And what does it mean to you? Mine was Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. I was 5 when it came out and I didn't know English then. Have no idea how I made it to the Sword but that's as far as I'd get until I picked it up again as a teen. Then after that it was Pokemon Red, where I'd throw 'Nugget' away because I didn't know what it was. Cutesy, harmless RPGs that built me up to more grindy, story-driven ones. I loved the exploration and reading of it all.
Fairly certain it was Final Fantasy 6, AKA Final Fantasy 3 on the PS1. I was real young when I played that with my dad. After that, it was either Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast or Kingdom Hearts for the PS2. I still have some emo-ass AMVs imprinted in my DNA that were Eminem and Linkin Park set to Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, all dating back to around 2002 or so. So mostly JRPGs growing up. I know I got into Pokemon pretty deeply around that time as well, but I largely fell out of favor of RPGs by 2004 or so. Ironically, it was one of my favorite games that did it— Knights of the Old Republic, a game I will still pop in from time to time today. As I said a bit when I first joined the forums, I'm a child of Grand Theft Auto. As a 10-year-old who was only kinda sorta into Star Wars and didn't care much for story-driven games, I just wanted to go f**k about with my lightsaber, grenades, and force powers, but I could only do some token saber-waving move and use those powers in turn-based combat. GTA taught me that you could use weapons anywhere and that action could be free-flowing rather than rigidly following turns, so KotOR was sort of the last RPG I played for a while outside of some handheld anime titles like Legacy of Goku II or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
Super Mario RPG is best game. Much turtle shells. Frying pan. I want to play it again now. Off I go. Goodbye. And I dunno. Milo's Secret Castle I guess was an RPG.
First would be Times of Lore, if I recall correctly; didn't mean much, I have to say, played it only a bit before forgetting about it; I was mostly into Sierra's Adventure Games by that time. Then it was Sierra's Quest for Glory, and all of a sudden all of the other Sierra games were lacking... something. Numbers, obviously! =) By that time I already knew "roleplaying games" (pen and paper, I mean) were a thing, but knew nobody else that would play them. That's when I stumbled upon Eye of the Beholder. Which means that nowadays I can officially grumble like only a grumpy, old fart can grumble and say: "Back in my days, kid, we drew'em maps by hand!" =)
Dungeons & Dragons, the Basic Set. It means that it's been many years since those first gaming sessions, reading over the rules and the small group of us finding our way toward a hobby has endured for decades.
Hahaha, I completely forgot about Sierra Games and those types. There's only one solution but a million ways to die. Oof, those were annoying but I had fun. I had a Hugo's House of Horrors and then the one where you watch Penelope's uncle get murdered. There's actually one of those games I had but I cannot remember anything about it to properly search it on Google. It was in the same manner as Hugo games but you were some medieval dude. Scenes I remember: the opening sequence of a Rube Goldberg Machine waking you up, swimming too far out into the ocean got you eaten by a sea serpent, and some cavern here a cult was sacrificing a woman. Woah hey. Nok Nok Shells, tyvm. ------ I wish I could say D&D like some of you folks but alas, I didn't get into real pen and paper roleplaying until a few years ago. I only did forum/online-type of roleplaying because I'm a dweeb.
Very first was Legend of zelda. On the game boy... in black and white if I remember correctly. And you know what? It blew my mind as a kid! What did it mean to me? Exploration! Back then games were very linear. Do this, then do that and then this. Even adventure games (remember the type in games?) were annoying in how specific you had to be. Zelda opened up a world and said Go. No limitations, no one telling me to do this or that. Just a world to dive into as I pleased. Sometimes I'd get so close to the end of one cave just to find that I can't progress without a specific item. So I'd leave, go somewhere else and if I ever come across something I'd be reminded and go.. oh yeah that would work on so and so! LETS TRY IT!!! Puzzles in every room and most of it depended on pattern recognition so if I lose it was my fault. If I win however it was such a rush of adrenaline to hear that musical jiggle as the door to the next puzzle opened. Zelda was just plain fun.
Not exactly RPG, but... Mixed-Up Mother Goose The open-world freedom really fascinated me to no end. This came in 4 big floppy discs, and whenever you changed zones you had to take the current floppy disc out and then put another one in (and wait a very long time for it to load)! The problem was that we played on my cousin's copy, and she only had 3 of the discs, so we never completed the game, but we played it over and over and over... The thing is... modern MMORPGs can't even do fetch quests that good... And then... Chip's Challenge. Again, not exactly RPG... but puzzles! Spoiler There's one ice maze level, where you're going around in circles forever, until you get to the 'hint' box, and it says "What's the name of this level?" -- It was "Southpole" -- and all you need to do is always go down. I was really impressed. This is just like the "Up, Up, Up the Mountain" in Zelda I.
I played Zelda I and Zelda II as an adult, and I drew those maps by hand. SO was doubtful at first, but then we had to rely on my map at the end, so I had the last laugh. Actually, I also drew a 'fish map' for Zelda: Windwaker by hand. Good times.
Final Fantasy came next, and Final Fantasy II hooked me. What do they mean to me? I’m not all that sentimental except to acknowledge that they started my love affair with this kind of gaming. I do have fond memories of Playing dragon warrior and calling up my best friend at the time to announce every time I found something new and vice versa. For FFII my mom wouldn’t buy it for me so I spent an entire summer renting it from the video store and renewing it over and over. Probably would have been cheaper just to buy it. I paid my respects by adding an FFII reference to my book by creating “Triplets” named Pehrom, Pohrum, and Pahrem to my book. Echoing the Palom/Porom twins from FFII.
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar on the Apple IIe. Played that in strategy game club in middle school and was hooked.
I think that Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars was also my first video game RPG... I'm pretty sure that's right... No, wait, it was Earthbound (otherwise known as Mother 2). What it meant to me was... well... I'll admit that it didn't mean a lot to me at the time. My main idea of fun was fighting the bad guys... then again, my ability to understand stories was nil and void back then, especially due to my Autism. I really didn't get what I should've about a story's true ability... to convey a message. In hindsight, however, I guess that the game was what opened my eyes to story games in particular. It was an especially interesting thing for me... really.
This is gonna put me in the old folk's home for sure, but it was something on the TI-99, I think Adventureland? Anyways it was text based and I had no idea what I was doing. Later when we got an IBM PC I taught myself Basic and wrote a bunch of my own . . . they were probably terrible. I kind of wish I could see them again, tho, just for old time's sake. The first tabletop was D&D, the basic set in red. I didn't have anyone to play with at the time, but it did start me down a long road of just buying games to read the rulebooks (I'm weird).
for me it was Rifts. Your first game always holds a special place in your heart. I have been playing it every since and eventually I started running it too. I love pen and paper role playing games.
My first role playing game was definitely Dungeons & Dragons back in 1981. In all honesty, I've played far more pen and paper RPGs than I have console or PC RPGs.
Quest for Glory is one game I loved so much I had to jailbreak an iPad, shove on DoSBox and load the game that way. I've played it a dozen times or more - and it was only on round like 15 hat I figured out you could befriend the minotaur.
