My fondest memory is from when Diablo 3 came out, waiting for a server.

Is there a description for the contest? (I guess it is lost in the incompatibility between the new GOG site and my pre Quantum FF browser?).

Edit: Looking at those other posts I guess I understood what this contest is all about. Will post a text later then - have to think about it :)

Some years ago I created a game to propose to my then girlfriend (no engines used, my own c++ code!). It was a retro side-scrolling space shooter, single-level which was divided into sections. When she would tackle each section she would be granted a specific item in her inventory (a diamond and her initials in tiles) and when she defeated the huge boss a ring would appear from within its belly. Then all of a sudden, the music would soften and all the items would come together in place to form a simple proposal :) The game was purposefully difficult to show her that marriage isn't easy and needs effort to get through obstacles (although real life does not usually have checkpoints). She was very touched and of course she said yes!

I have a number of moments in gaming that stick out to me still. So here's one that still makes me smile looking back.

Playing Command & Conquer at a young age was something special. I had these Micro Machines I used to collect that were from their military line-up. Little tanks, soldiers, planes, and warships. So seeing my little pixel army and commanding them around in real-time on my CRT display was amazing to me. Me and my dad would always go head to head and he'd show no mercy. But I was always so enthralled that I was playing virtual war with another human being I didn't care. It was definitely why I came to enjoy RTS for years to come. (I still hold out hope the C&C collection shows up here one day.)

The thing about the first C&C game though, is it can be pretty damn hard and tricky sometimes. Being so young meant that I sucked pretty bad at playing it. I didn't know how to formulate effective strategies yet. So when I got to a new level it was super exciting but also terrifying. Part of that excitement was in part because I knew I'd get to see a new FMV. I think C&C was the first game I played with FMV and seeing real people on the screen, talking to me like I was someone high up and important, was kind of fascinating to me. The CGI cutscenes looked real to me at the time.

Anyways, I always picked the bad guys in RTS first because it was fun to see their perspective for a change, and they usually had really interesting units and buildings. So, naturally, I was playing with the Brotherhood of Nod first in C&C. After struggling through the first few missions, you were always greeted by a man named Seth. He was supposedly the right hand man to Kane, the mysterious and almost god-like leader of the Brotherhood of Nod. As you progress, Seth gets noticeably more jealous and irritated by your success. So at one point he sends you on a suicide mission to attack the Pentagon in the U.S.

This is the cutscene.

BAM.

Just like that, out of nowhere. Seth gets his skull emptied, and Kane himself sits down and stares you in the face. He tells you he's Kane, and you work directly for him now from that point on. I remember sitting there with my jaw on the floor, thinking what the hell just happened?! I was so shook from that, that when the mission started I couldn't even think! I had to pause the game and collect myself!

Kane was hands down one of my all time favorite video game characters from that point on. Joseph Kucan aced his performance of him. It was simply flawless. What a badass moment that still gives me chills thinking about it!

For me, the one that sticks with me the most is when Pirates came out for the Commodore. The day it came out I went to the store and bought it and immediately went home to try it out. After waiting for it to load I started the game and then realized I needed to go to sleep, 23 hours later.

I have done this with Civilization, The first Railroad Tycoon as well as with Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Are gaming related karaoke videos count ? ;)

I remember this time, almost three years ago, when I entered a GOG contest ... and I'm still waiting to find out who won!

Seeing blood for the first time in a game from my first first-person game, when I keyboarded and tapped right ctrl to punch an Ettin in Hexen using the Fighter class only to see it collapse into a heap of blood with a gut churning noise. Nothing before this had been so dark and scary (only surpassed by my playing of Doom later on).

Thinking the first level which effectively serves as a tutorial was so mighty and daunting with its few traps and keys that upon leaving it would mean I had finished this strange game. My how very wrong was I. I needed a mammoth sized walkthrough to get around that gargantuan beast, or so it seemed so huge back in the day. But every time I found a new location, heard new music, saw new monsters, and found better weapons and artifacts, as well as solving even more complex puzzles, I was thoroughly immersed and eager to see what came next, despite being slow and terrible at FPS (especially platforming, which Hexen was fond of at times).

