Still remember my finest multiplayer moment with the original Homeworld at a high school LAN party back in the day: I sacrificed all of my small fighters and bombers in a massive suicide attack of my buddy, say Kevin's, frigate/battleship fleet. He was far too impressed with how he was butchering my attack to hear the one thing you have to always listen out for : “Mothership under attack”. I had teleported every single one of my, about 20, ion frigates to his mothership and was slowly ripping it to shreds. Kevin’s sister even walked by and he gloated to her in front of me about how he was busy wiping out all of my ships. Then, as the last of my fighters disappeared into a fireball, and with a supremely smug expression on his face, he heard the crackling over his com : “Mothership destroyed” :D

My youngest brother would invite me to play Resident Evil with him on PlayStation. I am a little bit colorblind. most of the time it doesn't matter in the slightest. But, while playing RE, we would visit the map page to see where we needed to go. One time, we had been almost everywhere so we were studying the map, and my brother says, "Oh, we need to go unlock that door." I said, "What locked door?"" He says, "the one marked with the blinking red bar." I simply could not see the blinking red bar at all.

Another time when I was very sick for several days, same brother loaned me his PS2 and the light gun and his copy of House of the Dead. It was even more fun with a fever. Not really sure how far I got in the game, but pretty far.

How come I noticed this thread just now?

Gaming moment #1:

When me and my brother were 9 respectively 12 years old, we shared a C64.

We played whatever game we could lay our hands on. One of the first games we ever got, was "Kaiser", a turn based strategy game in which the goal was to be the first to become "Kaiser" (=emperor).
https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Kaiser

Somehow, we never managed to achieve that goal while playing the game in hotseat mode against each other/with our friends.

Some sunday, my brother was invited to a birthday party of a classmate, and so I ended up playing "Kaiser" on my own.

As these things usually go, with no one around to mess your game up, I managed to become Kaiser eventually. Oh what a joy!
However...my brother was not there, and he surely would doubt, that I managed to beat the game, if I could not present some evidence to him.

Remember - this was 1984 - no smartphones with build-in cameras around.

So, what did I do?
Easy. Since the game ended with the crowning ceremony, I decided to let the C64 run, until my brother returned from the party...which was about five to six hours later.

Which of course meant, I could not play anything else during that time...on a sunday...with no one around to play anything non-computer related.

But boy - was it worth the face of my brother, when I presented him the screen of my crowning. ;)
https://www.c64-wiki.de/images/a/aa/Kroenung_zum_Kaiser.gif (not my crowning - but you get the idea)

Gaming moment #2:

Was essentially the same as the first one, but this time with the game "Hanse" (practically the predecessor of the game "Der Patrizier/The Patrician") and two years later, in 1986.
https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Hanse

I can't remember why my brother was away that day (school trip?), but he was away, and so I decided to play on my own - despite having promised to my brother, that I wouldn't do that (we were really competitive at that time, and he didn't want me to win this game, too).

Well - I played, I won, and I let the C64 run to present the endscreen as evidence to my brother.
He was not amused. Actually he was pretty pissed. But I didn't care - I had won. ;)

Gaming moment #3:

For a while I was pretty obsessed with playing "Football Manager" on the C64.
https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/Football_Manager

Usually I never made it too far up the ladder of success, but some sunday (what was it with these sundays?) I had a run...had started playing very early (rest of the family was still asleep) and made it through premier league, had only two or three games left to win - and then my mom came into my bedroom and said "enough computer for today, you know we are invited to aunt Lottie - end the game now, we've got to go!"

A look in her face made it pretty clear that she had no interest in any arguments, and since she had in the past taken to some desperate measures to stop me and my brother from playing (involving, but not restricted to, turning off the fuse) and I definitely didn't want that to happen before I could save my game, I begged for just two minutes...just enough time to save and switch off the C64 properly.

Well, to my mom's credit - she granted me these two minutes.
However...when I tried to save the game, a message appeared on the screen "insert tape and press record".

Now, that wouldn't have been a problem - if I had had the Datasette connected to the C64 at that time. But I hadn't. I had the 1541 floppy disk drive connected, because the game was on disk - not on tape (don't ask - it was more innocent times, back then).

Ok...what to do? Of course I had a Datasette, so I only had to connect that to the C64 and all would be fine, no?
No!

Turned out, the C64 didn't like it when you connected a datasette while it was running.

Oh sure...the tape started to run...but it didn't save my game.
And I couldn't even return to my game and just let the C64 run, until we would come home again...the game had crashed.

Hours of successful team management - all for nothing.

Football Manager never was the same for me...I could never bring up the same enthusiasm as on that fateful sunday morning.

