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[Jeeves]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was checking the Smash Bros. Dojo website every night at Japan Time™. I was actually on dial-up Internet for a good portion of the time leading up to the game, so...my F5ing was extra deliberate. I flipped when Lucas was announced. And of course, I was lurking GAF to read everyone's reactions to each tidbit every day. I remember everyone on here having Kirby Super Star avatars for some reason...oh yeah, and this was back when we had animated avatars.

Anyway, thankfully I had better Internet when the game launched, as well as a new big screen TV to play it on, and play I did...I rushed through Subspace and when I finished that I took to online play. And no, I didn't have any connection issues. I played the game for 24 hours straight, and then I took a 45 minute nap and played for another 13 hours. Having a blast the whole time.

I know it's seen as the weak link in the series, and I agree with that now, but man that game was hitting the spot for me at the time. The hype absolutely paid off.

 

[BlackM1st]

PS4 hype was through the roof. Nothing comes close for me. Since the announcement and all the way to first 6 months on a market it was hilarious and good fun.

PS5 is like "ok, world is on fire, you stuck at home, we changed the number, now give us your money, thanks, see you in 5 years, stay safe". Complete antihype...

 

[alabtrosMyster]

PS4

 

[Old Retro]

Really showing my age here but 1st real hype train was the NES Deluxe Set with ROB...


Commercials back then had a different appeal and effect on people (kids). Played the demos of Duck Hunt and SMB in department stores whenever I could before I was gifted my NES set.

Also got to EB early on release day for the N64 and Mario 64. 1996 was quite the quantum leap in gaming for me.

Stood in line with 100 other dummies in the cold for 2009s COD Modern Warfare 2 midnight release. Which wound up being a shitty, glitched game within a year but it was pretty fun in the beggining.

 

[Concern]

No Man's Sky

 

[SirTerry-T]

Probably BOTW in the last decade but I've been around long enough to have a few. Even old 8 bit home computer games had their own hype build ups, though on a far, far smaller scale to what we see these days.

All the Bitmap Brothers, for example titles used to get plenty of column inches in the gaming press back then, they were very much the Rockstar Games of their day.

 

[ArtemisClydeFrog]

Project Ego. Use to love reading in the game magazines about those badass ideas that were going into it. What a disappointment that ended up being.

 

[Closer]

Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was checking the Smash Bros. Dojo website every night at Japan Time™. I was actually on dial-up Internet for a good portion of the time leading up to the game, so...my F5ing was extra deliberate. I flipped when Lucas was announced. And of course, I was lurking GAF to read everyone's reactions to each tidbit every day. I remember everyone on here having Kirby Super Star avatars for some reason...oh yeah, and this was back when we had animated avatars.

Anyway, thankfully I had better Internet when the game launched, as well as a new big screen TV to play it on, and play I did...I rushed through Subspace and when I finished that I took to online play. And no, I didn't have any connection issues. I played the game for 24 hours straight, and then I took a 45 minute nap and played for another 13 hours. Having a blast the whole time.

I know it's seen as the weak link in the series, and I agree with that now, but man that game was hitting the spot for me at the time. The hype absolutely paid off.

This is me. Brawl was something else. Every little thing about it was pure hype.

 

[Fitzchiv]

Ouya.

I have a founders edition from the Kickstarter campaign, I was that on board the train.

 

[Radical_3d]

Halo 3, Killzone 2 and Uncharted. The good old days.

 

[K.S v2.0]

For me it was the initial DMC5 release. After waiting so long since DMC4 and having that trailer debut at the microsoft press conference, hearing "They're demons! Redgrave is completely taken over!" over the Capcom logo gave me serious fucking goosebumps. Probably the happiest video games has made me next to the FF7 remake reveal and wait.


Plus that fuckin logo for DMC5 is awesome.

The DMC5SE/Vergil reveal was pretty much the same... coz we'd all but lost hope and given up after Capcom said the game was done and a full year of silence. Granted as a 'Special Edition' it really is the weakest cheaped out shit ever but eh... Vergil is good... and he only cost $5 on PC. I'll take it.

 

[NahaNago]

Its been so long since i've been truly on a hype train for a game I can barely even remember any. I would guess it would have to be final fantasy related since I loved ff7. It would have to be FFIX and FFX then since I was old enough to work a part time job and buy the gaming magazines. Most of the time I'm merely interested in a game and get disappointed.

 

[Bl@de]

Fallout 4

 

[Herr Edgy]

2 games for me.

Guild Wars 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
GW2 seemed so promising at the time. My mind was still in a place where it started imagining things based on marketing - so I had this immensely alive feeling world in my head, with deep teamwork mechanics and crazy content. GW1 was a really special and unique game, so a GW2 would surely be fantastic. It wasn't a bad game per se but it was kind of a generic mmo. Everything felt standardized so much, it didn't feel like a world at all. A fate that basically all modern MMORPGs suffer.

Xenoblade X... the original was a phenomenal masterpiece, an instant JRPG classic. The initial reveal trailer was a departure from the first one's setting, but it was ambitious, and nothing implied it would be a drastic departure in spirit too. Most fans were thinking this is going to be the "real" Xenoblade, as the original was, per Takahashi, more of an experiment, and X seemed inspired by Xenogears with the focus on mechs and sci fi. People were expecting an epic story, one that is as well crafted as the original's, or perhaps even better. People were expecting an interesting world full of lore, plot twists and character, in HD, on the Wii U, with characters that didn't have 5 polygons. Boy were we wrong.
Bad pacing, bad story, bad execution, scrapped main character with a personality to be replaced by a customizable one, for the purpose of introducing a real crappy online mode. While some of the world had interesting designs and monsters, a lot of it was barren-feeling areas with tons of tanky enemies. Lore for some sidequests was really interesting but since it never went anywhere and the story was really bad, there was no point in immersing yourself. Tons of weird QoL issues.
It became very clear, with the statements released after release, that XCX became nothing more than a tech experiment for Monolith Soft that was salvaged from bad production that couldn't keep up with the original vision of the game, especially when considering the art book's hints and that the script for the story was supposed to be longer than for the original; despite almost nothing happening in the story.
XCX was probably my biggest gaming disappointment ever. XC2 went into the direction of XC1 again and the tech experiment seemed to pay off, as it was developed really quickly compared to XCX, and was much broader in scope and mostly well executed.

