RetroGaming

When you could walk up to the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D and they would flash their titties at you.

Beating the first Baldur's Gate after numerous (hundreds?) attempts over the years when I was 19-ish (ca. 2009). I recall actually tearing up quite heavily 😂. Even after all these years, still my absolute favourite game for replay (when I get the chance!).

I remember being in like a GameStop or whatever the store was prior to that in my area. The tvs in the store were playing a teaser for the new Zelda game that was going to be coming out. I think this might have been like very early concept of windwaker before they went with the cartoon cell shaded style. I remember there was a sword fight between I think Link and Ganon. I remember thinking that games had peaked at that point. Of course we didn't end up getting exactly that, but the memory remains.

Final Fantasy 6, the three mechs marching through the snow in 3d.. followed by the emotional impact of the game elevated gaming to another level I had never before seen

The moment when you see the first colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. You've watched a contemplative intro movie that sets the stage, been faced with a desolate land that you're seemingly completely alone in, and charged headlong with only the light shining off your sword to guide you. You've seen nothing but you and your horse moving in this place in the half hour or so you've been playing so far. You've done just enough platforming to know that you're a very normal human with no magical abilities, and if you've swung your sword at all you've seen that you have no real skill with it. You just know that you've got to kill these unseen colossi to hold up your end of the deal with the voice in the sky. And then a building shaped like a gorilla walks past you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ckn0mdFyEU

Playing side scrollers my whole life and seeing Mario64 at a Walmart. Being able to play in actual 3D and thinking at no way they can surpass this.

Playing the Mario 64 Demo at Walmart.

My brain had a hard time trying to navigate in 3D.

Starfox 64. I played it at Toys R Us......oh, uh, kids Toys R Us was a toy store that had been around for like 80 years. And everybody knew it was never going to close, because there was always going to be more kids.......and then it closed.

Anyways, they had a demo unit you could play. It reset every 10 minutes. Then Mario would pop up and say "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING NINTENDO 64, WHO'S NEXT???"

And like a stupid teenager, I yelled "I AM!!!" as if it were voice activated. It wasn't. I was just a dumb teenager telling at a CRT tv.

One time I got so invested in it, that I didn't even notice a kid was behind me for like 20 minutes. And eventually he said "Excuse me.....you went 3 times in a row. Can I try please?"

Man I felt like an ass. He probably felt like I was bullying him out of playing. I was twice his age, twice his size, and even compared to other kids my own age I was always a kid who was at the top of the food chain. I genuinely didn't see him, and thought I was alone. I let him play all the turns until his family made him leave.

But those visuals.....THE RUMBLE PACK???!!! OH MY GOD!!! THE CONTROLLER SHAKES WHEN YOUR SHIP GETS DAMAGED!!! And it had 3D space ship flying and voice acting, and oh my god.....

It was all very overwelming. I'm not saying Mario 64 is a bad game. I loved it. But Starfox 64 was the game that made me buy a game for a console I didn't even own. I was THAT sure that I'd have to have an N64 one day.......that day was like 6 months later.

I come from the ZX 81, Spectrum, C64 and Amiga days….I made a lot of music on C64 and Amiga, but for gaming?

Borderlands 2 with 3 friends battling Vermivorous the Invincible, everyone on life support and hanging on to their teeth and after a long struggle defeating it. Once in a lifetime.

3 of them:

• watching an Amiga 500 load from disk having only seen 8bit games on tape. Everything that machine did at the time was like magic.

• watching the castle fly through intro for Unreal on PC when the first 3D accelerators appeared. Everything changed after that.

• experiencing the shark diving demo on PlayStation VR. And also how nothing changed after that! xD

And to have been able to experience that evolution from space invaders to cyberpunk in a single life time has been a privilege.

I’ll never be able to get over the opening cinematic to the first Kingdom Hearts. Having played mostly Game Boy Color prior to that, I had no idea that graphics could look that good.

The first thing that jumped to my mind was Half Life 2. The facial expressions on the characters, and the physics of objects in the game world.

I miss demo discs. My favorite one had I think spyro and some snowmobile game on it. Playstation 1...dominos disk?

People shit on this stuff like it's terrible garbage that no one would want to play, but I remember playing Zelda on my friend's CD-I and being blown away by a video game having fluid animation and voice work. Up till then, I had only experienced NES games, and a few super Nintendo ones. But that shit was amazing to me. The IR remote control, on the other hand, wasn't.

Then there's was also virtual boy. I remember trying it out at a Sears and thinking how cool it was.

Just remembered that seeing Doom for the first time is another obvious one. Man that game was incredible when it came out.

Stepping out of the sewers in Oblivion for the first time. Nothing has really captured that feeling since.

Actually making it to level -1 in SMB after finding out how to do it from the TV show Video Game Power. I needed my NES Advantage to do it reliably, but it blew my mind to learn it was legit.

Everything about Metroid Prime. Incredible soundtrack, gorgeous scenery, interesting wildlife, challenging bosses/puzzles, and so so so much lore. It's still probably my all time favorite game. Can't wait for Prime 4 to come out!

Pairing two TVs and two Xbox consoles together for an eight player local Halo death match. Online gaming will never match the energy in that room.