Make her understand! Once someone is exposed to the glory of Zelda, they're hooked for life.

I'll get to you on that...

I exposed her (no pun intended), but she just didn't seem to get it. She's not much of a gamer, but she does like super mario and old mortal kombat games. I've tried getting her into the games I've gotten from GOG, but she doesn't have the attention span for BG or Gothic. She's pretty hopeless, lol.

I can think of a few off the top of my head:

-My dad worked at RadioShack when I was a kid and he would take my sister and me to work with him. It was there that I was first introduced to The Legacy: Realms of Terror. The game to this day still creeps me out. Maybe it's just old nostalgia kicking in but when I was a kid, getting slapped to death by what was then a scary as hell zombie, scared me for life. :P

-It was also there that I first played the Dagger of Amon Ra. Fell deeply in love with that game from the very moment I first played it. It is to this day one of my all time favorite games, aong with the Colonel's Bequest (hence why I keep rambling about wanting these two on GOG).

-When Doom first came out me and my friends were all over it. I must have played the shareware episode about a million times. I remember borrowing those loads of disks from a friend to get it loaded on my computer, same with Wolfenstein 3D. When Doom 2 came out I was shocked by the amount of disks it was when I borrowed it.

-For consoles I would say it was probably staying up til almost 2 in the morning trying to beat the hospital level in Parasite Eve 1, on a school night. I felt like hell during the school day but it was so worth it.

Ohhh, the stories I could tell. I have very fond memories of my gaming days, from the very beginning to this very day. It's overwhelming sometimes.

When I was a kid, I would watch my father play Prince of persia (the original, of course). Every time he made mistake, I would basically look away from the screen, because I could perfectly visualise the prince being impaled or sliced in half. The other game was Alone in the dark. Once the first zombie entered the room, I would flee behind the corner and just peek out at the screen. Of course I was very vocal in encouraging my dad to punch it in the face, and he still remembers that with a smile. Punch it! Kill it! Nooo, don't die!

The first time I got my hands on a Shogun:TW, it was just magic. 3D battles in great detail (for the time), ninja cut scenes, great strategic and tactical depth... one time, I got cornered with my army and was facing a superior enemy. He had about a 1000 warriors, commanded by a strong general daimo, while I had somewhere around 400 of badly beaten, but honorable warriors and archers. Luckily, we were based in a province with a river, and you know that means a great defensive advantage. And what a battle it was. For the better part of an hour (didn't speed up time even for a second), he would advance over the river, and I would pray that my archers could rout their formations before they got over the river. Just before my arrows were depleted, he would march over the river with his best warriors, the buddhist monks. They got across, and a pitched battle took place. I was sweating like never before, managed to outflank him, and kill the daimo. His army routed, and my general started to pursue them, putting most of the fleeing warriors to the sword. In the end, I lost around 150 men, and practically destroyed my opponent. I quickly got fresh men to the stationed army, and proceeded to occupy his lands. It was my second game, after being defeated the first time, and I felt just awesome.

While we were waiting for class in high school, some of our classmates got access to the computer room. There was only one game there, but what a game it was. Jump 'n bump. The battles were supreme. Four of us were using the keyboard at the same time, while the others were waiting their turn. As soon as someone was killed, another took his place. Sometimes people were changing so fast, that three second later a complete new pack of players were playing. We laughed like crazy, it was so fun playing such a simple game hurdled up like that. No really, we were barely breathing for all the laughter, like when someone was just waiting with his bunny in the corner, and someone would try to jump on him, and getting 'offed in mid air by someone else, all the while getting taunted by all the remaining players. That's how a game should be played, I think.

Ultima 6, far and away. I was a child of only a few years the first time I played it, but I was hooked.

You got to control this little fella that moved his arms and kicked his feet, and who was followed around by other little fellas who were similarly animated. You could explore castles and cities, use all manner of fantasy weapons, fight fantastic monsters, and manipulate many objects in the world as you saw fit. There were dungeons to explore, quests to solve...man, it was addictive.

Being older now, I've since come to appreciate the Ultima series far more than with just the youthful exuberance described above, but Ultima 6 still holds a special place in my heart. I play it through about once a year, and always in a different way. I try to pass the quests in reverse order, or I challenge myself to pass it without actually killing any monsters with the Avatar (it's probably not possible to pass if you also disallow the companions from killing anything; there are a couple of situations where monsters can possibly block essential dungeon pathways).

Great game. Hell, I even have it installed on the (now banned-by-Apple) iDOS app (basically, a DOSBox port) on my iPhone.

might and magic: world of xeen. the game that brought me here also brought me into serious gaming. spend hours ... make that days exploring the world. I had like a 100% completion percentage (or so it turns out, after reading some guides) pre-internet. This meant that I did the tedious, redundant crossword-puzzle dungeon. and the floor after that. Which had no use.

before that: super mario bros 3. I was obsessed with that game, used to play it with my little sis all the time. We played it when we got home from school around noon, until we had to leav for school again. Good times.

Most of the games I will probably remember when I'm sixty will be games on the SNES or on the N64. Not because of the game itself, but because I played it with my friends after school, and we had a lot of fun that way. Even if we were bad at the games.


-** edit: this sums it up: http://www.gamespite.net/toastywiki/index.php/Games/G5-TheKidCultureOfNES