My Top Five Video Games 

Hey Tim!! This is the Ur-Quan Masters team. We were so happy to hear your words. We love your games too! We'd love to connect and talk more, just let us know how to reach you.

Everquest was so special! I have a lot of nostalgic memories of that masterpiece lol Great list!

Star Control 2 is a genuine masterpiece, one of my favourite games of all time. The original devs are currently working on a true sequel to the game which is cool to see.

Star Control 2 was/is such an amazing game. Of all the games I played as a kid on PC 30+ years ago, this and maybe Monkey Island are the only 2 that I can vividly remember all of the details, witty banter, and endlessly replaying them. Thanks for the trip down memory lane (which reminds me I should go redownload the UQM open source port of SC2 and replay it again).

The first 6 months of everquest was wild. No information online, everyone kept things secret so much to learn and everything was a mystery.

6:04 Great to see the love for Star Control II! It blew my mind in 1992 to have an open world space game with amazing MOD music, funny alien dialogue, mixed with Eldritch horror. Still one of my top games of all-time! Thanks for shedding a light on this classic close to its 31st anniversary!

Thinking back, most influential games for me were Command & Conquer, the music is still in my head, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - countless hours spent playing random maps, Jagged Alliance 2 - character interactions are special in it. These are timeless for me and even the art style has aged very well.

Ultima 4 was my revelation. The philosophy, the open-ended sandbox, travelling over the world with earned purpose. I will never forget reciting the 8 virtues and ascending to avatarhood. A truly special game that was.

Merry Christmas Tim, thanks for the continued work on the channel. Your content is regularly part of my week and as an old fan of your work I'm always glad to see it.

I love your videos and tend to watch them as soon as i'm notified. Your stories make me want to be an "Uncle Tim"! At 46 i'm finally being serious about game development and your videos elevate, educate, and prime me for my future success! Stay well and keep doing the good work. Thanks Tim.

Tim do your top 5 video games to learn from/study

Thank you for making the games that are in the top of my all time favorites! You and your teams and Ron Gilbert and teams are responsible for the highlights of my teens.

Appreciate all the edits and clips of the games being discussed!

Love your work Tim I shat myself when fallout 1 came out, still being a fallout and rpg fan in general I still praise the series in your honor. Thanks for unforgettable experiences my man love seeing content from you!

Tie Fighter (collector's edition) was one of my favorites. Same engine as X-Wing, but 640x480 so it looked insanely good back then. It was also fun to play "the bad guys" after playing the rebels first (in X-Wing), since there's a lot of missions and storylines where you are just a random police role pilot, actually upholding peace and order in the galaxy, never mind what the franchise heroes are doing somewhere far away. There's even a storyline where you end a war between two factions through force, no sign of "the rebels", which helps explain why something as massive as the empire can't just send everything to finish off the rebels. Makes you think that the whole good VS evil theme has a lot of gray area. Whoever wrote that game's story knew what they were doing.

I really like how Ultima did something different with level scaling too. Has any game ever triggered events based on your level (or otherwise calculated power-level) that make environments tougher in ways narratively justified? That can feel contrived in it's own way, hurting the worldbuilding more than it helps, of course, but when it feels natural, I really love it when things that happen more or less for the sake of gameplay make sense in the world. A classic example is how games like Dark Souls and Axiom Verge respawn you, Dark Souls in general feels like it was developed both top-down and bottom-up when it comes to this, seems like a lot of those bottoms and tops respectively emerged, going with the bits that felt right together.

I discovered Star Control 2 just a few months ago, and it is such a masterpiece. Just so deep and detailed, even by today's standards.

Star Raiders! Wow. That immediately brought back memories of that game. I haven't played or thought about that game in decades and now I want to find a version of it to play again. I remember it being quite challenging, but I was a small kid the last time I played it. I really loved just warping through space, probably because I had no idea what the actual objective of the game was.

