List of some video games Adam Lanza played

PS2 : Dynasty Tactics               XBOX 360 : Call of Duty 2: Big Red One
       Kingdom Hearts                                Call of Duty: Finest Hour          
       Kingdom Hearts II                             Dead or Alive 3
       Onimusha                                        Halo
       Dynasty Warriors                              Halo 2
       The Two Towers                                Lego Star Wars
                                                            MechAssault        
                                                            SpiderMan
                                                            Splinter Cell 2    
                                                            Splinter Cell-CT  
                                                            Star Wars Battlefront
                                                            Star Wars Republic Commando
                                                            Tenchu: Return from Darkness  
                                                            The Return of the King  
                                                            Worms Forts Under Seige

He played World of Warcraft too iirc.

Yes, he played World of Warcraft.
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He also suggested that he had played Minecraft. As you can see, he was having trouble finding games that he really enjoyed. In a post on the forum, he talked about Skyrim and said that he played it but was disappointed and actually said that he barely played any video games. I think he was saying that he didn't play a wide variety or get very involved with most of the newer ones, rather than meaning to say that he didn't play at all.

Smiggles wrote:

Don't bother. I barely play any video games, let alone any modern ones, but I bought it because it was being universally described as the most immersive virtual world to have ever existed. In actuality, every aspect of the game is designed solely around  the facilitation of its mindless combat system. I was so disappointed that I got 6000 words into typing a review lambasting everything about it until I realized that my disappointment was my fault for being so foolish as to allow myself to be excited, especially over something that I should have known would be awful.

I know that other than World of Warcraft, he also played online PC games like the FPS Combat Arms and the RPG Phantasy Star Online.

He had a download of GTA: San Andreas on his hard drive as well as emulators for Gameboy, N64 and NES with the games "Earthbound, Super Mario, Final Fantasy, Romance of the Three Kingdoms."

The Paper Mario cartridge was still inserted into the N64 system in his room, suggesting that it was the last game he played on that console and one of his friends from high school Tech Club said he preferred Mario Party and WoW to FPS type games at the time.

Inside of his house he had (at least) Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Dreamcast, Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, GameCube, SNES, and N64 gaming consoles as far as I could tell.

Edit: Forgot to include the list of games included in the final report. It repeats some of the games listed above but I'll quote the whole thing.
Numerous video games were located in the basement computer/gaming area.  The list of video games includes, but is not limited to:
-“Left for Dead”  
-“Metal Gear Solid”
-“Dead Rising”
-“Half Life”
-“Battlefield”
-“Call of Duty”
-“Grand Theft Auto”
-“Shin Megami Tensei”
-“Dynasty Warriors”
-“Vice City”
-“Team Fortress”
-“Doom”

And more information about the games he played in high school.
In terms of video games, the shooter liked to play “Phantasy Star Online” (a role playing game), “Paper  Mario,” “Luigi’s  Mansion” and “Pikmin.”

Adam's taste in video games seems pretty good. Interestingly enough a good number of the games he played were not really that gore filled or violent. The game that he played most obsessively leading up to the shooting was DDR. I am beginning to think that he did not necessarily think about violence all the time like some would assume. In fact some of the video games that he played helped to distract him from having depressive or violent thoughts, which is partly why he probably enjoyed playing video games. The games transported him mentally to other worlds that he was more comfortable with.

sscc wrote:

I think he was saying that he didn't play a wide variety or get very involved with most of the newer ones, rather than meaning to say that he didn't play at all.

He kept saying that early 90s stuff (including games) were the best. Its something I noticed about him which always seems odd. He Would mention 90s as some sort of golden age, but he was born in 1992. He was just 8 years old in 2000, he couldn't possibly even remember much of the 90s.

I wonder if this this was part of his cover story? That he wanted to make people online believe that he was older than he really was? Talking about the early 90s as someone who remembers them well and has fond memories could serve that purpose.

But possibly its something more - maybe he was sort of projecting himself into his brother's shoes and into the life his brother had. His brotehr was born in 1988, so he would remember early 90s as a kid.

I was like 7 by the time the 90s ended and I still remember a lot of it, playing NES to PS1 with my older bro

Games still tried something unique and new instead of being washed out with generic orchestra music. They had way more charm, peaking in the 90s to early 2000s.

What was his WoW char names ?

