Just remembered that seeing Doom for the first time is another obvious one. Man that game was incredible when it came out.

Pairing two TVs and two Xbox consoles together for an eight player local Halo death match. Online gaming will never match the energy in that room.

Everything about Metroid Prime. Incredible soundtrack, gorgeous scenery, interesting wildlife, challenging bosses/puzzles, and so so so much lore. It’s still probably my all time favorite game. Can’t wait for Prime 4 to come out!

Actually making it to level -1 in SMB after finding out how to do it from the TV show Video Game Power. I needed my NES Advantage to do it reliably, but it blew my mind to learn it was legit.

Stepping out of the sewers in Oblivion for the first time. Nothing has really captured that feeling since.

People shit on this stuff like it’s terrible garbage that no one would want to play, but I remember playing Zelda on my friend’s CD-I and being blown away by a video game having fluid animation and voice work. Up till then, I had only experienced NES games, and a few super Nintendo ones. But that shit was amazing to me. The RF remote control, on the other hand, wasn’t.

Then there’s was also virtual boy. I remember trying it out at a Sears and thinking how cool it was.

I miss demo discs. My favorite one had I think spyro and some snowmobile game on it. Playstation 1…dominos disk?

The first thing that jumped to my mind was Half Life 2. The facial expressions on the characters, and the physics of objects in the game world.

I’ll never be able to get over the opening cinematic to the first Kingdom Hearts. Having played mostly Game Boy Color prior to that, I had no idea that graphics could look that good.

3 of them:

• watching an Amiga 500 load from disk having only seen 8bit games on tape. Everything that machine did at the time was like magic.

• watching the castle fly through intro for Unreal on PC when the first 3D accelerators appeared. Everything changed after that.

• experiencing the shark diving demo on PlayStation VR. And also how nothing changed after that! xD

Starfox 64. I played it at Toys R Us…oh, uh, kids Toys R Us was a toy store that had been around for like 80 years. And everybody knew it was never going to close, because there was always going to be more kids…and then it closed.

Anyways, they had a demo unit you could play. It reset every 10 minutes. Then Mario would pop up and say “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING NINTENDO 64, WHO’S NEXT???”

And like a stupid teenager, I yelled “I AM!!!” as if it were voice activated. It wasn’t. I was just a dumb teenager telling at a CRT tv.

One time I got so invested in it, that I didn’t even notice a kid was behind me for like 20 minutes. And eventually he said “Excuse me…you went 3 times in a row. Can I try please?”

Man I felt like an ass. He probably felt like I was bullying him out of playing. I was twice his age, twice his size, and even compared to other kids my own age I was always a kid who was at the top of the food chain. I genuinely didn’t see him, and thought I was alone. I let him play all the turns until his family made him leave.

But those visuals…THE RUMBLE PACK!!! OH MY GOD!!! THE CONTROLLER SHAKES WHEN YOUR SHIP GETS DAMAGED!!! And it had 3D space ship flying and voice acting, and oh my god…

It was all very overwelming. I’m not saying Mario 64 is a bad game. I loved it. But Starfox 64 was the game that made me buy a game for a console I didn’t even own. I was THAT sure that I’d have to have an N64 one day…that day was like 6 months later.

Playing the Mario 64 Demo at Walmart.

My brain had a hard time trying to navigate in 3D.

Playing side scrollers my whole life and seeing Mario64 at a Walmart. Being able to play in actual 3D and thinking at no way they can surpass this.

The moment when you see the first colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. You've watched a contemplative intro movie that sets the stage, been faced with a desolate land that you're seemingly completely alone in, and charged headlong with only the light shining off your sword to guide you. You've seen nothing but you and your horse moving in this place in the half hour or so you've been playing so far. You've done just enough platforming to know that you're a very normal human with no magical abilities, and if you've swung your sword at all you've seen that you have no real skill with it. You just know that you've got to kill these unseen colossi to hold up your end of the deal with the voice in the sky. And then a building shaped like a gorilla walks past you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ckn0mdFyEU

Final Fantasy 6, the three mechs marching through the snow in 3d… followed by the emotional impact of the game elevated gaming to another level I had never before seen

I remember being in like a GameStop or whatever the store was prior to that in my area. The tvs in the store were playing a teaser for the new Zelda game that was going to be coming out. I think this might have been like very early concept of windwaker before they went with the cartoon cell shaded style. I remember there was a sword fight between I think Link and Ganon. I remember thinking that games had peaked at that point. Of course we didn’t end up getting exactly that, but the memory remains.

Beating the first Baldur’s Gate after numerous (hundreds?) attempts over the years when I was 19-ish (ca. 2009). I recall actually tearing up quite heavily 😂. Even after all these years, still my absolute favourite game for replay (when I get the chance!).

When you could walk up to the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D and they would flash their titties at you.

But of an odd one, but who remembers the dos installer for the original command & conquer?

I still remember the headache from trying out the Nintendo Virtual boy at Toys R Us for just a few minutes.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s impossibly sparkly invincibility, with the show-off music that sped up to show off that there wasn’t any lag at all from the particle effect graphic. Really everything about Sonic when he first arrived. That’s the best 16 bits ever looked and sounded… Except…

Star Fox. See the other post about Star Fox 64. Star Fox (original) felt the same. Nothing before it looked or played that way. (No offense to Stellar 7’s many previous attempts.)

Final boss fight of Portal 2 - one of my favorite and most satisfying gaming moments.

Oh boy I have a few:

PC Another Lifeless Planet (and me with no beer) was fantastic for a text adventure. Testdrive. Wolfenstein 3D was incredible at the time being surpassed by Doom then Quake. Day of the Tentacle for its high quality cartoon animation opening sequence. Unreal on a Voodoo graphics card. HL2 of course with its physics (ragdoll) engine and jump in polygons.

