I wanted to take a moment to remember the games that most influenced my life.

It was early in my life that I realized that I couldn't possibly sit for 90 minutes in front of the TV and watch an entire football match. It was just too boring.
So when my Father and my brother watched eagerly I started going to the computer and playing with MS-paint. I know, Autism anyone?

It wasn't long till I realized that I needed something more, something more fun. Something deep that moved you inside, had real moral value and taught you the truth in the world.
So I started playing Worms with my older brother.

If that was the spark to my fanaticism towards video games then Command & Conquer: Red Alert was definitely the fuel. I played that game with such vigorous enthusiasm that my mother eventually started locking the door to my father's office, which had the only computer in my home, just so I would start sleeping or taking showers.

It's not that I was a great tactician or anything; I preferred the "Safety in Numbers" approach. Build as many Refineries as you possibly can and spend it all on Mammoths and Tanias. As a matter of fact "Chew on This" were my first ever spoken words in the English language.

The first game I ever finished was Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars. The point-and-click adventure game genre had me in its grips after that one. I've finished every Broken Sword game, All the Sierra Quest games I could get my hands on including Torin's Passage which is my all time favorite (despite the fact that no one else in my country has ever heard of it).

The Strategy genre had my heart to, but I never finished those games. I never played the story, because it didn't interest me. The C&C series I played in Skirmish mode mostly and Wargames as well. The only Strategy game I ever finished in story mode was Age of Empires 2. History started to be interesting.

I remember vividly the day I sat in my room actively ignoring my girlfriend and playing Myth when my soon-to-be ex-best best friend came in the room and uttered these words: "Hey Ingvi, You have to try this game, it's fucking AWESOME. It's called Delta Force". Let's just say that several months later I discovered the excistance of "Living-in-Cave" Syndrome. It's a Vitamin D deficiency brought on by lack of exposure to light.

My brother had played games like Quake, Doom and Resident Evil but I never liked them because I always shat myself when something unexpected happened, like a leper jumping up from the water throwing chunks of his own flesh at me. I was an innocent child. But with the emergence of Tactical FPS games, I had found my love. I played Counter-Strike till my fingers bled. Delta Force, Delta Force 2, Delta Force: Land Warrior and Delta Force: Black Hawk Down I played till my big toe was numb (don't ask).

I had only played games on PC up till the point in my life where someone told me about a game that I had to try. It was called Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and it was available both on PC and on PS2. I started by downloading the demo and that was it. The next day I went to the nearest computer store (which was an hours drive away, two villages over to the north) to buy that stupid game but the clerk informed me that they didn't have that game for PC and wouldn't for a while. They only had one copy of the PS2 version. My transformation into the world of console had begun.

I am now a fully hyperactive PlayStation fanboy and have every console from Sony hooked up to my TV at this moment. And I am even writing this article on a Linux installation on my PlayStation 3.

I sincerely apologies for any grammatical error you may find among my words for I am only a simple Dyslexic Icelander and therefore I don't know any better.

Man, Delta Force was GREAT.

One game that had a big influence on me was Betrayal at Krondor, which I got free with a magazine in an airport. I'd never touched fantasy before, but I ended up chewing through every fantasy book in my local library. It was the first time I'd really "owned" my reading... like, I was going out and finding these books by myself rather than having them handed to me by my parents or whatever.

Some other games that sucked me in and that gave me that "This is allowed?" revelation: Crusader: No Remorse, Civ II, Doom, Thief, Metal Slug, Warcraft, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Tekken 3, Monkey Island...

In a word Pokemon.

I played a few games before mostly games with "Sim" at the beginning. I was young and didn't really understand them but I still played.

Afterwards I started playing Age Of Empires 2. I loved to play it again although i was bad. I never got the hang of the whole RTS thing and now that i want to try them again i have a mac. I also liked to play point and click adventures at friends houses solving puzzles together. I really want to play psyconaughts because of good ol' yahzee but can't find it.

Then i found Pokemon. I spent endless hours training my Pokemon. I raised all to level 100 before the elite 4 and went through the game to many times to count. I could never get enough of them. This started my love affair with the RPG. Particularly, sorry yahzee, the JRPG. I am a guilty grinder because of Pokemon and Pokemon also introduced me to the great Final Fantasy Series.

I have recently re-discovered the, for lack of a better word, awsomeness of Pokemon and i am playing ruby on my GBA and occasionally my friends emerald. I am soon going to borrow a DS with Pearl. (I don't want to buy a DS for just one game).