 

[Laconian Sword]

1. Mortal Monday 1993 release of MK on consoles. Genesis had blood, but I got the SNES version since I only had the three-button controllers.
2. Metroid Prime. Got a nice T-shirt with it on launch day too!
3. Wii. Gave it away before I knew about any of the weird gems on it.

 

[SEGA_2012]

Binary Domain.

 

[Soodanim]

Back before GTA Vice City came out a friend and I would be all over this flash site Rockstar put up. It had radio clips, gameplay clips, and probably more. At one point I had all those QuickTime videos saved, and I loved watching a little clip of a car driving for 20 seconds. 14 year olds are easily amused, I guess.

Those little teasers opened my mind to an entire decade of music, and the game was one of the all time greats.

 

[Beer Baelly]

Had to be Twilight Princess. You had to be there, but the excitement was just stratospheric. People were so excited and shocked for the return of the Ocarina of Time style, as well as the fact that the game just looked jaw-droppingly ahead of anything out on console, epic, and almost open world in the first trailers.



Every single detail, piece of art, and trailer only amped it up that much more.

Did the actual game live up to that? Unsure. It was indeed the wonderful, Zelda dialed to 11, epic people were expecting, and just blew minds, but also quite linear and with its fair share of flaws. People also simultaneously realized they were being ridiculous and Wind Waker was an awesome game.

But the hype was unforgettable, and possibly the coolest thing I have ever experienced as a Nintendo fan.

Came to post this. Still gives me goosebumps. I havent been hyped since

 

[Evangelion Unit-01]

-Arcadia- already posted the Twilight Princess trailer. That and Halo 3 were my two most anticipated releases. Had to wait for a month for Twilight Princess because I couldn't get a Wii at launch and didn't want the GameCube version.




I was really excited for Breath of the Wild as well. This trailer in particular really pulled me in. Waited a few months before I bought a Switch though as I wasn't able to make the time until later that year.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Oh, also Metroid Prime, probably the first time I got hyped for a new release.

As a kid with no internet I lost count of the amount of times I watched the trailer that came with the special edition of Wind Waker.

 

[kyussman]

I'd never been a Kojima fan and hadn't played the MGS games....but that first Death Stranding trailer got me hooked,the music and visuals just got me really intrigued.I followed all the rest of the trailers and boy,did the game ever deliver for me....incredible game.

 

[G-Bus]

Killzone 2 was a good one.

 

[godhandiscen]

Halo 2
Xbox 360
Gears of War
Halo 3

 

[darthvaderer]

Battlefront 2 (2017) for me. All the hype and letdown. Pre-order than refund. 1 month protest than buy it again on sale. Since that day, a love hate relationship has been going on between us.

 

[Threeshotgamer]

Wildstar was big hype for me. Played for a long time but sadly it went the way of the dinosaurs.

 

[sublimit]

From last gen:

"Project Beast" leaked gifs:

This gameplay video from The Witcher 3 with commentary by the developer:


Dragon Quest XI first gameplay trailer

 

[crozier]

Yeah, Mario 64 was bonkers. I remember taking the bus to Toys R Us with a few friends just to get a few minutes with it on a kiosk. Never has a game delivered like Mario 64.

 

[Hitchyhero]

The old Republic MMO. Was legit hyped for that Wow killer (although I was more of a casual Wow player anyway). Those cgi trailers were legit the best cgis in gaming. I've watched those trailers again recently and they are still amazing.

Game however was crap

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Gravity Rush 1 and 2.... Were like a christmas wish.

I love the scene with kat jazz in the trailer of launch game

 

[Breakage]

GTA IV

 

[EverythingsOverrated]

I remember being in a computer class in high school when blurry pictures of the twilight princess trailer taken by people with shitty digital cameras started to hit forums. One of my classmates in the middle of class just blurts out "the new Zelda looks realistic". I remember watching the trailer later that day when I got home and shat my pants.

I was big time on the Ocarina of Time hype train. The cool thing of gaming back then was even when you consumed literally every single piece of media available you still hadn't seen much of a game. Most video clips were no longer than 15-20 seconds and publishers would usually only release a handful of screenshots at various intervals.

I had watched every trailer and video clip, looked at all the screenshots, read the hands ons and reviews but most of the game was still completely new and awesome when I played it. Huge hype payoff.

MGS2 is the other one that immediately comes to mind. MGS1 being as good as it was was a surprise to me. I only had played the metal gear games on NES and both of those games (mostly the first game) were fun but weren't high on my favorite games list growing up. But MGS1 was a revelation when I first played it.

When that first trailer was released people couldn't believe it was running in real time on the PS2 - everything from lighting to animation, to physics was just on a completely different level from anything I had seen in a game. The trailer itself was a phenomenon, people were going to Konamis booth over and over to watch it. They even released the trailer on DVD in Japan.

Like plenty of other of people I bought zone of enders for the mgs2 demo and played through it dozens of times. What a game

 

[crozier]

The FF7 demo had me positively fiending for more. I don’t think I even tried Tobal.