There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

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.

9point6 ,

But of an odd one, but who remembers the dos installer for the original command & conquer?

DoctorButts ,

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

Artemis ,

Beating the first Baldur’s Gate after numerous (hundreds?) attempts over the years when I was 19-ish (ca. 2009). I recall actually tearing up quite heavily 😂. Even after all these years, still my absolute favourite game for replay (when I get the chance!).

You_are_dust ,

I remember being in like a GameStop or whatever the store was prior to that in my area. The tvs in the store were playing a teaser for the new Zelda game that was going to be coming out. I think this might have been like very early concept of windwaker before they went with the cartoon cell shaded style. I remember there was a sword fight between I think Link and Ganon. I remember thinking that games had peaked at that point. Of course we didn’t end up getting exactly that, but the memory remains.

zcd ,

Final Fantasy 6, the three mechs marching through the snow in 3d… followed by the emotional impact of the game elevated gaming to another level I had never before seen

Ashtear ,

Yes. One of my moments is a certain event late in the game where the world map music changes after pounding the player with an oppressive atmosphere and some very low lows for a couple of hours. It’s amazing how well a 16-bit game was able to make it so cathartic.

Skua ,

The moment when you see the first colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. You've watched a contemplative intro movie that sets the stage, been faced with a desolate land that you're seemingly completely alone in, and charged headlong with only the light shining off your sword to guide you. You've seen nothing but you and your horse moving in this place in the half hour or so you've been playing so far. You've done just enough platforming to know that you're a very normal human with no magical abilities, and if you've swung your sword at all you've seen that you have no real skill with it. You just know that you've got to kill these unseen colossi to hold up your end of the deal with the voice in the sky. And then a building shaped like a gorilla walks past you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ckn0mdFyEU

statler_waldorf ,

Tap for spoilerAlso the dawning realization that you’re doing something horrible by killing the colossi

baldingpudenda ,

Playing side scrollers my whole life and seeing Mario64 at a Walmart. Being able to play in actual 3D and thinking at no way they can surpass this.

Rhynoplaz ,

Playing the Mario 64 Demo at Walmart.

My brain had a hard time trying to navigate in 3D.

chunkystyles ,

That game was so futuristic. It was nuts.

Back then, the camera didn’t feel as shitty as it does today. It was all so fresh and new.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Starfox 64. I played it at Toys R Us…oh, uh, kids Toys R Us was a toy store that had been around for like 80 years. And everybody knew it was never going to close, because there was always going to be more kids…and then it closed.

Anyways, they had a demo unit you could play. It reset every 10 minutes. Then Mario would pop up and say “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING NINTENDO 64, WHO’S NEXT???”

And like a stupid teenager, I yelled “I AM!!!” as if it were voice activated. It wasn’t. I was just a dumb teenager telling at a CRT tv.

One time I got so invested in it, that I didn’t even notice a kid was behind me for like 20 minutes. And eventually he said “Excuse me…you went 3 times in a row. Can I try please?”

Man I felt like an ass. He probably felt like I was bullying him out of playing. I was twice his age, twice his size, and even compared to other kids my own age I was always a kid who was at the top of the food chain. I genuinely didn’t see him, and thought I was alone. I let him play all the turns until his family made him leave.

But those visuals…THE RUMBLE PACK!!! OH MY GOD!!! THE CONTROLLER SHAKES WHEN YOUR SHIP GETS DAMAGED!!! And it had 3D space ship flying and voice acting, and oh my god…

It was all very overwelming. I’m not saying Mario 64 is a bad game. I loved it. But Starfox 64 was the game that made me buy a game for a console I didn’t even own. I was THAT sure that I’d have to have an N64 one day…that day was like 6 months later.

kindenough ,

I come from the ZX 81, Spectrum, C64 and Amiga days….I made a lot of music on C64 and Amiga, but for gaming?

Borderlands 2 with 3 friends battling Vermivorous the Invincible, everyone on life support and hanging on to their teeth and after a long struggle defeating it. Once in a lifetime.

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.

MermaidsGarden ,
@MermaidsGarden@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll never be able to get over the opening cinematic to the first Kingdom Hearts. Having played mostly Game Boy Color prior to that, I had no idea that graphics could look that good.

urata ,

The first thing that jumped to my mind was Half Life 2. The facial expressions on the characters, and the physics of objects in the game world.

SendMePhotos ,

I miss demo discs. My favorite one had I think spyro and some snowmobile game on it. Playstation 1…dominos disk?

can ,

I think it was Pizza Hut. I bet it was Reggie Fils-Aimé’s idea.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Oh the irony!

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

People shit on this stuff like it’s terrible garbage that no one would want to play, but I remember playing Zelda on my friend’s CD-I and being blown away by a video game having fluid animation and voice work. Up till then, I had only experienced NES games, and a few super Nintendo ones. But that shit was amazing to me. The IR remote control, on the other hand, wasn’t.

Then there’s was also virtual boy. I remember trying it out at a Sears and thinking how cool it was.

SurfinBird ,

Those qualities were really impressive back then. I remember being super impressed when games started having cut-scenes.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •