Quake gave me a sense of direction when I was a teenager. Before that I had either walked very short distances or been driven everywhere. My sense of direction meant I could figure out that this street was parallel to that street etc. but it was not based on cardinal directions. When I started using a map during college was when my sense of north aligned with north.

In silicon valley it's interesting because people sometimes define north/south as parallel to the freeway north/south 101. It actually runs ~east/west where I am.