I have tried to do the MMORPG thing. Runescape (shudder) at first when i was young and naiive and then diablo 2 online, Maple Story, Ragnarök and a few others. I could never get into them because they were just mindless grinding to me. The JRPG's had stories that i just wanted to complete and Pokemon had so much to discover each time.

Another important game for me are Hitman (same as OP). I only own contracts, probably the worst one, but i love it's originality and working with tension and suspense like a movie rather than blasting action. It is a shame i never got around to buying blood money.

I also love the Burnout series for showing me that car games can just be plain fine and putting a use to my crashing habits. I like how it was not bogged down in realism like Gran Tursimo or focusing more on features than racing like NFS.

And who has not played an MGS game and been blown away. Well probably there are people.

Wow that was quite long. And sorry for grammar issues i am guessing i made quite a few.

Me and my girlfriend used to play Sim Tower together. But she always wanted to make the tower all gay and stuff so I ended it. Sim Tower that is. She ended it with me when I started moaning the name of my character from Newerwinter Nights during intercourse... That's right! I played a girl!..
Also, I enjoyed Deus Ex: Invisible War, and I do think that it could have been one of the most important ones in my life, had it not been for the fact that I downloaded a broken copy that crashed every time I tried to kill the Hag who had the airplane locked up.

Metroid. I was obsessed with that title. It set the bar for what I want in a video game and it established my preference for action- adventure and exploration gaming. That game encompassed everything I liked about Sci-fi; the music, the atmosphere and the lonliness made it the perfect game to play on a rainy day.

Resident Evil 2.

The horror aspect of the game was something I had never experienced before and creatures like Lickers lead me to some wonderful reading.
Robert Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft,and other horror writers. Via RE2 I was introduced to the Cthulhu mythos and other myths and stories of horror.

Also upon falling in love with RE series as a result of number two it lead me to the comic store that I now own a location of. (I was young! No matter how bad the Resident Evil comics were DC Wildstorm still got my money.)

I can't believe I almost forgot Wing Commander!..

TIE Fighter got me into PC Gaming... Then Grand Theft Auto took me to PS2, and Command And Conquer brought me back to PC.... This time tomorrow I hope to be playing X-Wing on my laptop....

Legacy Of Kain is a direct reason that I'm in a great relationship and live far away from my family.

We are all forgetting the proverbial asexual father (and mother) of all strategy games: Civilization. That game made me into the gamer I am today. I still remember when Civ 2 came out and being excited as a child on the first day of summer, and still, months later, fingers fused to the 2, 4, 6 and 8 keys, still being as excited as the day I got it. That game did everything for me. It taught me history, hell, I now LOVE history. I have read over many things in the Civ2, 3 and 4 Civlopedias just for the hell of learning, because that game got me interested in... what is a Currassier? Who was Suryavarman II of the Khmer? and for that matter... who the hell were the Khmer?

And we move on to one of the other great strategy games that made the genre. Populous (namely populous 2). I tell you, to this day, i still look for a way to get the game to work properly on my computer. Downloading DOS emulating programs and such, but i can't find it. That game made me wanna understand God... but not be him. It's not easy. And when I got to level 998, i couldn't beat it. DAMN YOU ZEUS! That was the game that kept on giving... and giving... and giving... every frustrating gift it gave me forced me to crawl back for more. PS: Is it just me? or are games getting easier and easier? Populous was a bitch.

Can we move on to Syndicate? Syndicate invented my Lust for violence. The music, the blood, the sounds, the speed, the mind boggling difficulty... the fucking Atlantic Accelerator! That was a game unlike any other, and yet another game i can't find to run on my computer.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II deserve major props from me. Those games brought about my interest in real time strategy, as an alternative to Civilization style board gme strategy.

These are the games i grew up on. These are the games that turned me into the gamer I am today. I blame these games for the problems being a gamer brings about, but in the same breath I thank them for making me into one, and I thank them for shaping the gaming industry into what it is today.

Oh my God, I can't believe i forgot Chrono Trigger. My first and favorite RPG

I'll never forget the first time I rented, what was then known as, Final Fantasy III for my trusty Super Nintendo. From the onset I was completely captivated. This poor mind controlled "Magitek Witch" and two soldiers from a very familiar movie go for a romp through this tiny village blasting everything away via high powered battle armors. Pretty intense for a kid. Rest assured I reserved that game every weekend, as that was when I was allowed to rent, I could. It only took me like 5 months to beat!

