Defining moments in your gaming life

[Leitz]

I fondly remember playing Duke 3D as a kid, which was a shareware version. I was so naive to tell my mother about the content of map two..for some reason she decided to take the CD away from me.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Jerking off to the Better Bodies mod for Morrowind. First thing I did after installing that mod is go to that club with dancing girls in Suran. Those curves man! To see them shake it!

And now we have PornHub et al.

 

[hellbent]

Playing and eventually finishing Pool of Radiance (the gold box edition, not the "remake" shitshow from the 2000s). Got me started enjoying CRPGs.

 

[Nathir]

I remember being 6 and playing Diablo for the first time. I was scared shitless and had trouble sleeping. I also couldn't advance beyond the first or second level of the catacombs.

 

[Catacombs]

I also couldn't advance beyond the first or second level of the catacombs.

Hello, Nathir, my old friend.

 

[Sykar]

After getting beaten quite severely at SC:BW over the course of a few dozen games by my best friend who played that game at a national level while I was a casual scrub he suggested a round of Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I never mentioned to him until then that I was at the time quite good having played and won a small inoffocial city tournament back in the day. After just three games he told me it was not fun getting perfected by me so I told him that now he knows what it feels like playing SC:BW against him and we never played SF Turbo again. We did play some more SC:BW though.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

In chronological order:

Elite: I still remember the first time I managed to dock at Leesti. I sat in shock for about five minutes afterwards. For a couple of years I was a space trader, ploughing the space lanes and battling evil pirates and thargoids, until:
Ultima 4: I've never been so 'ill' for so long. Damn those constant infections that kept me from going to school. For a long time afterwards Ultima 4 was my definition of what a RPG was, which is why I never fully got into blobbers. Sorry Cleve, I'm doing my best.
Trinity: My favourite Infocom game, and one I was never able to complete. Still to this day reminds me of something I can't quite put my finger on. For similar elitist reasons to Ultima 4 I never really got into graphic adventures, although Monkey Island was fun and Fate of Atlantis was probably the best.
Serpent Isle: U7 was good and had some great memories (Skara Brae) but the whole plot of SI was like nothing I'd encountered in a game before. The backstory with the ophidians, the subtle references to earlier Ultimas like Shamino's reaction to finding his old castle, the increasing gloom surrounding the fate of the land and its inhabitants, to Dupre's sacrifice, all made it the most memorable RPG I've ever played. Combat was shit.
Icewind Dale: RTwP blah, blah - the best of the Infinity Engine games by a country mile, this was atmospheric dungeon crawling like I'd never seen before or since.
Morrowind: I'm sorry, but I just bloody love it. The world, the story, the history. I'd not been so caught up in a game since Ultima 4.

Honourable mentions to Dungeon Master and EotB2 (which I won a free copy of in a gaming mag). Everything since then has been shit.

 

[Cyberarmy]

1- Finding Civilazation in my newly bought PC.
2-Bomberman deathmatches on same keyboard.
3- Figuring out how to beat Alone in the Dark.
4- Playing Diablo 1 shareware version and clicking Butchers door O_o
5-Thief

 

[fantadomat]

Might and magic 6 was the first rpg that i have ever played and my favourite one,since then i am hooked on them.
Gothic 3 was the game that came in interesting times for me and magically was running ok on my pc,also introduced me to the Piranha games.Still my favourite game even if i know that it is not the best
Oblivion for teaching me that horses could have armour too.
Mass effect 3 showing me that there could be more than one colour when it comes to ending.

 

[Freddie]

In chronological order:

Elite: I still remember the first time I managed to dock at Leesti. I sat in shock for about five minutes afterwards. For a couple of years I was a space trader, ploughing the space lanes and battling evil pirates and thargoids, until:

Didn't put Elite in my list but Elite was big thing. I saw it first on my friends computer, he had it bought, cool box, manual and all and the graphics and the possibilities, it was all very exciting. (Same could be said about Mercenary).