SNES Fzero and Mode-7 graphics Donkey Kong Country, its CG was nuts at the time FFVI’s snowfield theatrics Starfox

Sega Earthworm Jim Another World/Out of this World for that opening and style was amazing and still holds up!

N64 Super Mario 64 Japanese demo at Babbages in a mall before the US demos came out. That was mind blowingly smooth. Waverace 64 for its water effects. Ocarina of Time for its cinematic 3D story telling and fun gameplay.

PlayStation Resident Evil was incredible for the atmosphere. Tomb Raider for more detailed 3D environments. Warhawk also stood out for its great use of the analog dual joysticks. FFVII for its cinematic story telling and FMVs. Wipeout for its fast paced racing and great OST.

Dreamcast Seeing the demo of Sonic Adventure blew my mind since it was so fast and colorful. The whale jumping after Sonic as you raced away was burned into my brain.

Wii: Super Mario Galaxy for its outstanding OST and gameplay.

Born in 1980. Seeing the original Mortal Kombat arcade for the first time at a smoke-filled bowling alley that when I was in 7th grade was pretty awe inspiring.

Aside from that playing Wolfenstein 3d for the first time was really trippy.

Playing Mario Kart DS with people I did not know.

The DS was my entry to the beautiful world of online gaming (it was free, can you believe it?).

And now I see this world kinda meh, perhaps I play (or not) the wrong games, but nothing can beat a perfect 1 player game.

Playing Call of Duty World at War for the first time, if that counts as retro. I had always played co-op games with my brother, and when he was gone for a weekend, I decided to try and play for myself. Spent countless hours replaying missions until I finally beat the campaign. And if I remember correctly, it drops you straight into zombies with no warning. I remember it being way past my bedtime, sitting alone in the dark. I was absolutely terrified because I was genuinely shocked by the premise and maybe too young for something so scary. Didn’t sleep at all that night.

There are some very memorable games.

No game has ever matched the freedom of Morrowind. You are only limited by yourself. Even Oblivion and Skyrim feel restricted by the game.

Half-Life 2 interacting with the environment. I must have played with the can for hours the first time.

Final Fantasy VIII though was the single most impressive game for the hardware it came out on. The character models being actual human proportion, the summons looking like actual monsters, and the FMVs where people look like damn people in a movie.

In the same vein, FFX being described as looking like FFVIII’s FMVs but all the time. And then living up to the hype.

For me it was the original Resident Evil on the Playstation.

It was the first time I saw live-action digitized full-motion video on a gaming system. I know there were a lot of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in that era on other systems, but I didn’t own those other systems and I didn’t know anybody who did. So, it was all new to me once I played a Playstation.

Resident Evil was also the first time a video game had ever given me a jump scare. Early in the game a zombie doberman bursts through a window unexpectedly and I was hooked! I loved introducing my friends to the game, specifically so I could see their reaction when the dog shows up. So much fun.

Honestly seeing and hearing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo was kind of wow, too. The graphics boost compared to the 8-bit systems I was used to was incredible. And the sound quality compared to the other 16-bit systems I’d played (Genesis and TG-16) was a leap above. The experience probably pales in comparison to modern games, but back then there was wow factor to it.

To young me, Street Fighter 2 Turbo was pretty wow as well. It was “literally” the same as the arcade version to child me. I could not believe the home version was so close to the real thing, because prior generations of game systems like the NES couldn’t come close to that level of performance.

Art direction in Comix Zone for Sega Genesis. After static cartoonish games it’s unbeliveable you can pull it off on the same hardware. The animated intro, the hand painting enemies as you go and these transitions between scenes were very impressive.

Playing Air Warrior II on Windows 95 in 1997. My dad and uncle lived in another state and we’d hop on AOL at a specified time and join a game. It was my first ever online game experience. I was 13. I hope kids today can still feel that total world-changing excitement that I did back then.

Booting up Mario Kart DS and seeing 3D on a portable game system. For years it was 2d portables, 3D consoles. But now both had 3D. My mind would have exploded if I ever saw the steam deck or switch.

Pitfall on Atari 2600

Becaise I’m old, I guess. Pacman, too, but pitfall seemed more advanced.

Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64. The running animation was mind blowing for the time

So many…

• loading (from ¥) and playing Adventure on a PET 4004. It was breathtaking!
• Wolf 3D on my first x86 machine.
• DOOM! I spent all bloody day trying to download the shareware levels on the University campus, and ultimately, it was worth it.
• Crying at the end of Grim Fandango
• Mass Effect. All of it"

Boomer take, but going from NES to the SNES and seeing the advances in sprites and animations in Nintendo games like Donkey Kong Country, Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, and Super Metroid was really mind blowing.

Also seeing the early days of more cinematic approaches to storytelling in SquareSoft games like FF IV, VI, and Chrono Trigger. Those really forshadowed how games would mature into a serious storytelling medium for me. FF IV’s opening scene on the airship and the music is still burned into my brain.

The transition to 3D the following generation was also insanely impressive obviously, but none of those games have aged half as well as the 32 bit era.

UT2004

Loading into World of War craft for the first time back in 2005 is probably the biggest.

Seeing all the people running around and doing their thing was incredible. It made me super excited to go explore the world.

Biggest for me would be going online with the Dreamcast. At home I was online with the DC before we had a PC so used it quite a lot.

I probably spent to much time on Dreamarena chat rooms and playing PSO with randoms.

The beginning of Link to the Past, with the rain, thunder and lightning. LttP took it to another level coming from NES games and even most PC games at the time, setting a mood and atmosphere I had never experienced in gaming before.