Then I started seeing commercials for Chrono Trigger. I still remember seeing that boss fight on the bridge with Lucca and Crono and the game shows off the Cyclone attack. Good god, I knew I had to play it. Again, I was back to renting a game religiously every weekend I could.

Then Middle School rolled around and I got highly addicted to Xenogears and FFVII. And still to this day Xenogears blows me away with it's plot. I know it's caught a shit ton, and I won't lie it is deserved for that let down of a second disc, but I've enjoyed RPG's for their story content, since I don't have the patience to get into books. And I've always enjoyed games that have pushed me to think about my own beliefs and choices as an individual and Xenogears does that almost every time I play.

When I was 5 years old my dad got a nintendo for his birthday with the duckhunt/supermario cartridge... it's all been downhill from there.

Resident Evil is directly responsible for the reason I am now broke most of the time...

I didn't start getting my own games until my mid-teens - I had no money. But that didn't stop me playing endless hours at my mate's houses.

Worms was my first love. My mate had it on his Amiga, and we would waste hours on the thing. He also had most of the Bullfrog games.

Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park and Syndicate are /the/ games which made me realise I love gaming. I still remember saving up to buy Theme Park for myself. Those old Bullfrog games, which I eventually bought most of (apart from the magic carpet games) were just pure, condensed fun.

Golden eye and later Perfect Dark made me fall in love with FPS games. This was compounded later when I bought Quake II and Deus Ex. I haven't looked back since.

The first game I ever played was Pokemon.

The thing that got me into consoles was Spyro the Dragon, but the PC game that made a real gamer was C&C: Red Alert, so I've been all around when I was 6-10 years old. Also, Unreal got me into FPS games.

Wasn't into games till about 7 when my cosins gave me their big gray bricks called Game Boys and I played Wario World. I didn't play much else until the Game Boy Color where I played Pokemon Silver and Zelda: Orcle of Ages. Then onto the Advance with my first RPG, Golden sun FF Tactis, Sword of Mana, and the list goes on. The upgrade of owning a computer yeilded Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Myst, and Beyond Good & Evil.

But all in all it was Golden Sun that hooked me. Into the time I got a DS and PS2 it has been a quest to find great RPG's like FFX, Persona 3. However the DS has been a disapointment for me for RPG's. other games for it are good though

Super Mario Land on the Gameboy was a big influence for me as it was my introduction to gaming, Nintendo and the jumping plumber. It's what got me hooked.
Second to that Pokemon was also a big influence, especially when it was at its most popular over here. Here was a game that I was respected for knowing about, at least for a while. It introduced me to the wonderful world of level grinding, obssessive collection and completion and RPGs.

The first video game I ever played was the second Sonic game for the Genesis. That game shaped my imagination in a big way.

What games changed my life...One guess: Donkey Kong. Yep, that game hooked me onto the drug known as video games. Basically, after DK, I got my grubby little mitts on a PS2, and have been an avid gamer since.

The games that changed my life... I don't know, Tetris was the first game I ever played (and I played it A LOT). That was when I was 6. I then got a megadrive complete with Sonic The Hedgehog shortly after and I've been obsessed with games ever since... On reflection it may have been better for my social and economic development if my parents had bought me a football instead.

R.Nevermore:
Oh my God, I can't believe i forgot Chrono Trigger. My first and favorite RPG

I agree. And by the way, yes, X-wing is still a good flight simulator lo these many years later...

When I was a kid my Mega Drive (genesis to you yanks) was second only to my pool with its ability to win freinds. We used to organise Mortal Kombat tourneys (abacabb) and sonic 2 races, even simple games of High Score or How Far Can You Make It with games like Alex Kidd and Ecco the Dolphin. My favorite was always Co-op Golden Axe. man that game was awesome
Before then i had a NES as well, with a fairly good library of games, Mario, Duck Hunt, all the standards, but the game that turned me into the loving freak i am? Spaceship Warlock. I played this in 1991, the first time i'd seen anything like it. it was what was called an Interactive Movie back in the day, and i would gladly give away my one functioning kidney to find and play it again

mortal combat was the first video game i ever played on a sega at a friends house (3-4 i think)
warcraft 2 first one i owned, i sucked bad at it but it was my crack for many years
all the nintendo classics

so i would have to say warcraft/starcraft and conker's BFD, without them i wouldnt love RTS's or have a twisted sense of humor