43. Age of Empires
PC, 1997


The original, because anything involving guns and cannons just doesn't interest me nearly as much as bows, arrows, swords and spears will. My cousin, Sus, had a friend who would occasionally come over with four desktops, set them up in her kitchen and we would all play against each other. It was like RISK... broken alliances were commonplace and as we couldn't see each other's screens, the chuckling/cackling that would occasionally come around would set everyone else in the room on a wild panic. xD

The game was well designed, I loved the balance in it all, and we always had loads of fun. I tried the later AoE games but couldn't really get into them like I did the first. It's like the RTS version of Civ... I like starting from scratch, not with a bunch of technology already under my belt. All in all a great game.