Sabratha wrote:

He kept saying that early 90s stuff (including games) were the best. Its something I noticed about him which always seems odd. He Would mention 90s as some sort of golden age, but he was born in 1992. He was just 8 years old in 2000, he couldn't possibly even remember much of the 90s.

I wonder if this this was part of his cover story? That he wanted to make people online believe that he was older than he really was? Talking about the early 90s as someone who remembers them well and has fond memories could serve that purpose.

But possibly its something more - maybe he was sort of projecting himself into his brother's shoes and into the life his brother had. His brotehr was born in 1988, so he would remember early 90s as a kid.

I don't think that favoring 90s games over modern games is terribly uncommon among video game enthusiasts. If you look around online, it's also a bit of a cliche among gamers and plenty of discussion goes on, comparing old and new games, usually with a few people who staunchly believe that old games were better, at least in some ways, just like FIBAgent is suggesting.

Assuming that fuckcomments was Adam, it may have been something he picked up from gaming communities but it also may have been how he truly felt, even if he was very young at the time the games were released. He had a large number of game cartridges that appeared to belong to SNES and N64 in his room, and though most of the titles are not visible, some of the consoles were plugged into an electrical outlet, with a cartridge still inserted into the N64 console. It's possible that he played those games with his brother when he was younger and continued to play them as an adult because he enjoyed them more than newer games, or even because he associated them with happier times in his life.

Also worth mentioning, his list of favorite movies ranged from the 70s to the 90s and he had some of these old movies on VHS. His father also mentioned two of his favorite TV shows when he was younger, and they were also from the 70s and 80s. He certainly wasn't alive to see these movies and series when they were new but that doesn't mean he didn't watch them later on. He seemed to have a thing for the past and it doesn't seem particularly out of character for him to prefer old games so I don't think it was any sort of cover story or attempt to appear older. If anything, it was a "born in the wrong generation" kind of thing, but I don't even think it was that. I think he just liked older games for some reason, whether it was based on gameplay/graphics/mechanics or simply nostalgia.

Also, I keep forgetting to ask.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I'll admit that I never paid much attention to the lists of games in evidence but I don't remember seeing some of these games and I'd like to know where the information is located, for future reference. Where does this list of games come from?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Sandy Hook Final Report Pages 35 & 36.

Thank you very much [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

According to this report, it says that the list of Xbox games was found in the game history of the Xbox console, since the Xbox 360 was damaged and they were never able to turn it on. I have a question about this. Would the game history come from the Xbox Live account or from the console that the history was accessed from? I tried to clarify whether they were Xbox or Xbox 360 games by looking some of them up, but a number of them are available on both consoles and it seems that many games that were only released on Xbox were compatible with Xbox 360 anyway. If it's from the Xbox Live account, then this could be a mix of both Xbox and Xbox 360 games but if the game history is strictly from the console, that would mean that there is no list of Xbox 360 games at all.

(I know this really doesn't matter at all but I thought that I'd ask anyway, now that I have the question in mind.)

I also wanted to add that a few other games were listed there, including "Mercenaries," "MGS2 Substance," "Panzer Dragoon ORTA," "PSO," and "Shenmue II."

(And I should point out that based on this, I was incorrect when I said that he played the PC version of Phantasy Star Online. Looks like it was actually Xbox. All of this is so very important, I know.)

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] That's very interesting. The game history would come from the Xbox Live account that was signed in when said game was played & yes Xbox games are compatible with an xbox 360 console.

He's Xbox gamertag was apparently DS9345

Smiggles94 wrote:

He's Xbox gamertag was apparently DS9345

Was that not debunked as being owned by Ryan Lanza?

Strychnine wrote:

Smiggles94 wrote:

He's Xbox gamertag was apparently DS9345

Was that not debunked as being owned by Ryan Lanza?

It's probable but it's not certain plus if it was in Nancy's house I'm sure he would have been on as that was the only account, although there was another Xbox but it was broke.

Smiggles94 wrote:

It's probable but it's not certain plus if it was in Nancy's house I'm sure he would have been on as that was the only account, although there was another Xbox but it was broke.

Hmm. I'm not so sure.

Quote :

(From Sandyhooklighthouse)

However, I suspect that the DS9345 account was actually Ryan Lanza’s, not Adam’s. Here’s why:

Ryan Lanza moved out of the Yogananda Drive home in 2006
Several of the games listed under the DS9345 account came out in 2007 or after (Call of Duty 4, Rock Band)
An Xbox 360 was found in the Yogananda Drive home, along with Xbox 360 games that came out after 2007 (Left 4 Dead, for example), and which are not listed under DS9345’s account.

