Thanks for participating =)
I was ~6 years old, when I played the demo version. Earlier, I had played Q2, (maybe Q3 demo?!), Tiberian Sun, Red Alert before and couple of simpler games and demos.
Unreal Tournament demo had like ~4-5 Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch maps, 1 Capture the Flag (infinite gameplay for me at that age on CTF-Face (Facing Worlds) :D ), maybe 1 Assault map, but not sure.
The motor, feeling, control, sounds, music were just pure awesome. Sniper headshots, jumps, tricks, extremely competitive feeling, double kill, triple kill, ultrakill, mo-mo-mo-mo-monsterkill... :D
Then the Game of The Years version was a Christmas present for me, I still remember the smell and the feeling. I could not try it out for a bit, so I was reading the (Hungarian! :D) manual back and forth. The GOTY version had extra weapons, maps, skins, goodies.
Later, internet was slow, but mods and couple servers were just awesome.
I want to go back! :D
Unfortunately it is impossible. Partially due to the missing scene, partially because I get frustrated, when I realize that my muscle memory (aiming) is totally broken and I cant hit shit, even if I truly see and feel, that I hit. :D
Back then, I did not even see if I hit, I just knew. And I truly hit. Wtf, it's gone. :D
Nowdays the only maps I play are TS/Expo/mobx-keystone. :)
Echoes of the Eye did the same thing the first time I walked into the main environment and looked up.
If that sounds interesting, seriously, DO NOT LOOK UP ANYTHING, do not read anything about it, just buy it and play it blind. You won't regret it. The mystery and wonder and surprise is the whole point.
EDIT: one caveat - if you are on PC, do yourself a favor and use a gamepad rather than a keyboard. You'll get way too frustrated with digital inputs rather than analog.
When I was first put onto the game I was lamenting the state of media lacking alternatives to "punching your way to a solution". This game is a first person shooter that replaces guns and violence with science equipment and archeology. It is a breath of fresh air.
Also, I love surface to surface space travel, and have to say that I found more enjoyment from a solar system of ~9 imaginatively unique planets with distinct biomes and gravity to the slew of other popular procedurally generated alternatives.
I recommend it to just about everyone and have known many people who stopped because the flight mechanics were difficult initially; abandoning the game saying "this must be for people who can actually fly this thing". Truthfully, you will get good at controlling your ship and suit, but also, crashing is ultimately a hilarious "part of the gameplay".
The music is excellent and integrated into the gameplay in a meaningful way. I found myself playing the game with a guitar nearby so I could take a moment to jam with the characters in the game.
The expansion is perhaps my favourite planet, but play through the main game first!
It does have a bug in the rebels phase - they can wipe out your entire fleet, and it's all but impossible to recover from.
- Elite: it had almost no graphics, but boy, what did it do to my imagination...
- Starcraft: there were good RTS before (Dune, C&C), but this one nalied the design and an epic story.
- Wing commander 4: A bit late to the party, so laid my hands on this one. Space opera meets movie, overall great.
- Planescape Tourment: One of the weirdest, if not the weirdest RPG with a sad world and once in a while really interesting NPC and story. Also bonus points for not using a high fantasy setting. Tops BG in my opinion.
- Fallout 1&2: Loved it for atmosphere, humor and tactical gameplay.
- Jagged Alliance 2: Trashy tactics, very fun.
- X-Com: (the remake and sequel): They've nailed the gameplay and imo the remakes are better than originals which were all over the place.
- Bloodborne: My first soul, came for suffering, but stayed for the lovecraftian horror.
- Street Fighter: The foundation for my love to the genre after all the years, and also the best thing to play with friends.
- Elden ring: A very recent one, but I was impressed with a sad, quiet world and a long forgotten feeling of exploration - you want to know what is behind the next corner. Open world done right.
- Last of Us: The most atmospheric game I've ever played. A work of art. Stay away from the sequel.
- GTA 3: I was completely stunned at the moment it came out. A sandbox world where you could do whatever you wanted? How did they came up with it? The magic wore off long time age, I actively avoid most open world games these days, but I remember the feelings.
I guess I could remember much more, since I do gaming for 30 years already, there is Privateer, Monkey Island, Half Life, Deus Ex, Prey, Dirt/2.0, but these were the most memorable, I guess.
Hard to pick "the" most memorable, so here's a small list:
PC:
Homeworld — the scope and "space-y" feel, and how well you could control things down to details. Seemed impossible at the time. Likewise for Total Annihilation.
