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[Moofers]

I have so many!

-Getting my NES as a surprise purchase at Sears one day, seemingly at random.

-Beating Super Mario Bros and having my dad and step-mom make a big deal out of it like I'd done something amazing.

-Getting Final Fight on the SNES. I remember being blown away by the graphics, particularly Haggar's pants, and the "on-fire" animation.

-Getting Mortal Kombat on the Genesis. I got the last copy at KB Toys on the Saturday before the official launch date, "Mortal Monday".

-Getting my Sega CD and being blown away by the fact that I was controlling "real people" in games like Ground Zero Texas.

-Getting my Atari Jaguar and being blown away by how scary Alien vs Predator was.

-Skipping class in high school with my best friend so we could ride our bikes to Best Buy and play the "PlayStation" demo that was set up before launch. Toshinden was the coolest fucking thing we'd ever seen. We put HOURS into that demo. HOURS.

-The Metal Gear Solid demo for PlayStation. Never saw something so cool and so innovative before. PlayStation was truly the future of videogames.

-Reaching Sephiroth before all my friends in FF7. There was a universal fever over that game among everyone who played videogames. It was on the cover of every magazine, on every website, and all my friends were talking about it. I reached the final battle first and felt like a rockstar when they all wanted to see it and booted up my save.

-Visiting my local rental store and discovering that they had a Japanese Sega Dreamcast with Powerstone and Sonic Adventure available to rent, months before the US launch. I was absolutely floored by Powerstone. Then I was out of my goddamn mind over the first level of Sonic. That stage music will always represent the entire system for me.

-Playing Marvel vs Capcom for the first time and loving how over-the-top the specials were. Ryu's fireball is now a beam that takes up the whole screen? Awesome!

-Beating Terminator 2: The Arcade Game with my dad and his best friend at the mall arcade. We were on a mission that day and I liked to believe we were the first people to ever play that game to its conclusion.

-The day I saw Primal Rage for the first time. The graphics were amazing, the cabinet itself was gigantic, and the sounds boomed throughout the entire arcade. I would obsess over this game for months after.

-Playing Tekken 4 every day on my lunch break at the local arcade. I'd run across the street and have exactly 24 minutes to play it before I had to start running back.

-Reading on GAF that a store about 7 hours from my home was selling Halo 3 a week early. Then, getting the game at that store the next day.

-E3 every year. Its like a holiday that only my people are aware of and celebrate.

So many more memories, but I could go on all night. I should try the Diablo 3 beta one more time so it can tell me the servers are busy, then I'll go to bed.

 

[Celcius]

-As a kid, getting my first console (SNES)
-Getting a N64 for Christmas
-owning a dreamcast while all the classic capcom games were coming out
-beating emerald and ruby weapons in ff7
-the first time I beat EQ in SO4 (end of looooong dungeon, ended at like 2am)
-borrowing my cousin's genesis back in the day to play S3&K
-having so many fighting games on xbox plus two arcade sticks that I modded and playing metal slug with my bro
-getting free snes game rentals from blockbuster as a kid for having a good report card. My little bro would watch as I played Super Mario RPG or Megaman X
-playing 4 player matches of Bomberman 64
-the first time I played Oblivion
-playing through Tales of Vesperia in english and japanese multiple times
-having a ps3 and playing an online multiplayer fps for the first time
-picking up a cheap gamecube after about 2 years of pc-only gaming. So many great games and Tales of Symphonia was amazing
-playing 3rd Strike, Cap vs SNK, and MvC2 nearly everyday around 2001-2002
-playing Gran Turismo 2, 3, and 5. I've spent so much time enjoying each one that I'd quit buying new games for like 6-7 months lol
-grinding during Final Fantasy post-game sections
-getting all the chaos emeralds in sonic 3 & knuckles and playing with super sonic for the first time
-the first time I saw ps2 graphics
-watching my family play SSB Melee

...and many, many more, but I'll stop here.

 

[weekend_warrior]

Also, the first time I played Grand Theft Auto III. Driving around Liberty City for the first time was a pretty big moment. It felt alive and I felt like I had total freedom.

Yeah that moment in GTA3 when the cutscreen of them escaping the police van ends and the game's like, "Here you go, here's GTA3, enjoy." Nothing can prepare you for that moment.

 

[Jaffaboy]

The announcement of Snake in SSBB.

Getting Pokemon Red Xmas day and my bro getting Blue and just playing and battling for days.

Getting Pokemon Silver on launch (and my bro getting Gold) and then going on a 4 hour drive to a county show thing which was boring as hell so we played all weekend.

Getting hyped for the Gamecube launch and then on launch day, I got the school bus in the morning to see my grandad drive the opposite way with it sitting in the back seat. Longest day of school ever!

