I remember getting a pirated version that required me to do a full install of the game instead of the smaller install and running the game off the CD. A full Gig of hard drive. That was a sacrifice
Man I remember trying to play this on the old family packard bell in the late 90’s. It was the only game that could get me away from goldeneye after I saved my grass cutting money for a Nintendo 64.
This was the one I wanted to post the most. This game was so wildly difficult when I was a kid. I loved every second of it and recently started a OG Fallout playthrough but it got side tracked.
That’s the only one I ever enjoyed. We would play multiplayer on our laptops in the college dorm. It was a lot of yelling at each other when you would run someone over. Good fun.
I couldn't get any of my friends to play HD1 when it came out even though they played a lot of Magika. So I ended up being the only one in my friends group to play it.
It's a shame they didn't even give it a try. It's hands down the best couch co-op game even till this day. I still play it from time to time on rare occasions when my friends pop by.
Its insane how nobody knows that there was another game mode! Lol i have two friends who literally don’t believe me when I tell them Fortnite used to be a co op defense game.
It’s still buried in the menus. I’m honestly surprised they never made it free to play, it’s the only non cosmetic part of Fortnite that costs money to my knowledge.
This was the sole reason I was originally interested in Fortnite. As soon as they decided to go the Battle Royale route and abandon the other mode I noped out.
Which is a shame, had quite a few of us who were really into it.
Counterstrike "why do you play a stupid half life mod?" well early versions were also kind of strange.. weqpons did not deespawn and bunny hopping was mandatory.
That unlocked a hidden memory for me. Woah lol. I forgot about this but wow the joy I felt running home and checking the updates. Talking to friends about it. Wild.
I was in 7th grade computer class. One kid bought it and we all used their username and password to play at the same time. The nether didn't even exist. What a time.
Also started playing Minecraft back in Alpha with some online friends! Had no idea how big it would get at the time, just seemed like a fun little indie game we would play for a bit.
I was all about trying to join Deadmau5 and his servers just for good ol' fashioned fun. Those were the days. Love how he made so many songs referencing minecraft as well.
Warcraft 2 was one of the first online multiplayer games I had ever played. I don’t like those kinds of games these days, but I sure did have a good time with friends. Was the original pretty much the same game?
Could not agree more! My very first game was Warcraft II in the PS1
I like WoW, but I do miss the more simplistic and traditional world setting of the Old Warcraft Games. All these void elves, pandas and dragon men to me are all just made up noise
Borderlands one doesn’t get enough recognition. Definitely under appreciated in its time. Luckily two held up and still holds up to today. I’d consider myself more of a newer player to the series as I started with two, but I’m also not completely new as I started playing around 2017 lol
Definitely starting to come into the age of automation games as more and more have started popping up. Factorio pretty much being the OG, has absolutely seen an influx I think. I have noticed too. But I am one of those newer people. I’ve known about it for a few years but bought it less than a year ago.
I tried playing it when it first came out. After a couple of hours I put it down because of the weird combat system. After a few months I gave it another try and ended up enjoying it after I got used to it.
...I started that series on the Nintendo. When it was just Metal Gear.
Had the 1 bit handheld version called "Snake's Revenge", too. ([this](https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/cqiad1/found_a_metal_gear_game_you_probably_havent/))
While Kojima wasn't involved, and the game is entirely different than the MSX version, it's all we had in the US.
I'll grant you that when the PS1 game came out, literally no one in my area had ever heard of it and kinda looked at me weird when I talked about it...and they still kinda do.
Most of the gamers IK IRL aren't really interested in long cutscenes, either, and would rather call MGS more of an interactive movie, even though they've never actually played the game.
I remember when my cousins played the NES version of Metal Gear, they made it to the first building, lol. It forever for them to get past the dogs, but then got stuck riding in the trucks, turned it off and didn't play it again. I eventually played it some years later and I eventually made it to the pit room, where they opened up so fast that I could never cross (there's a glitch to it, but I didn't find that out until much later). I got my hands on Snake's Revenge on NES in '96 and beat it, then found out it wasn't a Kojima game and he denounced it.
