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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.

geekwithsoul ,

Final boss fight of Portal 2 - one of my favorite and most satisfying gaming moments.

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.

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.

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

Oh boy I have a few:

PC
Another Lifeless Planet (and me with no beer) was fantastic for a text adventure.
Testdrive pushed graphics hard
Wolfenstein 3D was incredible at the time being surpassed by Doom then Quake.
Day of the Tentacle for its high quality cartoon animation opening sequence.
Unreal on a Voodoo graphics card was something else.
HL2 of course with its physics (ragdoll) engine and jump in polygons.
Doom 3 for its advance in polygon count again.

NES
Super Mario 3 was a leap believe it or not. Blew people away back then.
Battletoads had huge sprites which wasn’t a NES thing until they did it.

SNES
Fzero and Mode-7 graphics
Donkey Kong Country, its CG was nuts at the time
FFVI’s snowfield theatrics
Starfox

Sega
Earthworm Jim had a great art style and pushed edgy games
Another World/Out of this World for that opening and style was amazing and still holds up!

N64
Super Mario 64 Japanese demo at Babbages in a mall before the US demos came out. That was mind blowingly smooth.
Waverace 64 for its water effects.
Ocarina of Time for its cinematic 3D story telling and fun gameplay.

Neogeo
Metal Slug was incredible in the arcade for all the sprites moving on screen and action. So much fun still to this day.

PlayStation
Resident Evil was incredible for the atmosphere.
Tomb Raider for more detailed 3D environments.
Warhawk also stood out for its great use of the analog dual joysticks.
FFVII for its cinematic story telling and FMVs.
Wipeout for its fast paced racing and great OST.
Grand Turismo for its photo realism simulation and physics.

Dreamcast
Seeing the demo of Sonic Adventure blew my mind since it was so fast and colorful. The whale jumping after Sonic as you raced away was burned into my brain.

Gamecube
Wind Waker, still love that art style and loved the exploration that was enabled by sailing the sea. Didn’t feel that again till BoTW.

Wii
Super Mario Galaxy for its outstanding OST and gameplay.

Playstation 2
Grand Turismo 3
Little Big Planet had incredible art direction and unique play style

Wii U/Switch
Breath of the Wild. What an intro to a new world! They absolutely pushed the hardware to the limits on the Wii U.

MajorHavoc ,

I still remember the headache from trying out the Nintendo Virtual boy at Toys R Us for just a few minutes.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s impossibly sparkly invincibility, with the show-off music that sped up to show off that there wasn’t any lag at all from the particle effect graphic. Really everything about Sonic when he first arrived. That’s the best 16 bits ever looked and sounded… Except…

Star Fox. See the other post about Star Fox 64. Star Fox (original) felt the same. Nothing before it looked or played that way. (No offense to Stellar 7’s many previous attempts.)

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.

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.

9point6 ,

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

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!).

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!

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"
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.

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