I traded pirate version from someone, anyway, learning to play, get in fights and died many times trying to dock and then finally successfully docked at Leesti. There is actually something I recall now. I still call jumping in space 'Jaunting'. I think I got it from some sci-fi novel I read when I was a kid, and because of Elite it just stuck.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Didn't put Elite in my list but Elite was big thing. I saw it first on my friends computer, he had it bought, cool box, manual and all and the graphics and the possibilities, it was all very exciting. (Same could be said about Mercenary).

I loved Mercenary as well. That was another game that had a unique atmosphere conjoured out of virtually nothing, leaving everything down to the player's imagination. Elite also had the distinction of introducing me to the works of the author Robert Holdstock, who wrote the manual and the novella.

Also, while I remember I should add Doom, which was the first and last first person shooter I've ever really enjoyed, Bioforge, and Millennium 2.2. The latter had a uniquely bleak and lonely atmosphere.

 

[c2007]

It was a long time ago....

Some Codexian re-posted my rant from the TSLRP forums here and I was amazed at the cruelty of the Codex, and was smitten.

Of course, I joined then with that username, and fairly quickly was banned.

Mammaries.

 

[octavius]

Elite also had the distinction of introducing me to the works of the author Robert Holdstock, who wrote the manual and the novella.

Damned that Robert Holdstock; he sent me on a wild goose chase for Raxxla and the Dark Wheel. I never found it, but I found some rare planets with tech level 15 (3 more than max) where there were invisible ships which occasionally became visible. I managed to damage them, but never to actually destroy one, since they could only be damaged in the few moments they were visible.

I don't know how much time I spent on that game, but I made my own log book with a nice Elite logo on the front, and writing down all the routes I flew. And I eventually became Elite. Right on, Commander!

I loved the dogfighting in this game when attacked by packs of small pirates, and I wore out some of the rubber on my Speccy. The sequel with its realistic newtonian physics was a disappointment combatwise.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I loved the dogfighting in this game when attacked by packs of small pirates, and I wore out some of the rubber on my Speccy. The sequel with its realistic newtonian physics was a disappointment combatwise.

There were a number of things I disliked about Frontier: the thrusters showing in ships when they accelerated and turned (I felt that by then we should have some kind of reactionless propulsion rather than turning my beautiful Cobra into a gaudy rocket), the time acceleration effect rather than space jumps when in system, and the aforementioned combat to name but three. But I did love the sense of endless exploration, which the game then ruined by having your ship fall apart every year without fail if you didn't take it for its regular service. I made the mistake of buying First Encounters immediately on release - a game that was sufficiently buggy that it crashed whenever you did anything, and of course David Braben has fallen even further in my hero-worshipping estimation with the social simulator, Elite Dangerous.

 

[Freddie]

I don't know how much time I spent on that game, but I made my own log book with a nice Elite logo on the front, and writing down all the routes I flew. And I eventually became Elite. Right on, Commander!

I loved the dogfighting in this game when attacked by packs of small pirates, and I wore out some of the rubber on my Speccy. The sequel with its realistic newtonian physics was a disappointment combatwise.

Those must have been some serious hours for Elite. Didn't know / don't recall planets with tech level 15 or invisible ships, still today there's something new to learn from Elite. The best rank I got was Deadly, but my dogfighting skills weren't that great and I had long breaks, sometimes months before I resumed playing it again. I tried keeping notes of good trade routes and then kept losing those notes.

 

[c2007]

Citation Given:

For the record, Dash, hate on me all you want, but in the real world I am your boss. I am the guy that is ten years older than you, has the position you want, and will fire you for work like this. If this project was a hobby for you, and hobbies generally being things you love, I'd be frightened to see the work you do that is simply just work...

pwned!

Regarding the OP, it was time travelling in Ultima ][ that got me hooked into gaming. That game was broken as shit, but was enormous in it's own way. Exodus cemented my interest in CRPG. Thanks Lord British!