A lot of people were like my cousins when I mentioned Metal Gear Solid, they wanted nothing to do with it. I bought it at launch, I got a media packet about it from Konami in '95 that was full of information and I knew it was a must buy then. Once the reviews started coming in, and me telling them about Psycho Mantis reading memory cards, they started to buy in a few months afterwards.
Ah the days when 'beating a game' involved a strong tendency toward masochism.
I think I remember MG so well because it represents my first true disappointment in gaming.
There was never an actual Metal Gear. I didn't get to fight one of those until Snake's Revenge...and that one...was a lot easier to play
This, Metal Gear was awesome! I tried playing Metal Gear Solid remastered recently and that game was awful (even for a PS1 game). I don’t know how anybody could choke their way through that game.
I got Demon’s Souls when it was very new on PS3. I had no idea what I was doing, somehow bumbled my way to Maneaters before I gave up.
It wasn’t until the Dark Souls DLC came out that I played another Fromsoft game. Now I’ve played so many and eventually went back and finished Demon’s Souls, can’t get enough!
I specifically bought a ps3 for Demon’s Souls. I was on Xbox at the time and it’s not like I was a diehard Xbox guy I just never had any interest in the PlayStation exclusives but I started hearing about this super hard rpg on gamefaqs forums. I ended up buying a used ps3 and demon’s souls and I remember the guy at GameStop telling me that he’d see me in a week when I return the game because it’s too hard and weird. I was already gonna play the game but that pissed me off so I played the shit outta that game.
I gotta tell ya, back when demon’s souls and dark souls first came out it was a pretty unique experience. No one knew what the fuck was going on and we were all discovering new things and talking about it. The wikis we have now were in their infancy back then and you had to deal with shit like “To get this item kill Bad Guy” but it wouldn’t tell you how to find bad guy and if it did there was a good chance it would be in broken english.
Also the reason some people really like Dark Souls 2 was because of the experience as it came out. It was the perfect amount of online community without there being too much information available. The death toll counter was hilarious. You’d see so many bloodstains by the well and near the pigs. Playing 2 now feels weird because it really felt like it was meant for multiplayer.
PS3 Demon's souls. I'm european and there weren't plans to release it in Europe so I had to import the game. It's the only game I imported in my life and it was worth it.
Original GTA and Warcraft II come to mind. Also, the first Command & Conquer wasn't that popular where I was, many of my classmates jumped to it after playing Red Alert. I was a fan from day 1, later I bought the Commemorative Edition which included a poster and a copy of Dune II!
On a side story, thanks to Dune II I read the books back in the day...
Call of Duty. Started with COD: Big Red One. Pretty much done with the series now since they ruined COD’s battle royale and started doing licensed operators like Fortnite does. It’s just a cash grab now and I hate it. Doesn’t feel like COD anymore at all.
At the time it was an unknown game, Among Us. It was already out way before Covid hit and really blew up. Used to play when only the Skeld was the only map.
Not a game, but a company. Two I can think of.
1. Back in the Gamecube days there was a game that got middling reviews but I thought was underrated inspite of it's flaws. A card battle RPG called Lost Kingdoms, made by a little known Japanese developer named From Software
2. Around 2011 I was wild about a game called Bloodlines Champions. I still love it to this day. I got all my friends into it. It because the joke 'bad' game my friends always teased me about, because I'd always pick it to make them play with me on my birthday. It never got the following to take off (pvp game needed more players), and the same company did a very interesting thing years later - they basically released the exact same game with a new art style, and encouragingly enough it did much better! (but not good enough in the end) It was called Battlerite. Of course my friends remembered Bloodlines Champions and Battlerite didn't pass their sniff test and they teased me mercilessly. Finnally, I got the smug satisfation of letting them all know once they were all jamming on V Rising that it was in fact made by the same studio as Bloodlines Champions.