Also thinking the Chaos Serpent, the next new monster I saw was a boss because it looked huge and terrifying compared to the Ettin that came before it, despite being easily felled in a few blows I was awash with relief lol. Then amusingly fast forward to playing Heretic later on only to see the Chaos Serpent again near the end as a mount for D'Sparil had me going 'Hey, I remember you...'. And now it was as tough as a dump truck!

Sure hope GOG gets the Heretic/Hexen series someday now that they got SoF!

he-he

classy Gog PR example

Alright, seriously though, here's my real gaming memory:

It was the first time I had ever played Civilization III, or any Civilization game for that matter. I played everything random. I ended up playing as Germany. Fairly early in the game, I invaded my closest neighbour with a relatively small force - just to kind of test their strength sort of thing. My closest neighbour happened to be the French, and they happened to fold like a wet newspaper to my tiny little invading force. Emboldened by my success in France, I moved on ... and wound up getting my ass handed to me by the Americans and the Brits. It was such an amazing replay of history, and I was forever hooked on the Civilization series. While Civ 4 is often touted as the best, and Civ's 5 & 6 support Linux, this event still makes Civ 3 my favourite of the bunch (although, to be honest, I've never gone back to play 1 or 2).

We... may already have the winner, considering Panaias' story.

When I was a kid, my first computer was a hand me down laptop that I got from my late father. It was an old black behemoth. Had a huge 4GB hard drive. It was my gaming machine. I could run Diablo 2 on the lowest settings at a powerpoint presentaion speed. But I didnt care. Its what started my love for gaming as a whole. Looking back, playing Age of Empires 2, Diablo 2, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and Doom. I look back on those days with a tear in my eye. Its what brought me to GOG and now I will never leave. And now I can play all the games I used to watch him play. Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Heroes of Might and Magic and the early elder scrolls titles. In a way its kinda like playing with him again. I've watched him play probably hundreds of hours.

Silent Hill 2 is one of my fav games of all time. Survival horror at its best with one of the very weird ending scenes. :D

The D'Sparil fight in Heretic on the "Black plague possesses thee" difficulty.

After struggling for almost an entire day, constantly seeing him just teleport milliseconds before my Phoenix Rod fireballs would hit him, I was dying of frustration. The more damage you do to him, the more often he teleports. The whole fight was also basically on a timer because he would constantly spawn new and new Disciples to his side. After getting a decent amount of hits in on the big boss himself, most of my attempts ended by getting swarmed by tens and tens of his Disciples with no way of actually attacking or hitting D'Sparil himself through the literal wall of bodies before him. And dodging every projectile from the Disciples quickly becomes unfeasible once they reach critical amounts. I get killed once again, hopelessly in a corner after I can't dodge the spray of Disciples' shots anymore. Defeated, I utter "One last try" and proceed to load the save game. This was sometime around 6:30 AM after trying basically the whole night.

The attempt goes on as usual. The first few hits on him are easy but with each additional one, the frequency of his teleports increases. After a while I get the feeling that I hit him a few more times than usual. My hopes go up but he is still not dying. Getting more hits on him is becoming more and more difficult, the Disciples keep piling up and I feel I'm running out of time. The projectiles start hitting me as it is no longer possible to dodge them. All symptoms of yet another failed attempt. I run around like a rabbit on adrenaline, trying to dodge and weave my way through the horde to D'Sparil, getting hit more and more often. But then I encounter a blob of Disciples that was a little too big and there was no way around them. "That's it." I thought to myself. And suddenly, I hear something strange. The sound of D'Sparil dying. The host of Disciples he has summoned crumbled all around me and then there was silence. Not fully understanding what just happened and staring aimlessly at the screen, one hit away from death that would have come in the next few seconds at most, it finally clicked with me. One of the stray Disciples' projectiles must have finished D'Sparil off. Even through all his teleporting, he also couldn't dodge the storm of projectiles from his followers and met his death by one of them.

What happened next can only be described by the word "Joy".