This is kind of a modification of a post I create a while back on the indie Hamumu forums. Basically I just think it'd be neat to hear about those near-ecstasy moments in your personal gaming history. If you can't remember very well, I think you could just name or discuss the game in general.

Here are some of mine (modified copy-pasta from Hamumu):


" - Frogger 3D [1997 Hasbro Interactive] The main two things I remember are discovering what the golden frogs did (they unlocked other zones), and beating the last level of the Sewer Zone, essentially winning the game and feeling a big sense of achievement. These days I don't think I could ever do the latter thing again without cheating in some way; I've gotten rather "soft" when it comes to games, and think games should focus more on fun rather than being too challenging. But I digress...

- Frogger 2:Swampy's Revenge As I note with Pac-Man: AiT, I loved the colorful graphics (both games came out in 2000), and being able to beat it relatively easily was very cool, too.

- Pac-Man: Adventures in Time The game was tough (I got to about halfway before all my lives ran out; that lives system made absurd, imo) but fun; I loved the secret little unlockable movies, and still adore the colorful graphics and graphics engine.

- Speedy Eggbert Honestly, the best memory was getting it to work on the buggy PC we had; for some reason, the install option took forever to start up, and I was extremely depressed until it finally did. Then I experienced the wonders of Eggbert/Blupi. I've never really owned a video game system before that, although I loved side-scrollers when I played at friends or Wal-Mart, so getting this to work, playing it, and creating my own levels was an absolute joy at the time. I don't play much anymore, but I've decided to call this my favorite game of all time. :)

- Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese (This is actually a game I bought off Hamumu) This sorta relates to another game from that site, Spooky Castle. About an hour or so into starting the game, I was playing through one of the original creator's worlds (players can create their own), and it struck me that I now owned a HUGE version of Spooky Castle , which was awesome because I liked that game! They're both what we refer to as "2.D action-RPG" games; I liked 'em both because they /looked/ like they could be turn based (and could play on almost any computer), but were action-based (you could get all kinds of weaponry and just start slicing into the "baddies".)

(Here's a little plug for the site: [url]http://hamumu.com/game.php[/url])

- The first two Pajama Sams: I loved the exploration, logical problem-solving, Sam's attitude, the goofy characters, and the silly little secrets/animations everywhere, in these games. The worlds overall worked quite well, and there was only one time I got really stuck, because it wasn't obvious where I was suppose to go. Humongous Entertainment adventure games were pretty much my early childhood; I wish more games nowadays used such classic animation.

- Half-Life This was a darker love, if you will; there was a It's-me-against-the-world-baby kinda quality about the game. Plus, I didn't have Internet at the time, nor had I played many M-rated fps games prior to this one, so I didn't know hardly anything about HL or its storyline, so the lack of an explanation about what was happening in the game also drew me in! Even more so than HL2, because there characters are always chit-chatting about what's going on, and that's ... kinda bleh to me. HL2 was great, don't get me wrong, but the memories for it aren't as significant.

- Streets of Simcity / Simcopter These games were both rather weird and Streets of Simcity had a wonky difficulty curve, but I loved the freedom in the games (I do Simcopter let you do more stuff while walking around though), the action-violence, and (esp. in Streets) the music. Check out the bluegrass on YT if that's a genre you love! The other stuff in Streets is high-qual, but it's mostly lyricless and repetative, so that may be a turn-off for you, but I thought it was sweet, esp. the rock station. Simcopter had some sweet tunes too (including a classical station!), but the quality was much less.

- Lego Island We had a romantic journey, Lego Island and I. Of course I was infatuated with Legos at the time, and my love first started when I watched two separate friends play Lego Island, and I tried to play as often as possible. :) Eventually, I bought my own copy (probably from Toys R Us), and tried to play it at home, but the computer froze up whenever the intro movie ended, in the Infomaniac's station. (I didn't understand how to switch between 3D options at the time.)
So, rather sad, I eventually was able to play it on my grandma's computer, because her machine was quite new at the time and had Win98 and a 3D accelerator (remember those?). Oh, the joy! It was wondrous being able to move freely about the island and discover lots of little secrets, race, run into people, catch the Brickster, and listen to the wonderful music. And so after that, I tried to go over to my grandmothers as much as possible. :P
(Eventually I learned how to changed the graphics settings so that the game worked on our computer at home, but the significance had died down by then.)
My youngest brother liked a lot of my older games and enjoys tinkering around in it occasionally."

EDIT: Not from the forum.

