Poke Me In The Eye

Crawford’s Answers:

In no particular order…

Goldeneye for N64

This was the ultimate multiplayer FPS for a long time. I really hope it comes out for the Wii. It was simple but exciting, decent graphics (fantastic for the time) and had great controls for the generation and platform. I’ve played it more times than I can think of and worked damn hard to get all the cheats.

Legend of Zelda

Another simple one but oh so much fun to play. There were so many secrets to discover with little to no hints on where to find them. This was before the internet so it wasn’t all that easy to get descriptions on where things were…adding to the difficulty. It was hard without being impossible and launched a fantastic franchise.

Half Life 2

I loved the original but the sequel absolutely blew it away. The graphics still hold up and the physics in the game are astounding. I blew threw the whole game fairly quickly but still like to go back and use that unreal gravity gun

Gran Turismo (series)

I can’t just pick one…the first blew racing games out of the water, the most recent is breathtaking. I’ve probably played this one more than any other game in existence. It’s one that can always be picked up and jumped right into.

Pitfall

It doesn’t get much more simple than this. You run, you jump, you survive. But it was, without a doubt, groundbreaking at the time. It never became harder…no real puzzles to solve nor bosses to fight. Just started with a simple choice (left or right) and continued forever. In all honesty I’ve no clue how long it will go…someday I will find out

Moe’s Answers:

This was kind of a tough one for me, there are a lot of games over the years that I have really loved including some old school games. Technology advances makes me want to pick more new games but instead I am going to go with the games that really made an impact on me or that I spent the most time playing.

Hard Driving

My freshman year of college there was an arcade about 100 yards away from my dorms. I spent far too much time in that arcade playing Hard Drivin’. I got a bit of a reputation for myself as well. I set many of the high scores on their machine and one day while I was playing some guy was standing by the machine waiting for his turn. I eventually ran out of time and as I was entering my name in the machine (my name was octopus) the guy waiting for me was like “holy shit, you’re Octopus!”, I felt like king of the dorks for about 3 seconds. Hard Drivin’ still has some of the best controls of any racing game in my opinion. If you could combine Hard Drivin’ with Gran Turismo you would have the best racing game in the world.

Team Fortress Classic

I don’t think I have spent as much time playing any other game than I have playing TFC. I am referring to the Half Life mod of TFC here by the way. I have some great memories of me and my roommate charging into the enemy base, both of us as heavies and just laying waste. I was even in a clan at one point. I cannot wait till TFC 2 comes out.

Yars’ Revenge

I have been a gamer for a very long time, we even had the original pong machine. My family had tons of Atari games but my all time favorite was Yars’ Revenge. Probably not a very popular pick and I bet there are some people who read this who have never even heard of it. It was a very challenging game but not impossibly so, it had the perfect level of challenge as far as I am concerned. I haven’t played it for many, many years but I’d be willing to bet I would still love playing it.

Half Life

First person shooters are probably my favorite genre of games and I don’t think there is a finer example than the original Half Life. Half Life literally opened my eyes to what video games could actually be. Valve really made it feel like you were a character in a movie rather than moving some pixels around the screen. I actually recently went back and played Half Life through again. Even though the graphics aren’t up to today’s standards the game play is still rock solid and the AI is still better than many of todays games.

Super Mario Brothers

If you had an NES I’d be willing to bet you had this game. I was one of those really lucky guys, I got my NES about a year before most people had even heard of it. Nintendo selected a few small markets to test out how Americans would like the system and I was lucky enough to be in that market. I vividly remember being at FAO Schwarz and seeing the NES for the very first time, they were playing Duck Hunt and I was instantly blown away. I begged and pleaded for my parents to get me it for Christmas and luckily for me, they got it. Anyway, Super Mario Brothers is one of the greatest games ever created in my opinion and it is a game that I would say 80% of the population are at least familiar with.