW4 was perhaps my favorite game for the only platform my family would go on to own for quite some time. I had completed it perhaps only a couple times. During this sad era of gaming drought I would go on into sports and paperback novels.

It wasn't until many years later that my family got the Sony Playstation 1/PSX and while I had missed out on the many, many Consoles/Systems in between I had been very lucky to be in this era, as I consider the golden era of jrpgs at least for me. I am also grateful for my time spent and fun had. I pretty much played every rpg on that console, mostly renting and as you can imagine not finishing many. I would like to say my first rpg for the PSX was "Beyond The Beyond", a very important true favorite of mine and one that in my eyes made up for missing out on Super NES Console. Beyond the Beyond had SNES sprites (something that I had never experienced), a interesting beautiful story if not slightly above basic, companions, secrets, coming of age concepts, class upgrades, puzzles and that traditional turn based rpg mechanics from Dragon Warrior. I completed Beyond the Beyond multiple times. Little did I know that this would pale in scope & comparison to Final Fantasy 7 and then Final Fantasy Tactics which I would go on to complete both. I won't write more on those except those were my first entry into the Final Fantasy Series and I had indeed missed out on the previous entries. I imagine they are more popular worldwide and don't need descriptions, but I would later regard them both as true favorites.

Now I had completed Xenogears but the game didn't hit the same way as FF. I also finished the Vandal Heart series but #2 while a more truer rpg than the first, was exceptionally hard with chess like combat and hard secret alternative endings. Worth experiencing but not favorite material. I wished I had finished Wild Arms but I got stumped midway in a play through never to be finished. I had just about rented every other psx jrpg or later in life found other "ways & means" to play them all, every single one, why not? I could really go on and on but I feel sticking to the highlights are more important.

I can't leave the PSX era without commenting about my #1 true favorite games of all time, Suikoden I & II. Still to this day, they are far more important than perhaps anything I ever played, yes even Baldur's Gate or Fallout 1 & 2. Although a tough choice, its a personal matter for sure. I feel that Suikoden, Baldur's Gate and Fallout deserve more words than what I had already typed but its late and my post is already long enough. I didn't even discuss Breath of Fire or Star Ocean or the entire PS2 Era including the likes of Lunar Silver Star Story etc, not to mention many PC Games.

Btw my favorite games of all time Suikoden are getting a HD remaster on steam. There is also a spiritual successor and a lot of creative talent from Suikoden series is involved with making "Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes" after a successful kickstarter, also on steam. I feel there is more to be said perhaps I might have to return for a follow up post.

Played plenty of consoles going back to the earliest ones (I'm pretty old) but gaming doesn't start till you get a PC and I bought my first PC to play Everquest after having a bit of a go of it at my friends place.
What a game! Still have accounts, 2 life memberships, currently in limbo but they're there.