What is your Fondest Nostalgic Gaming Moment?

[chargerrich]

I have two and cannot decide which left the more memorable impact upon my brain.

#1 - Wastleand (RPG by EA before they sucked ass) on my C=64 circa 1988/89

The C=64 limitations and a need for copy protection required that when you got to an NPC interaction you were presented with something along the lines of "Sally says to you <go to page 32 of your game manual>" where you would be given dialogue! Nonetheless I loved that game and the colorful combat descriptions such as "You attacks reduce the mercenary to a thin red paste". Would kill for a true remake (I know fallout is the spiritual successor but it did not capture the same feel for me).

#2  - Neuromancer (Interplay I believe) also on my C=64 around 1990

My first foray into cyberspace. Man I played that game for like a year straight! Having to upgrade your "deck" (computer) with new "ice" and battle other programs was just pure goodness with awesome sauce. Not to mention selling your body parts for cash! Read the book shortly afterwards not before. And the DEVO track is STILL stuck in my head!!!
Looking back the game was so shallow, but I never knew it. Ahhh to be a kid again!

Good stuff...share yours!!!
 

Edit - Typo

[FatuousTwat]

1. Me and my mom getting really sick one week when I was a kid and staying home, playing bubble bobble and eating cocoa pebbles.
2. Playing T.I.M. with my mom and sister.
3. PVPing in MMUD.

[Salamok]

1st time we played multiplayer doom at the office
1st 4 months of Diablo 1

[Hindenburg]

Seeing Duke taking a dump in the alien's neck.

[Mrbloodworth]

Accidentally killing that goblin in Ultima underworld.

[Sky]

1. Sending the entire buffer of a day-long game of adventure to the office printer in the late 70s. I was 7 and my grandfather was angry.

2. Daggerfall, falling 40 stories down a well in a dungeon and fighting my way back out through the randomized (and often submerged) dungeon.

3. Exploring in Ultima 7/7.5. Or U4 or U5.

4. First modded game of Q2 where the whole house full of LAN players all had custom avatards. Hiding on a ledge until the room filled up with a nice firefight and letting go with the BFG, listening to the yells from every room in the house as it powered up.

[Brogarn]

Back in '99 I'm playing my lowbie Monk in EQ and fighting large spiders in whichever Karana is next to the Qeynos zone. Basically not having a clue what I was doing, but knowing that spiders dropped silk and monks wore silk armor, so there you have it. Mostly, I was dying. And more often than not, it was to some @#*&$)@#(*&$# werewolf that would run at me from friggin' nowhere. I was a human and my fire beetle eye gave me very little light, but it was all that I had. Anyways, dawn is about to break in game, I see a werewolf running around and start booking it to the nearest guard tower. Before I got there, this group of armored guys lead by a wood elf and surrounded with blue sparkles comes blasting in, grabs the werewolf, and pounds it in into puppy paste. It was the coolest goddamn thing I'd ever seen in a game. Dawn just breaking. Magic lights going off all over. It was epic for me as a fantasy fan and old D&D player.

[stray]

Jamming out to Zelda's title screen probably.

I never did finish that game..

[Slyfeind]

Me, my mom, my brother, and my sister all working together to get the locked door open in Zork II. The difficulty level of that puzzle, including the hints such as "The newspaper is too thick to fit under the door," was perfect.

Getting Ultima V for Christmas, and finding out that it was indeed the same world as Ultima IV...but it had changed.

Being unemployed, 1,000 miles away from my lifelong friends, getting into the beta for Ultima Online, and staying up all night saving for new equipment for me and my brother.

Writing my first game. It was a space ship that was the "Up Arrow" on the C-64, and every key on the keyboard made it do something. There was no real gameplay to it, but just an interactive little space ship.

[fuser]

SWOTL, PC around 1992

 Finding extra uses my Gotha Go 229 could do on B17 intercept missions. Load it up with bombs and fly to England after intercepting and my long drawn out tour of duty trying to singlehandly win the war.

[Hoax]

Diablo1, first time playing multiplayer for reals, beat the game pretty much entirely with a guy from Ontario Canada, my dad comes out to tell me to go to bed at 12:30 and I say, "this guys from canada isn't that amazing!?" he let me stay up all night.

10six, destroying everything a player had, repeatedly, after the third time we newbie locked him (took his last camp, forced him to restart the game) his mother came on his account and started scolding us because he was crying.  So much fun.

Tribes1, being so pumped with adrenaline before every OGL match that I could barely hold my mouse.  Also my first real lan party and stopping some of the best cappers in the game are great memories.  Irc drama, pick up games, good times.

AvP2, playing in the dark after hours at the local internet cafe before we all got dsl and internet cafes died out.  Playing as the marines was so great because the whole place would be spooky quiet then suddenly you'd hear that big two hand rifle make that great noise and everyone would start shouting and all hell would  break loose.

