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First game you saw as a kid which blew you away?

First time powering the machine on at our local arcade at the mall.


Literally everyone's face:
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Grew up on NES and loved it, but never was blown away by the graphics. The jump between 8 bit and 16 bit was brain melting.
 


I grew up playing a lot of games in arcades, in Game Boy, at friends' houses, on computers, anywhere I could get em. The full 3D of Descent was amazing with a proper joystick, which my dad was nerdy enough to get one for our family. He didn't buy it specifically for Descent (I forget which flight sim he got it for) but he let me use it for this game.

Blissful.
 
My experience with gaming dates back to using demo CDs out of PC magazine to run DOS based games on my 486. And though I remember firing up Myst's picture perfect graphics, Wolfenstein, applying the nude patch on to Duke Nukem 3D, firing up Doom and owning people on Rainbow 6 via GameSpy for the first time ....all my flashbulb moments are all console related.

1. Altered Beast and Sonic the Hedgehog were CLEARLY leaps and bounds from anything on my NES. Mortal Kombat brought home the arcade.

2. Night Trap and Sewer Shark felt like a generational leap and the prohibitive cost of the SegaCD added to the mystique and allure.

3. Resident Evil for the PS1 sticks out because of how different it was. It as immersive and scared the shit out of me.

4. NBA2K and NFL2K for the Dreamcast blew me away and redefined sports games for me.

5. I don't remember anything in particular from the PS2 / XBOX generation that sticks out as a giant WOW inducing leap. I guess my expectations may have changed at this point.
 
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It was all about the cutscenes in games for me as a kid. Final Fantasy 7 blew my little mind as did games like Resident Evil. FMV's were just jaw dropping for me back in the day. I was obsessed.
 
Not the first game to blow me away but might be one of the most memorable:



I know for a lot of people it was the Mario 64 intro but for me, it was Unreal. It was such a gigantic lead forward with the 3D, the lighting and tech. Not only that but it pushed hardware and made you really want a 3D capable GPU. Every computer shop or retail store had the intro/demo on loop and I remember crowds of people watching it everywhere I saw it.

Man, watching it now it STILL looks impressive.
 
Final Fantasy X easily. Combination of all scenes voice acted and (what appeared to me at the time to be) totally realistic ingame renders of characters completely blew me away
 
Elite on the BBC B. I couldn't believe such a vast galaxy to explore in 3D was possible, when just before it came out I was playing basic 2d platformers.
 
Beyond time


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Mario 64

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Myst

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Tomb raider angel of darkness was super good looking on PC

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Doom 3:

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Oblivion finally open world with grass yay ( not so yay when u actually played it )

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There were 2.

The absolute first was Street Fighter II in a SNES demo display in a big store. The sheer concept of a playable Kung Fu movie blew my 8 year old mind. Then I saw the first fireball and I was hooked!

The second one, that may has influenced me in more than just gaming-awe, was Resident Evil on PSX. We were visiting a rather young colleague of my parents, who happened to have a Playstation. Yay for me (then 12), I was put before the TV with a handfull of games to try.
I had no idea how to play this complicated mess of a game, but fucking hell, my parents intervened a long time after the corridor cutscene and 2 or three gruesome deaths at the hand of the first zombie. I had a lot to talk about those maybe 20 minutes of game time (and the intro movie) to my friends in the coming weeks.
 
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At first it was ocarina of time but when i first seen this when the xbox og came out i thought it looked real life haha, crazy how looking back at it on MCC and it looks nothing like the first time i seen this
 
Gonna have to go with Sengoku on the Neo-Geo. I remember going to a mall and seeing it through the window at EB and being in total awe of the amazing 2D visuals. Then I was even more in awe of the price tag and wishing I was a millionaire so that I can afford it.

edit - 44 years old here
 
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There was an arcade game probably from 88/89 that had what looked like digitized puppets , VS fighting game, probably Japanese, definitely historical Japanese puppets.

That one.

Anyone have any idea what this could have been?
 


Loved it as a kid, realized it was a total failure as an adult. Still, that physics based engine was almost ten years ahead everything else.
 
For me, it's the original Dead Rising

Having that many enemies on screen, being able to pick up seemingly anything and use it as a weapon, the survivor and psychopath mechanics, it was just a joy to play as a kid.

I still love the first three games, and I go back and forth on which one I enjoy the most.
 
Afterburner, man. This game and that cabinet had me hooked every time I walked into the arcade as a kid.


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And my second would be Apollo 18 Mission to the Moon on the C64. I must have sunk so many hours into this after getting home from school.

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Gamers don't really look at it like an open world game but Ocarina of Time was the only one to blow me away, Ganon showing up, getting my sword and shield, tremendous first dungeon etc. what Nintendo did way back in the 90s shows they had it going on ahead of time.
 
Dragons Lair was pretty amazing to look at, however in terms of being 'blown away' I think Astronbelt beats it (screen shot doesn't do it justice - the explosions were amazing). Basically, stick 20p and you were buck rogers for 5 minutes - things don't get much shit-your-pants cooler than that.

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So I'm looking at the phrase "Blew me away"...

For me, it didn't come until much later (I'm 34)...I think my first "whoa" moment was the opening title screen for Ocarina of Time.

A more obvious time was the opening of Final Fantasy X. To me that was nuuuuuts. So lifelike then haha
 
My dad was a computer repair man back in the day when main frame computers would take up entire basements of hospitals.

I would tag along with him in the early 1970s just so I could play Hunt the Wumpus on those massive machines and couldn't believe how "smart" those computers were.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I'll never forget waking up on Christmas day to see the stunning graphics and quick action of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 running on my TV. I was floored. Every other Christmas gift was set aside just to watch the attract screen for way too long. It was a disappointment that my parents forced us to open all our other Christmas presents before we were allowed to jump into playing Sonic. To that point, I grew up with dos games (mostly in the awful standard CGA color palette) and the NES. I couldn't believe my eyes and I was convinced that the Sega Genesis was going to give us lifelike graphics based on this one game.

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Raven117 said:
I thought I was the only person to play this game. It really is like a precursor to Bloodborne in a way.


It was probably Mario SNES. Those colors were so lush compared to anything on NES.
Click to expand...
Compared to ANYTHING, actually. Maybe some SVGA games were up there but still...
 
While I had already been playing games for years mine is Final Fantasy II on SNES.
The music, the Red Wings flying in on their mission, the awesome character design.
It was the first game that gave me a clue to how huge video games could be as a storytelling medium.
 
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Shout out to Zelda 1 as well. The graphics didn't blow me away, but more the presentation. I was at a cousins house and this was the first NES game I ever saw. Specifically in the dungeons, the music paired with the visuals and sound effects, it felt cold and hollow and a little spooky. I was entranced.
 
I remember seeing NFS Underground on the demo thing at a Walmart when I was young. I was amazed and so were many others. People were gathered around to have a go. It was that drag race level where you can jump the train.
 
All though I've played my first games on Atari 2600 I think the game that truly blew my mind was FF7, there were many games I remember liking before such as Double Dragon and Out Run but FF7 was just so graphically impressive compared to anything I had played yet. Then I remember being similarly impressed by Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventures on the Dreamcast.
 
Cliche but super mario 64. Games before it surprised me some but Mario blew me away. After that it wasn't until Halo:CE till i had that same feeling.
 
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