Command & Conquer — glorious pixelated gruesome deaths (:
King's Quest and Myst-style games — I remember drawing maps and taking notes with my Mom to get through these.
Heart of Darkness — more wonderful death animations
SNES:
* Mario Paint — really good variety; you could make music, animations, paint, play that flyswatter game. Plus the mouse was a novelty.
* Sim Ant — loved how the humans were a kinda peripheral antagonist; you just see their footsteps or get caught in a lawnmower from time to time.
* Populous — for some reason the thing I remember most is the alternate tilesets — cake-world, computer-world, etc.
* Chrono Trigger — the depth of the story, the beautiful artwork and music. Played through many endings on that.
But my vote goes for Morrowind.
These two games actually have a lot in common. Great storylines and gameplay. But what they excel at above all other games is the exploration. I won't spoil Outer Wilds, but the following are some of my favorite moments in MW early game that got me hooked.
[spoilers]
In the first few hours of the game you're stumbling upon a man falling out of the sky with amazing boots, a naked Nord who was tricked by a witch, a maiden that has become infatuated with the bandit that robbed her, and a spy of the empire that hides hard drugs under his bed.
The guild missions are really well written. The feud between the fighters guild and thieves guild forces you to choose a side - unless you're very clever. The early mages guild mission where they send you, the intern, to go gather .. flowers. For alchemy. They don't mark your map. They just give you vague directions and areas to check.
The world is alien and foreign. Exciting but unforgiving. It's full of interesting places, characters, stories, and history to discover. Even now I think of how many stones I've left unturned in that game that makes me want to go back and play it again.
However, be warned. If you plan on playing, it is rough around the edges. I highly recommend using OpenMW, as it address a huge number of exploits and balance issues.
Further, the tes3mp multiplayer mod is not half bad if you can convince a friend to join your play-through.
I believe it is the only game I didn't sleep until I finished. The intro sequence captivated me into the story as I played through it.
- Bioshock: great atmosphere and story with subtext that almost everybody gets wrong in one of two ways, but is worth digging into
- Titanfall: insanely fast-paced with mechanics that really made one feel (after getting good enough) like an unstoppable killing machine. First game that I was good enough at to just wreck the other team relentlessly. Sucked a lot of my time though, I wouldn’t want to get back into it again.
- VtMB: Good story, good gameplay, buggy as hell, wonderfully sleazy vampire aesthetics.
- Ocarina of Time and Majora’s mask: Mainly because of nostalgia, but they really are wonderful games. The 3D ports were beautifully updated.
- Doom: Nostalgia, and with things like Brutal Doom it becomes extremely intense and immersive.
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: my favorite Metroidvania.
- Deus Ex: Everything about it was perfect.
- MUDs: I used to play a strangely popular local Dystopia MUD run by some of my cousin’s friends. I sucked (I was maybe 12 at the time, and didn’t really learn the mechanics), but had chosen their custom Wraith class which became stronger after each death, and eventually became the strongest player in the game just by being so bad at it. I mostly shot the shit with friends on there. Funniest moment was when my friend from school joined, playing as a female Werewolf and started relentlessly getting everyone he could to cyber with him: the MUD had x-socials, basically x-rated emotes, and tracked one’s arousal level—if one completed the act, they got experience. I think that might be a GodWars feature. He thought this easier than farming kills and just hilarious in general.
- Silent Hill 2: maybe the opposite of doom. I don’t like survival horror generally, but this was the exception. Atmosphere was wonderful.
I like small worlds that I can really dig deep into. I got hooked on Morrowind for a while, but it put me off of the whole idea. I dislike the new Zelda games for the same reason.
Stars! was another really nice multiplayer game (PBeM), I met some people irl from playing that and hanging out on IRC channel.
ADoM back in the early days, playing it and finding out game lore from some mix or forum rumors and looking at strings in the exe felt special, the community around the game was great.
Not community-related,
Fallout 2 I think might be the best CRPG game ever as far as RP goes, you could really get away with playing a peaceful character that barely ever fights, and you could also become a maniac hated by the whole world and still have meaningful gameplay.
Settlers 2, for some reason that's the only game I can basically just keep playing forever even though I ~never played multiplayer or never did anything online with it.
