I remember playing the Nintendo Entertainment System as a 6-year old child. Some games I played were Super Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Duck Hunt, Megaman, RBI Baseball, Legend of Zelda II, Gauntlet, and Final Fantasy. Most of these were the quick play variety and very simple to learn. I also played Street Fighter II at the arcade. The only move I can do is Ryu and Ken's fireball.
Then I switched over to playing PC games, mostly adventure games like Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Legend of Kyrandia plus a few action games like Alone in the Dark, Wolfenstein 3D, and Prince of Persia. The one puzzle oriented game I liked was Lemmings. (In this game, you make Lemmings perform certain tasks: bridge building, mining, blocking, etc. to guide them to the exit. Otherwise, they just fall to their death like stupid lemmings.) I also really liked the space simulator Wing Commander and managed to beat Final Fantasy VII (with heavy hints) the summer before I went to college.
Adventure games are sort of like a light puzzle. You control a character who interacts with other characters, picks up objects, uses them in different locations. Secret of Monkey Island is probably the premiere game of this genre. For example, to become a pirate, you need to fight the Swordmaster (actually a woman). But the only way to find the Swordmaster is to ask the shopkeeper and secretly follow him all the way to the Swordmaster's house! Another nice aspect of many adventure games (except King's Quest) is that it's nearly impossible to die and very hard to get into a situation where you have made a irrevocable decision and have to start over.
Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones were made by LucasArts and had a characteristic sense of humor. There is the famous sequence in Monkey Island where you win sword fights by exchanging insults with your opponent. For example, "You fight like a dairy farmer." "How appropriate. You fight like a cow." Or when you pull out the evil nemesis's underpants because you need that item to complete a voodoo doll. Sometimes the humor is just in the game for no reason. Like when you fall off a cliff, the game appears to be over (in a King's Quest-like way), and then you hit a rubber banana tree and bounce back up to the cliffside. Or in the dialogue: "2,4,6,8, who do we assassinate? Largo, Largo, yay!" (a satire on the cheer I did in childhood soccer games)
Quest for Glory (much time spent on leveling up your character) and Alone in the Dark (exploring, shooting a few evil creatures, and doing some tricky 3D jumping) are adventure/RPG hybrids. I remember that the first Quest for Glory game didn't even use a mouse; you had to manually type commands like "climb tree". Prince of Persia is hybrid of action and puzzle-solving. You get into sword fights with enemies, but you spend most of your time carefully timing leaps over pits and avoiding spiky booby traps. You basically spend each level figuring out how to escape alive.
The more traditional shoot-em up games I played were Wing Commander (shoot space ships from a cockpit) and Wolfenstein 3D (shoot Nazis). Final Fantasy VII was the true (role-playing-game) RPG I played -- a beautiful game artistically with a thoughtful story but also incredibly complex and time-consuming. Nowadays, the Final Fantasy series is so famous and the expectations are so demanding that a release of a Final Fantasy game is like the Super Bowl x 10.
Oh and strategy games! I also played Civilization II and managed to conquer the world on easy levels. I think my main trick was to create a spy and infiltrate enemy cities and cause rebellions. I played Warcraft (usually being the knights vs. the orcs) although I wasn't very good at the real-time aspect and usually lost after the first few levels.
Fast forward through a dark age of 7 years with no games! Well, I was busy studying. But now, no more! I just bought an Nintendo Gamecube (yeah, I'm a late adopter and terrible at shoot-em games like Quake and Halo). As a graduate student, I don't really have time to work through a Final Fantasy RPG, but I do like playing short, fun games like Mario Kart. My Gamecube is a way to relax for 30 minutes and clear my mind. Maybe later I'll review some Gamecube games!
