I took a whole eleven days off of work for the Wind Waker. I bought a case of Bawls, a few cases of Barqs, some Lotte Milkis, a freezer full of what I called "stoner food" (pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, etc), a whole cheesecake, some tiramisu, etc etc etc. It was a junk food bonanza - enough to last the whole vacation.
Then, I went out and bought a new surround sound speaker system to go with my big TV. And some blackout liner for my curtains then. And lots of candles to set a great mood for my living room.
It was an absolutely glorious vacation. I spent all week long on that sofa, dog at my feet, sailing around Hyrule. I had taken time off of work for gaming events before, but this was escalating it to a whole different level. It marked my transition to adulthood, where I didn't have binding obligations like college classes any longer - indeed, I could finally devote serious time once again to my beloved hobby.
This vacation would set the base standard for all of my future video gaming-related vacations.
I remember back in the day my mind being blow by playing Call of Duty (the first one) on my brand new laptop, which was a beast at that time. So crisp, so beautiful, so fluid, it was like a whole new world opened to me. It's to that date the only satisfying PC gaming experience I had. And the online, oh boy. Oh many LANs we played with that.Does anyone else remember playing CoD4 for the first time? Shit was insane.
Fuck man, that must've felt amazing.Beating Ultima for the first time in FFXI (Airship battle, Chains of Promathia Quest 10-4)
Living in a single parent home and having three siblings was rough financially. But my Mom one day took me and my brother to Childs world and while I was looking at the games she comes up to me and tells me what do I want and I first was shocked and thought she was playing and she tells me pick the system you want and I picked a Sega master system (cause of the arcade ports and it Rocked!) and she paid for it with whatever little money she had to make me one happy child. I'm grateful to my Mom for that moment even though she tells me now she made a mistake she she started my gaming hobby.
Instagib CTF matches in UT99 were amazing. Especially on CTF-Face.UT99. 8vs8 instagib CTF on CTF-Niven. Smallest CTF map in the game, was utter chaos with my favourite mutator, pretty high skill level involving all us old clan folk.
20mins in, game was 1-1, went into sudden death. Was extremely tight, both sides struggling to make it a meter out of the base with the flag. All you could hear was the sound of 10 shock rifles blasting away.
4 hours later, it was STILL 1-1. So many close calls, last minute saves, monster kills. We eventually lost, but it was the most amazingly intense, stressful, but truly epic gaming moment I will ever have.
Driving to Hyper Game Action in West LA in early Feb 1997 to pick up my import copy of FFVII. Driving home on the freeway marveling at the über clean box art and thumbing through the manual, trying not to crash. Listening to a cassette of New Day Rising by Husker Du the whole time.
Got a PS1 with Legend of Legaia because of an operation I went through. I know the game isn't particularly great, but it made the fact I could barely get out of bed for days pass by much easier.