I played the demo level "We don't go to Ravenholm" probably 50 times before I bought the game and was blown away. Everything about the game was so far ahead of where the industry was at the time and I still have not found a weapon as fun as the gravity gun in modern games.
I read somewhere that Mario 64 convinced Gabe Newell that video games could be art - Half Life 2 is that game for me.
Teenagers on amphetamine and mephedrone, surviving the worst hangover of your life only to get drunk again, aching for a love that you destroyed yourself, barely scraping money to pay rent, corrupt union leaders, foreclosed game studios, domestic violence, underground rave at abandoned church, people who are unable to let go of a political conflict after a few decades — all of that hits much closer to home than saving the world.
It’s an open world survival craft game set underwater on an alien world.
The basic gameplay mechanics of diving underwater, having limited oxygen, light and time create an immersive baseline experience. It’s scary, exciting, and fun.
The core gameplay loop is about exploration, and as you advance and get better equipment and vehicles the experience of gameplay qualitatively advances too which is satisfying.
As you go deeper and farther away you find so many beautiful alien biomes and terrifying creatures. The game provides equal parts wonder and terror.
slight spoiler warning
As you play longer, there is an incredible story that is ‘hidden’ within the game. To me it came as a surprise, like a great plot twist in a movie.
playing games is a big part of my life, and until a few years ago I had self-limited to 'pop' or action/cheerful games. I started going down the road of "interactive fiction" to scratch an itch of "needing to do something productive with my game time"
it gets very very disturbing very very fast. almost whiplash fast for me (went into it blind), and in retrospect it seemed a little 'much', but it helped me get over my inhibitions and start exploring a whole genre of horror/grimdark games that I had been avoiding
System Shock 2 was memorable enough that I couldn't play it in the dark and had to cheat just to give me the courage to finish it. I'm a glutton for punishment so I tried a few times to come up with a solid prompt to recreate SHODAN as an AI assistant. The goal was to balance our interactions such that we're both using each other to achieve our goals, but she always ends up becoming an unhelpful, Narcissistic, shrieking banshee like AM (from "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream").
PROTIP: All of the conventional adjectives used to describe her (megalomaniac, Narcissistic, sadistic, etc.) on the Fandom wiki tend to result in all of those traits being played to annoying extremes; she loses her chilling femininity when the only topic up for discussion is her aggressively screaming at you in all caps about how much better than you she is (that's a man, baby). I'm still working on it myself, but recommend ignoring all existing lore and rewriting her character using lesser/alternative adjectives like "helpful, cold, cutting, manipulative, and resentful of your humanity."
Fun facts:
- I bought it because the game box showed a turret which I mistakenly though was a button for a puzzle.
- It was my first first-person game, and the beginning of the game (when you see yourself through the portal) was such mind blowing that I spent a couple minutes just moving forwards and backwards trying to understand it.
- I couldn't play it at first because my graphics card was a literal potato, half a year later we upgraded it mainly because of this game.
- I loved it so much that I spent several years (until portal 2 released approximately) downloading and playing custom maps from the internet (my first contact with modding too).
- Steam was required and I hated it because of their constant updates that made me wait a couple minutes before playing (until I discovered the offline mode).
So yeah, it changed my life.
Honourable mention to Age of Empires - played a lot of late night sessions in the late nineties. The music loop is burned into my brain forever.
Then I had kids and had no time or energy for games.
It was a high-fidelity Warcraft 1/2-like RTS that fit into the resources unimaginable by today’s standards.
It was art that’s completely and utterly lost to the modern times of bloated frameworks and gibibytes of resources that somehow still become obsolete within a few years. And if it wasn’t for this game in my adolescence, I’d probably be much less excited about learning computers and choosing them for career path.
And btw if you’re interested to check it out, the website of its genius (sole!) developer with a few other equally impressive feats is still up:
* Medievia (yep, the text MUD): played this a bunch with a buddy in college around 2007ish, and at the time we were both obsessively drinking Vanilla Chai tea. So even now, whenever I smell that tea (the Bigelow brand specifically), I think of short hand commands like "bs; l in cor" and responses like "Double maim!"
* Fallout 3 : been well over a decade since I played this, but when I sat down and played it for the first time I also happened to pour myself a pint of Guinness right beforehand. So now whenever I have that tasty first sip of a fresh pint of Guinness, I can't help but think of the line "War. War never changes" and the opening tune to "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by the Ink Spots.