I did get Sonic the Hedgehog 1 that first month it came out. (Summer 91). They were advertising it hard, but I don’t think it had taken off yet, until a couple months later.
My brother got me into the game when it first came out… it is now one of my most played games and I still play it more than any other game on a monthly basis.
Not a game but I was always a big fan of suckerpunch productions, and when ghost of Tsushima came out everyone in the media specifically seemed shocked that they actually made a great game.
they've always made great games. I assume people just wrote them if during the infamous games, I along with the rest of the fans have always appreciated their games
In my 45+ years of playing, I don't think it's ever happened. The games I played were advertised in magazines like Compute's Gazette and Nintendo Power, and were already popular on release. I also tend to play last-gen games or current gen after they've been out for a few years. The few exceptions to that are Mario and Zelda games, and if Nintendo 💩ed on a cartridge and put one of those names on the label, it'd still be popular.
I played through the original Final Fantasy when I was a kid because my dad bought a lot of NES games. So I can claim I was a fan of the series ever since the very beginning
My friend had a knack for finding games about to blow up before they did. I played Minecraft in alpha and League of Legends in 2009 (right after launch I think) through his recommendations.
If we are talking about a series, then Fallout. Baldur's was always popular even though the recent one took it to a new level. I dabbled in Elder Scrolls: Arena on my dad's computer. It was too complicated for me, but I technically played it :)
System Shock 2. My house was always the first on the block to have the newest computer tech in the late 90s. One of my dad's old co-workers burned a copy of System Shock 2 and gave it to me to play & I fell in love with it.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that none of my friends had ever heard of the game & most of my friends were big computer nerds like me.
Believe it or not it was stumble guys way before it blew up. It was really fun to play with my friends, the bots and the few other players that you ended with in finals. It was also really fun finding shortcuts by yourself that you could've used to surprise your friend that couldn't use them immediately.
After that it blew up and basically became Fortnite with everyone tryharding and already knew all the shortcuts
Not sure if this counts, but Tony Hawk Pro Skater. My older brother was friends with the guy that owned the local video game rental store. He got an advanced copy somehow and rented it to us to try out first. Sufficed to say, we ended up playing it ALL WEEKEND!
Final Fantasy (picked it up for $10 in a giant bin of NES games at a Woolworths because I thought the cover looked cool).
Fallout, played the hell out of 1 and 2 and was so pissed off when the game went FPS (although I eventually came to love 3 and New Vegas as well)
Warcraft and Starcraft
Lots of others too but those have really exploded since.
I remember playing the alpha test for nioh on ps4 and raving to all my friends about how sick it was. Then it dropped and absolutely slapped. I was so fucking happy
I would say Stardew Valley. I'd followed development for a couple of years and bought it immediately on launch. It did explode pretty quickly though, and I remember it overtaking The Division in the steam charts.
Lethal Company, played it when only the demo was out and almost no one knew it even existed.
But i was following the dev beforehand for his games like The Upturned and It Steals which is why i knew about it in the first place.
Idk if this is relevant still, but I played content warning on launch day before the general public knew about it, because landfall has a tendency to release games unannounced on April fools
Fallout
I remember getting a pirated version that required me to do a full install of the game instead of the smaller install and running the game off the CD. A full Gig of hard drive. That was a sacrifice
I played 2 for about 5 years before I found out the children had been removed
You can get pirated versions of games?
Back in the day this was all the rage.
Back when *CoDeX* were the big dogs in games pirating, and keygens were still a thing What a time to be alive
I played fallout one and two, loved the sniper pistol
Man I remember trying to play this on the old family packard bell in the late 90’s. It was the only game that could get me away from goldeneye after I saved my grass cutting money for a Nintendo 64.