What's interesting though is that the account DS9345 has 3 friends on its friends list which all seem to be abandoned but on two of the accounts they each have one friend each that seems to be still active. Both of which were last online 2 days ago. If I see them online I'll message them and ask did they ever play with or talk with DS9345 and then go from there. The chances are low though seeing as it would've been a friend of a friend.

sscc wrote:

Numerous video games were located in the basement computer/gaming area.  The list of video games includes, but is not limited to:
-“Left for Dead”  
-“Metal Gear Solid”
-“Dead Rising”
-“Half Life”
-“Battlefield”
-“Call of Duty”
-“Grand Theft Auto”
-“Shin Megami Tensei”
-“Dynasty Warriors”
-“Vice City”
-“Team Fortress”
-“Doom”

And more information about the games he played in high school.
In terms of video games, the shooter liked to play “Phantasy Star Online” (a role playing game), “Paper  Mario,” “Luigi’s  Mansion” and “Pikmin.”

I wonder how many of those games he played to completion. Is there any report that makes it clear which games he played and for how long?

Sabratha wrote:

But possibly its something more - maybe he was sort of projecting himself into his brother's shoes and into the life his brother had. His brotehr was born in 1988, so he would remember early 90s as a kid.

It's also possible that he was projecting himself into Eric and Dylan. It was probably more likely that he had different taste in gaming compared to other gamers. 

FIBAgent wrote:

I was like 7 by the time the 90s ended and I still remember a lot of it, playing NES to PS1 with my older bro

Games still tried something unique and new instead of being washed out with generic orchestra music. They had way more charm, peaking in the 90s to early 2000s.

What was his WoW char names ?

Greetings from the land of the living.

QuestionMark wrote:

I wonder how many of those games he played to completion. Is there any report that makes it clear which games he played and for how long?

I don't know of any reference to that. He supposedly had a Steam account which would give some information on that topic, but it is private.

There is not even any proof that Adam played every game that was found in his home or put onto that list because surely, some of them belonged to Ryan (although I would guess that it is likely that he spent at least a little bit of time playing games that his brother may have purchased). We can be sure that he played the ones below the list though, because other people saw him play them or knew that he liked them and there are a few more that we definitely know he played because they were on his computer, which are the ones I referred to at the start of the post.

There are only a few games where we can gather how much time he spent playing.

blarvink wrote:

Even though I sporadically played World of Warcraft for over five years, I never managed to reach level 60 on any of my characters because I was inordinately bored by the way it was primarily meant to be played. However, I played it often because I greatly enjoyed the game's atmosphere. In addition to its endearing graphics, I liked how you could go anywhere you wanted to at any level, and you could appreciate the design of the environments in the way you wanted. I'm irritated by the types of games which have ostensibly interesting environments, but lock you in them as if to say, "You're going to 'explore' this and appreciate it, and then you can teleport to another constricted area and 'explore' that". World of Warcraft had an enormous contiguous world which you could explore without any explicit restrictions. The zones were all interestingly unique in their own ways and weren't homogeneous like the cities in the Grand Theft Autos games. Beyond only the intended areas, there were dozens of hidden places ranging from ones like this:

[Three Youtube videos showing exploration of game areas]

A game like Minecraft might be recommended, but that feels unbearably and depressingly empty to me. The environment itself wasn't the only aspect I enjoyed about World of Warcraft's atmosphere: I also liked how the world was filled with outposts, towns, and cities which had many non-playable characters you could talk to.
In addition to them, I enjoyed being able to interact with other players in-character. One of my favorite things to do was to roleplay, for which I had dozens of different characters. One of my characters was played for over a couple hundred hours without ever even reaching Level 10 because I just roleplayed in Stormwind City.

The obvious solution would seem to be to play World of Warcraft again, or I could possibly try playing on an online Minecraft server which has other players, but I'm not interested in doing either of those for various reasons which I wouldn't be able to explain particularly well. I would appreciate it if you could recommend any other games which are similar to what I described above, whether online or offline. Also, I don't really know if this is the right board to be asking this, so tell me if you know of one which would be more appropriate than Nonstop Gaming.

I think Richard Novia also talked about how Adam would often choose to play WoW at the Tech Club. I'm not sure if WoW is a game that can be completed but it sounds like he preferred to stick with games with immersive worlds that encouraged open ended play so I'm not sure that completion was his goal, even with games he played often.

