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Battletoads (NES) I have a few but I want to call out this as it gets memed for it's difficulty - and it was difficult - but not "can't pass level 3 speeder bikes" difficult!
The game looked great, had extremely tight controls and had an insane amount of level variety! Each of the 12 levels was unique, from platforming, rappelling, biking, surfing, flying, racing, swimming, and even weird ass wall clingers! And they all played well - It also had the most banging pause music ever haha!
F-15 Strike Eagle on the C-64
The original Tie Fighter.
Simpler times.
Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, Time Splitters
I've got a really fond spot in my heart for The Neverhood. It really opened my young eyes to the possibility that video games could be weird and artistic. They didn't have to be an action packed generic mainstream capitalization of whatever is popular at the moment. As a kid, I could still tell it was a unique piece of work that required a lot of passion and creativity. I consider it the first indie game I ever played and it absolutely set the tone for what I chose to play to this day.
I still listen to the soundtrack nearly three decades later.
Thank you for mentioning this. My personal favorite was Skullmonkeys. High school in the ‘90s was a wild place.
Castlevania 1-3 & Symphony of the Night,
Lemmings,
The Adventures of Lolo 2 & 3,
The Incredible Machine (and any clones),
Silent Hill 1-3,
Heroes of Might & Magic 3,
Zelda 1-3,
Tetris,
Bubble Bobble,
Super Mario Bros. 3 & World,
Nethack,
Tomb Raider 1-3,
Dungeon Keeper 2,
Theme Park,
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1-3,
Rayman, Command & Conquer: Red Alert,
Megaman 2 & 3,
Metroid,
Solstice (NES),
Metal Gear Solid
Civilization, Marathon, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and F/A-18 Hornet
Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge are my favorite games of all time. I sunk so much time as a kid beating the campaign and then making custom maps and levels for fun. The installer and the cut scenes were so memorable. It also had an amazing sound track. It was also one of the few RTS I tried at the time where the game didn't feel like it took forever. For contrast I remember playing some C&C and also Dune 2000 as a kid and I remember each campaign easily taking over an hour to complete. I also remember it got kind of boring fast.
Aside from those some other honorable mentions:
The original Spyro was my absolute favorite as a kid, also enjoyed crash bandicoot, ratchet and clank, and the jak and daxter series. The don’t make adventure games like they used to imo so now I do a lot of strategy and sim games as I’m obviously old now
Diablo 2, Black & White, Star Craft, Lords of the Realm 2, Twisted Metal, Tony Hawk Pro Skater....many I've forgotten.
Super Mario 64. I have the best memories from. I got an N64 and Mario 64 on Christmas the year it came out.
Sonic Mega Collection was a game I absolutely loved and provided a ton of hours of my free time when I felt like playing it. That, and around middle school I got really into Borderlands 1 and have been in love since.
Mega Man 2 Earthworm Jim Sonic 3 & Knuckles Smash Melee NBA Jam: TE
FPS by age: Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Blood, Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Quake, Tribes 2, Counter-Strike.
RTS by age: Dune 2, C&C, Tiberium Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, WarCraft 2, StarCraft, Warcraft 3
Sim by age: Conway's Game of Life, SimCity, SimCity 2000, The Sims, The Sims 2
Strategy by age: Civilization, Civilization 2, Masters of Orion
RPG by age: Final Fantasy 2 (4), Chrono Trigger, Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind
Adventure by age: Pitfall, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, King's Quest, Space Quest, Tomb Raider, Grim Fandango
Honorable mentions: Microsurgeon, E.T., AD&D Minotaur's Labyrinth, Golden Axe, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Ecco the Dolphin, Eternal Champions, Android Pinball, Solar Winds, Detroit (not Become Human; it was a car making sim on DOS), Crusader: No Remorse
Super Mario Bros 3 is probably the first game that comes to mind as I was finally old enough to really get excited for specific games, and that one was hugely anticipated at the time. The whole game blew my 7 year old mind (think thats the math at least). Up until that point it was mostly grabbing games based on their box art at the rental place, or based on what looked cool in those displays in Toys R Us. And you played those whether they were good or not. That wasn't the case with SMB3 though.