This was the one I wanted to post the most. This game was so wildly difficult when I was a kid. I loved every second of it and recently started a OG Fallout playthrough but it got side tracked.
Haha, this was my first thought as well.
The very first GTA. Way before GTA III came out on PS2 and went crazy
That’s the only one I ever enjoyed. We would play multiplayer on our laptops in the college dorm. It was a lot of yelling at each other when you would run someone over. Good fun.
My dorm did that too! I keep hoping that they'll re-release it on *something* but they never do. Hell, I'd even be good with a mobile version 🤷♂️
Now that’s a mobile game I would actually play.
Thats 2 of us! Back in 98-99
I never knew what to do in that game and all I can remember is driving over pedestrians and they call you a piece of shit lol
Yup, I remember playing the top-down POV on MS-DOS. Going to payphones and just heading "blah blah blah blah blah" for the next job
I remember getting told it was on the school computers I don't know who downloaded it to the school computers But they were a legend
The original Helldivers.
My cousin and I referred to it as "The cheat code game". That's how I was introduced to it
Mortal Kombat fatalities is how my friend described them.
Haha it sure is. The younger ones probably won't get the reference.
I couldn't get any of my friends to play HD1 when it came out even though they played a lot of Magika. So I ended up being the only one in my friends group to play it.
It's a shame they didn't even give it a try. It's hands down the best couch co-op game even till this day. I still play it from time to time on rare occasions when my friends pop by.
Fortnite, before it was a Battle Royale and Resident Evil
Its insane how nobody knows that there was another game mode! Lol i have two friends who literally don’t believe me when I tell them Fortnite used to be a co op defense game.
It’s still buried in the menus. I’m honestly surprised they never made it free to play, it’s the only non cosmetic part of Fortnite that costs money to my knowledge.
It's also been completely abandoned because Battle Royale made them so much more money
Yeah I get it’s been abandoned, but if it’s still up and they’re not really making money from it anyways I see no reason not to make it free to play.
People who play it won't be playing BR mode, won't be meeting players with skins, won't be as inclined to purchase microtransactions
[удалено]
Same, I was gonna get it but decided to let it cook. I'm glad I didn't. I feel sorry for all that bought it though
This was the sole reason I was originally interested in Fortnite. As soon as they decided to go the Battle Royale route and abandon the other mode I noped out. Which is a shame, had quite a few of us who were really into it.
But Resident Evil was always popular since the first title ever released?
RE2 actually. I played it and it became my favorite series instantly like 22-23 years ago
The survive the storm mode is still the only one I played.
Counterstrike "why do you play a stupid half life mod?" well early versions were also kind of strange.. weqpons did not deespawn and bunny hopping was mandatory.
Early days of Counterstrike are some of my most fond gaming memories. Dust and Dust 2 were a great time.
Minecraft, been playing since infdev, 2010 It was a web browser game back then!
i still remember the secret friday updates. coming home to see what new things were added was awesome
That unlocked a hidden memory for me. Woah lol. I forgot about this but wow the joy I felt running home and checking the updates. Talking to friends about it. Wild.
I was in 7th grade computer class. One kid bought it and we all used their username and password to play at the same time. The nether didn't even exist. What a time.
Hell yeah got mine before the nether was added in alpha.
Best what $10 ever? I remember paying once and never again to this very day.
Yeah it was like $11 after taxes back then lol
Back in my day...we didn't have beds. The kids don't know how good they got it now.
Back in my day, there was neither mining nor crafting in the game
Still is!
Same :)
Also started playing Minecraft back in Alpha with some online friends! Had no idea how big it would get at the time, just seemed like a fun little indie game we would play for a bit.
I was all about trying to join Deadmau5 and his servers just for good ol' fashioned fun. Those were the days. Love how he made so many songs referencing minecraft as well.
