in no specific order, Pokemon Red, Ocarina of Time, Ace Attorney, Tales of Symphonia, and Myst

NB: I never beat Myst, I fought for every tiny bit of progress because I wasn't good at the puzzles yet. but it fascinated and haunted me like little else

Myst and Ace Attorney in combination showed me what games could be, as interactive narrative experience, in a way that I think kind of reshaped how I looked at stories

ToS was my first proper JRPG, and that was important on that journey too

I only got into ToS because of how good I'd already proved myself with OoT

how does that make sense??? well, because we didn't own ToS. My little brother had borrowed it from the boy he was crushing on, and needed help with the block puzzles

after helping with puzzles, I stayed to watch cutscenes, and decided I wanted to play it for myself

I was the designated puzzle helper to all my younger siblings, which only added to my frustration with being unable to make progress in Myst which was at a whole different level

Pokemon Red was the first game I ever played that wasn't a PC edutainment game, and I begged and begged my parents for it because all my friends were playing it

we didn't have any video game systems, but I wanted it enough that they got the four of us kids a game boy and a couple of games for Christmas. to share.

within the next year they bought a second one, having realized that one game boy for four kids would never be enough

Myst was so good! I was no good at it, but my mom took over and then she got obsessed. She had a whole notebook full of her notes on it to help her through puzzles

it was a legitimately good game, and I still really enjoy games of that genre

all the more now that my brain has developed enough to be decently good at them

I'm too impatient for puzzle games but I still sometimes try to torture myself

there was a while that I got really into free browser-based room escape games, I still have a notebook somewhere that has pages at the back full of random-looking doodles to help me work through puzzle solutions

my friends still make me solve the puzzles when we do Horror Game Night on Fridays

(I also get to be the person who holds the controller in everything first-person, thanks RvB for making me play Halo I guess??)

I kind of miss the days when I got to be the family puzzle solver, honestly. made me feel important