Meeting my wife on Elder Scrolls Online has got to be number one, but we didn’t even play the game very long to be honest lol.

The Second Dream quest from Warframe

Riding a snake in Getting Over It With Benett Foddy.

Finishing Mass Effect 3. Multiple times :)

Smashing and being smashed with my mates at worms with couch-coop

Multiplayer halo 2 across the LAN in my house

LAN party instagib ctf 1 hour 0-0 and winning it in overtime

Rocking a battlefield 2/3/4 server online with a squad of mates all using voice comms, and nobody playing a sniper

I love gaming

Kerbal Space Program: progression from being unable to get a rocket into orbit, to collecting a surface sample from all 5 of Jool’s moons in a single launch

One day a couple of months after World of Warcraft Burning Crusade came out I was woken up by my friends playing the game. I had left on either Teamspeak or Ventrilo the night before and about 3-4 friends jumped on the following morning. I signed on soon after that and played for hours.

I think that’s the last time I’ve been woken up by people whom I like and immediately began the day with a group activity that involved joy.

24 hour Civ 5 marathon with beer and the boys in my college days.

Staying up all night playing GoldenEye.

There are too many. Completing Lode Runner on my C64. The first time I played Sonic on my megadrive. Playing Ninja Gaiden on my game gear for hours with my little bro. Playing Echochrome on the PS3 on LSD. When the nuke exploded in Modern Warfare 2. Playing through Inside in one go in the dark by myself.

KOTOR. just existing in a Star Wars world and becoming a Jedi. really have no idea why we can’t have another Jedi RPG, do you not like money Disney?

I once stole 20 billion Isk from a guy in Eve Online. I was hard for days.

When I beat Grim Fandango.

It was bitter-sweet, because you ::: spoiler spoiler have to leave one of your companions behind, him being a spirit of the land; while you ride off to the land of eternal rest with your new love interest :::

I’ve probably played an uncomfortable amount of FF7 to most. During covid, I recently became single so I decided to find some like-minded discord communities to pass that time. I met someone who was streaming FF7. I hopped into the stream and kicked it off with explaining how to get a golden chocobo to reach the final red materia. We’re married now and have a dog :D

Once when I was 8, a friend brought over his PS1 and Metal Gear Solid. We played pranks on the guards in the zone that has a bathroom using claymores and Nikita missiles and called snake the Toilet Stalker. Peak 8 year old humor, I couldn’t breathe from laughing.

Another in High school, visited my older sister in the dorms and the boy floors were having a massive halo Lan party since all the rooms were connected. I had never played a console shooter before but the guys were really welcoming and wanted me to join anyways. One match came down to a 1v1 with me and one of the good players, I almost got him with the sniper but lost. I wasn’t too bummed but afterwards everyone on the floor cheered me up. I stomped the same guy later that night in warcraft 3 and that one felt good.

Killing Malenia. Finally.

I don’t know if these are the most joy but some good memories.

When I first saw Mario 64 in Toys R Us I was awestruck. Just unbelievable. Mario in 3D.

When I was playing Ocarina of Time I was hunting Poes in Hyrule field on Epona. I fell asleep because it was late. When I woke up the game was still running. Nothing overheated. Nothing killed me in game. No loud jarring noises. I wasnt late for anything. I just woke up and started hunting Poes again.

A friend and I were staying up late playing one of the early Kings Quest games where you can dial a 900 number to help you if you got stuck. This was back when save points where maybe once every 10 minutes if you’re lucky. We had gotten to a really verbose riddle that we were supposed to have found a clue for earlier in the game but missed it. We just figured out the riddle and guessed it on the first try. It was an unbelievable triumph.

I think nfsu2, we got it for christmas and played it for 2 full days in a row.

But tbh i still remember my playlist (flyleaf - i’m so sick/ fully alive, hinder - wings of an angel, Marilyn Manson - the beautiful people, a perfect circle, Korn and a couple others) i used while playing wow for the first time when you could get to lvl30 within a certain trial period. Definitely been hooked for some time but never made it to lvl cap nor did i get sny good gear.

Skyrim gobbled up the most hours of any game.

But i think wow really offered the best escape of real life back then for me, which is my main drive for playing games.

Being able to do the right thing and actually getting rewarded for it is a thing that keeps me coming back to videk games.

Real life isn’t really like that most of the time. It will drain you completely, eat all your good intentions and shit you out the other end completely drained and empty handed.

River of Sorrow in Metal Gear Solid 3. First regular then as “no kills” run. It’s something that made me genuinely question everything while playing a video game. Everything.