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Those must have been some serious hours for Elite. Didn't know / don't recall planets with tech level 15 or invisible ships, still today there's something new to learn from Elite.

I seem to remember that each of the different versions of the game had different special missions. I started out on a Beeb and continued on a C64, which had a mission to destroy the constrictor, which then became just one of the crowd in Frontier.. I briefly played the PC version of Elite+ (which was crap). I think at one stage I had a section of a bookshelf dedicated just to versions of Elite!

 

[c2007]

F2P release of SWTOR.

I thought, great I can finally play this game and see the story at least, mild storyfag that I am.

Yeah...... no. Was also my first and last foray into MMO.

 

[Freddie]

Those must have been some serious hours for Elite. Didn't know / don't recall planets with tech level 15 or invisible ships, still today there's something new to learn from Elite.

I seem to remember that each of the different versions of the game had different special missions. I started out on a Beeb and continued on a C64, which had a mission to destroy the constrictor, which then became just one of the crowd in Frontier.. I briefly played the PC version of Elite+ (which was crap). I think at one stage I had a section of a bookshelf dedicated just to versions of Elite!

I don't recall much special missions, just find this guy, kill him type of stuff at least on Commodore.

I too tried Elite+ and some open source remake, but I didn't played them for long. For my part, I can't tell any feature which were really worse, it was more like games were much the same, I had changed. And of course, they weren't new experiences in comparison to original.

Now I think of it, one of the definitive features, exploration. We can create similar experiences which is largely based on abstraction, but that something more escapes us.

 

[JarlFrank]

Monkey Island was one of the favourite games of my childhood, and it's still great. That got me into adventures as a kid. Heck, back then it was even more awesome cause it felt like exploring a real, living world, since I didn't know about programming or game design or limitations yet. So I thought characters might actually react to most things I do (I was afraid Largo would come for me when I dug out the bones of his grandfather and ran out of the graveyard ASAP).

The Settlers got me into strategy gaming. In the later part of the 90s, Age of Empires was what really grabbed me and became my favourite game, but it was Settlers in the early 90s that started it.

Diablo was the first RPG I played. After that, I played BG2, Arcanum, Morrowind... and RPGs became my favourite genre of them all. Arcanum and Morrowind stand out as the two games I was most impressed by in my teens. They are the two essential games of my gaming life, which have molded and shaped my understanding of game design and any game I am working on as a designer will inevitably contain influences of these two games, considering how much they shaped me.

Oblivion had probably as much of an impact on my as Morrowind did, but in the opposite direction. Morrowind amazed me and I fell in love with its open exploration, freedom, no handholding, huge amount of different equipment slots, etc. I was MASSIVELY hyped for Oblivion. I was about 17 at the time Oblivion was released, and as a young impressionable teen the previews really made my mouth water. "Oh boy, this is going to be just like Morrowind, except even better!" I had hunted down Daggerfall shortly before that, and while not loving it as much as Morrowind, I really liked its character development and its systems. I thought Oblivion would be the best parts of Morrowind + the best parts of Daggerfall combined. It ended up lacking all the best parts of both games, and massively dumbing down every single aspect I liked about MW and DF. The massive disappointment of Oblivion was the point where I realized gaming was not on a road of perpetual incline.

Rome Total War, and later Medieval 2 Total War (this being one of the few games where I day one purchased the collector's edition) were games I spent so much time on, playing dozens of different mods and wasting hundreds if not thousands of hours with them. I played so many Rome and Medieval 2 mods I got burned out on the series, and sadly CA haven't managed to fix the exploitable AI in their newest titles so I could probably still defeat an army that massively outnumbers me by cheesing the AI. The TW games, along with Morrowind and Oblivion before them, were games where the different mods provided even more fun to me than the vanilla experience.