I remember playing Diablo II and reaching Travincal in Act 3 and after destroying the Compelling Orb I tried entering Durance of Hate and the game crashed. I tried loading the last save but every time I tried entering Durance of Hate the game crashed. Uninstalling and reinstalling didn't solve my problem. Apparently I was in possession of a faulty disc which resulted every time in a corrupted installation. It took me another couple of years to get a new copy of the game and finally finish the game.

I have had a lot of memorable gaming moments, but there is one I still remember with a smile on my face.

It happened many years ago: I was at school and, during recreation time, I was summoned by a teacher of another class, a person I've never met before. I went to the other class wondering if I had done some mischief I couldn't remember of.
When I finally met her, I discovered that she somehow had known that I had completed "Prince of Persia 2" and wanted to get some hints to pass an hard part!


Thank you GOG for both this giveaway and "Shadow Warrior 2" but, most of all, thank you for being unique, so different from the other stores.

I got one to share

Way back in my young years, 12 or so, videoclubs and gaming cafes were a way more popular thing, and there was one where my buddies back then and me would go every afternoon we could after class. Had a big room with consoles and monitors and a row for computers, but we always went with the consoles and played stuff like Tekken or to beat each other's score in Crazy Taxi, basicaly anything that would let us place against one another on the consoles.

One day a woman showed up with what we instantly recognized as a retarded kid: round face, weird eyes, big, dumbfounded smile, and asked if he could play for a while. The owner said fine of course, but since we were using the consoles he'd have to wait: she offered then to pay for an extra hour if we could let him play because they had to leave after a while.
Not wanting to be rude to an old woman and a down kid, we backed, but then he asked us if we could play with him: he was surprisingly (for all the expectations we had for him back then) good, and managed to beat us some times, and we beat him some times too. All good, after an hour or so they left and we went back to our stuff.

They showed up the next day, and asked for the same, and again we did the same, and some other day, the same. Eventualy, without us even realizing it, he became a regular and coined one of the most common phrases in the place "Can you give me a Coke? Mama will come later and pay", because he'd have at least 1 everyday he showed up. Turned up a good fellow to play with and he even learned to come on his own and wait for her mother there with us.

In the end, there would be small tournaments and first to lose would end up paying for his Coke as punishment, and winner would get paid the next day's full run. Good fun.

Regrettably, after a year or so it seemed that the owner had to close, and called his mother to tell her not to allow him to come alone the day of closure. Told us that she asked him if we could make a farewell party and have a good time with the kid, and she even showed up and thanked all of us for being so good with him because he had problems in his school (he went to one different from us) and she was concerned about him not having anyone to hang around with or to leave him with.

He had fun, we had fun, owner had a nice gesture and gave him a bunch of games and stuff that he wouldn't use anymore since he was closing. After that, we met sometimes but without having a common place to meet that both he and us could use, we lost touch eventualy.

To this day the surviving members of the group still remember him fondly and joke around the Coke stuff. Looking back, it sank on us how little we cared about him having Down beyond the first meeting. How all we knew and bothered about him was that he was funny and he would play games with us.

We met a good kid through games, and made his life better through them as well.

Getting Riven for my 10th or 11th birthday was absolutely magic and it completely sucked me in. I'd already played Myst with my dad a few years earlier but Riven really grabbed me hard. Of course it was literally years before I completed it, but apparently back then I had the patience to be stuck for weeks on end and just keep playing.

I still remember how my brother told me that I beat NWN1 ch2 in one day when I was teenager. Back then, I played NWN1 non stop and when my brother introduce me to NWN2 I played that for whole day, too. He's also the one who introduced me to Zeus + Poseidon Acropolis and other city building games. RPGs and simulations are still my prefered genre.

Great story. Thanks for sharing, and *hugs*.
Same here ;-(

Hey there! Well, if I find the time to look hard enough in my numerous external drives I will probably find the source files :) I really liked your story about the nightmare, I mean really, who can force themselves back into a dream at will? Also, lots of great stories and memories in this thread! It is peaceful and sincere threads like this that reminds me of how great the GOG community is!

One more turn and I go to bed...
Repeat for about 20 years
I can't barely remember how sleeping was...

I'd be curious to see your proposal game :-)

About the dream... I think it worked because several things came together. When I first played Doom I was really scared - like after playing I was scared shitless walking at night through the city with wind rustling in the wayside bushes... At the time it looked very real (people were calling it "photorealistic" back then, lol...) and I felt very vulnerable and more like "the hunted" than "the hunter". And that changed when I learned the game and could routinely beat it on Ultra-Violence. Add the decaying environment, hallways, stairs and it was rather similar to the nightmare. So I probably went like "I know this situation, and I've dealt with it before" and I took the shotgun (for me still THE iconic FPS weapon) and turned from hunted to hunter in my dream too.
It just happened. After that I did "return to the dream with a new hand" many times. Especially when it comes to bad dreams. Though not always.