Playing Halo co-op with my wife.

• Getting to the final boss of persona 3 as my first SMT game, feeling actually scared irl, fighting it for over an hour and then getting wiped out when it had less than one pixel of hp left. The party AI was sabotaging me and I was coming up with new strategies in real time to counteract it, it was great
• The final dungeon of FFIV-2 (yes I agree the game is shit). I had to finish it in one night because I was going back to college the next morning. My real world scheduling was good but I didn’t plan for it to be the longest final dungeon in FF history. Luckily the entire thing was really fun and I played for 12 hours until sunrise, delirious while taking down the final boss and getting to see the credits roll.

Rank, taking out 2 full teams while my dead teammates watched and cheered. With health that even a sneezed would kill me.

My hands were shaking and my heart rate high AF, fucking diamond Apex.

Mass Effect, almost certainly with plenty of honourable mentions to other games.

Peak is the Dramatic Scene at the end of ME1 after the final boss. Really really moved by events on Tuchunka and Rannoch.

Favourite moment outside Mass Effect, JC Denton saying “You’re gonna burn, alright”

Hard to say what’s the absolute best one, but some highlights:

Finale of Ace Attorney Justice for All; when you finally have the change in circumstances needed to pin the real killer and send them into a genuine panic.

Pizza Tower, final boss third phase: When Peppino sees that Pizza Face is sending him a Boss Rush, and flips his shit, annihilating each boss at lightning speed.

Ghost Trick, Phantom Detective: The final “4 minutes before death”, and multiple last revelations

Most of these are memories of story-driven moments nailed in by very solid soundtracks, which has very much convinced me how important music is to these games.

Don’t know if it’s the greatest joy, but I absolutely adore the sound effect in the original borderlands where you set a Crimson Lance person on fire and they scream before being disintegrated after their health depletes. Sounds horrible, but it’s just a sound I think they did a really good job on.

Far cry 2 team Deathmatch first team to 100 kills win on clearcut.

I got 55 of the required kills and was banned from using the 50cal sniper on all future games.

You haven’t experienced true joy until you and your best friend chainsaw the same locust in Gears of War at the exact second the chorus of “Lavatory Love Machine” by Edguy starts (2 minute mark here: youtu.be/-y3CMlvrkN0?si=_rAHP6KoXgeYwV-k).

Okami. That game was an absolute joy to play and the visuals and music were beautiful. My wife even mentioned that I seemed calmer and relaxed while playing it.

I was probably 10 when my best friend (at the time) and I would play Super Contra on the NES for hours. We loved everything about it. We’d get as far as we could. We’d give each other lives. We could sing the soundtrack. When it was game over, we just restarted it.

Those days were simple and beautiful. I don’t think another game could give me anything like that experience, since it wasn’t really entirely about the game.

Passing the controller around the room playing God of War 3 on Wednesday nights.

Rock Band 2. Bladder of Steel achievement playing with a full band of 4 (locally).

It’s playing the entire setlist of 84 or so songs all the way through in one sitting. Without pausing or failing.

We did it with all instruments on Medium, but we did it! (I could pass anything on Expert, but maybe not all the way through. My friends were borderline Hard players at best, so Medium was the only way we’d ever be able to do it together)

Vermintide 2 dlc where Saltzpyre gets a piglet as a hat. Best goddamn $5 I’ve ever spent on dlc. His little legs and his but wiggle around when you move and ofc the purity seals are on point.

Also way back in DCUO when fire tank was busted AF I kept summoning fireballs that I would then Chuck into my buddy trying his best to actually complete whatever task we were doing.

Also Also max difficulty helldivers 2 against the robots on Mavelon Creek. It was a struggle to survive ore than 10 seconds put of the drop pod and it was some of the funniest shit I’ve ever played.

I was in the military and we had this big conference table that could fit a good 12 people at. About once a month our boss would give us the key for the weekend and we’d play Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, and Red Alert 2 for 12-18 hours straight while pounding back Mountain Dew Code Red.

Getting to the top of the mountain in Celeste. It may not be the hardest challenge in the game (screw you Farewell), but just arriving there with the soundtrack swelling felt so good.

Completing the golden path in Tunic.

Any number of silly things in FFXI that at the time probably felt immensely important.

Wandering around in Morrowind before I really knew what I was doing, being happy just to find a few coins in a tree stump or a crappy dagger.

Other games have given more extreme emotions. But no other game has instilled such a joyous sense of wonder.