The Games We Played in School

The Games We Played in School

GAMEPRO GOES BACK TO SCHOOL: GamePro remembers the games they were super glued to in college and high school that sucked up far too much of their studying time.

Ah, school. For the hardworking men and women of GamePro, the mention of college and high school conjures up memories of long nights of studying, shotgunning Pabst Blue Ribbon, and knocking over mailboxes with baseball bats... oh wait, that's the plot to Dazed and Confused. Our years of study were far dorkier.

While the majority of us here studied hard in school, just about every single one of us spent a little too much time with the controller in our hands. Read on to see the games the GP staff were engrossed in when they should have been hitting the books!

Master of Orion II

by Tae Kim - Reviews Editor

Follow: Tae on Twitter here!

The Games We Played in School

I was a senior in high school when Master of Orion II released onto store shelves. Having been a fan of the first game, I went and bought the game on the day of release and immediately started tearing into it. If you've never played it, Master of Orion II is a classic 4X title, meaning the gameplay follows the four basic conventions of eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. MoO II is widely considered one of the greatest games in the genre and I was instantly hooked.

I fell into the addict cycle of "just one more turn" and literally played if from about five o'clock at night until six o'clock the next morning. I conquered planet after planet and eliminated alien enemy after alien enemy.

Since this was a weekend, it was no big deal for me to stay up into the next day except for one thing: I had to go hang out with my girlfriend that afternoon. After catching about three hours of sleep, I dragged myself out of bed and went over to her house...where after hanging out for like thirty minutes, I ended up crashing on her couch for a couple of hours. I woke up to one seriously pissed off girlfriend. But whatever-it was worth the aggravation I got from my girlfriend to log some serious hours with one of the best games ever.

God of War and Champions of Norrath

by Raychul Moore - GameGirl.com Lead Writer and Manager

Follow: Raychul on Twitter here!

The Games We Played in School

During the few years I was in college there were two games that got me into trouble with my teachers the most because they were eating up all of my study time: God of War and Champions of Norrath. Two completely different types of games, I know, but they were both so good! With God of War, I got the relentless blood and fast-paced action I crave. With Champions of Norrath, I had fun leveling up characters and going on never-ending quests for the next better weapon or spell.

Both of these games were a "first" for me in each of their genres. I had played games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill before, but nothing that offered such power in attacks and the over-the-top gore like I found and loved in God of War. Champions of Norrath was really the first RPG title that really got me hooked. Before I had tried turn-based RPGs and really didn't like them, but the hack n' slash nature of Champions had me addicted. I remember both of these games keeping me up at night and really affecting my studies. Coincidentally, it's around that same time that I was playing these games when I really decided that I wanted to pursue a career in video game journalism -- so here I am.

Skullmonkeys

by Andrew Yang - Senior Graphic Designer

Follow: Andrew on Twitter here!

The Games We Played in School

To a student, no time is better suited for procrastination than during the last week before finals. As a child, I would toss away any chance I had of getting a decent GPA by using my study time to play SkullMonkeys.

For those unfamiliar with the stupidly awesome, Skull Monkeys was a PS1 sequel to a claymation puzzle game The Neverhood. While the original game was praised for its artistic presentation and memorable storyline; This game reduced the protagonist to nothing more than a generic platforming game with over100 identical levels and only one kind of enemy; a moronic gorilla with a skull for a head.

While the game took the concept of redundancy to new levels. The simplistic gameplay and humorous cinematics were somehow therapeutic to me during those stressful times. It became my quarterly tradition to always beat the game from start to finish just before the first day of tests... tests that I effortlessly failed.

At school my friends often joked to me that I looked just like Klaymen... and by "friends" I mean people who beat me up because I looked just like Klaymen

Karaoke Revolution

by Dave Rudden - News Editor

Follow: Dave on Twitter here!

The Games We Played in School

While Guitar Hero arrived on the scene shortly after the end of my schooling years, another game filled many a college weekend evening with drunken musical interpretations.

Karaoke Revolution has definitely seen better days, with the series latching itself onto the American Idol license, but during the early part of this decade, the series offered up solid track lists (the kind you'd expect at your local dive bar) and the ability to perform duets, which was sorely missed in the Guitar Hero/Rock Band series (until The Beatles: Rock Band, anyway). When other music games were about focusing on your own, Karaoke Revolution made my friends and I sing together. Usually after a few shots of Jim Beam.

Mega Man Collection

by Chris Parisi - Video Producer

Follow: Chris on Twitter here!

The Games We Played in School

The games that probably distracted me the most from school work was the Mega Man collection for the Nintendo Gamecube. All the classic Mega Man games were on there from the very first one all the way down to where the series art styles were getting more Anime-looking and lame.

I remember it being hell-week during college and I had a whole bunch of essays and screenplays and short films due so I was pretty much working around the clock to get all my work done. To take my mind off of it all I'd take a break and play a few levels of Mega Man, then get pissed off that I couldn't beat certain levels, and then return to my school work.

After a while I took more and more breaks because I'd be sitting there trying to write some bullshit essay about the plight of modern man visualized through the main character in the film Memento, but all I could think about was how screwed up it was that in Mega Man when you try to jump over this cliff they put some enemy on the other side to shoot you in mid-air so you fall down the cliff and die! Who programmed this **** game! It was like they hired a bunch of sadists to create a horribly frustrating game that makes people want to rip their hair out and punch themselves. "Hey, you know what would really piss people off? Let's give the players only 3 continues too."

Thanks a lot. After a while my time spent doing school work versus the time playing Mega Man reversed. It became a personal attack onto me. I wasn't going to let this game beat me. I wasn't going to let Wind-Guy blow me off his stupid airship again. I wasn't going to let Shocker-Man, or whatever the hell his name is, prance around the screen! But in the end when I finally beat the game. So thanks Mega Man for extending my schoolwork hours into the night and making me feel like an irresponsible idiot.

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Fat_bot

Man, I thought this was going to be about games you literally played in school: mostly portables, but I'd have loved to see the appearance of Drug Lord and that snake game everyone had. Regardless, very cool look into the minds of Gamepro.

neogigames

Not something I'm proud of but in 8th grade, I skipped school for a month straight to play Mega-Man at a friends house. Child Services who?

glock408

I thought this story was going to be about the games you played in school. Ya know like Oregon Trail and that Number Muncher Game that were on the Apple II computers in all elementary schools. There was a computer class in high school that we all would play WarCraft as part of our curriculum, that was awesome.

ProtectMyBallz

In high school, I was all about the Tekken games and Diablo. In college, Super Smash Bros. Melee and Halo. When I was in the service, they had a modified StarCraft game that was used in one of hour training courses. It pitted classes against each other to see our strategy skills. Since some of my classmates and I played the original game in college, we pwned the other class--unfortunately I got chewed out by my instructor because I was talking smack to the other class via chat... I remembered typing "suck it hard and suck it long"

xcrunner00

good article, guys. speaking of which, i should probably be studying right now...

Xobi

A trip down the memory lane...............Damn i iss those good old days

wutisupmon

omg battle.net on warcraft 3 has consumed thousands of hours of my life...

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