As I watched this video, I almost (okay, not really) came to tears thinking about all the hours (days) that I have lost spent playing some of these games.
In particular, my fond memories are of:
1972 Pong (Atari, Arcade)
1980 Space Invaders (Atari, Atari 2600)
1981 Pac-Man (Namco, Arcade)
1981 Frogger (Konami, Atari 2600)
1982 Donkey Kong (Nintendo, NES)
1989 Tetris (Nintendo, Nintendo Gameboy)
1991 Lemmings (Psygnosis, PC)
1992 Wolfenstein 3D (ID Software, PC)
The early 80’s ones drove my crazy since I only got to play them once in a while, but never enough time to get much better at any of them.
Tetris will likely be one that I will always love, in any decade. Even as I type this, I want to play a quick game, though I know there’s no such thing.
Wolfenstein 3D wins multiple rewards. It was the game that turned me off games for a long, long time – I suppose it was that good. I have fond memories of trying to study, or finish projects, or do something related to my education, but instead I was scaring myself silly opening scary doors, and shooting down people at 3 and 4am in the morning. It was during one of those nights when all my room-mates where asleep, and I had been opening creepy doors for the past 4 hours non-stop that it occured to me I was foolishly addicted, so I quit Wolfenstein cold turkey.
During this time, I was raving to others about this cool thing I had called an email address where I could write to someone else immediately; we could have an electronic conversation in real time across many kilometres, and we didn’t have to pay a fee to write! It was an incredible tool vs the very expensive telephone, and the slow-moving snail mail. I was also distracted by the world wide web, discovered usenet groups though for the life of me, I can’t remember any of the alt.?? groups I used to read?
Nostalgic? Absolutely. 1992’s Wolfenstein was a teenager ago - 17 years to be exact. It’s hard to believe how much has changed in that timeframe and you know only more will come.
Enjoy the little video – and tell me your fond memories too.
And enjoy this one too! 
- Daisy
Lemmings, Tetris and finally Prince of Persia did me in.
My favorite was Galaga! I loved going to arcades and playing that game. I also liked Centipede. I was hooked on Myst for a while until I started reading about it and realized that I would have to put in waaaay more hours than I already was, just to solve the thing. At that point I handed it to some kids I knew and said, “Here ya go!”
Nowadays I like word games better. I go to pogo.com on occasion and play Word Whomp, Hangman Hijinks and Trivial Pursuit.
Thanks for the nostalgia! It really took me back in time. Especially Myst. Sometimes I’ll hear a door opening or a fuzzy TV noise and it will jolt me back to Myst. Eerie.
Daisy you geek! You just reached level 10 in my cool scale. You poor thing.
I’m going to have to get you to write a guest post on e-clecticism.
Randi…Myst, I spent way too much time on that game as well and I am sad to say I did eventually solve it with some help from friends. The whole look, sound and feel of that game was very distinctive even by today’s standards and I know what you mean about being reminded of it.
All the games you mention I am very familiar with especially Lemmings as I recently downloaded a copy to run on an emulator. I would add Elite on the BBC Micro, Manic Miner on the Commodore 64 and Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum as having particular fond memories for me.
I’m now a PS3 man and am only slightly addicted to the Call Of Duty series of games but every now and then I just cant resit on playing a special edition of Wolfenstein 3D that has been released on PS3.
I don’t recall the game you mean Daisy but I did a bit of Googling. How about the ones below…
http://www.ae4rv.com/games/lemonade.htm
http://www.primarygames.com/socstudies/lemonade/start.htm
http://www.classbrain.com/cb_games/cb_gms_bag/lemonade.html
Punch cards. Don’t remind me, I still have nightmares.