Recently on Twitter, the hashtag #gamestruck4 has been circulating, depicting the four most influential games to the tweeter. While I already joined in on Twitter with the thousands of other accounts tweeting with the hashtag, the team here at Sooner Esports decided to write about our experiences with our favorite games.
For me, my love for games started out when I lusted for a Nintendo DS. I was stuck with the Gameboy, and while that is my favorite handheld system, I didn’t appreciate it until I was older. All my best friends had a DS and all I wanted to do was talk to them on Pictochat and play Nintendogs. I begged my mom for one, and she and my dad paid for half of it while I earned enough money for the other half. When I got it, I was lost in it, I played for hours, I was obsessed with going over to my friends’ houses and going into bark mode and collecting the other dogs, and I was very, very into taking care of my virtual pet. I barely touched any other game, and when I did, it was Mario Kart with my friends. That’s why Nintendogs is the first game that really shaped me.
Soon after I received my DS and I was busy with sleepovers centered around caring for our dogs, my best friend introduced me to a weird cube that played Lego Star Wars. We sat for hours playing the levels and crying laughing at what the minifigures were doing. This is one of my favorite games of all time, it has traveled with me through many systems and many deleted save files, It’s the only game I’ve completed more than once. When my family’s first Wii broke, the main thing I was concerned about was the fact I wouldn’t be able to play Lego Star Wars anymore.
Moving on to my prime video game time, when my family first got our Wii. My mother had been against video games for a long time, but when we were visiting a friend, she bowled on Wii Sports and was set on it, so was the rest of the family. As a family, we ended up only playing Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii for most of our Wii’s lifespan. And we played a lot, most nights were filled with us finishing dinner and racing to the couch to play Mario Kart. It was the game that truly bonded me and my dad over video games. Luckily, Mario Kart is still a common theme in my house when I come home from college.
Last, but certainly not least, my most influential game of all time has to be The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess. I wasn’t fortunate to have an N64 growing up and wasn’t able to play Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask, but I was able to experience Twilight Princess during it’s run on the Wii. I had come from playing sports and party games with friends all my life, and this was the first game where I was able to sit down and invest myself in a story. I instantly fell in love, and it’s one of the main reasons I have so infatuated with The Legend of Zelda franchise. To say that Twilight Princess has inspired me to start doing what I do is an understatement.
That’s my #gamestruck4! If you want to see me gush more over games like this, follow me on Twitter: @UltimateCodex. And don’t forget to comment with your top four games!