Building my first PC and playing FFXI for the first time at my best friend's/fellow GAFfers house. Although that is kinda a regret too as I didn't do much else for the next 2 1/2 years, but it was a lot of fun at the same time. Also claiming the Valkurm Emperor and getting that hairpin was an amazing feeling! I just started running around the house like a madman.

Buying an N64 for £40 that just so happened to have GoldenEye in the box, and then going to a different store to buy Conker's Bad Fur Day for almost the same price! Then I got home, played for a bit when a few friends came round with one of them asking me if I wanted to buy OoT off him for like £5 because he thought it sucked. Best day ever.

 

[Relax.MX]

Multiplayer on GoldenEye or Perfect Dark...

 

[DJMicLuv]

Waiting in my local game shop in 1984 with my ZX Spectrum buddies for the courier to deliver the first box of Ultimate's new game - Knight Lore - then after waiting 2 hours to get the game going home and having all of our tiny minds BLOWN by it. EXCiTE!

 

[TheTruth523]

sadly (or not) both of mine are WoW related

killing Anub'arak in tier 9:
my first raid end-boss, my guild spent around 2 months on it and finally getting it down gave me a feeling that hooked me on Wow for the next 2 years

fast forward 2 years
Killing Ragnaros in tier 12:
solidified my guild (different from first guild) as top 20 US and Rag was widely considered the hardest boss ever seen in the game with crazy amounts of coordination and individual attention needed. Spent around 1 1/2 months on him and I yelled as loud as possible when we finally killed him.

then a month later I realized how much of my life I wasted/ruined and I quit the game

WoW gave me a lot of good memories and friends but I regret ever playing it

 

[gollumsluvslave]

A few for me, in chronological order

1. Christmas Day 1985 (11 years old) - Opening and playing my Commodore 64

It was 2nd hand (we were poor!), and came with a pile of games and Zzap64 magazines. Happy days! Tape Loading times! Paradroid and Way of the Exploding Fist got most play time.

2. Sensible Soccer sessions on Atari ST, too many to count!

3. My first proper PC arriving early 1997 (took out a bank loan!)

Pentium 200 MMX, 16mb RAM, 1GB hard drive, 3DFX Voodoo Graphics (Diamond Monster 3D), Soundblaster AWE64

Seeing GLQuake was one of my biggest jaw dropping moments in gaming. Turok in Native Glide was pretty awesome too.

4. First time playing through Half-Life, especially 'We've Got Hostiles', 'Blast Pit' and 'Surface Tension'. Wow

5. Playing the tutorial for Thief : The Dark Project and thinking 'Man, I like this, this is so different! And this Garret character is too cool!' First impressions are seldom wrong, can't wait for Thief 4

6. System Shock 2 - mokeys with crow bars, the audio diaries, The Many, the twist, the fear and terror of my weapons breaking - I think this game (along with Deus Ex) spoiled modern gaming for a lot of people

7. Trying out a demo on PC Gamer for an RTS game called Homeworld not expecting anything as I could never get into RTS games, and losing about 3 hours. Bought it the next day. There is something just 'perfect' about that game. So many memories, especially around successful salvages

8. Fighting Kangaxx the DemiLich in Baldur's Gate II, and having my mind blown the first time he destroyed my (what I thought was) uber-party in little time. Time Stop really blew my mind!

9. Deus Ex, so many choices, my biggest memory was trying different ways to solve the Statue of Liberty mission at the beginning of the game, awesome. Tracer Tong, Walton Simons, Bob Page! Story, characters, choice and consequences. Conspiracy theories. So far ahead of it's time it is unreal, my brain could not take it. So many 'wow' memories!

10. Halo CE, 'Halo' level - shock and awe! Dat graphics! 'The Silent Cartographer' - the theme, the beach, the Warthog! My first real taste of co-op gameplay with 2 xboxen lanned up, wicked!

Think that's plenty for now, wonder how the last few years will stack up 10 years down the line?

Can't see much touching the 'golden age' for me of 1998-2000, it was truly special for me.



5.

 

[DukeTogo1300]

When I finally found a PS2, which were very damn hard to find at the time. I felt like I was going to pass out as we walked it (and a friend with his own) to the checkout line.

I haven't been that excited about new hardware since.

 

[Tarin02543]

When I had been playing Quake for about 2 weeks solid back in 1996. This was my first PC at home and it was a blazing DX100 with 16mb ram and a modem. I read in a PC magazine that you could play it online so I dialled up on my 20 hours free compuserve account and looked on Altavisa search for "quake servers" and found a random IP address.