Tomb Raider II (Demo), III (Demo) and III - I was a bit late in coming to the Tomb Raider party (played around '02), but Lara Croft is significant because those games introduced me to more action-y/shooter games than I had played previously. The Tomb Raider II Demo I bought for 5 bucks from a classmate (kind of a ripoff, wouldn't you say?), and I enjoyed the 3D freedom, even though the game was linear. The Special Edition disc (a way of getting around calling it a "demo") claimed to have three levels (Great Wall, Venice, and a sunken ocean liner), but for some reason I could only reach the first two; the game would never take me to the third, instead back to the main menu... but I digress... it was still fun, and iirc had a Tomb Raider III demo included.
I bought Tomb Raider 3 during my 8th grade class end-of-year trip, and enjoyed it even though I couldn't make it past the first boss. (Fortunately I knew about the concept of a cheat code - lol - and had access to the internet at school.) The London Underground, the jungle/crashed plane with more dinosaurs, Antarctica - the puzzles were sometimes seemed absurd, but I could forgave for that because of the sweet, sweet 3D "freedom". (Realize that we didn't get a Win98 computer until about 2001.)

And I must admit the fact that the main character was a sexy female with juicy ... thighs probably added to my love of the series (and many others). As Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw did, I would sometimes back her into a corner so the camera would swing around to get a frontal look. :P I'm sure the sexuality helped sell it back then, and still does to some degree, but I also think since so many games nowadays have sexy female characters that the Tomb Raider series has started to mature, slightly.

A lot of my best moments come from long years go by, but here are a couple that I remember:

Actually beating Friday the 13th on the old NES. The final battle with Jason was just crazy. I'm throwing axes at him, he's wailing on me with a machete. I'm hitting him more often, but his hits are doing more damage. Our life bars are racing to the botom. I swear one more hit and he would have had me. But, I beat him. It was ultra-gratifying because that was one of the most difficult games I played on that system. It's one of the rare times I truly felt spent after playing a game.

The first time I fired up NHL 93 on the Sega Genesis. I've always been a huge hockey fan, but up until that point all hockey fare on gaming systems had been on the order of Blades of Steel. Buth this...wow. NHL teams and players? The physics of skating, turning , etc? One-timers? Fights that could end with a KO? I was hooked. Completely and utterly hooked. I just couldn't get enough of the game. I don't know that I'll ever experience that sort of Shangri-La moment in gaming again.

Ha ha, I think the Angry Video Game Nerd tried playing that. Needless to say, he was not happy with it. I thought it was pretty much dead after reaching the 3rd page. Thanks for the revival; I enjoy hearing about other people's great moments. I recall seeing a thread on Reddit (yeah) called "Why Deus Ex Is So Great" or something like that. The main post was a picture of a flow chart for a single mission in that game - there were probably a dozen or more ways to accomplish the task, and the lines interwove with each other this way and that. X) Yeah, I'm not real technical, but it's obvious that the game gave you a lot of choices and freedom. I haven't played it, so here's to hoping (like everyone else) that GoG can get it up here eventually! EDIT: Oh, so Deus Ex is on Steam? :-/ Well, I could get it when I go back to university, but not during the summer.

Seeing and playing Defender of the Crown on the Amiga for the first time; wow. I'd gone from playing games on the Spectrum and C64 with what I thought at the time had good graphics (I didn't know any better) but then DOTC came along and I was stunned. Such a massive jump up in graphics (and sound).

I still have fond memories of this game (and other cinemaware games) on the Amiga.

It came when realizing that games can have a physical effect.

We installed Doom on the PC in our shop aboard ship. The first "realistic" mainstream 3D shooter I remember playing. Anyway, we had been playing it for a month or two after hours... and then we went out to sea. We were on a really big ship so the motion of the water gave it gentle roll - the thing would put you to sleep even if you were wide awake. Anyway, in Doom the screen takes on a bit of a running motion as you move around the levels - you know, swaying side-to-side. The timing of the swaying did not match the rolling of the ship so our inner ears were going haywire within 3 - 5 minutes. We'd play until our stomachs felt funny, and then switch with someone else and go stand outside on deck for a while to get some fresh air and fix our equilibrium. And then back inside for another 3 - 5 minutes of play.