This is what he said about Skyrim. He said he was writing a review which would usually suggest that he completed it but based on the context, it's hard to tell if he played it through or whether he got fed up after playing part of it and dropped the game completely.
(Off-topic side note: I wonder if Adam posted any game reviews somewhere. I've also wondered the same about the movie reviews that were found on his hard drive. I posted a thread a long time ago where I believed that I had found his reviews for computer parts on Newegg so I wouldn't be surprised if he posted reviews for other things online too.)

Smiggles wrote:

Don't bother. I barely play any video games, let alone any modern ones, but I bought it because it was being universally described as the most immersive virtual world to have ever existed. In actuality, every aspect of the game is designed solely around the facilitation of its mindless combat system. I was so disappointed that I got 6000 words into typing a review lambasting everything about it until I realized that my disappointment was my fault for being so foolish as to allow myself to be excited, especially over something that I should have known would be awful.

You can see that he also said that he barely played modern games, which may suggest that he was not a big fan of the newer games on the list (probably most of them since I'm fairly sure that it was the older game systems that were in his room) and that he didn't play those games for long if he did try them out.

We also have some limited information about his Combat Arms stats. My understanding is that this is information from a single server and not his total play time so someone correct me if that is not true, but you can see that he played thousands of games. He also belonged to a clan so that may be another reason to assume that this is one of the games that he played frequently at one point in his life, though again, I'm not sure whether this is the sort of game that you can complete.

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And he had the Paper Mario cartridge in his N64 which suggests that he had been playing that since high school and once again, although I know nothing about the gameplay, we can assume that he played that through more than once if he was playing it for 5-6 years.

I can't really think of any other evidence that indicates the amount of time played other games.

sscc wrote:

I don't know of any reference to that. He supposedly had a Steam account which would give some information on that topic, but it is private. 

Do we know the name of that Steam account?

Also thanks for the additional info.

FIBAgent wrote:

I was like 7 by the time the 90s ended

That feeling when you try to figure out if you’re misremembering about Lanza having played Fallout and accidentally stumble upon William Atchison lying about his age.

morgenroede wrote:

FIBAgent wrote:

I was like 7 by the time the 90s ended

That feeling when you try to figure out if you’re misremembering about Lanza having played Fallout and accidentally stumble upon William Atchison lying about his age.

Hindsight is 20/20 they say.. Both Randy and Will seemed normal.

There's so many mentions of video games and since in the police stuff it confirmed he had emulators it widens it a bunch, I think there's lost posts out there that showed he played tf2 on steam but take that with a grain of salt. Something I found personally interesting was he had Eartbound (2 lazy right now to find which report lists it i'm sorry i'll get to compiling a buncha stuff sometime) and in his bookmarks he had the website to a talk show reenactment of the game series called "Fobbies are Borange" which features a bunch of youtubers I watched growing up.

SilverMoxie wrote:

There's so many mentions of video games and since in the police stuff it confirmed he had emulators it widens it a bunch, I think there's lost posts out there that showed he played tf2 on steam but take that with a grain of salt. Something I found personally interesting was he had Eartbound (2 lazy right now to find which report lists it i'm sorry i'll get to compiling a buncha stuff sometime) and in his bookmarks he had the website to a talk show reenactment of the game series called "Fobbies are Bprange" which features a bunch of youtubers I watched growing up.

That’s probably where I got the idea that he played Fallout, IIRC it was in his bookmarks. There’s a lot of video games there, doesn’t mean he played all of them though.

He played Skyrim, Mirror's Edge and Silent Hill 2 as well.

What are the chances that Adam Lanza played the 1997 shooter Postal?

The game ends with the protagonist trying to massacre an elementary school before having a mental breakdown.

As you can see there is a striking similarity between the ending of the game and the actual events that happened in Newtown and I was wondering if there was a possibility that Lanza had played this game and maybe even took inspiration from it? (not saying that vg cause violence, I just want to know if this game could have been played by Adam)

_________________
This is the story of one fading life,
a life that couldn't be saved.
Please remember me when i'm gone.

Is their a detailed list of all the video games Adam owned that where siting on the book shelf in his computer room.

He mentioned how he liked the early 90s.

So, how likely is it taht eh played any NES or SNES games? Or emulated them on his PC?

Sabratha wrote:

So, how likely is it taht eh played any NES or SNES games? Or emulated them on his PC?

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