The document told me to press a key to bring down a console (of which I had no idea about) and then type connect <ip> - which didn't make a lot of sense to me so I just did what they said and hit enter. Some text flew past the screen then I appeared in DM1 and thought "didn't think it would work, it's just loaded the first DM map :/". Then, I saw a quake guy run past the door firing, then another behind him shooting a nail gun. I couldntquite comprehend that these were other people so I ran after them with my mind blown and tried to greet my fellow Quake players so I just jumped to say hello!.....then exploded into a pile of gibs as the guy shot me with his rocket launcher then I saw a text communication pop up with a simple "" . I smiled wide and then 4 years of my life were sunken into Quakeworld.

I had a similar experience, my first steps into online gaming was Quake. I remember trying GLquake with my voodoo2 card (the budget 8mb version, lol) and being blown away by the trilinear filtering and high framerate.

 

[ScreenSplitter]

Some of these are making me smile!
- Play Sonic 2 on my neighbour's Megadrive. Am transported into a world of interactive and creative possibilities.

"It starts..."
- Not being able to turn my ancient computer off when Doom crashed and wouldn't let us quit, then my Dad forbidding us from turning it off because he thought it'd damage the computer (not a techie). As a result, Doom music played in our house all night for about a week. Creepy.
- Similarly, my Dad is not a big gamer. But some of the fondest memories I have growing up are helping him through Doom 1 and 2. On Nightmare mode.
- Going round my best friend's house, playing Crash Bandicoot 2, and crying because I didn't have one.
- Growing up realising the hypocrisy of my Father who let me play Doom on his lap as a 6 year old, then refusing to buy me Grand Theft Auto.
- Openly going round my friends house to play GTA, and bringing back to borrow it. Parents do not mind. Will still not buy me the game. Quickly realise parents are stupid.
- Christmas 1999. Very confused to open a Phillips Power Tools box. Looked at my parents in absolute bemusement. Opened up to find my Uncle's old PS1, my first ever console. Screamed the house down.
- March 2001. Received an "I.O.U one copy of Pokemon Gold" from my Mother. My very first pre-order.
- Went to holiday in Spain. Spent all of the two weeks in the hotel bar, finding other children to play Pokemon Gold with. Parents not pleased. Me, with all 6 starters and Tyrogue, very pleased.
- 2003. Finish Kingdom Hearts. Cry at a videogame for the first time. Show girlfriend. Girlfriend does not cry. Breaks up with me. I cry some more.
- March 2004. Got a Nintendo DS and spent all day marvelling at "DEAR LORD, POLYGONS."
- February 2008. After months of looking, got the last Nintendo Wii in stock at a local store. Got Call of Duty 3. It was terrible. Also got Twilight Princess. Was not terrible.
- March 2008. Miss traditional controls. Buy Xbox 360. Underwhelmed. Feel like a dirty traitor.
- March 2011. Get up at 6am to buy the Nintendo 3DS. Very first handheld purchased by myself, with my own money, on launch day. Standing in line with a mother and her two children. They look at me with disdain. Fuck them. I get Pilotwings Resort and Rayman 3D. Didn't have any other games for three months, but damn it felt good to revisit my inner nerd child.
- Turn 18, buy every GTA game. Not because I want to, but because I CAN.

 

[gerudoman]

I think it was when a friend lent me his Pokémon Blue. I spent all night playing and I only stopped when my batteries died, ha. My parents didn't want to buy me any Pokémon because they considered them as dangerous... fucking yellow press. At that time getting a friend to not only lend you his Pokémon game but allow you to start a new file was almost a miracle.

In general Pokémon mixed with school bring me really good memories: playing furtively at class . I also remember the craziness t my class when a friend brought a japanese copy of Pokémon Silver/Gold months before its european release... we had to wait in a queue for a long time just to sit by his side and watch him play XD Discovering all the new Pokémons was really exciting.

 

[Celcius]

-Finding Xenogears for $10 in a closing store and then being amazed at the story

 

[Log4Girlz]

Mario 64 in a kiosk at a videogame store owned by gamefan magazine (forget the stores name)...MIND FUCKING BLOWN. Wasn't even funny man. BLOWN

 

[Silphonica]

Lots of gaming related moments that stick to mind. Such as getting my SNES, gamecube, 360 and pokemon blue, but two that really stand out.

The day I got my playstation 1

I remember as a kid, I was very methodical and I fucking loved christmas. Every christmas I would wait for my mum to wake up to open my presents. I told her "I'll start from smallest to biggest so I don't ruin the big surprise".

Well I opened the smallest present there, it turned out to be tekken 3. Obviously I knew what the big present was, my playstation! Even though I knew what it was, it didn't dull my excitement when opening it, and when I saw "Playstation" written across the box, I literally threw it in the air in excitement...

... and smashed the TV in the living room.

The day I got my N64

This is memorable for the wrong reasons. I was at my dads, he got me an N64. The goldeneye bundle, I was so happy. That happiness turned into resentment as I spent the next 2 hours watching my dad play Goldeneye.

My dad was such a dick.