RetroGaming

Stardew Valley or Terraria.

Inscryption. One of my favorite games to come out in years, but the secondary playthroughs don't have anywhere near the appeal without the mystery/intrigue sadly. The first time for me was magical though.

Chrono Trigger, Castlevania SOTN, Pokemon BW and B2W2, Dead Cells

A link to the past is my top Zelda game for sure.

... Have you ever tried the randomizer for it? It will give you a rom where all the items are randomly distributed around the map, making you do the whole sequence out of order.

I will play though a random Rom one a year or so and it's a blast.

https://alttpr.com/en

Picking one is quite hard, but since it's retro only, my vote goes to Super Metroid. That game is a rare gem.

Wow OP it's like we had the same childhood. That opening sequence and the early parts of LTTP are seared into my memory. +1

Wing Commander 3 and Black & White.

Played both of them when i was a kid and it'll be nice to be able to play them again as an adult.

Easily Metal Gear Solid 3 for me.

Halo reach. Such a masterpiece.

Final fantasy tactics, or 7.

I loved Bioshock, so probably that.

Oh man.... I would love to experience Zork again for the first time. 😊

"West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here."

Hollow Knight

Definitely Dragon Age Origins. Loved it all, from the weird combat mechanic to the relationship scores. I only wish Varric had been available to romance.

Ultima Online. It was my first MMO. I could own a friggin house that other people could visit! I've been chasing that high for 20+ years now.

Half Life 2, New Vegas and MGS all blew my young mind and would be great to relive.

Portal or Minecraft.

I've played so much Minecraft that I have everything down to a science.

Like quickly making a wooden pickaxe, mining exactly how much cobble I need for a furnace and a stone pickaxe, and how to find coal and iron in less than 5 minutes.

Wood and stone tools, outside the two pickaxes, are skipped entirely.

Before the end of the first night I am almost entirely decked out in iron stuff.

Farming cows for bookshelves for enchanting is quick and easy, and then getting fortune 3 and looting 3 pretty much makes the game easy mode. You print ores and food.

Not to mention you can get mending from a villager easily. Just pick up and put down the job station until they give you mending. It's not skill, it's just luck. You can get it in less than 2 minutes if you're lucky. Now you'll never have to worry about anything ever breaking again. You can also get fortune and looting this way as well, removing the need to waste time and materials on the enchanting table.

It's sad. I wish I could erase my knowledge of it, and play Minecraft how I used to. By savoring my enchanted items, creaming my pants at the sight of diamonds, and grinding hard for food.

Runescape, 2006 sort of era

I actually bought LTTP before I bought a SNES.. The game itself wasn't easy to get in my area and I happened to be out of town and ran across a copy, so it was an easy decision

ICO

such an amazing game that never seems to get any love

94 NHL Hockey on Sega. That game blew my mind then after years of playing pretty bad ports of hockey games like Ice Hockey and Wayne Gretzky's hockey on NES. I was hooked from the very first moment and played the franchise for years until they got into 14 buttons and FPV. The older overhead version was peak for me.

Have you tried a link to the past randomizer . It makes it very fun and you can find different ways to progress through the game . Sometimes you have to do some of the dark world first or find clever ways to get into areas .

The original Luigi's Mansion. First off little kid me was still scared SHITLESS cause this game has ghosts everywhere. And that dumb kid didn't have a clue what "triangles" or animations" were so in his mind those ghosts could do ANYTHING to poor little Luigi just trying to save his brother.

And the story of course isn't anything super amazing of course, it's a non-rpg Mario game. But again little kid me doesn't know shit. In my mind I can remember thinking "what if E.Gadd is lying and is actually evil. What if I can still find Mario somewhere in this mansion and we can gtfo together.

My family used to rent that shit from Blockbuster all the time and I was youngest of three, so I barely got to play much back then and we wouldn't own it for years. But I can still remember major tears of joy when I finally did and Luigi just starts laughing at Mario with that vent stuck around his neck.

Others for my list that I've seen plenty here so won't gush about the same way is: Dark Souls 1, Both Portal, Destiny if I could experience it from release day and have the shitty content droughts D1 went through constantly, Halo 3, and another I haven't seen is JK: Jedi Outcast

Portal or Arkham Asylum, something that surprised me in unexpected ways.

Portal because I thought I was getting a neat puzzle game (I was), but GLADoS blew me out of the water.

Arkham Asylum because of how effectively some of the Scarecrow sequences messed with me specifically (making me think my game had glitched, etc.)

Learning Team Fortress 2 for the first time as a teenager was such a crazy fun experience.

StarCraft's campaign was a masterpiece. I get to include Brood War here too.

Monkey Island or Little Big Adventure

Grandia on ps1. I refuse to replay it out of a morbid certainty that it's basic as all hell. But it was my first jrpg and it blew my mind.

I swear it took me weeks to make it to the wall, but searching my memory it's the first scene after your hometown.

Nier Automata

A game I will never forget