Always good hearing from the GOAT

This made me reflect on my own list which turned out to be a fun trip down memory lane. I’m about ten years younger than Tim but I don’t think I have anything newer than 22 years ago. In no particular order: Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 & 2 Civilization 1 The Bard’s Tale Battlefield 1942 Tie Fighter With honorable mentions to Baldur’s Gate 2 and The Oregon Trail.

A very refreshing top list, cool stuff man

This is so cool that you do these videos. Thank you, please keep at it

I've played Star Control 2 on Mega Drive / Genesis and really enjoyed the RPS approach to ships. Also the battle map being looped (your ship "exits" the left side of the screen and appears on the right side) and the planet gravity had effect on combat maneuvers. All elements made a cohesively working combat experience, which was also fresh and unique. Tim, have you heard of a game Exanima? It's an RPG on steam in years of early access, but has a unique physics based combat/movement/interactions etc. I think it deserves a minute of your attention.

Lovely video, Tim. Your stories about each game and why they are important to you were great to hear. My top 5 list would also include the first professional MMO that I ever played, Star Wars Galaxies. That game was something else. Hugely ambitious, but with a lot of faults, so many great memories were made playing that title. Sometimes your first MMO can really be a magical experience.

love how the games you were playing back then influenced your own games

Cool memories. I did not get along with my stepdad growing up. So when I was told we have to go to the camp he bought during the summer, my mom thankfully brought the Atari. I played Atari 2600 version of Star Raiders for hours listening to music. It's around the exact time I first heard Black Sabbaths Iron Man. Made the situation much better!

Man, it's astonishing how much this mimics my own experience, except that I was born in '86 and missed the boat on that kind of job market. Do envy that.

Hearing someone talk about Star Raiders really takes me back! One of my favorites as well.

I remember Star Raiders on the Atari. I went into the store near my school every day to just gape in awe at how unbelievable it was. It was totally jaw dropping.

Thank you. I should tell you that Fallout is my Ultima 3. So thank you for inspiring a deep love of CRPG's!

This is my absolute Favorite Channel!

Awesome list and awesome video. I could watch you talk about different games for days. I was a Commodore 64 then nes boy. The one that really stands out for me to this day is Metroid nes. I don’t know why I didn’t get into ultima back then. Wish I would have.

YES! Star Wars: X-Wing!!! I remember watching my older cousins play it back in Maine. Honestly, Lucas Arts defined the 90's when it came to PC gaming. Miss them dearly.

Did the version of Star Control 2 you played have voice acting? I only recently learned that not every version had voices, which is crazy to me considering how good they were!

Star Control 2 was just _so_ good!

1) Star Raiders 1979 @ 1:08 2) Ultima 3 Exodus 1983 @ 3:17 3) Star Control 2 1992 @ 6:06 4) Star Wars X Wing 1993 @ 8:10 5) Ever Quest 1999 @ 9:48

That was so cool! I didn't play any of those games but now I want to check them out! Okay false I did have X-Wing vs Tie Fighter so I am familiar with those. Very fun! I really dig your videos keep makin em!

Big ups for the X-wing pick! And Tie Fighter really took it to the nex level both graphics wise and story wise. The reason why the Prequels paled in comparison is because of all the amazing EU material that was made in the late 80s and 90s.

Yo! I never see EQ as people's top lists. EQ was really groundbreaking, and still has some stuff that (at least conceptually) are unmatched even in contemporary MMO's for roleplaying. I agree with your feelings on it, gonna check out your vid on it!

Hi Tim I'd love to hear your talk about how you chose the music for Fallout and Vampire. Some of my favourite ambient soundtracks, love the weird sound effects.

I had a similar experience with Ultima VI when I was growing up and for me that will be my all-time favourite, because nothing can quite equal the first time you get lost in a game like that.

I can confirm that you aren't the only person who bought a joystick just to play X-Wing! I remember first seeing the game running on a computer in a Costco and being utterly blown away. It looked fantastic at the time, and the sound effects were spectacular.