Super Mario World is probably the next example, for similar reason as above but even bigger and better. Then into the Donkey Kong Country games. Final Fantasy VI was another game that blew me away when I first saw it. That intro was crazy when you still considered the SNES a new platform. Pokemon Blue for the Pocket I got specifically to play it.
Played lots of the original Diablo, though I was terrible at it back then. Actually didn't like Diablo 2 that much when it was first released, but got into it again years later. Baldur's Gate 2 was fun for a while, but never beat it (and didn't play the first until much later). Lords of Magic was a game I played the crap out of but was terrible at the game as well.
If we are just talking about time played then games like Baseball Stars, Excitebike, Track and Field with the Power Pad, etc. You just played the shit out of every game you owned back then. Because you only got them once or twice a year.
Gridder for C64
Sonic, streets of rage, tekken 2 and 3. Original gta, WWF attitude. Crash bandicoot.
GoldenEye , Diddy Kong racing and Mario kart.
GTA 3 , Vice city and San Andreas. Halo 1-3, Kotor 1-2, mass effect trilogy. Wipeout games. Skate 3, OG tony hawk games. Original modern warfare 2, morrowind, oblivion and skyrim. Final fantasy 7,8,9 and 10, also the splinter cell series.
Thats all that comes to mind but I would have spent a good amount of time on them throughout the years.
Early 2000s Xbox, so I grew up on Psychonauts, Blinx the Time Sweeper, Blinx 2, Jet Set Radio Future, and Spider-Man 2 (the movie game).
We grew up poor but my parents managed to get us an nes. We had a half a dozen games we'd trade back and forth with friends.
Megaman 3, Jackal, fist of the north star, Batman, street fighter 2010, TMNT, are some of the great games I grew up on
I was a beast at Jackal. Could play that game without dying easily, and made up my own lyrics to the music. (I remember one song was about Colgate Jr.)
I think I loved how in so many games getting hit by any enemy meant death. But here you could run over guys. Fun game.
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth
Pretty sure my first major video game was Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and it started my fascination for cars.
My favorite game from my childhood would probably be Mafia 1 though, I still replay it like once a year. Halo CE is a close second.
I'm thinking about the games I played in my childhood that influenced what I like to play now, so it might be only halfway relevant to the question.
First monster collector: Pokemon Blue. Digimon World 1 was also one of my favourites, because of how real it felt, like a real monster. The one other monster game I really got into as a child was Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, I think I played Cobi's journey. It helped that a lot of my friends were playing it.
First builder: Simcity 3000. Started my lifelong love for city builders, even though I'm not great at them per se.
Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper 2 were my introduction to management sims and also my favourites for a long time.
As a kid I absolutely loved this RTS called Warbreeds because of the ability to graft any weapon onto any unit. Nowadays though I just find such mechanics fiddly, but as a kid it felt so sci-fi. In terms of time spent playing, though, the standout RTS was probably Starcraft.
I also played on a lot of MUDs as a kid. Wheel of Time (but had never read the books), Discworld (but had also never read the books), Aardwolf and I think one or two others. I was amazed at how it felt like I could do so much (even though most of the "free" actions were just emotes.
My first graphical MMO was I think Maplestory, which was a huge part of my social life as a kid. I think I miss the feeling of being part of a big community than the MMO experience itself, honestly. Nowadays when I try getting into MMOs it feels like that feeling of being a part of a giant community of people is gone.
Star wars Jedi knights games for sure. Asheron's Call also got a lot of playtime as my first MMORPG. Tony hawk pro skater 2.
Pokemon (1st gen and 2nd gen -- plus some of the spin-off stuff from that era to a lesser extent) captivated me in a way no other games have before or since. Honestly, I hope nothing ever grabs me that hard again; it's kind of scary how obsessed I was in retrospect.
A number of N64 games also made a big impact on me. Majora's Mask was probably my second favorite game (after Pokemon) for many years. (OoT made an impression too, but I played MM first.) I loved the music in Diddy Kong Racing. I got 120 stars in Mario 64, and when I tried it again as an adult, I really appreciated how short and to the point levels could be (not that I played that way as a kid) -- also the camera in that game sucked. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness kind of disturbed me a bit as a kid, but it's probably the first game I encountered a sort of "New Game Plus" in, which was neat. (People have since told me that's the "black sheep" of the series and that it's really weird that that's the only one I've played significantly.)