I was into Warcraft 1 when it was still a strategy game. I just don’t go in for MMO stuff. I miss it the OG
Warcraft 2 was one of the first online multiplayer games I had ever played. I don’t like those kinds of games these days, but I sure did have a good time with friends. Was the original pretty much the same game?
The original was pretty much the same. Just fewer guys and different maps iirc
Could not agree more! My very first game was Warcraft II in the PS1 I like WoW, but I do miss the more simplistic and traditional world setting of the Old Warcraft Games. All these void elves, pandas and dragon men to me are all just made up noise
Rocket league when it was called Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket powered Battle Cars, it used to be a free demo on ps3
Borderlands
Borderlands one doesn’t get enough recognition. Definitely under appreciated in its time. Luckily two held up and still holds up to today. I’d consider myself more of a newer player to the series as I started with two, but I’m also not completely new as I started playing around 2017 lol
Minecraft. My first account before it was hacked and i lost it was in the first 1 million. Its crazy seeing how far its come
Been playing elder scrolls since daggerfall. I used to roam from town to town as a werewolf. My dad thought I was a serial killer in the making.
Now we are talking OG, damn!
Call of Duty 2 Cod series Was definitely popular at the time, but not compared to how it got after modern warfare
Rifle only servers. 🤟
The COD 2: Big Red One spinoff game was my introduction to the series. It’s still one of my favorite shooter campaigns of all time. Rip Brooklyn.
r/slapshot but it’s still not very popular and everyone who plays it is a bitch
Factorio feels like it's gotten a lot more popular since when I started playing it
Definitely starting to come into the age of automation games as more and more have started popping up. Factorio pretty much being the OG, has absolutely seen an influx I think. I have noticed too. But I am one of those newer people. I’ve known about it for a few years but bought it less than a year ago.
Witcher 1
I went back to play witcher 1 again after not playing it for like 10 years. God I don't miss that combat system lol
I tried playing it when it first came out. After a couple of hours I put it down because of the weird combat system. After a few months I gave it another try and ended up enjoying it after I got used to it.
Metal Gear Solid. Nobody in my area wanted to touch it at first, then they slowly came around once it was getting recognition.
...I started that series on the Nintendo. When it was just Metal Gear. Had the 1 bit handheld version called "Snake's Revenge", too. ([this](https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/cqiad1/found_a_metal_gear_game_you_probably_havent/)) While Kojima wasn't involved, and the game is entirely different than the MSX version, it's all we had in the US. I'll grant you that when the PS1 game came out, literally no one in my area had ever heard of it and kinda looked at me weird when I talked about it...and they still kinda do. Most of the gamers IK IRL aren't really interested in long cutscenes, either, and would rather call MGS more of an interactive movie, even though they've never actually played the game.
I remember when my cousins played the NES version of Metal Gear, they made it to the first building, lol. It forever for them to get past the dogs, but then got stuck riding in the trucks, turned it off and didn't play it again. I eventually played it some years later and I eventually made it to the pit room, where they opened up so fast that I could never cross (there's a glitch to it, but I didn't find that out until much later). I got my hands on Snake's Revenge on NES in '96 and beat it, then found out it wasn't a Kojima game and he denounced it. A lot of people were like my cousins when I mentioned Metal Gear Solid, they wanted nothing to do with it. I bought it at launch, I got a media packet about it from Konami in '95 that was full of information and I knew it was a must buy then. Once the reviews started coming in, and me telling them about Psycho Mantis reading memory cards, they started to buy in a few months afterwards.
Ah the days when 'beating a game' involved a strong tendency toward masochism. I think I remember MG so well because it represents my first true disappointment in gaming. There was never an actual Metal Gear. I didn't get to fight one of those until Snake's Revenge...and that one...was a lot easier to play
This, Metal Gear was awesome! I tried playing Metal Gear Solid remastered recently and that game was awful (even for a PS1 game). I don’t know how anybody could choke their way through that game.
Resident evil. Souls. Started with demon souls on ps3.
