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What were your (now retro, but not at the time) gaming wow moments?

I remember a few from various stages of my life (born 1984).

Seeing the demo footage of Sonic 2 in Woolworths and thinking the leaves falling down in Aquatic Ruin zone was so cool and advanced.

The original Sega arcade of Virtua Racing with the moving cars completely blew me away.

I remember my uncle loading up Cannon Fodder on his Amiga, and a REAL song with REAL music came out, along with REAL photos. I was amazed haha.

A few years on I remember a PlayStation demo disc having promo footage of the first Gran Turismo and it looked so real to me, I watched it over and over. The first Driver on PS1 looked absolutely amazing to me also.

ECB ,

Loading into World of War craft for the first time back in 2005 is probably the biggest.

Seeing all the people running around and doing their thing was incredible. It made me super excited to go explore the world.

numberfour002 ,

For me it was the original Resident Evil on the Playstation.

It was the first time I saw live-action digitized full-motion video on a gaming system. I know there were a lot of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in that era on other systems, but I didn’t own those other systems and I didn’t know anybody who did. So, it was all new to me once I played a Playstation.

Resident Evil was also the first time a video game had ever given me a jump scare. Early in the game a zombie doberman bursts through a window unexpectedly and I was hooked! I loved introducing my friends to the game, specifically so I could see their reaction when the dog shows up. So much fun.

Honestly seeing and hearing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo was kind of wow, too. The graphics boost compared to the 8-bit systems I was used to was incredible. And the sound quality compared to the other 16-bit systems I’d played (Genesis and TG-16) was a leap above. The experience probably pales in comparison to modern games, but back then there was wow factor to it.

To young me, Street Fighter 2 Turbo was pretty wow as well. It was “literally” the same as the arcade version to child me. I could not believe the home version was so close to the real thing, because prior generations of game systems like the NES couldn’t come close to that level of performance.

HexagonSun OP ,

Yeah, playing Resident Evil for the first time was something incredibly atmospheric and special. I rented it from Blockbuster and knew straight away I had to buy it.

Before it released my friend and I used to speed-run the Resident Evil 2 demo which let you play as far as you could get into the full game, but with an 8 minute time limit.

falk1856 ,

Born in 1980. Seeing the original Mortal Kombat arcade for the first time at a smoke-filled bowling alley that when I was in 7th grade was pretty awe inspiring.

Aside from that playing Wolfenstein 3d for the first time was really trippy.

HexagonSun OP ,

Yeah, I very nearly added seeing the Mortal Kombat arcade to my original post but decided maybe I was writing too much!

DoctorButts ,

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

HexagonSun OP ,

Shake it baby!

deuleb_biezelbob ,
@deuleb_biezelbob@programming.dev avatar

UT2004

towamo7603 ,

Boomer take, but going from NES to the SNES and seeing the advances in sprites and animations in Nintendo games like Donkey Kong Country, Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, and Super Metroid was really mind blowing.

Also seeing the early days of more cinematic approaches to storytelling in SquareSoft games like FF IV, VI, and Chrono Trigger. Those really forshadowed how games would mature into a serious storytelling medium for me. FF IV’s opening scene on the airship and the music is still burned into my brain.

The transition to 3D the following generation was also insanely impressive obviously, but none of those games have aged half as well as the 32 bit era.

ramblingsteve , (edited )
@ramblingsteve@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Rhynoplaz ,

We’re the only generation that grew up alongside video games. We watched them grow up into what they are today, and our kids don’t even know of a world without them.

I don’t know what “Age” we’re in right now, but I think 1970-2024+ should be referred to as the Video Game Age.

HexagonSun OP ,

I feel the same way about it being a privilege. I missed the earliest part… but even to have lived through the NES and Master System era through to today has been amazing.

Games will continue getting ever more impressive, but nobody again will witness the kind of seismic leaps in what games could accomplish that people saw between the 70s and 2000s.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

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.

PM_Your_Nudes_Please ,

My buddies and I had easy access to a theater, which had giant curved walls on each side of the stage. We hooked up three projectors to three Xboxes; One projector for the stage, and one for each of the curved walls. Then we ran them into the sound system.

We did it two or three times a week for months.

The funny part is that you could always tell who was screenlooking, because the screens were so big that you had to physically turn your head away from your own screen. And at that point you just die, cuz you start missing the people right in front of you.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

Any theatre that doesn’t facilitate this has my express permission to go out of business. That sounds incredible.

swordgeek ,

So many…

  • loading (from ¥) and playing Adventure on a PET 4004. It was breathtaking!
  • Wolf 3D on my first x86 machine.
  • DOOM! I spent all bloody day trying to download the shareware levels on the University campus, and ultimately, it was worth it.
  • Crying at the end of Grim Fandango
  • Mass Effect. All of it"
HexagonSun OP ,

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

EvilBit ,

I remember my brother telling me about Wolfenstein 3D. I insisted that something like that, that moved smoothly at your command in any direction instead of in clunky 90° turns and blockwise steps, was impossible with the current technology.

I was wrong.

Num10ck ,

you were right, the computers couldnt do the math in time. the trick was to precalculate the sin/cos tables for angle steps into tons of lookups instead.

EvilBit ,

It wasn’t just the trig tables, but realtime raycasting altogether felt like sorcery.

Kelly ,

And was re-released last week. I was pleased to see the 2024 console ports still support LAN play.

giddy ,
@giddy@aussie.zone avatar

Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64. The running animation was mind blowing for the time

APassenger ,

Pitfall on Atari 2600

Becaise I’m old, I guess. Pacman, too, but pitfall seemed more advanced.

the16bitgamer ,
@the16bitgamer@lemmy.world avatar

Booting up Mario Kart DS and seeing 3D on a portable game system. For years it was 2d portables, 3D consoles. But now both had 3D. My mind would have exploded if I ever saw the steam deck or switch.

MisterMoo ,

Playing Air Warrior II on Windows 95 in 1997. My dad and uncle lived in another state and we’d hop on AOL at a specified time and join a game. It was my first ever online game experience. I was 13. I hope kids today can still feel that total world-changing excitement that I did back then.

andrew_bidlaw ,
@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

Art direction in Comix Zone for Sega Genesis. After static cartoonish games it’s unbeliveable you can pull it off on the same hardware. The animated intro, the hand painting enemies as you go and these transitions between scenes were very impressive.

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