It's impressive how much was fit into an 8k cartridge for Star Raiders. Must have been written quite efficiently to make such a game (and with 3D movement!). I am constantly surprised by the amount of ingenuity old games fostered - no - demanded, from developers back then!

Star raiders is such a great game, I used to play it on my Grandad's Atari800XE as a little kid. I thought the hyperspace effect was amazing, and would happily zoom about shooting things until I ran out of fuel. It wasn't until I watched my cousin complete it that I learned you could travel to the starbases for refueling, and from then on I was able to make Star Commander rank on my own. 😁 Tim have you tried Aric Wilmunder's unreleased Star Raiders 2?

Great video! I wish you would have tried final fantasi xi online when it first released. They took inspiration from ultima and everquest. It was a final fantasy mmo, that didn’t hold your hand, you had to pay attention to know where you needed to go. you NEEDED other people to level up, help do job (class) quests, etc. It was the first time i played an online game, playing with people all around the world, it was an incredible experience. Nowadays it’s been watered down and holds your hand more with things, so i don’t play it anymore. I still subscribe now and again though, just to run around the world i love and listen to the music, it just takes me back to the good old days!

STAR WARS XWING!!!! loved this game. Hours and hours at my neighbors house playing this game. Story was so good. It FELT like you were in an XWING.

If I were to speculate on their rankings, I would place them in the following order: EverQuest, Star Raiders, X-Wing, Ultima 3, with Star Control 2 ultimately emerging as the winner.

Hey Tim. You and I are roughly contemporary and we both learned 6502 on our own and got a job in games because of it. It's kinda cool how much overlap this list has with mine. I would probably replace Star Raiders with Battlezone because Battlezone was the first time I realized a game could simulate 3D. I also never played Star Control but I can see it was my kinda game at the time. Otherwise I agree with every pick, especially Ultima 3, which was my first Ultima too, though I'd give an honorable mention to OG Apple II Akalabeth, the true progenitor and the first real computer RPG I played, long before Ultima. And let's not even talk about the EQ addiction, sigh. Three years of my spare time spent on Veeshan. I think I want about half of them back, but I don't regret the other half since they were kinda formative for me. Great talk. I didn't realize you had a channel; I think I'll sub. :) PS: I'm tempted to add Robotron 2084. As a super-addictive high-action stand-up game, it's one of the few times gaming has given me a cardio workout. :)

I remember playing star raiders in some ps1 bootleg atari collection and got really surprised how much people could do with so little resources, scarcity generates creativity

What an interesting list. If I made a list of my top 5 games, it would be the ones that completely blew my mind when I saw them. That opened my mind to what a video game can do and be. Off the top of my head it would probably be Super Mario Bros, Fallout, Diablo, Warcraft 2 and Dark Age of Camelot (or Ultima Online). I'm not just putting your game in there because it's you. Fallout was so different from everything I had played up till then.

I was born in 2003, and was fortunate enough to play Star Control 2 when I was little. I still revisit it regularly and it is probably my favourite ever game, right next to XCOM UFO Defense.

Nice list, I wish Everquest didn't come out the year I was born! Love hearing you mention assembly every once and a while because I'm learning about it in school! Only thing is you probably have nostalgia for things like assembly, while to students it's like trying to learn how to code using punch cards and data tapes

I forgot how many sticks I broke playing X Wing Vs Tie fighter, which was the sucessor of Xwing. GOD I love that game.