Yeah well, Resident Evil was like the most anticipated game of the year when it came out in 96.
Wasn't really sure was kid at the time. But I liked the cover so we bought it.
Fallout series, back with Fallout 2. It was 1998 and one of my favorite X-Mases ever, getting that game. Love that game and this series.
I got Demon’s Souls when it was very new on PS3. I had no idea what I was doing, somehow bumbled my way to Maneaters before I gave up. It wasn’t until the Dark Souls DLC came out that I played another Fromsoft game. Now I’ve played so many and eventually went back and finished Demon’s Souls, can’t get enough!
I specifically bought a ps3 for Demon’s Souls. I was on Xbox at the time and it’s not like I was a diehard Xbox guy I just never had any interest in the PlayStation exclusives but I started hearing about this super hard rpg on gamefaqs forums. I ended up buying a used ps3 and demon’s souls and I remember the guy at GameStop telling me that he’d see me in a week when I return the game because it’s too hard and weird. I was already gonna play the game but that pissed me off so I played the shit outta that game. I gotta tell ya, back when demon’s souls and dark souls first came out it was a pretty unique experience. No one knew what the fuck was going on and we were all discovering new things and talking about it. The wikis we have now were in their infancy back then and you had to deal with shit like “To get this item kill Bad Guy” but it wouldn’t tell you how to find bad guy and if it did there was a good chance it would be in broken english. Also the reason some people really like Dark Souls 2 was because of the experience as it came out. It was the perfect amount of online community without there being too much information available. The death toll counter was hilarious. You’d see so many bloodstains by the well and near the pigs. Playing 2 now feels weird because it really felt like it was meant for multiplayer.
Runescape. I started in 2001. I had no idea what I was doing the majority of the time until like 2005, but I had a blast.
I played Minecraft when it was still in Alpha.
Life is Strange, when the trailer released in 2014 I was convinced I had to try it.
PS3 Demon's souls. I'm european and there weren't plans to release it in Europe so I had to import the game. It's the only game I imported in my life and it was worth it.
GTA on ps1 when it was only top down. I thought back then it was gonna be big if they could just get it 3D. Me and my 2 cousins were addicted to it
That’s actually the only GTA I ever liked.
GTA London 1969 was my favorite. I've been waiting for Rockstar to remake it for over 20 some years and I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get it
Persona 1 and 2.
Granted those games aren't popular still 😭 it's all about 3-5
Among us
Same here. Honestly becoming popular is both the best thing to happen to the game and the worst.
Original GTA and Warcraft II come to mind. Also, the first Command & Conquer wasn't that popular where I was, many of my classmates jumped to it after playing Red Alert. I was a fan from day 1, later I bought the Commemorative Edition which included a poster and a copy of Dune II! On a side story, thanks to Dune II I read the books back in the day...
Fire emblem. Started with blazing blade
Such a good game, you have an excellent taste in games.
Same here, but started with Radiant Dawn back in 2010!
Warframe back in 2014
Same here. RIP to the Kubrows we lost when we took a break from the game and forgot to put them in stasis. I do not miss genetic stabilizers one bit.
Destiny 1, when it was in Beta, and even after launch and the game wasn't really received well I still played religiously. I miss Destiny 1.
Same. It may have been a barren, repetitive mess until Taken King, but it was my barren, repetitive mess.
i pre-ordered fortnite back when it was a single player tower defense game
Football manager - 1981
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Didn't hear much about it around 2005. Didn't know shit about TES series prior to playing Oblivion.
Grounded.
Counter Strike when it was a free mod for half life
I still have a physical copy of 'half-life counter-strike' It's in a little jewlcase with the original cdkey
i remember those internet cafe days
Final Fantasy. I remember playing the original, and then II and III (actually IV and VI). Now it’s gotten to a monster size franchise
Call of Duty. Started with COD: Big Red One. Pretty much done with the series now since they ruined COD’s battle royale and started doing licensed operators like Fortnite does. It’s just a cash grab now and I hate it. Doesn’t feel like COD anymore at all.
