Yep, toxicTom's story takes second so far, but it'll be one hell of a feat for anyone to challenge Panaias.
Don't have anything epic, but there are a bunch that come to mind quickly. Not including moments scraping through by the skin of my teeth or beating something after dozens or hundreds of failures, have plenty of those, probably so many that they just crowd together and cancel each other out, and the frustration and feeling of accomplishment probably cancel each other out too. One I recall is one where that didn't happen because I hated the game so there was little enjoyment or accomplishment to speak of, was just stubborn to finish it if I was stubborn enough to struggle through - referring to the end of Diablo 2's expansion, when basically hitting meant dying, and I spent hours just doing that, go in, 1-2 hits, die, recover everything plus companion, repeat, and in between send annoyed messages to a then-friend about it, eventually managing to win just before running out of the money gathered carefully throughout the whole game.
But anyway, some of the more memorable ones. Sexual content warning for the first, in case anyone may be bothered. And first four aren't directly gaming events, but there are games involved.
- Me and my gf were from different cities, but before I moved in with her after a year and a bit (and her leaving almost 2 years after that ...), we'd be spending weeks at a time together, either me there or her here. And it was during such a time when she was here that I was playing Arcanum while she was in bed. At some point she starts to giggle, I turn to look and realize she had just, er, handled matters herself. I ask why did she do that and she said it seemed I was busy so she took care of herself. I asked if she considered telling me she was in the mood to see what I’d do before deciding I wouldn’t care and she said she just didn’t think it was the case. Lovely, ain't it? :))
- Also in that period, was trying to make a game in RPG Maker 2000. Had basically stopped adding to it by the time I moved in with her, but I took it with me on a CD and eventually decided to go through it carefully and start fixing bugs and things that didn't seem right. Spent some 2 months doing that, maybe not much at a time but quite clearly added up to over 100 hours, maybe well over... And one day there was a HDD failure, attempting to fix stuff only made it impossible to even recover data properly, and there went all my work, and I was left with just the CD with how the game was before all of that was done. Never touched it again, and then also lost it when ending up back here. Forgot about it when I packed, not that I was in any state to think of anything at the time, and when I told her about it when she was back there (complicated story) she sent me a box with probably every CD she could find not having been burned by her (drivers, pirated stuff, magazine disks, I think some of her mother's stuff too) except the one with that game. Not suspecting any ill intent, likely she didn't look one way or the other, just set aside what she knew was hers and sent everything else over, so either she mistook that one for one of hers or it got misplaced and didn't find it at all. But end result is that it remained lost.
- And last one from that period, was after I moved in but before I had my computer brought over as well, and we were alternating between having their computer in our room and in her brother's, and it was while it was in her brother's room that he was sleeping and I was there on the computer, I believe playing Materia Magica, though there's also a chance it was while I was fooling around in Counter Strike in the network there, lacking anything I actually cared to play for a while. Well, suddenly he sat right up, looked straight at me, cursed up a storm... then just went right back to sleep. Apparently had no memory of it the next day, but I was sitting there wondering what the heck did I do.
- Last one not actually about a game, I was little, and had Prehistorik 2 on a floppy, I guess dad had brought it after having somebody copy it from him or something, and it was in the drive since I kept playing it. But I was also poking around all over, and since the computer was running DOS with Norton Commander for interface, I was going through the menus and thought "format" sounded interesting. I mean, it sounded like it changed the format of something, to make it look different, right? So I clicked that and saw it had C preselected, by which I assumed that was the current format, so I changed it to the other option, which was A. Even proudly announced to my mother, who was none the wiser, that I'm trying to see what changing the format from C to A will make it look like. Realized as it was about 2/3 of the way through formatting the disk with the game what was actually happened, and yanked the disk right out, but of course that was it for my game.
- An actual gaming moment, the final battle from Escape from Monkey Island. [Spoiler] Now both monkey "mechs" are invincible, so there's no way to actually win, but I didn't know that and kept "fighting" away to the best of my ability for over 1h, wondering how long it'll take before what I assumed was "health" above what could be displayed on screen would be eroded and I'd start seeing "damage", until I just happened to draw a turn, not really on purpose... Noticed what happened, but still wasn't sure, so did a few more "correct" ones, but then drew again and realized I was on to something, so did it a third time and finally won. Sort of stood there after that thinking wait, I just needed 3 moves but instead I stood here for, if I remember correctly, 1h15m carefully fighting correctly move by move even though none of that actually did anything???
- Another one, in BroodWar. My strategy was turtling (one reason why I suck at RTSs and eventually gave up trying, since they tend to favor rushing and expansion), kick ass defense, occasional targeted attacks when possible but mainly just wait for the AI to drain the map of resources, then move forward. And there was one particular Zerg scenario when the map was really filled with enemies and I managed to make myself some elbow room but otherwise largely stayed in my corner and waited it out as wave after wave after wave broke before my defenses, then when it died out I also used every scrap of resources I still had to make over 100 units and went forward to smash through. Considering all the resources and time the AI had, don't think it was easy, but it sure made for some fighting I doubt the game was designed for. (I'll also add here that the BW disk I had gotten from someone was responsible for the one major infection I ever had on a computer I was the primary user of, with CIH. Fortunately noticed strange behavior and scanned and cleaned it all up... just days before it'd have triggered.)
- Last one, Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Played it a lot back in the day, but I only once got to the end of the timeline, in 2050, and that was when I just let it run when dad called me to dinner, so I went there for a bit, then passed in front of my room on my way to the bathroom, seeing a newspaper on the screen. So I assumed it was paused, since something like that had showed up, and didn't stop to actually look, coming back after eating to see the newspaper gone. Previous save was too distant and I didn't care to go back to it, and I never again got to that point, so before checking on YT (actually recently) I had no idea what that newspaper signified or said.
Oh, as for an experience that's in no way personal... The haunted hotel bit in Bloodlines played at night, in the dark, with headphones.
