DUDE!!! I have been trying to remember the name of Another World forever!! I LOVED that game. I played it on the PC (286), though … never had an Amiga or a C64.

Another 286 game I couldn’t get enough of was Thexder.

Kaboom and Warlords were my absolute favorite Atari 2600 games.

Gorilla and Tank Wars were both on my highly played DOS (486) list.

Then came Lemmings … I wasted countless hours playing Tank Wars and Lemmings.

My best friend would come over to the house and I remember on numerous occasions looking up from the computer and seeing daylight and thinking “… but it was 10pm just a second ago.”

Now it’s the Xbox and the games just aren’t as memorable. Don’t get me wrong, I still play until the sun comes back around but I don’t enjoy it near as much as I used to.

Thanks again, man, for bringing up those wonderful memories!!

Lemmings 1
The Legend of Kyrandia 3
Dungeon Keeper
Earthsiege 2

and (allthough a bit late for real childhood):

Fallout 1&2

Magic Carpet: Best game ever…
i played that game untill my head felt like it would explode or the computer was in danger of a spontanious kick of frustration( i was little… i think 7) i beat it after eons of playing, and i never beat it on the disk… cuase it wouldn’t work on windows XP sadly… i still have it. I finally got DosBox and i actually have it up right now as im typing this, work is soo boring. gotta love it. i just got the second one and i hate the night.

Despite low draw distance, that made it look like you were fighting with a bag on your head, it has better gameplay than most games these days. wish they made one these days with modern graphics. i would pay whatever to play it.

@Luke: Sure – rub in the whole age thing :)

For me it was Commando on Commodore 64, then Silent Service and Gunship on Atari 520 STF. I had a soft side for simulators of all kinds then. Not much interest for RPG video games which I found better playing table top…

I just realised that even though I put down a list like that, the most memorable games of my teens weren’t played on a home computer, but in video game arcades :)

Oh my… It seems that most of you guys are a bit older than me. :) Either that or you are purposefully picking the old school titles.

So let me repair my street cred by bringing up few of the old C64 games I used to play all the time at my friends house:

Creatures – we spent countless hours on this game. Compared to most of C64 titles it actually had awesome graphics and incredible attention to detail.

River Raid was simple and yet addictive.

And finally, Pyramid. It’s notable because it was so incredibly frustrating that my friend at one point stood up and angrily threw the joystick at the floor at which point it shattered into a million pieces. We stared at each other for like a minute and then I was like “Dude, how the hell are we going to play now”.

I have to do this by platform (it sort of aligns with time). This is an extra sentence because the spam filter seems to dislike lots of links. I had to lose all the YouTube game links to get this post through:

Atari 2600
Kaboom
Difficult, twitchy and addictive.

BBC Micro
Elite
Need I say more?

Apple IIe
Taipan!
Trading and fighting in an addictive package. I spent ages playing Space Pilot on my palm which is effectively the same game.

ZX Spectrum
Chuckie Egg
The quintessential platformer.
Saboteur
Brilliant!
Heavy on the Magik
Something different, but amazing!

XT PC
King’s Quest
I dislike this game now, but I spent an inordinate amount of time playing this.
System Shock
I can still play this. An absolute classic.

There are more games and there is lots more on 386 era and higher machines. But by that time I wasn’t a kid anymore ;) I totally agree on Syndicate.

Minesweeper 4 life.

I’m almost 48…so Pong. As a teenager and early 20’s – Galaxian.