This is a site dedicated to Nebraska sports and following July 4th the off-season really hits home.
This past weekend I stumbled upon a video from Will Compton’s Bussin with the Boys Podcast. In this episode he was on there with Josh Allen and George Kittle. Generally they end an episode doing “Tier Talk” where they take a subject and rank their favorites into tiers. This episode they did video games.
So that was the genesis of the idea of doing a Top 10 Favorite Video Game Countdown which will end the week before Nebraska Football’s first game week against Northwestern.
Luckily for you, I have persuaded our fearless leader Jon Johnston to join me on this list. I know he is a gamer and from what I have heard it is likely that we will not have many games that will overlap.
We have not shared our list’s with each other so it will be interesting.
So here we go.
Oh, no sports games are allowed. So NCAA Football 2014, which rightfully would be on this list, will not make it. No Mike Tyson Punch Out either.
Nate’s 10th Place – Dead Space 2
As you can tell from the clip below, Dead Space 2 is in that horror-survival type of genre.
If I were to describe this game, I would say it reminded me of Resident Evil but with hope. The Resident Evil franchise was much darker and it felt there was no way to win at that game.
Maybe that’s the point.
But Dead Space 2 made it to 10th place because not only was it intense and at times scary, but it was a lot of fun. The upgrading of the suits and the options of weapons was awesome as it cut through the monsters.
This was also the first game where I had a high level of anxiety throughout my entire first run through the game.
I have had experience with others in the horror genre including Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Silent Hill was creepier than Dead Space 2. Resident Evil was scarier.
Though I’m not sure I would characterize either the Resident Evil or Silent Hill franchises as fun.
That’s where Dead Space 2 made a difference.
Jon’s 10th Place – Hack
This is Hack. Hack was a DOS-based game released around 1984.
Hack was the first real computer game I remember playing. There may have been other things like Pong – the first video game, but Hack was the first I ever played that felt like a precursor to EVERYTHING ELSE that came after it.
There are a few different versions. It doesn’t matter which I had. I downloaded it, probably off UseNet, and played it on an IBM Portable PC that had two floppy drives and a four-inch screen. I got it for $600 (instead of the several thousand) because one of my former roommates had gone to work for IBM and bought it for me with his employee discount.
This was my start into a computer career. Hack was the real start to my gaming.
The idea with Hack was that you were exploring a dungeon called “Hell” to get the Amulet of Yendor. You were an ampersand. You “walked” around using the arrow keys. You encountered monsters, you discovered food, which was good, because if you went too far without food, you died.
What I remember most about Hack is that it took forever for me to get a character to the 50th level of the dungeon, which was the goal. I was walking around trying to win the game (so I thought, to this day I have no idea how you win that game) when I turned the corner and ran into a kobold, which turned me to stone. And that was it.
Game over.
It didn’t have multiple saves. You only had one save. The save in my game was right when I ran into the kobold. When I reloaded the game, I immediately turned to stone again. I was so pissed off.
The other two games I remember fondly from the beginning were “Zork” and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Both were text-based adventure games.
Below is Zork (from wikipedia)
By Marcin Wichary – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/7154389844/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43983991
I loved these games because of the puzzles they presented.
Because of them, I became a lifelong gamer.