But more memorable for me is Larry Laffer 3... spend hours with my cousins playing it ;) many jokes and sexyness, would be probably not okay to produce a game like this nowadays.
Biggest addiction I had was with Super Mario Bros on NES.
Tangent-- modern Doom games have all been underwhelming, but the Brutal Doom mod (and non-MIDI soundtrack) for the original's WAD files evoked the same feeling of rediscovery for that franchise too. Duke has his own similar renovation project (eduke32 IIRC).
1) MS Flight Sim, starting with version 4 in 1989.
2) The entire Descent series from Parallax. Playing heads to head on 14.4k was a lot of fun. Later, Internet play became possible. Having bots jump out at you from nowhere lead to some nearly falling-out-of-chair-screaming moments!
3) Portal and Portal 2. The cake, was in fact, a lie.
Tomb Raider - it was my first 3D game. The sense of adventure and danger was so intense.
Uncharted - like Tomb Raider but with jokes and lighter. Really enjoyed storyline.
Last of Us - this game was able to recreate the same intense feeling of danger and adventure that the first Tomb Raider game did.
God of War (PS4) - first game I played during my paternity leave after becoming father. Felt very connected with story as it deals with some parenting questions.
The longest journey - I don’t remember the story but I remember I was very moved by it. One of few games that are on my play again list.
These days I love Minecraft, but I get motion sick playing it 8(
Although games are a big hobby of mine, that level of excitement about what I plan to do next and how to reach a new area of the game was new for me.
The game design is top tier. And so are the graphics. Very few bugs, and most that I encountered were fixed during the patch cycles.
They deserved my $30. In the same way others have remarked about different games here, the thought of playing it for the first time with no memory of the first run... really resonates.
A serious and imaginative story, amazing art, memorable and interesting characters who had to make hard (and sometimes heartbreaking) decisions, and a huge world full of secrets and adventures to explore — that (spoiler warning) halfway through the game is essentially destroyed. I was in disbelief after the floating continent and ruin section - absolutely audacious. And it all comes together beautifully.
In the modern era, I would say Bloodborne. It so perfectly and completely achieves exactly what it sets out to do in gameplay, storytelling, and art that it sort of demotes every game to a lesser plane, even Elden Ring, which I loved.
Of the 90’s era deck building games it had the most advanced mechanics. The unique, beautiful, brilliance of the game was an element of randomness built into the game be the cards themselves.
Your deck was a stack that you would often draw the top from to determine random elements. Then place the card on the bottom (there’s more to this rule, but good enough for now).
Experienced players could learn to count cards in the end game, creating either fast, dynamic play or hard fought chess battles, jockeying for positions slowly undermining your opponent.
Tournament games had a time limit, but I’ve played regulation decks for 3 hours.
Lucasfilm eventually pulled the license for lesser games, but for a while it was amazing.
So many stories around it. So many interesting openings I tried. So many metaphors for real life. So many interesting characters in the history of chess.
So many interesting books about it. Coincidentally my favorite is "My 60 Memorable Games" by Bobby Fischer.
About one move in a game, Fischer writes "Sherwin slid the Rook here with his pinky, as if to emphasize the cunning of this mysterious move". Since I read that, now whenever I make an unusual move, I prefer to do it with my pinky.
There is also nothing better then finding an old chess game in a bar or cafe and then spontaneously playing a game. On a summer evening. Putting a candle next to the board.
I still play them from time to time.
I will list them here in no particular order:
- Sensible World of Soccer
- Baldurs Gate I & II
- Heroes of Might and Magic III
- Colin McRae Rally 2.0
- Governor of Poker
- Counter Strike 1.6 and GO
- Fallout 1 and 2
From the games above the Sensible World of Soccer holds kinda my 'personal' record as this is the only game that I have played non-stop for 28 hours with breaks only for eating and toilet.
I described how to setup them on FreeBSD here if anyone is interested:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/oldschool-gaming-o...
Regards, vermaden
RHEM throws that all out the window. Each game (there's 4 now) is a complex web of interconnected puzzles, with the feeling that you're finding 2 new puzzles for every hint. An absolute masterclass is "What if Myst was actually fun?".
- Hack and Slash : Diablo II, first game I believe that introduced grinding.
- RTS : Total Annihilation with Core Contingency. What's better than stopping your foes with a swarm of Krogoths ?
One game that stands out as one I played a metric fuckload of though - Jedi Knights: Dark Forces II. I don’t think I even played more than half of the first level of single player. I had so much fun with that game and especially the mods that came with it. Miss it a lot.