One I can remember off hand is from the first Tomb Raider.... At one point there is an giant sphinx underground...if you don't remember what I'm talking about oh well.... anyway at about this point I was about done playing for a bit but I wanted to end in a blaze of glory so I ran up to the head of the sphinx and dove headfirst (literally, you could do that in Tomb Raider if you didn't know) and hit the ground head first.... and lived XD

My dad pressing in the "Power" button on the Nintendo for the first time and saying "Look at this! Now you can play Mario at home!" Thinking of course that I'd just play it occasionally between doing whatever it was normal kids did. He had no idea what he created...

While I had played Riven before at my aunt's house, Myst IV was the game that really brought me into the series. I have never played a game before or after that matched the production values, while retaining a similar gameplay style. There's just something so vivid and fascinating about the way each particular world in that game is built. It's also the last great use of FMV characters in CG backgrounds.

It's a game that's truly near and dear to my heart, and easily my favorite Myst title. It inspired me to create several fake books that detailed entire worlds, trying to replicate how I thought the D'ni wrote. Of course, I usually switched to writing fake journals shortly after that. You know what more games need these days? Well-written fake journals used for exposition and embellishment of the world and story.

Going to my grandparent's house and sitting down and playing X-Com, building my base, getting down to business, getting past a couple early missions, then completely buggering up and having the aliens take over and kill off all of humanity.

Also watching my uncle play Dungeon Keeper 2. And him playing some game, I think it was an adventure game, that I couldn't watch, and trying to watch anyways. I wish I could remember what game it was...

And watching my dad play Baldur's Gate.

Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis, it was the first and the best adventure game i played and it got me into the other adventure games,it had everything multiple paths, difficulty and jokes being, watched the films after playing the game they were awesome.
play it if you haven't played it yet

Playing the Magnavox Odyssey at my grandparents' house during the holidays in Fall/Winter of '72. Followed later by them getting an Atari 2600 before we got our own at home.
Gotta love Grandparents on the cutting edge of technology.

Hum, I feel like there should be a thread on this topic already. Anyway.....

- Prince of Persia: the first time I saved the Princess, and then the first time I went below the 30-minutes limit of the overall 60 minutes available to complete the game. Heck, I'm still here trying to lower my records and refine my platforming/fighting skills :-P

- Half-Life 2: the first time I installed the damn game. It was during Christmas time (2004, maybe), I couldn't go away from the PC during the following 5-6 hours....

- Another World/Out of this World: the first time I completed the game. Heck, I cried....

- Ghosts'n Goblins: playing it in the arcades, when I was so young I had to raise my sight to see what was on the screen. One of my golden gaming periods....

- Advanced Dungeon's and Dragons: on the Intellivision. This game made me shake due to stress. Pure atmosphere...

Etc., etc., etc....

ok here are some memories from myself:

Half-Life 1:
I am somewhere in those tunnels, and som of those SWAT guys or whatever special force that is have a shootout with me. I go hide around the corner, waiting to pick some stupid AI enemies one by one, all of a sudden, there comes a grenade flying from the other way around. Those bastards decided to flank me and stuff o_O.

Quake 1:
I dont know the proper names, but there are the "normal" enemies, just guys with a gun, and those ork like types with a grenade thrower. And the fun thing in quakes was, if some enemy hits another one, they go to war with each other, so there was some fighting going on, that grenade ork looking around to find the enemy, and you know that one scene in Rambo 3 i think, where Rambo rises guns blasing from the water? The same thing, normal gun guy rises from the water and shoots the grenade ork to hell.

Riddick:
I am sneaking around in some kind of cave, and at least 3 to 5 guards are patrolling. There are some lamps everywhere. Little cover, little darkness to hide in. About 3 minuts later everyone but me is dead without anybody noticing.

Swat 4:
The first time accomplishing a mission makes you feel so macho. Storming into a room and having to shout before you can defend yourself makes you feel invincible.

Planescape Torment:
I wont spoil what exactly happened, but it has something to do with something written somewhere ....

Metal Gear Games: Every! Singel! Moment!

There is indeed another thread and you even participated in it. But unfortunately it died pretty fast. I hope it doesn't happen to this one.

- X-Wing: During one of the missions I lost my shields, my sensors, my computer, and my R2 unit.;-) And on top of it there was this enervating continuous buzzing alarm, indicating an ejection seat malfunction. Surrounded by 3 tie-fighter I still managed to survive and shoot them down.

- X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter: Mission 7 of the rebel campaign. Over 20 minutes non-stop action. And no quicksave function either.

- I-War 1: First roundtrip around Jupiter (2nd Mission). Making every other space fight sim obsolete.

- Nexus: The Jupiter incident: The first time I used an (shield) overload bomb. Boom! (Where are my sunglasses? ;-)