Damn punk kids.
I remember walking into Sears with friends so that we could play Pong on the display TVs.
Now that was a seminal computer game. Check it out – you could actually make the TV do stuff!
Phoenix on the 2600. If you flipped the power button off and on quickly, you could make the game glitch into giving you unlimited lives.
I still remember the first place I saw a played Pac-man. Way back in the day.
Of course, to me, game arcades were dark and scary places. You weren’t allowed to be in most arcades after a certain time if you were under 18. If I ever build a MAME machine I’ll have to screw an ashtray to the side, just to feel like a kid again.
Boulder Dash on my PC jr. I can still hear the Violent Femmes first album playing.
Hardball on the PC jr. In wonderful glorius CGA.
Archon on the C64.
Whoa, you have fond memories of Pac-Man for the 2600? It is widely regarded as one of the worse Atari games of all time, and (along with E.T. for the 2600) helped bring about the fall of console gaming.
And Here’s a link to “The Song of Storms.” from Ocarina of Time.
Just remembered 3 other games that I wasted countless hours on:
For early PC
Pizza Tycoon - You opened up a pizza shop, create your own recipes, run drugs/arms for the mafia for side-funds, burglarize/destroy the competition, and do it all on an international scale. FUN! 
Transport Tycoon
Transport Tycoon- Who’d have thought they could make a game that good back then about owning/operating trains/trucks/planes/ships?
For NES
Shingen the Ruler - I picked this game up for like $4.99 from the Kay-Bee Toystore bargain bin. But it was freaking awesome. Never got any play in Nintendo Power or anything at the time though. 
If anyone else enjoyed Transport Tycoon as much as I did, there’s and open source version available here. It runs fine on WindowsXP too, unlike it’s MS-DOS predecessor.
Which was far superior to Archon for the PC if only because the C64 phoenix’s flame attack gave it invulnerability while it was going on instead of the dumb “ring” attack.
Most message boards with video game content have the opposite problem. 
Yeah, sad, isn’t it? I know the game was pretty pathetic, but you have to remember–this was the first video game console I ever had (we didn’t get Odyssey or Pong–my parents thought they were too expensive for what they were, and in retrospect they were right). So the fond memories weren’t so much of playing the game, but of having an actual video game to play in my very own room. 
Hey, cool! That is indeed the one. Thanks!
I forgot one of the Rules of the Internet: If you ever watched it or heard it during any time in your life, it’s probably on YouTube now. 
Thanks to Autolycus for posting it, too!
I loved the Bard’s Tale series, or at least I, II and III - as I type this, I seem to recall that there was at least one other game with the Bard’s Tale label that wasn’t part of the series. I remember thinking how bad-ass my party was because I had two arch-mages (arch-magi?).
Of all the games I’ve played over the years for some reason the original Banjo-Kazooie for the N64 by RARE sticks with me as the best mood-setting / environment / feel of anything I played. The music, level design, characters, colors, etc. just swept you into an intense fantasy land that was surreal, creepy, and fun all at the same time.
I’ve always had a special fondness for Solarian II. It was my first “real” computer game on my first “real” computer. My brother introduced it to me and hooked it up to the stereo speakers and it was way cool.
A few years later as a working adult with my first my-very-own apartment and good paying job I bought a SNES just to play Super Mario World. That was my first real video game on a real console. I was busy, and it took me a full year to play through the whole thing but it was the best year ever. I used to love coming home from work and hitting that game for a few hours.
Hah! By the final battle of BT1 (and it goes down in history as one of the lamest final boss battles ever), I had 3 arch-magi.
Not that the term really meant anything.
(FTR, the other members were a Monk, a Paladin, and a Bard).
Oh boy, let’s see.
Trying to get the hang of the controls for Commander Keen at age 7. My brother always seemed to pick up on games faster.
Playing Duke Nukem 3D against my dad when we got two computers. My favorite level was DukeBurger because I knew where the hologram was and I enjoyed pressing the little drive-through button and hearing Beavis and Butthead.
Mortal Kombat. My favorite punch-em-up bloody game series.
Diablo. I remember being scared of the dark, barely visible dungeons, being mauled by the groups of barbequed rat-looking monsters, wishing that the barmaid and drunkard could’ve given me quests, and fighting the Butcher on level two that always scared the hell out of me with his damage and speed. Walk away!!!