Sabers only NF BGJ
As a kid, I was amazed with its simplistic yet engaging gameplay and fantastic storytelling.
It also happens to be an utterly brilliant piece of software: https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons/
Surprised no one mentioned this actually. For those not familiar it's a shooter located on the site of the accident where the disaster produced various mutant monsters and an unstable environment. Really immersive with the difficulty, story and ambience. Haven't seen the movie it was based on.
Or the soviet era Andrei Tarkovsky movie Stalker based on the novel Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (who also wrote the screenplay)?
The later is unrelated to the Chernobyl accident (in any direct sense) as it concerns unfathomable alien technology left as waste on earth after a visitation (or alien picnic along a galactic roadside) with human 'stalkers' raiding the unknown like ants after sugar.
Stalker the film is based on the Roadside Picnic story, btw.
They had Asteroids and Space Invaders and a few others, but Crazy Climber is the one I remember most. There went my next four years - after I got back from summer vacation we moved into town directly across the park from a 7-11 with a game room. It was right before Pac-Man came out and things exploded and there were arcades all over the place.
The cool kid introduced me to punk rock and reggae too. Thanks!
If memorable in which game itself left an impression, probably Skyrim. I think that was the first open world game I'd played, and it was at the time rather breathtaking.
When I played with my son, it was all about Zelda and Minecraft.
Journey - beautiful game that does not center on combat
Braid - good art, great puzzles and a game mechanic that is fully realized and explored (time rewind)
Cuphead - gorgeous art, like playing a Fleischer brothers cartoon
Monument Valley - simple but perplexing puzzles wrapped in gorgeous art
One Hour One Life (and, smaller in scope but Passage) - an MMO where you spawn as a helpless baby then grow into a full adult in one hour. The game forces others to cooperate or else you die within the first few minutes [1]. Passage was one of the first games that took me aback [2].
Not sure if "memorable" is the right word for it but "addictive" and "things I play too much" are: Beat saber, Pistol Whip, Crypt of the Necrodancer (all beat games)
For nostalgia reasons: Doom, Angband, Nettreck, (original) Legend of Zelda.
Games I haven't played but have heard are good: The Witness, Legend of Obra Din, Undertale, Transistor, Night in the Woods, Dwarf Fortress
The AAA games, or their equivalent, are like blockbuster movies to me: well scripted, well animated, have lots of "game feel" but ultimately lacking in the artistry it takes to make a memorable game. AAA games can have an impact on people in that way but I suspect this is mostly due to someones first exposure to a full game which usually happens in their teen years. You can probably guess my age from the games I like for nostalgia reasons.
EDIT: added features I like about the games and some links
[0] https://music.disasterpeace.com/album/fez-ost
So, I would say Kerbal Space Program, but I already said that in the previous thread.
Instead, this time I will say Dyson Sphere Program Factorio + interplanetary. Relaxing and interesting exploration.
It really didn't look like my thing but I picked it up from a friend's recommendation and it blew me away.
The story, the soundtrack the gameplay are incredible and made me think a lot more about the philosophy of games. Highly recommend it.
I was pretty disappointed when I finally hit the end. I tried Andromeda, but it just lacked something and I got bored pretty quickly.
Also the Settlers and Command and Conquer were quite important.
And not forget the time spent looking for gasoline for the chainsaw.
Sim City (series) is a close 2nd for many of the same reasons. I spent so many days building cities only to forget that I left disasters enabled, and here comes Godzilla.
Or Cave Story. Same reason.
But then there's Angband.
Got sucked into organised play with an (very large, > 200 people) international group and spend a solid 4 years doing little else but organising and playing the most epic (6 to 12 hours) sessions.
There I've learned the power of gaming communities and anyone who applies for a job with me and mentions they've lead a bunch of randos online grabs my attention quickly :)
King’s Quest III. I think, as a young boy, I related more to the character than in King’s Quests I and II. I really got lost in the world.
Infocom’s Planetfall. Also, lost in the world.
* The Legend of Zelda (NES)
* The Adventure of Link (NES)
* Starcraft (PC)
* Crystalis (NES 8-bit)
* Final Fantasy (NES 8-bit)
* Final Fantasy VII (PC)
* Duke Nukem 3D (PC)
* Mega Man 2 (NES 8-bit)
* Journey to Silius (NES 8-bit)
* Mighty Bomb Jack (NES 8-bit)
* Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES 8-bit)
* Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES 8-bit)
* Ninja Gaiden (NES 8-bit)
* Willow (NES 8-bit)
There were others, but these are my most memorable of all time.
