<\/td><\/tr><\/table>The best example of this is the 1994 classic System Shock. I saw it on the shelf and was drawn by the strange box art<\/a>. I asked the guy at the store if it was any good. He didn’t know anything about it. I picked it up. I put it down. I read the back four times, but I couldn’t figure out if it would be something I would like. It was $40, which was a hefty price tag for me at that point in my life. Finally I flipped a coin and bought the dang thing.<\/p>\nWhat followed was several weeks of near obsession<\/a>. The game seeped deep into my pores and eventually infected me to the point where all other games were judged through my myopic System Shock lens. It instilled in me a love for “open-ended first person roleplaying”, a genre so small I doubt there have been ten titles that could be described this way since 1994. From there I went on to play System Shock 2 and then the various incarnations of the Thief series. (Which are close cousins to System Shock gameplay-wise.) Eventually I wrote a novel based on the game<\/a>.<\/p>\n I think I got my $40 out of it.<\/p>\n I picked up Planescape: Torment<\/a> in the Bargain Bin for $10. It was pretty old by the time I tried it. It was already considered a “classic” by some, although I’d totally missed it. I had no idea what I was getting. In fact, I thought the game was called Planet<\/strong>scape: Torment. I thought it was sci-fi. I only got it because it was $10. I didn’t love it as much as some, but it was still an excellent and interesting RPG, and a steal for ten bucks.<\/p>\n
<\/td><\/tr><\/table>Sometime in 2000 I saw