Duke Nukem 3D was the first game I modded, I think (very simple graphical stuff). Definitely wasn't age appropriate but I played the heck of it anyway. Didn't really get much into other shooters other than playing through the main game of Perfect Dark on N64 and playing split-screen Golden Eye with friends.
I also played a lot of Sim\ games -- particularly SimCity 2000, SimEarth, and SimTower. Also had a bunch of others like SimFarm and even some of the more obscure ones like SimSafari. Streets of SimCity and SimCopter being able to load SC2K maps was really neat though. Played a fair amount of other city builders and simulation games like Caesar III and Roller Coaster Tycoon too. My parents probably hoped I'd become some sort of business manager. :p
I had a lot of creative tools back then as well which I treated as not-that-different from video games. Various Kid Pix programs (one of which had a bunch of odd video clips integrated -- including a short documentary about jackalopes of all things), Kid's Studio, Digital Chisel, some version of HyperCard, etc. Game Maker -- which I found around the year 2000 back when it was still on www.cs.uu.nl -- ultimately led me to being a professional programmer.
Among my most memorable:
Sid Meier's pirates for c64
One game that I loved and never see too many people commenting on was Tomba!, specifically Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return.
Crash Bandicoot Warped and Toy Story 2 for PS1, I come back to the latter multiple times per year yet.
Suprised no one has mentioned Minecraft yet. That's probably it for me.
Tomb raider, AOE, command and conquer. Those kinda games
Mario kart Street fighter 2. Super Mario world Tetris Dr Mario AND Dr ronitniks mean bean machine. Sonic 1+2
Now playing sf6 and buying son Mario kart and switch for Xmas.
The original Genesis Sonic trilogy was a constant replay for me as a kid and even on occasion now as an adult. I loved the visuals, the music, learning how to master every level, playing as the different characters. It was all so good to me.
As someone who only got into retro RPGs like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger as an adult, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time was the first game to show me how games could tell an epic story. There is a reason it was held up as one of the greatest games ever made during its heyday and even holds up well now. It had huge varied environments for its time, memorable scenes and characters, and IMO a perfect difficulty curve to its dungeons and puzzles. Even after playing many of the later Zelda games, it remained my favorite Zelda game until Breath of the Wild.
And of course, the original Smash Bros 64 started off the ultimate fun party game series, my siblings and I spent hundreds or even thousands of hours playing Smash 64 and Melee growing up.
Bubble bobble
Castlevania
Metroid prime
Also as a kid remember playing some old school ghostbusters game that consisted of mashing a button over and over as quickly as possible.
Mega Man X on the snes was my favorite for the console, the day I got to play the first time I managed to beat Chill Penguin, Spark Mandrill and Armored Armadillo. I couldn't for the life of me, for the next 5 or so hours, beat any other boss. That I played that long without any progress probably shows my dedication.
Donkey Kong Country 2 was my second fave. Never managed to "legally" get all 75 kremcoins, or beat all the 5 special stages back then. Hell, even getting to the final world was a challenge back then.
On the ps1, Mega Man Legends 1 and X5. I'm only counting the games I played when I was "a kid" (< 12yo). I still love most Mega Man games.
Ps2: GTA sanandreas, gauntlet dark legacy, onimusha2( mostly watched my older brother play), need for speed underground2, midnight club2, resident evil 4(also just watched my brother play), On WII: redsteell, super samsh bros brawl, mario galaxy, mario kart, On pc: world of warcraft online, club penguin and flash games in general
Now you've got me longing for my old Atari back. My top 3 games by a country mile were:
Supercars 2 - must have played it through a thousand times.
Ellie Frontier - sank many hours in to it despite never being very good at combat.
Sensible soccer - one of the most fun games I've ever played. Would often play with my step dad. Some epic matches.
These days you can emulate old consoles almost perfectly, with a lot of quality of life improvements. The whole memory can be written and retrieved in milliseconds so you can save everywhere and anywhere.