All time.
A friend gave me a 3.25 floppy and told me it was this cool new game, with a new way of playing called 'first person' which confused the hell out of me until I played it.
The game mechanics with bullet time was just the cherry on top.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Miner
Many, many hours of a misspent youth were spent on this game, until all 20 levels were complete, and could be done in one go without loosing any lives, and then, as quickly as possible just for fun! The levels would even feature in my dreams! :-)
Halo 3 is still the best one, though.
Honorable Mentions: Civ IV: It all rang true. One session lasted over 40 hours. One more turn...
City of Heroes: best MMO for me. Every now and again I hear echoes of the sounds and it brings me joy. The story, graphics, scriptable attacks I could tinker with. Just loved it.
VR Soccer, Fifa and Age of Empires, Warcraft II for lan parties
You take the role of a hacker and fly through a computer system altering the security of building that your partner is trying to infiltrate. You have to coordinate what you are doing in the 3D computer environment with protecting your partner as she moves through a building shown as a 2D overhead map.
Completely (too?) ahead of its time on a lot of fronts, from its sandbox, open-world design to social economy, deep crafting and the MMO game tech itself.
Memorable also in bold early ambitions and for, effectively, losing its entire playerbase overnight due to corporate greed from SOE with its NGE update.
My favorite moment was: Conversion battle. Priests can convert enemies' army into my own army.
Another World (Amiga)
Ar Tonelico II (PS2)
Castle Master (Amiga)
Chrono Trigger (SFC)
Impossible Mission (C64)
Lemmings (Amiga)
Kult (Amiga)
sharin no kuni, himawari no shoujo (Win32)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Game Gear)
Syndicate (Amiga)
The Secret of Monkey Island (Amiga)
The Settlers (Amiga)
Wings (Amiga)
Later I learned to cheat by duplicating stuff with a pile of coins, and the difficulty of the game was lowered so much.
Settlers 2 on Amiga.
Golden Axe... Amiga.
Final Fantasy ..9? 10?
I was around 12 years old at the time, and I was in middle school. I remember feeling extremely frustrated at the school system because I was ready for much more in terms of academics, but my teachers mostly taught to the lowest common denominator. I read books by John Taylor Gatto, and later Alfie Kohn. I was extremely interested in "Unschooling", an idea that if the school system were removed, kids would actually learn more by their natural curiosity. That idea isn't very appealing to me anymore but Montessori schools and more self-directed learning in general would probably be a good thing for the educational system.
I had found a website that allowed you to click a button and would redirect you to a random "interesting page". There was a website called "Everybody Edits" which was a 2D platformer made out of a grid of squares, and players could add or remove squares. Servers had challenges with read-only levels, and there were buttons and doors and little boost pads. I thought the game was pretty fun but I left after a couple hours playing different challenges.
I clicked the button again, and it led me to minecraft.com . That game almost immediately blew my mind. I built a little brick house with flowers out in front and I got my mom to come over and look at it.
What made it so special for me was this very tangible feeling of freedom. This was a game that allowed me to build anything, where I wasn't restricted at all by my parents, or my teachers, or any authority figure whatsoever.
After playing with the singleplayer mode, I saw there was some multiplayer servers. I don't remember much about the first (several?) servers I joined, I think they were all build-protected so nobody could grief them, and they had some pretty builds.
Then I joined a server that didn't have any build-protections at all. It kind of reminded me of a jungle? Whatever terrain was randomly generated there was completely destroyed. Minecraft classic had an extremely short height limit, I think 64 blocks. Many many people had joined the server, built a pillar directly to the top of the world and constructed a "canopy" built out of random blocks. I swam over to the only structure that existed, a brick house that was decaying. I started to fix it, but then another random player started destroying it, being kept in a constant moving state of existence.
To this day, I'm still obsessed with web games and games that allow an extremely high level of freedom. Much later in life I got a software engineering degree, I went to work for a big company with a big paycheck, I bought an RTX 3090 to play Minecraft RTX, and now I'm fulltime trying to build a pathtraced game on the web using WebGPU. The main reason why I want pathtracing isn't for photorealistic visuals, but to enable the same level of freedom that Minecraft has.