Giving Thief 2 a chance after hearing good things about it on the Codex, even though I used to loathe forced stealth missions in FPS games. I played through Thief 2, Thief Gold, then discovered T2X in summer 2010. Then I discovered that there are even more fan missions around than just T2X... and ever since, Thief with its FMs has been the one most important and most-played game in my library. Thief, and especially its fan missions, are my most important and influential gaming experiences of the last 7 years. Heck, in 2016 I even started building fan missions myself. The Thief games are such masterpieces, it's just beyond comparison.

Grimoire, obviously.

 

[Gepeu]

Oblivion had probably as much of an impact on my as Morrowind did, but in the opposite direction. Morrowind amazed me and I fell in love with its open exploration, freedom, no handholding, huge amount of different equipment slots, etc. I was MASSIVELY hyped for Oblivion. I was about 17 at the time Oblivion was released, and as a young impressionable teen the previews really made my mouth water. "Oh boy, this is going to be just like Morrowind, except even better!" I had hunted down Daggerfall shortly before that, and while not loving it as much as Morrowind, I really liked its character development and its systems. I thought Oblivion would be the best parts of Morrowind + the best parts of Daggerfall combined. It ended up lacking all the best parts of both games, and massively dumbing down every single aspect I liked about MW and DF. The massive disappointment of Oblivion was the point where I realized gaming was not on a road of perpetual incline.

I had an exactly same experience.

 

[Invictus]

There were many "oh my god I love this" but these would be the most memorable

-As a kid we took computer clases to teach us basic stuff and the head computer lab boss was the mother of one of my friends so she always had the latest cutting edge hardware and one time we were supposed to be doing our homework but we discovered Hero's Quest... that started my love for adventure games in general (Sierra and Lucasarts) but those weird skill increases were what really caught me

-in 1987 I went with my father to Pittsburgh and we were invited to an event at the local Sears where they were showing the new "Atari"... seeing that chubby new console and its GOLD cartridge was amazing but getting to play that game! Oh man, I remember telling my father I would work all summer to pay for the game and console. He kept me to my word and in a sunny afternoon on the end of summer I got to open my brand new Nintendo Entertainment System and play The Legend of Zelda

- I was going to be sent to boarding school to Canada and me and my parents went to check out the school first. The whole trio my mother was kind of worried I would not take it very well so she wanted to buy me a farewell present which turned out to be a Sega Genesis with Altered Beast, Revenge of Shinobi and Phantasy Star 2...seeing Nei die as some other poster already said was such a profoundly changing experience for me

-All nighter sessions of Might and Magic World of Xeen, Leisure Suit Larry, Laser Squad, Dungeon Master and other during boarding school

-Learning that beign the Neveradine in Morrowind was a lie and Dagoth Ur was not the "bad guy"

-Lab 18 or the gas tunnel for Pripat for Stalker and Call of Pripyat

-Booting the demo for Grimoire for the first time

-Spending a whole night to finally beat Kalamet in Dark Souls

-The sad goodbye to Man Bot at the end of Freedom Force

- Seeing (and hearing) soldiers flanking me and trying to distract me in Half Life made me realize they were "thinking" and not just waiting for me right in the middle of the corridor

-Jumping out of the tallest building in Saints Row 4 and gliding out while listening to "Gold" by Macklemore and Lewis...only to learn to jump out of airplane to do just that in real life

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Laser Squad was awesome! I always had C64 and Amiga for the longest time and I was jealous of my friends who all had PCs. The games on PC started to be so awesome after one point, probably around and after when 386 came out.

I actually prefer the 8-bit versions of Laser Squad myself. The PC version doesn't feel right.

One of my fun memories from that game is the first mission where one player controls 5 marines sent to kill a man named Sterner Regnix at his house, and the other player controls Regnix plus four combat drones.

Remember those moments in the X-Com games where you're standing outside a UFO and are about to go in through the doors? How hard it could get at times due to aliens camping the door with reaction fire at the ready? This scenario started that trend, as the house only has two doors and those combat droids love to camp them.

