Defining moments in your gaming life

[Tomatohead]

Few, or almost 10 years ago there was a hardware SID soundcard available for PC and you could use that in conjuction with sid player. I was about the get one but never could get into it. I can't remember it's name though was it called 'hardSid' or something? Some of the chip tunes are amazing and they helped to enable musicality in my youth. Still remember classics by Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard and John Dunn, so many great composers and some of them are still in game industry. High Voltage Sid Collection is still maintained to this day which is admirable.

 

[Ovg]

Discovering everything was shit was my turning point.

Once you internalize the poo, you can play anything. No loo to hold you through shame.

 

[Tomatohead]

But that's rather... cynical! This however helps with life in general. Lowering expectations is the first step to happy life.

 

[Tito Anic]

Playing Deus Ex for the first time. I instantly fell in love with it DX is a perfection: dark, moody music, captivating story, freedom of choices, augmentations, beautiful graphics. I remember saving Juan Lebedev first time, helping Paul in Ton Hotel. Every location full of hidden doors, stuff, interesting NPC's, moral choices. Monumental game. Deus Ex>>>anything else

 

[Wierd Beard]

Dungeon Master on the A500 - incredible how much fear that game conveyed.

Borrowing a friend's copy of Turrican 2 and spending hours just listening to the level music from the menu.

2 player Chaos Engine and being a greedy fuck collecting all the loot.

Mapping and completing Eye of the Beholder 2 + 3 with a couple of friends during summer.

Frontier Elite 2 - A Christmas gift that I didn't put down for years. Even wrote a paper guide for it that no one read.

Fallout 2 demo level off a cover CD. Played it on my Dad's work laptop at every opportunity. Got the boxed full game a year later.

Half Life for most of the reasons already mentioned. I actually liked the ending and would've been happy if they had never made any sequels.

Divine Divinity - was 'sick' for a week because I had to clear out every area (even the horrendous unfinished final Imp area). Still one of my favourite ever games despite its flaws.

 

[Shackleton]

I remember getting my shiny new Pentium3 PC and playing through more than half of the original Half Life before I realised you could adjust the resolution and graphics settings. I'd been playing it on the lowest res on software settings or some bollocks and thinking it looked a bit blocky but still decent. When I changed it to my monitors resolution I was mindblown. Having previously been a filthy Playstation owner, this was nirvana.

Not too long after I was playing through Tales of the Sword Coast when I got a bug that caused loads of copies of mobs to spawn, (happened when I was fighting Werewolves, thought it was a power they had at first!) The internet was pretty new shit and I didn't have it, so I rang the Interplay helpline and they informed me that it was a known issue and the game needed to download a patch from them to fix it. I actually took my PC round to my parents house and used their dial up internet to get it. That also blew my mind that a publisher could release a game with a critical, game-stopping bug in it. I ranted about it for days to anyone who'd listen. How times have changed.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

There was that one time in grade 5 or so, our class was on a camping trip. Me and my best bro go to take a piss somewhere behind the trees around the camping area. I found myself eyeing his pee-pee. It was like a delicious baby carrot, except all pink and fluffy. He found himself eyeing mine.

Ended up sucking each other off.

 

[Ash]

Defining moment: playing shit game after shit game, thinking WTF is going on, recognising the decline, and then coming online and seeing some others experiencing the same thing. Then over the years seeing things getting worse and worse, and realising that the vast majority of "gamers" are perfectly content with the way things are as a result of ignorance derived from not really playing a lot of old games, and I've just became more and more disillusioned and frustrated with the whole thing. I fucking love video games, always have, always will, but my passion for it all is seriously tested in the face of so much decline: the quality of the games today, the business practices, the raping of old franchises, the utter ignorance of the audience, the absolute dominance of shit games because fuck quality marketing wins, and so on and on. Things were never perfect of course, but the forces of decline are strong and all-encompassing.

Oh, and I made a mod considerably enhancing a flawed masterpiece somewhere in there, an attempt to show these cunts how it's done and solidify the old school as the best. I succeeded -- the masterpiece is much less flawed and deeper than ever, without losing its original identity.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Ended up sucking each other off.

Did you video it?

 

[Old One]

Spending entire afternoons at the arcades, to the point my parents had to go pick me up.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/alan-a-video-junkie/81302474/

 

[Tomatohead]

There was that one time in grade 5 or so, our class was on a camping trip. Me and my best bro go to take a piss somewhere behind the trees around the camping area. I found myself eyeing his pee-pee. It was like a delicious baby carrot, except all pink and fluffy. He found himself eyeing mine.

Ended up sucking each other off.

That's really defining moment. I hope you didn't touch his balls because that would make you gay.