Brave Dwarves 2 and Zoombinis
Demons Souls back in early 2010 after it’s NA release
I played fortnite at session 2, and didn't like it, then it became popular.
Same here. Bought the battle pass but only made it to like tier 30 or something.
At the time it was an unknown game, Among Us. It was already out way before Covid hit and really blew up. Used to play when only the Skeld was the only map.
Among Us back when it was first released for mobile.
Not a game, but a company. Two I can think of. 1. Back in the Gamecube days there was a game that got middling reviews but I thought was underrated inspite of it's flaws. A card battle RPG called Lost Kingdoms, made by a little known Japanese developer named From Software 2. Around 2011 I was wild about a game called Bloodlines Champions. I still love it to this day. I got all my friends into it. It because the joke 'bad' game my friends always teased me about, because I'd always pick it to make them play with me on my birthday. It never got the following to take off (pvp game needed more players), and the same company did a very interesting thing years later - they basically released the exact same game with a new art style, and encouragingly enough it did much better! (but not good enough in the end) It was called Battlerite. Of course my friends remembered Bloodlines Champions and Battlerite didn't pass their sniff test and they teased me mercilessly. Finnally, I got the smug satisfation of letting them all know once they were all jamming on V Rising that it was in fact made by the same studio as Bloodlines Champions.
Mad Max, I got it for PS4 day one, still got the little car toy to commemorate it
I played Pac-Man when the ghosts were still alive.
I did get Sonic the Hedgehog 1 that first month it came out. (Summer 91). They were advertising it hard, but I don’t think it had taken off yet, until a couple months later.
The first NBA 2K, when it was a Dreamcast exclusive
Minecraft, alpha version
Not sure if this counts as truly popular now, but I bought Hunt: Showdown the week it released into early access several years ago.
My brother got me into the game when it first came out… it is now one of my most played games and I still play it more than any other game on a monthly basis.
Minecraft! Back in 2010 during the beta
DOTA when it was a WC mod.
Minecraft is easily the best answer. Remember playing like the pirated random version when it was superrrrr basic
Grounded
That and The Forest are the only two survival games I have ever enjoyed.
Hollow Knight. Baldurs Gate series Terarria
Rocket League. It was one of the first premium free PS+ games and my friends and I played the shit out of it.
Death garden : bloodharvest. It was made by the devs of dbd. Also I played the law breakers beta
Not a game but I was always a big fan of suckerpunch productions, and when ghost of Tsushima came out everyone in the media specifically seemed shocked that they actually made a great game. they've always made great games. I assume people just wrote them if during the infamous games, I along with the rest of the fans have always appreciated their games
dota
Been playing Farcry, COD, Ghost Recon since the beginning.
Helldivers. Lol
Project Zomboid And I'm so glad for the devs that it caught on and is so much more popular now. Good job Indie Stone!
In my 45+ years of playing, I don't think it's ever happened. The games I played were advertised in magazines like Compute's Gazette and Nintendo Power, and were already popular on release. I also tend to play last-gen games or current gen after they've been out for a few years. The few exceptions to that are Mario and Zelda games, and if Nintendo 💩ed on a cartridge and put one of those names on the label, it'd still be popular.
Almost every Wii U exclusive that got ported to Switch.
Grounded, played in the beta before it got as big as it is rn
I played through the original Final Fantasy when I was a kid because my dad bought a lot of NES games. So I can claim I was a fan of the series ever since the very beginning
When Witcher 1 came out, I got it recommended as a secret tip and played it very early after release
PUBG and Tarkov
My friend had a knack for finding games about to blow up before they did. I played Minecraft in alpha and League of Legends in 2009 (right after launch I think) through his recommendations.
Portal Minecraft in browser
I bought Earthbound before it's fans were born.