So for some time this scenario proved to be a tough nut to crack, until someone one day dropped a primed grenade inside the house and blew away many of the inner walls, exposing Regnix. That got people thinking, and 5 minutes later the scenario is restarted and Corporal Jonlan is standing outside with a rocket launcher, while another squaddie stands ready with extra rockets. 2 turns later Regnix becomes a bloody smear on the bathroom wall as a barrage of rockets has torn apart his house, along with two of his combat droids.

Lesson: Destructible terrain and outside-the-box thinking existed as concepts in gaming as far back as 1989.

---

I could provide dozens of such memorable gaming moments, but since the thread wanted a defining one I'm gonna give that instead... except it's not related to any one game in particular.

I started playing games on an Amstrad CPC in 1986 as it was bought as a workstation for the home, and was soon on a path of collecting games for it. One part of gaming that is little talked about these days was the constant rivalry between us kids that had different systems. Most of my friends had C-64s, and no one wanted to admit that they had a Spectrum, and everyone was jealous of people that owned Atari STs or Amigas. Every time a new title came out we'd bicker and argue about which conversion was better and such.

So when the years rolled round and it was time for the "next" generation of computers to roll round, many of us were faced with a choice: What platform to pick and side with? Mostly by luck I ended up siding with the PC, after the family workstation was upgraded to a full-fledged PC in 1988 (with CGA graphics and TWO 5.25" floppy drives!) and I saw that even though it had worse graphics than the Amstrad and used a overambitious smoke detector to play sound, it was a much more powerful machine. I did, however, lament the fact that I couldn't play my Amstrad games on my PC, and as early as that I was wondering what would become of my Amstrad game collection.

After another workstation upgrade in 1991 I was so relieved to learn that the PC games from the older model worked on the new one, and I quickly realized that this seemed to be a thing on the PC: Backwards compatibility. So I made a choice going forward from that moment: I'd stick with the PC. Many of the kids (now teenagers) whom I'd shared rivalries with were uncertain what to pick, but a few did also pick the PCs while many others moved on to Nintendo or Sega consoles. (The fools, they'd end up coming back to the PC later on.)

And here's where the defining moment came for me, the vindication of my choice: In 1997 I heard about a Spectrum emulator, a program that made the PC act like it was a Spectrum, and could load up and play Spectrum games if they were hooked up properly to the machine. I went online and looked around, and discovered that similar things existed for the C-64 and the Amstrad.

That was a defining moment for me in gaming: Knowing that I had picked the right system for the future. I had not only picked the system that took the lead in hardware development and pure processing power, but the system with the greatest versatility of games, programs and utilities. On the Amstrad I could play Amstrad games, on the Spectrum I could play Spectrum games... but on the PC I could play ALL OF THE GAMES.

In all the years since the PC has always been at the top, meaning that the "Glorious PC Master Race"-meme is very real, and has been so for (at least) 20 years... and I've been part of it since the start.

 

[J_C]

In my gaming life there was only one defining moment, playing a game on my own computer for the first time, which was the demo of Unreal Tournament (which had more content that many full games today). I fiddled around with some games before on C64 or on some of the PCs of the school, but playing UT at home, by myself was something different. That sealed that I enjoy gaming thoroughly, and I will do it until I die. I might have less time for it, but I won't grow out of playing videogames.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

And here's where the defining moment came for me, the vindication of my choice: In 1997 I heard about a Spectrum emulator, a program that made the PC act like it was a Spectrum, and could load up and play Spectrum games if they were hooked up properly to the machine. I went online and looked around, and discovered that similar things existed for the C-64 and the Amstrad.

Yet to find an emulator that can perfectly reproduce the sound from the C64's mighty SID sound chip, though. That analogue filter is tough to copy in software. Some group of lunatics were trying to etch off the plastic of the chips to expose the cores and then reconstruct them using javascript, but not much has happened recently.

http://www.visual6502.org/