Since I commented earlier, and have been considering this topic since, here is a quick thought about "my 5". Based on time played I suppose: EverQuest - PC (7 years invested. We called it NeverQuest because you hardly ever did for the first few years of its release.) Minecraft - PC (The first time I bore witness to the birth of a new genre.) Payday2 - PC (My first in depth experience with something like an economy grinder in the form of a "crime sandbox", also has an rpg level/skill system.) Last two based less on time and more on influence: Final Fantasy "1" - NES (My first real rpg and it let me build a custom 4 man team, oh the replay-ability!) DOOM - PC (MY first experience with actual 3D and first person, blew me completely away.) I learned how to build a computer in order to play and multiplayer good old DOOM. Totally worth it! Shout out to my 4800 baud warriors who had to upgrade to at least 9600 baud to multiplayer DOOM! Those grinding modem tones never sounded sweeter than when I could 1v1 my old pals.. All in all, DOOM changed the course of my life now that I consider it..

I played so many hours of X-Wing. My friend Dan had it, and he went so far as to get a flight yoke joystick and literally bolted it to the front of his desk. I'd go over to his place, and we'd play it as a duo, one of us being the pilot (flying and shooting) and the other being the R2 unit, balancing the shields and generally calling out telemetry info. Some of my favourite early PC gaming memories.

I haven't thought about Star Control 2 in such a long time but me and my friends were hooked on that as kids. We'd get to school and swap map coordinates we found the night before. I just remembered the rainbow worlds were a thing too, if you found all of them they formed the shape of an arrow if my memory isn't faulty. Did they ever explain what that arrow meant?

Your decor in the background is so cozy. You must love to read!

Hey tim, been loving your videos as of late, what are you thoughts on the nes game nightshade? It was one of my favorite games that I played as a kid and was absolutely blown away by what they put into it, I remember hating the game at first but I just could not stop playing it, and I was terrible at it but I pieced things together and somehow figured out how to beat the thing eventually

Hell YEAH Star Control II! Truly a man of culture we have here. 😊 It's still my favourite game of all-time and nothing has yet dethroned it. It absolutely blew my mind back in the day for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm in the process of trying to build a collection of all the different versions. I have a complete PC copy, but still looking for Amiga and 3DO versions that won't require me to remortgage my house. I did enjoy Star Control: Origins from Stardock a fair bit, but I can't wait for the new game Paul and Fred have in development now.

played Star Control 2 on the 3DO - what a great game! the voice acting and dialog especially hilarious

Wow 3 games involving flying space ships. No iso/cavalier RPGs. 3 without emphasis on dialogue/story. No games I would have picked. Great list Tim and interesting video.

I played X-Wing with a replica of a WWII aviator helmet, my parents thought I went crazy when they entered my room :D

I loved Star Raiders! I enjoyed that game so much. I love being an 80s kid. OMG, my favorite Ultima was III. Wow! Another edit. Loved X-Wing! My favorite game of the 90's. No, this can't be possible, EVERQUEST!! Oh my goodness. Remember the Griffen that would kill you right outside of Freeport.

I was a teenager when I got introduced to Ultima III and PC gaming. It was not my first love, that honor belongs to Ultima IV.

Star Control 2 was one of the greats of my childhood. That and Starcraft, Ultima 7, and Final Fantasy 7.

Star Control 2 Hyperspace theme music from the 3DO version is an amazing track. still wake up and I have that song in my head first thing even after so many years of not playing the game

I can definitely see the influence of these games in the games you made. Have you played FreeSpace 2? check the FSO (open project with mods).

I got my first computer in the late 80s in the USSR and loved games from that moment. But nothing has ever hit me like Everquest when it came out. That was absolute magic.

I want to have that level of insight and forward thinking that your mom did, to tell you to take that summer off and relax. She was on point. Ultima 3 was my first "oh crap" RPG and it was the NES version (I wanna say around 89 or so). I had Ultima 3 and 4 for the NES and a friend I met had ALL the Ultima games on his Apple 2. I made my best friend ever through those games, and he showed me the world of CRPGs via Ultima, but rapidly moving onto WIzardry and Phantasie too ... though, Ultima was always THE jam for us. It makes SO much sense why Fallout 1 was such a blockbuster for us... Also, X-wing was formative. Tie Fighter was formative too, but dammit, while playing Wing Commander who didn't fantasize about flying an X-wing in a similar game. X-wing and Tie Fighter delivered that wish and more.