Myth2, playing in a 2v2 tournament and taking 2nd place, even though we knew nothing of the changes and the competition was all 30+ yr olds who took shit hella seriously.

WoW, watching that funeral celebration get raped, reading about it on f13 and the official boards, god I love that video.

[Xuri]

In randomly numbered order:

1. People mention Diablo 1, and I have to as well:
-Enjoying the atmospheric music in Tristram (aka the "Town" tune - listen to it and all other classic Blizzard tunes here)
-Encountering The Butcher for the first time - "AHHHH! FRESH MEAT!"

2. Me and like three cousins playing through Monkey Island 1 + 2 on Amiga in one sitting.

3. Playing Civilization 1 for the first time. On Amiga. On a tiny black and white monitor.

4. Participating in a hectic Quake 1 tournament with around 15 other players on a tiny map (House of Ch'ton) in a tiny room with no air condition, the tournament lasting for 3 hours non-stop without pause

[FatuousTwat]

Addition!

Playing at an all night lan party at the local internet cafe, playing the hell out of CS, DoD, and Diablo 2. They sold these air fresheners that were kind of like sponges in a can (I can never remember their name) and the scent of them always reminds me of that place. Good times... I bought a bunch of cheap games from them when they went out of business my sophomore year. /tear.

[ffc]

Diablo1, first time playing multiplayer for reals, beat the game pretty much entirely with a guy from Ontario Canada, my dad comes out to tell me to go to bed at 12:30 and I say, "this guys from canada isn't that amazing!?" he let me stay up all night.

Same thing happened to me except my buddy claimed he was playing from Tehran, Iran.  My parents didn't believe it, but his Farsi helped make my case.

[schild]

While I obviously have lots, my fondest is only tangentially related to any specific game (mostly MUDs, etc). But when I saved up enough money to buy extra keyboards and hide them, my parents stopped taking mine away. VICTORY.

[Draegan]

Beating Ultima III for the Apple ][e+ and doing it before my father!

Discovering Tele-Arena 3.0 and getting my green rune for the first time.

[UnSub]

Beating Ultima (finally). Yes, the first one.

Finishing the Fleet Street Phantom on the Acorn Micro (?) at school.

Coming back from camp to find that my brother had got a new game - Battle Squadron - that we cooped on. Also, coop games of Bubble Bobble.

I've got lots.

[Triforcer]

Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time after camping out at Walmart to get it at precisely the crack of 7 A.M. on release day, before school.  I just started a new file of it last night- damn that game is timeless and has not aged one bit for me. 

[raydeen]

5.) Seeing Pac Man for the first time and not being able to figure out what I was looking at.

4.) Entering Blackburrow for the first time with a group of total strangers.

3.) Playing Space Invaders (cocktail model) with my friend at Pizza Hut.

2.) Almost shitting my pants the first time Sinistar roared at me and told me he hungered.

1.) Achieving the highest rank in Star Raiders on my Atari 400 after a marathon 2 hour single game.

[Viin]

One of my older memories is during a computer class in middle school (6th grade I think). A few of us were playing Kobra MUD, while pretending to be following the LOGO lesson plan. Somehow we ended up in a PVP fight with a bounty hunter, and one of my friends got trapped in a room by the BH's droids. He starts freaking out and yelling at us to come help him. The teacher comes storming over with this huge angry face and makes him log off. I pretend I wasn't involved and try to get safe before I have to log, but the teacher walks around checking everyone's screen and I have to hide the telnet session before I got more than a few rooms away. We all died. It was glorious.

My best memories pretty much always involve PvP of some sort, either in a FPS or an MMO, even if I lost. It's the encounter that leaves the lasting impression.

[Montague]

In no particular order:

Seeing Kelethin for the first time.

Playing Rebel Assault for the first time and saying to myself that these newfangled CD-ROM games sucked ass (heh).

Choosing to feign sickness and play Civilization instead of seeing my girlfriend at the time, who went to college several hundred miles away and was home for the weekend.

Tarren Mill.

Playing Siegfried vs. my friend's Taki in endless hours of Soul Calibur duels.

And of course the defining moment in my gaming life. My best friend telling me his dad bought a brand new, bleeding edge 286 computer with a 10 megabyte hard drive. I shrugged until he fired up Pools of Radiance.

[justdave]

Hmm...I'll constrain it to video gaming, and rule out MUDs as well. It's so hard to pick just one, so I'll do three:

* Marathon-playing Gauntlet with friends in the mall arcade (after claiming to be sick), monopolizing the machine all day. Man, the trash-talk...

* Having a room full of (semi)grown men get all teary watching me play when Aeris died.

* Finally finishing Zanac (22 years after having gotten it as an Xmas present) a few months ago, in unemployed gaming malaise. (Fuck you, Japan!)

