How could I not do this one? Rayman was the first game I ever played. My parents wanted a CD player so they bought a playstation and some games off craigslist for CDs and so my older brother would have something to do. There was a good amount of trash in that pile of games, but I loved the style of this one! I could never get past the first stage of the music world, but watching my older brother routinely get far in the game was fun too.

I've written about this plenty of times before, but I always seem to scrap any longer-form writing I try to put down about how this game impacted me. Seeing this game as a very young kid on a demo disc really resonated with me. I thought the games aesthetic was so cool and I couldn't get enough of it. Also, I LOVED Lammy, but not in the like 10 year old crush kind of way. I felt this deeper connection to the character. The exact type of connection you can look at after transitioning and go: "Oooooh. That makes sense."

As I alluded to earlier, I mostly had shovelware as a kid. Honestly if it weren't for a few choice games, crap like that scooby doo cyber chase ps1 game would have put me off of the medium. But thankfully the Pokemon anime on cartoon network made me beg my parents for the game, and I put well over 1000 hours in this as a kid. Not my favorite generation, but the one I have the fondest memories of.

HM or Xeno are my two favorite series of all time. I think I could play only this for like 3 months and not get tired. its so lovely and made me love farming sims

my younger brother and I had a tradition where we played this game in one sitting once a year every year. I never really got along with my family, mostly just through our mutual hatred of our parents, but I think this really showed me how couch co op rubbing shoulders with someone is such a pure wonderful form of fun.

I'm not saying I'm completely free of awkward behavior on the internet, but I think this game helped me get a lot of my dumb mistakes out when I was younger. I hate to admit it but I edated like a motherfucker on this site, it was super embarrassing and awful but I am glad I did all that when was younger to prepare myself for being able to talk to people better.

I would not be here if not for this game. Several horrific life events happened right before I played this, and then seeing shiki and nekus arcs made me stay alive. I played it 4 times through in 2 weeks just because I didnt care about anything else

Seeing Scarlett do so well made me wanna get good at this game. Thank god it was one of the few games that ran on a Mac. Protoss player for life ever since i lost to cannon rush as a kid

I know "smash" and the fgc are very different communities, but this led to me to getting into fighting games a lot more seriously. my former tournament friends were the first people i ever came out to in person. It isnt a great community, but it is one I used to feel so welcome in.

I got excited for games before, but I think this was the first time I actively followed all the news of a game like a hawk. I joined the online xeno fandom, which was SO hungry for content as the series was still somewhat niche in the states. my guilty pleasure is following gaming news, and I dont think I would do that nearly as much if it wasnt such a social thing.