These are 9 games that I love and/or shaped me through my life so far, I have a couple of things to say for each one

Super Mario Bros.

When I was a kid I was walking past a local shop in my city, and I noticed a girl sitting behind the counter and playing this game on the computer. After euphorically describing that sight to my family we discovered that she was "playing Mario", so eventually, with a bit of help from my sisters, my parents got me a bootleg plug & play NES. Needless to say that I played Mario for hours after that!

Super Mario Bros. 3

A few months later, my plug & play console died, IDK, something about the batteries getting wet I think, but the point is that I no longer had a console so we had to get another one. This time we got a bootleg top loader with the carcass of a PS1. In this one, unlike the latter that had a 64-in-1 rom built in, we could actually put and swap cartridges, so that meant more games! One of the new cartridges we got featured SMB 3, and when I tried it I fell in love with everything, from the theater aesthetics, to the music and the power ups. I also remember finishing the first world thinking I beat the game, and when I got into world 2 I was like "wait, there's more??!"

(also fun fact, this cartridge also featured kung fu mari, super bros 6, mario 14, mario 16)

Pokémon Ruby

This one's relevance in my life is kinda split into two arcs if that makes any sense? A childhood friend introduced me to the world of PC emulators around 2010, he had a disc filled with n64 and gba roms. At the time I used to play those on Visual Boy Advance, and I got very hooked up with Pokemon Ruby because Groudon looked badass and I really wanted to catch it. However, the rom was pretty corrupt (and I didn't know where to download a new one) so I was softlocked a bit early in the game, something similar happened with Fire Red but somehow I managed to beat it.

During a summer car trip in 2014 I tried replaying Ruby on my phone, and it was a very fun game. It reignited my interest in completing the rest of the games of this franchise. I loved the mons designs and the soundtrack. Also it features Zangoose, my favorite Pokemon

Minecraft

If I recall correctly I got into minecraft around late 2012 thanks to a friend, it was mysterious to me but it was fun regardless, and when we discovered that it had multiplayer we enjoyed it even more. it's such a good game to play with friends. One cool thing about this game is that it became "timeless" and either lot of people are still into it, or new people discovers it, so the interest persists and revives over time. We still have the "occasional minecraft server phase" every couple of years ever since.

Of course, at the time we didn't had the money to get the premium version, pay a 3rd party host, or the patience to learn to run a server, but we had our ways

The Binding Of Isaac

This might be the most important game of this list, because everyone I know that knows me personally, associates me with this franchise eventually. I guess it's because it perfectly defines who I am, it defined my vibes, my sense of humor, and of course helped me during tough times, too.

I found out about this game in 2013, again, thanks to a friend. And again, thanks to piracy.

I played the hell out of a cracked version of wrath of the lamb, fell in love with the thick outlines/flash artstyle, the music from Danny B was godsent, the items were very fun too, loved everything about it.

And when I found out that Rebirth was in the works i got excited too!

This remake felt even better in almost every aspect, maybe I wasn't pleased with the artstyle or the music at the time but eventually it grew on me and now I think it's sick, and the soundtrack it's cool too

This is exactly the kind of game that alters your brain chemistry somehow

I still have a lot to say about this game and it's adjacents (Like Super Meat Boy and other Indie games in general) so i'll shut up now, but yeah it changed my life in more ways than I expected

Persona 4 Golden

This game not only is fun, it's beautiful

I tried playing it just out of curiosity on real hardware on my PS2 but my set up was very shitty at the time, and i didn't want to spend too much time sitting like a shrimp in front of my TV because the start of the game is a bit slow, even one sitting was a bit too much, so I abandoned after 12 hours and then I played it like a year later when it launched on Steam.

This game relaunch coincidentially appeared at a low point in my life so, as expected, it was my copium for quite long, it helped me to get rid of a good chunk of my social problems, it pushed me to get out of my comfort zone more often, and I still find it charming to this day. I feel this weird sense of joy every time I see a piece of fanart for this game, as if it were a little reminder to be more socially open and optimistic

I think I also said this in my steam review but yeah great music, very charming characters, fantastic artwork and designs too

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I've always had love for the Smash Bros franchise, sadly I didn't have the hardware or the money to experience it, I had to resort to watch YouTube videos about it and playing Smash Flash (I tried smash 64 but my pc was very shitty at the time so it didn't ran properly)

Eventually I got my own 3DS and my first Smash game, but I still felt a bit out of the picture because the real hype for this game was between 2013 and 2015, and I wasn't really aware at the time. I mean I even missed the splash screen of one of my most wanted characters at the time (Mega Man), so while I was still playing the hell out of Smash Run on my 3DS I kinda had this desire for living the hype in real time for the next installment.

And so after a few years it happened, Smash Ultimate was announced, and I was right there watching the Direct when it happened, it blew my mind, not because it was a new smash with better graphics & knuckles or whatever, but because it was first one that would happen while i'm conscious

Luckily it was one of the best smash games nintendo has ever made, if not the best. From the inkling reveal to the Sora trailer, i'm glad I could be present in every single reveal.

As for the other aspects of the game, it's excellent, filled to the brim with content from prior smash games (it lacks a proper story mode and fucking smash run, but eh, it's a great game still), and it's also the first smash game i could get most of my friends into, we hosted great nights thanks to it.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2

MvC2 was perhaps the first hyperfixation I had in my childhood, because it exposed me to the interesting concept of a "crossover" (which was rare at the time, unlike nowdays) the mere fact that the heroes from my comics and characters i've only seen in videogames were teaming up or beating the shit of other characters was sick as fuck. Abyss and it's three forms were very intimidating for me, it took me very long but i managed to beat the game over and over, those were my first impressions at first.

As the years went by and I got more and more into drawing, I started noticing that the artwork from this game (the pieces you could unlock in the shop in the PS2 version) were fucking amazing, I really wanted to make illustrations of my own just like those, to this day I still think they're inspiring, and I love looking at them or anyone's art trying to replicate it

never learned how to do a fucking infinite, though

And finally, Super Mario World.

The SMW case is a bit funny. For starters, it was the first game that made me stay up all night, not because i wanted to beat it, but because i wanted to play it

You see, I only knew about this game's existence because of youtube videos and flash animations/games I saw at my friends houses. I never got the chance to actually play it because "snes bootleg consoles" were never really a thing, I didn't knew about the existence of emulators at the time, and even if i did, i didn't have a PC either.

So one day I get to stay at a friend's house for his birthday and we played PS2 along with other kids. He briefly showed me a disc called Snes Station and told me those were old games. Of course I knew exactly what it meant, but he and the other kids were more interested in playing Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and Mortal Kombat Armageddon. So I came up with a plan that was to wait until every single kid felt tired, and then ask for the controller. Then when it happened around 4 am i put the snes station disc and played the hell out of SMW until my eyes bled. When I looked at the window, it was already morning, and my friend's mother was angrily looking at me. My parents picked me up after breakfast and I was still baffled by the fact that I finally played that game

dayum that is a lot of text