EDIT: Okay, four, that part in Grim Fandango where you're trying to get that gal's megaphone and you try to keep up with her side of the conversation in a kind of 'Mm-Hmm...Yeah...Yeah, Mushrooms are great. Yep. Oh, both of them?' kind of way. That was masterful.

[ahoythematey]

The last level in Episode 2 of the original Doom.  At the time all I could do is fire off a rocket and hide because those rockets it fires at you hurt like no other and if I just take my time and JESUS GOD IT FOUND ME.

Playing Resident Evil: Director's Cut late overnight during one of the worst ice storms Omaha ever saw.  The power went out at the worst possible moment, and to top it off tree limbs were breaking up and down the entire street due to the ice and sheer cold, making a cacophony of noises in the dark that almost sounded like gunshots from the warding off of zombies.  It was a very unsettling moment for me.

Beating Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and seeing the final ending sequence.  At the time I was so blown away by how cinematic it was, and those credits music still get to me to this day.

Going to a Lugian tunnel in Asheron's Call with backpacks full of auroch meat.  At the time there was no trade window; you could simply give a person an item.  I see you are in combat with that train of lugians; here, have some meat.  Overburdened by 200% of meat, it wasn't long before they try to run away.  I still cackle thinking about how many fell victim to being "beefed".

Final Fantasy Tactics.  All of it, including the awesome translation.

[Xuri]

While I obviously have lots, my fondest is only tangentially related to any specific game (mostly MUDs, etc). But when I saved up enough money to buy extra keyboards and hide them, my parents stopped taking mine away. VICTORY.

My parents "locked" my computer with the keys that came along with the cabinet. That worked for a little while, until I figured out that all the keys for all the cabinets ever made were basically the same. o_O

[chargerrich]

The UO and AC talk reminded me of two more "forever remembered" gaming moments:

1. UO - There was a dungeon (lower level) that had these jail cells that spawned rat men constantly (this was just shortly after launch, like same month). Anyway there were always dozens of dead bodies in that little cellar with cells and ratmen. We believed that there were untold riches down there and it was so hectic because so many people were down there dying. I must have died 20 times and was all freaked out because I was losing my stuffs 

2. AC - The Baron of Collier...OMG early in the games life the Baron guarded a chest that spawned Amuli armor among other vast riches. At night the place was camped with literally 20-25 people all waiting in line to kill the Baron. This was no problem since with 20-25 people he died instantly. Anyway, people had a habit of longing out there so when they logged back in they could get in the loot line.

So early one morning before work, I thought I would log in and get me some quick phat loot by seeing how long the line was...er...yeeeeah....no one was there save for the Baron, who exacted his revenge by practically one shotting me. Needless to say I died horribly to the much higher level Baron and lost some good  loot. Now in AC you lost your most valuable item(s) on death (and I had no concept of death items at this point) so I was frantic. In running back to my body, I died about 6 or 7 more times, bodies all over the place, lost and very sad from losing all my best armor and weapons (I was now naked).

To make matters worse, I also was VERY VERY VERY late for work (before I could do that without fear of trouble). It took about 3 hours to get someone to help me, I was distressed, sweating and freaked out that I lost everything. LOL...luckily someone finally did come help me but that memory will be with me on my death bed 

[Arinon]

Playing Utopia on the Intellivision with my brother and figuring out what the hell was going on and how to grief each other.  Also yelling at the hurricanes and tropical storms to get them to move where I wanted them to go.

The rush to the library computer during grade school to play Civilization or watch whoever got there first play it.

Watching the opening sequences to Final Fantasy IV and VI.  The music more so then anything else but FF IV was my first SNES game so it was pretty awesome looking.

Mortal Combat II tournaments after school with like 6-7 guys passing the controllers around.  Who does that anymore?!

Diablo at my friend’s house  “You mean this guy is another person?  Like me?  Can I kill him in town?!”.

Breaking into Plain of Hate as my first ‘raid’.  No clue what I was doing, spent most of time with that song (bard) that lets you see from the mobs point of view and chaining it between mobs to get a look at the bosses.  That was also my first all-nighter as a gamer.

Another thing that always sticks in my mind is going down to see family in upstate NY (I’m Canadian) as a kid and coming back each time with 3-4 new NES games because they were so much cheaper down there at the time and I’d always get money for the trip.

[SnakeCharmer]

 - Spending many sleepless weekends playing A Bards Tale on my first comp, an Apple IIGS.
 - Loading into Star Wars: Galaxies for the first time.  First MMO that truly gripped me from head to toe

[Venkman]

1- Melting my friend's AC adapter for his brand new Colecovision during a marathon session of Donkey Kong.