My mom was awesome too!!! She let me play Adventure on Atari when I was 5 or 6. She loved Ultima Exodus! It was a bit beyond me at such a young age, but I remember distinctly: loving the party creation. I'm not sure I have ever felt that in another game since.

Ultima III was my first of that series too. I have great memories of it - figuring out the moon gates, finding the marks, getting sucked into the whirlpool and finding Ambrosia, and getting attacked by the floors on the way to the final action in the game. I had never imagined that so much could be contained in a game, and I was hooked on RPGs from that day forward. Ultima III hasn't exactly aged well - combat is extremely tedious, and the overall experience is rather clunky by today's standards - but I will always have a soft spot for it. Ultima IV was just about as important. While it couldn't duplicate the sorts of memories that could only be formed through my first exposure to the RPG genre, it showed that RPGs didn't have to be murderhobo simulators and could include morality systems and complex interactions with NPCs. Later, Ultima VII came along and perfected the rich open world full of little secrets to find while wandering off the beaten path. When I played Bethesda games from Morrowind through Fallout 4 later on, I got Ultima VII-like vibes in how detailed, interactive, and lived-in the worlds felt. (Sadly, according to the reviews I've seen, Starfield might have lost some of this. I always wait on Bethesda games, so I haven't experienced it for myself yet.) Ultima III might not have been my first RPG experience, however, depending on how one defines Adventure on the Atari 2600. That game was also a huge influence on me, and I still play it to this day. The main character is a large square pixel that is the same color as the walls, the dragons look like ducks, and the sword is a simple yellow arrow, but in its time, this game really did feel like an epic adventure. It has some of the characteristics of RPGs - places to explore, loot to find, and enemies to kill - but there aren't any of the usual RPG stats. I don't see it as a full blown RPG (maybe it qualifies as a simple action RPG), but it was certainly an influence on the genre. Another group of games that was a huge influence on adventure games in general but is often overlooked nowadays is the text adventure. The Zork trilogy from Infocom was one of my favorites. These games have no graphics at all. They have rather brief text descriptions, and they respond to simple English commands. They feature puzzles so maddeningly obfuscated and obscure that they were nearly impossible to beat without resorting to hint books. The vault puzzle in Zork II is maddening, and the Royal Museum puzzle room in Zork III is the product of a truly warped mind. In some ways, these games can be seen as examples of bad game design, and text adventures, while no longer a mainstream genre, have come a long way since then, but the crazy world in which these games are set is so iconic and memorable that tangling with their unreasonable difficulties is a joy. From these humble beginnings, text-and-graphics adventures and point-and-click adventures arose, and ultimately the walking simulators of the 2010s can be traced to these roots. Even narrative-heavy RPGs owe a lot to these old adventure games.

very cool video tim. i would actually love to also be able to see your favorite "modern games" (maybe games newer than 24 years) if it's possible. congrats on your amazing channel by the way you are very wholesome.

I never played Xwing but man, I never knew the power balance was that old. Diverting power from weapons to shields and engines is my favorite space ship mechanic

i played TIE Fighter In the late 90s... it got me into space sims and rabbit holed me into other space sims like Descent Freespace, Tachyon, X-Wing Alliance, and lastly the Descent Freespace 2 open sourced mods 😁

Your top 5 games are phenomenal, now your Fallout (And of course the other games you've worked on for many others) is in top five of many people's including me.

Thanks for the video Tim, have you tried Cosmoteer on steam ?

Man, Ultima 3 is so nostalgic for me. I'd play it myself and then spend hours watching my dad play. He actually wrote all the moongate locations and phases on the cloth map. I still remember when he beat it- I think he had to put cards into slots. Lol. As for Star Raiders, I didn't play, but did play Starmaster on the 2600. One of my favorite games on that system.