Recently I had another gaming related dream:
Sunset, a dark forest with golden light flickering through the treetops. I'm running from a horde of vile creatures - I think Goblins or Orcs - might be inspired by that scene in The Hobbit or LotR (mixing them up sometimes).
Anyway - it wasn't a real nightmare, running from them just seemed like the best thing to do, since they were many of them.
So I ran, in twilight, and suddenly there were no trees but void - an abyss before me. I barely skidded to a halt and didn't fall - dead end?
No - there's a rock needle just ahead, with a few brave pines clinging to it - and I somehow knew I had to get over there and I would be safe. It was a fact.

I had been pretty good at running from "The Horde" so I knew a had a few moments before they got to me. So I went back a few steps and took a running start to leap over... and I lept... and missed by a few inches.

I fell...

(at this point - within the dream - expected to wake up, grab my shotgun and fight The Horde)

And all went dark. But I didn't wake up - instead letters appeared floating in front of me in the darkness:

GAME OVER

and then I remembered: I quicksaved just before I took the jump - so I loaded the save, tried again and made it.
Then I woke up.

I got my picture in the paper and a small scholorship prize because my hobby was making terrible Klik and Play games.

not really interesting or exciting like some people's stories are.

My favorite memory is exactly the same as the last time we were asked to share them so here it goes:

It was a very rainy summer so my friends were playing games all day long (ok, ok, we did play games on sunny days too). We were getting bored a bit (we didn’t have so many games back in 90s) so we started to make some bets like beat a game without taking any damage (Prince of Persia), finish a difficult mission without producing your most powerful unit (Dune 2, last Atreides mission, without siege tank). Eventually I was challenged too and my task was to beat Another World without dying even once. If you played the game you should know how hard it was! Believe it or not I managed to accomplish it! First I had to train a lot: I reloaded each section I moved to next one only when my success ratio was above 90%. Then I practiced a few sections in a row and eventually tried to beat the whole game. And I did it! I think it’s still my most hardcore gaming achievement. For winning the bet a girl with the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard agreed to recite The Great Improvisation from Dziady (Adam Mickiewicz) and it was awesome! Yeah, that’s gotta be my favorite gaming memory!

I'm in. Some spoilers ahead, go play Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines if you haven't already.

I love to be able to affect the plot and outcome of the games I play. So my go to is finding RPGs and getting into the story. The good ones are the ones that give you enough freedom to insert yourself while still telling a story. The best ones are the ones where playing the story affects you. One of my favorite RPGs of all time is Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

I played as a Nosferatu whose curse causes them to become extremely deformed and inhuman in appearance like count orlock from the movie. I had to crawl through the sewers to get around town otherwise the humans would panic and run screaming and I would get penalized for breaking the masquerade. The NPCs who are essential to the game would still talk to me, but everyone had a snide remark about my looks or my smell, and non-essential ones would just call me a freak and run.

I usually role-play as the good guy in my games because that's who I am day to day, I find it hard to deliberately make the bad decision. When I came across Heather Poe in the hospital I saved her without a second thought. But Lacroix kept sending me on errands and dominating me if I tried to protest and as the lowest on the totem pole I just kept getting abuse from everyone else. As the game continued to progress the treatment started to get to me. My morality started slipping and I started getting nastier especially when something went wrong or a new hurdle was thrown at me.

When Heather reappeared and offered to move in with me I was delighted. Finally I had a normal person who treated me like I as still beautiful. I came to view her as the only one on my side in a sea of characters who all wanted me to do things for them. But she wanted something from me too, my blood which made her feel powerful and special, loving me was just a side effect. I started to resent her for it while continuing to rely on her for emotional support. I would be harsh with her in the few conversations we had and made her change her appearance constantly like I was playing dress up with a doll. When she told me she was scared I told her to stop whining because I didn't actually think anything bad would happen to her.

When she was finally killed near the ending my character died a little inside, I was horrified and disgusted with myself. When I was given power over another person I abused it to the point I had gotten them killed. I was a monster just like everyone said when they saw me, on both sides of my face and I hadn't even noticed till then. Once I had had my revenge I decided that if I was going to be a monster I was going to at least be a powerful one. Several characters throughout the game had warned me that Lacroix was no good, but I figured I had already screwed everything up and I was too far gone. So I might as well go for the full evil ending and cause the end of the world with him. When Lacroix opened the sarcophagus and the bomb started ticking down I had just enough time to think "yep, I deserved this" before everything blew up.

They say nobody knows how they will act in a situation until they are tested. I always liked to imagine that I would pass with flying colors, but even when it was just a game with zero stakes I didn't. The fact that games can make you invest and learn about yourself like that is what I think makes them truly unique in media.

(The picture is after the hotel fight, I was practically dead and decided to drain a homeless guy wandering through an alley by himself. I though he would be safe to drink because I had taken care of the plague-bearers already, but it ended up being bad blood and my character threw it up. But it made them look pretty much like I felt at the moment.)