YMMV / Alter Ego (1986)

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A bizarre optional encounter in your Young Adult years involving having to deliver a package, and meeting up with a mysterious, seductive man/woman, which, while fun, essentially has nothing to do with the rest of the game itself.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In a good handful of scenarios, you can get yourself into trouble. Out of these, some of them allows you to get into even further trouble than you would've been otherwise, especially ones that either mentally scar people around you or nearly kill yourself.
• Good Bad Bugs: If you are killed in a scenario, it is possible to "revive" yourself and keep playing by pressing Esc either at that screen or on your review sheet immediately following afterward.
• Heartwarming Moments: When your father loses his job and you offer advice to remind him there's far more important things in life than just his job, and that you love him.
  • Helping the "old witch" that your friends keep making fun of. Apparently, her light's been out for quite some time, and you can help. She's grateful for the help, and you can continue to help her out. The narrator states that you've even given her a reason to live, due to your kindness.
  • Also your child's wedding, if it goes well. Your character feels momentarily sad about them leaving the nest, but it ends on a very sweet note and you ponder becoming a grandpa, ignoring the age that the title is associated with because you can't get your mind off the words themselves, "grand" and "father".
  • Making friends with the lonely Chinese exchange student. Your friendship blossoms and you discover he has a lot of Hidden Depths, such as being able to learn English far faster than you surmise you would have been able to learn Chinese.
• Moment of Awesome: Saving your suicidal best friend yourself and subduing a bank robber who turned out to be drunk and waving a fake gun.
• Moral Event Horizon: You can be a real monster as early as infancy. You have several options to do things from crying non-stop to either nearly killing yourself or attacking others, many of which you're told outright would cause you to mentally screw over your parents (your mother especially) or your targets in the long run. That doesn't even begin to touch the surface of the other things you can do when you're older including capitalizing on a vital mistake someone else at work made that'll cause their life to be ruined...
• Nightmare Fuel: Later Nightmare Retardant - The big scary monsters in your early life chapters, although if you decide to be brave and ignore it, the narrator either goes out of character to point out you need to have more imagination since "you're only young once!", or try to emphasize how big and scary the monster is, resorting to a quick "boo!" and an argument of whether or not it scared you if you still ignore it.
  • A straighter example would have to be the child molester scenario. Anyone who went to a school that beats it into your head from day one that you never talk to strangers, or go anywhere with one, knows how to make it out of this scenario alive (simply stay where you are and then run away), but as there is no reference to you ever being taught about this in school, you essentially survive based on pure luck and instinct.
    • Even not getting into the car will result in a simple, yet terrifying statement, "You move away from the man, suspicious that he might not be telling the truth. This is smart. Intellectual sphere rises sharply. This man hurts children."
• Rated M for Money: The game didn't sell well as most parents had raised eyebrows of the game's very visible warning that it has strong sexual themes. It's right, but the game immediately gives you a heads up if you try to trigger a scenario with said sexual themes (and won't penalize you if you skip them), and the content you see isn't anything worse or any more explicit than you can find in a sex-ed class (besides sexual encounters with your spouse or someone else, for instance, a lot of these events involved you just beginning to learn about sexuality as you're growing up), such as finding a pimple on your penis (which turns out to be nothing).
• Tear Jerker: Here's a page.
• That One Level: The episode with the kidnapper during the Childhood phase has gained near memetic status due to how very easy it is to die during it, especially relative to how early in the game it appears.
• The Woobie: Besides you, can apply to a number of other characters you meet throughout life.
• Values Resonance: For a 1980s work, the game is supportive and encouraging about seeking therapy for both men and women. This is likely because the writer, Peter J. Favaro, was himself a psychologist.

---