That was my first game, and I thought it was great. But as I grew in my new hobby, my standards became higher and my appreciation for this game waned. I moved on to other things- SimCity 3000, the sequel to the game I had first fallen in love with in Wal-Mart's dimly-lit display aisle. But the most imporant purchase I ever made was The Sims. I thought t was great. Little did I know that it would become a life-consuming monster that devoured everything in its path. Four years - and eight expansions- later, the thing has spawned a sequel, and I'm expecting it for Christmas. Some people never learn, eh? The Sims is about making and then playing with a neighborhood of simulated people- "Sims". And that's it. You make their house, tell them to get jobs, and just help them live their little lives, at the expense of your own. But this game- which some say is just the electronic equivalant of a unisex Barbie doll house- has become the best-selling game of all time. But I did have other interests outside The Sims. Most of the new games I bought were economic situations- manage a city, airport, golf course, etc. But I'm a guy. And so I'm attracted to games where you shoot people and blow up things. So naturally after a while I started finding games where I could shoot people and blow up things.
The first such game was Army Men. Most boys- and some girls, I guess- know of those little plastic green and tan army men that come in buckets, right? This game series was about those two sides actually being alive and fighting each other when you weren't around. And so in these games, you fight in "their world"- an otherwise normal world except it's inhabitated by plastic people with plastic tanks and plastic airplanes- and in "our world", where your soldiers slug it out across backyards, living rooms, and the like. To give you an idea. In one game, being pursued by Tan soldiers, you could order "Sarge"- to shoot the knobs on a electronic stove, heating the coils. When the tan soldiers ran over the coils, they melted. Army Men, through its developer 3DO, introduced to me to forums.
There were other games. Red Alert 2, for example, a game based on the idea that Einstien builds a time machine and kills Hitler, leading to Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union growing unchallenged, resulting in a world war (That was Red Alert ). Red Alert 2 has America's puppet leader of the Soviet Union deciding he'd rather not go down as the American president's lapdog. And so the game begins with the Ruskies invading from Mexico and from the sea. Predictably- with the USA & Great Britain fighting off the Ruskies on all fronts- the French and Germans refuse to fight.
Another game is Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, a game allowing you to control either the Army of the Potomac or the Army of Northern Virginia, and fight the three-day brawl that was Gettysburg. I also played Antietam! and South Moutain!, but those received much less press than the first one did.
I also played Pharaoh and Zeus, games allowing you to govern Egyptian towns and Greek city-states. I also have a large collection of Star Trek games- Elite Force and Armada being my two favorites. EF was a shooter- it puts you behind the gun, as opposed to you controlling a character's movements. I enjoy playing Capture-the-Flag sessions online with other people even three years after its release. Armada is an RTS- that is, real-time strategy. You build a military base and set up its economy (supply lines & such) In Armada, though, you don't make barracks for men and factories for tanks- you build shipyards. You don't mine gold, you build mining stations orbiting moons. EF and Armada were the two games I played in Starfleet. (Click link for my page about that).
There are two other games worth mentioning before I run out of space. Civilization III, a game that lets you control a nation from its first city in 4000 B.C to its future- wherever you chose to lead it. Mafia is a game about a cab driver turned Mafioso in 1930s America. Both of these two games have their own subpages- look up top.