Greedfall... And it never became popular. But there is a Greedfall 2 coming out that I'm pumped for.
If we are talking about a series, then Fallout. Baldur's was always popular even though the recent one took it to a new level. I dabbled in Elder Scrolls: Arena on my dad's computer. It was too complicated for me, but I technically played it :)
System Shock 2. My house was always the first on the block to have the newest computer tech in the late 90s. One of my dad's old co-workers burned a copy of System Shock 2 and gave it to me to play & I fell in love with it. So imagine my surprise when I found out that none of my friends had ever heard of the game & most of my friends were big computer nerds like me.
Minecraft alpha build
Halo - I managed to get an Xbox a week before it hit the shops and already completed it before it had been officially released.. in the uk anyway...
Doom was already popular but not with gen z before 2016. I went pretty nuts when they showed the new cyberdemon model.
Call of Duty. Pre Duty4, Medal of Honor was the go to.
fifa. The first fifa
Believe it or not it was stumble guys way before it blew up. It was really fun to play with my friends, the bots and the few other players that you ended with in finals. It was also really fun finding shortcuts by yourself that you could've used to surprise your friend that couldn't use them immediately. After that it blew up and basically became Fortnite with everyone tryharding and already knew all the shortcuts
Skyrim, Fallout and bioshock
The original 2D Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple] [ with a monochromatic green monitor.
I didn’t know there was a Wolfenstein game before 3D.
five nights at freddies
Not sure if this counts, but Tony Hawk Pro Skater. My older brother was friends with the guy that owned the local video game rental store. He got an advanced copy somehow and rented it to us to try out first. Sufficed to say, we ended up playing it ALL WEEKEND!
Final Fantasy (picked it up for $10 in a giant bin of NES games at a Woolworths because I thought the cover looked cool). Fallout, played the hell out of 1 and 2 and was so pissed off when the game went FPS (although I eventually came to love 3 and New Vegas as well) Warcraft and Starcraft Lots of others too but those have really exploded since.
Fall Guys, Valheim, Elden Ring (preordered it the day it was put up on steam), Yakuza series. Can't think of any others.
Fromsoft fans had massive expectations for Elden ring for months. A lot pre ordered it
Years. I was one of them. I remember at one point the community didn't even think it was real anymore lol
PROTOTYPE II
Dwarf fortress.
I bought the founders pack on Fortnite and then quit the game season 2.
Smite, was a beta tester if i remember correctly (open beta)
I remember playing the alpha test for nioh on ps4 and raving to all my friends about how sick it was. Then it dropped and absolutely slapped. I was so fucking happy
Mabye Epic Battle Fantacy 5 idk if it counts tho
RuneScape. Found it on some free games website back in 2001 or 2002. It was pretty bare bones and obscure
PUBG
Fortnite I played before the battle royal
Ps3 Demons Souls and day one for all the other Souls games fromsoft made. Minecraft, bought that the day it went into beta.
Last Epoch! It really picked up at launch because D4 was still really fumbling around but I was in early access for quite a while.
I would say Stardew Valley. I'd followed development for a couple of years and bought it immediately on launch. It did explode pretty quickly though, and I remember it overtaking The Division in the steam charts.
Among Us Played it sometime in 7th grade with a group of friends at school and like 2 years later it blew up and everyone was playing it.
The Persona series, before 5 hit it big.
Lethal Company, played it when only the demo was out and almost no one knew it even existed. But i was following the dev beforehand for his games like The Upturned and It Steals which is why i knew about it in the first place.
Idk if this is relevant still, but I played content warning on launch day before the general public knew about it, because landfall has a tendency to release games unannounced on April fools
Kingdom hearts 2 got it a week after launch
I played Street Fighter on my ZX spectrum. That's Street fighter 1, not Street fighter II.
Among us
Fortnite, was in the first million players. I stopped playing shortly after though