@CainOnGames Are there any recent games in the last 10-20 years you learned from, were impressed by, or just really enjoyed? How do you think newer games differ from older games, both positive and negative? Thanks for the videos, they are informative!

So excited to see eq on here. I will never give darkpaw another cent of my money, but id go back if they ever sell it.

I'd love to see a list of your favorite modern games!

I was born in 1990, but I completely fell in love Star Control II back in 2012. Now I’m making a game inspired by both it and DBZ! Encouraging to know a great designer was inspired by the same game… I’m not alone!

Star control 2 changed me. Epic mention.

Tim this is Tim, my first true RPG was Ultima 3 as well. I played most of the other as welll Ultima 3 to 4 is funny exp when you can go wild looting merchants, and getting tough enough to kill the town guards. Not knowing that going into 4 was pretty hilarious.

I used to rock Star Raiders for hours at a time on my 2600. Loved that game.

One that had a big impact on me was dungeons of daggorath back in 83. An 8kb, first person, real time, action dungeon crawl. Was lucky enough to have a trs 80 in the house as a kid making it the first game I ever played. Was about 4 or 5 years old learning to type thanks to it.

The CRPG Book sounds interesting to talk about, even if it ends up being a plug. Never heard of it until you mentioned it in passing here.

True, the first great ones of a genre make the biggest impression :) For me it was dungeon master, realms of arcania, tie fighter, alpha centauri (superceeding civilization), and xcom2.

So cool to see influential games from someone a little older game. Older than me, not old BTW😂. I’ve never played any of these games but they look fantastic. You did a great job of explaining why they were great too. If I had to put together my version of the list it would look like this: Sonic the Hedgehog Mortal Kombat 2 Pokémon Red Tomb Raider Metal Gear Solid

My top five video games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Pokemon Blue, vanilla World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Those are the games that impacted me the most which I keep coming back to when I can. Fallout introduced my to RPGs and it became my favorite genre. Thank you so much for creating Fallout

StarControl 2 was soooo awesome!

Hey Tim! Random question but I saw that Fallout TV show trailer and noticed the credit for the game was really given to Todd Howard. Did they reach out or mention they were going to credit you/the original team or not? If not it’s a real shame that they are claiming Todd and Bethesda folks are claiming to “create that world” when y’all set the setting and tone for Fallout.

Its actually mindblowing how influential Ultimas were. I already had a joystick for X-Wing, since I played Falcon 3.0.

Hell yeah, I knew everquest would be here when I saw the title! lol

Thanks for sharing mate

I'm definitely going to check out Star Control 2. Or putting it on my list until after I finish all of Tim's own games.

do a video about your top five most hours played aswell .o. i wanna know what they are and how you spent that much time in them .x.

Did you ever play "Elite"? It was available on the BBC Micro and Acorn computers. It was remarkable not just because of its 3D vector graphics but also because it gave players a choice of how they wanted to make progress, e.g., via trading, piracy, bounty hunting, etc. I like games that let the player choose what kind of gameplay they prefer. The game "Galaxy on Fire 2" (also available as a mobile game) took that tradition and provided a visually much more polished version of it. I thought it was very successful in blending story-telling, open-world exploration, and player agency.

8:10 Damn it Tim, you're gonna make me drag my old 486 out of the closet before this video is over, aren't you? The nostalgia is strong with this one. And yes, folks. Go ahead and ridicule me. I still possess every computer (and monitor) I've ever bought. That 486 was the first though. The original hard drive still works as well, 31 years later. At least I think so. Last time I fired it up was 5 or more years ago to play Frontier: Elite 2.

For all the fellow EQ junkies--Look up a game called Monsters & Memories for your radar. One of the EQ designers has a small indie team building an MMO with those old, niche sensibilities. Probably going to be a minute, but I imagine it'll be a nice new adventure for those who were there to appreciate the good ol' days.

Oh wow! Star Wars Squadrons(2020) uses that same system for distributing power between lasers, shields and engines, that’s awesome.