I’d say it’s a tie between The Curse of Monkey Island and Wing Commander (1 and 2).
Handheld Zelda link’s awakening for the Gameboy hits me the hardest as it was the first I owned myself bought with my first jobs mowing lawns and delivering papers.
Console, NES contra watching my older brothers get way further than I could at the time & teach me the Konami code
PC xwing, I had a f16 flight stick and my siblings would play splitting weapons/shield/engines distribution to a copilot and the pilot flying and aiming. That mission where you have to fly back and forth protecting the Corvette from imperial attacks from both sides jumping in and out of the area was peak retro space combat gaming.
-Operation Wolf Dad would watch me play. He would bring other people to come in and watch how good I was. -Mario Golf Dad would play with us, he even kept a spreadsheet, on grid paper, to track his stats. -Ultima 3 First game on a PC. Mom got it to play with me and my little sister after Dad died. She couldn’t figure out how to get it to work. I ended up playing it alone years later, but only after learning enough MS-DOS to figure out how to even get it running. CD…
Hug your parents. Play with your kids.
Megaman 2
Ghostbusters on C64. Love that game to this day.
Black and white 2
Master of magic
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego. Played it as a child together with my mom. She had all the worldly knowledge, but at the time I was the only one who could speak/understand English, so teamwork was key. That game meant hours of educational fun for the both of us.
Quest for Glory and Kyrandia!
I loved that Quest for Glory soundtrack.
Is Kyrandia the one where you play a jester in the 3rd game? I remember liking that one a lot.
I did t know you play as Malcolm in the third game! I’ll have to play the second and third once I’m done with a replay of the first one!
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
I played the original when it came out on PC in like 1987. A friend of my dad gave me a copy, but I didn’t have the manuals or map or anything that came in the box, so in order to figure out how to get around the Caribbean I had to crack an encyclopedia to a map, and that got me both interested in maps and also in reading the history of all these places I’d been to in the game.
I still play the 2004 remake of that game a few times a year.
Hitting a tree with a good stick.
Pokemon Blue on Gameboy
Stronghold, the isometric one
Toejam & Earl! My dad got a deal on a used sega genesis when I was 6 and it came with one game, it ended up being my favorite. The presents and little pixel sundaes were so visually appealing to my simple child brain, sneaking up on santa claus successfully was absurdly satisfying, and discovering the secret level 0 hot tub pre-internet made me feel like a fucking wizard.