2- Constantly revising my hand-drawn guide and map to all things Ultima III. Still have the map which I drew on a poster board mounted to an old street sign. Keep meaning to frame it. The cloth map was cool but inaccurate and useless for actual play.

3- Trying and never successfully beating the second to last level on Goldeneye. Still remember HOW to do it but never was able to master it.

[WayAbvPar]

Giggling when my pimped out character (who I allowed to be turned into a crab to make his weapons perma-poisoned) scored a max damage hit (I think it was a 'wallop') in Return of Heracles. The game made a sound for every point of damage taken, and listening to the sounds repeat over and over was hilarious. God that game was fun.

Any number of moments playing Ultima IV- harvesting Nightshade at just the right moon phase, discovering new shrines, finding new party members- Garriott may be a megadouche now, but he sure made some great games back in the day.

Getting Heart of Africa for Christmas from my aunt- was SOOOOO excited. Unfortunately my disk drive didn't play well with it as it errored out constantly on me. Tried 2 or 3 different copies too 

Nearly soiling myself when an SS officer burst into a previously empty room (screaming in German) in Castle Wolfenstein. Those fuckers were terrifying!

Nearly soiling myself when the really mean aliens suddenly appeared a couple of squares away from my squad in X-Com.

Stealing a siege hammer from a group of baddies and then leading them into an ambush in Shadowbane (detailed in Scott Jennings' runaway bestselller Massively Multiplayer Games For Dummies)

Leading a train of 20+ orcs from Orc Hill to the lift @ Kelethin, giggling like a madman. I got to the guard and died at his feet before he could dispatch all the orcs. But it was worth the entertainment value, and my corpse was easy to recover 

[DeathInABottle]

Figuring out, at six years old, the various different text parser commands in Quest for Glory.  "Open gate" was a standout achievement.

Figuring out that the number system in Riven was base five.

Getting the rat tail in Final Fantasy.  I don't know why, but I remember that quest being particularly harrowing and memorable.

[Engels]

Dusk smart bomb run along the Norwegian fjords in EuroFighter2000

High among the precipitous towers of the Imperial Base in Dark Forces

Doing the cobra move for the first time in SU-27 Flanker

Utterly petrified in East Commons (I hid behind a rock for 40 minutes at level 4)

Utterly petrified in Lower Guk

[gryeyes]

Playing Duris land of bloodlust with my only previous experience with muds being tele-arena and being stunned by the complexity.

The first sex scene in a game i ever witnessed Golgo-13

Being absolutely stunned by Night Trap.

The Butcher in diablo coming out and scaring the shit out of me.

[Sir Fodder]

Random nostalgia: During early UO beta the forge building in Minoc was jam packed with characters trying to smelt ore and make weapons and armor, lots of hilarious banter going on but pretty much a cluster fuck situation. At that point in the beta each time you pushed on to a tile another character(s) occupied, your stamina would go to zero, you'd have to wait a while till the bar filled again in order to push into the next tile, getting to the back of the room where the forge was took a few minutes. It suddenly dawned on my that I had a few fire field scrolls in my backpack, sheer pandemonium resulted muahaha!

Come to think of it, a lot of my favorite gaming moments, at least in MMOs, involved fucked up game mechanics, bugs, crowds of people, and random hilarious banter.

[Tale]

* Battling the stolen Constrictor ship on a special mission in C64 Elite.
* Secretly playing Ultima Underworld in the student newspaper office (I was the editor and had the keys).
* The way MechWarrior II made you feel it was real.
* Descent 8-player deathmatch at the end of every working day, including our boss.
* Exploring Norrath (EverQuest) for the first time.
* Star Wars Galaxies end-of-beta party on the bridge in Tyrena. (Edit - or was it the day-long exploration of Yavin IV - on foot - by me and three other high-level beta doctors/combat medics? I don't think anyone else went that far until retail because we were the only ones who could rez and your belongings stayed on a corpse when you died. We managed to keep at least one doctor alive all day, and then it took us an hour and a half of real time to run back across the map to the shuttle.)

[trias_e]

Music is by far and the number one thing that comes to mind for me.  I have to go with the big 3 SNES RPGs as being the most nostalgic for me.  The music is probably more important to me than the games themselves, heh.

Secret of Mana has these couple songs near the finish...the damn forest at the end of the game haunts me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEilQOiuE_g&feature=PlayList&p=9B1F4546776E26A4&index=28
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8sGSKE5j14&feature=PlayList&p=9B1F4546776E26A4&index=34

ff6:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ts3p2HQhk&feature=PlayList&p=866653D8AD00A745&index=51
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIhfs7Fw-vE&feature=PlayList&p=CBDBB48ABBDB7BF9&index=35

CT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIhfs7Fw-vE&feature=PlayList&p=CBDBB48ABBDB7BF9&index=35
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvvXsreyo30