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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.

B0NK3RS ,
@B0NK3RS@lemmy.world avatar

Biggest for me would be going online with the Dreamcast. At home I was online with the DC before we had a PC so used it quite a lot.

I probably spent to much time on Dreamarena chat rooms and playing PSO with randoms.

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.

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.

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"
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.

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.

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

There are some very memorable games.

No game has ever matched the freedom of Morrowind. You are only limited by yourself. Even Oblivion and Skyrim feel restricted by the game itself.

Half-Life 2 interacting with the environment. I must have played with the can for hours the first time.

Final Fantasy VIII though was the single most impressive game for the hardware it came out on. The character models being actual human proportion, the summons looking like actual monsters, and the FMVs where people look like damn people in a movie.

In the same vein, FFX being described as looking like FFVIII’s FMVs but all the time. And then living up to the hype.

RightHandOfIkaros , (edited )

Morrowind mentioned, based comment.

Subtracty ,

Playing Call of Duty World at War for the first time, if that counts as retro. I had always played co-op games with my brother, and when he was gone for a weekend, I decided to try and play for myself. Spent countless hours replaying missions until I finally beat the campaign. And if I remember correctly, it drops you straight into zombies with no warning. I remember it being way past my bedtime, sitting alone in the dark. I was absolutely terrified because I was genuinely shocked by the premise and maybe too young for something so scary. Didn’t sleep at all that night.

kratoz29 ,

Playing Mario Kart DS with people I did not know.

The DS was my entry to the beautiful world of online gaming (it was free, can you believe it?).

And now I see this world kinda meh, perhaps I play (or not) the wrong games, but nothing can beat a perfect 1 player game.

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!

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