What was your greatest moment as a gamer

[Kid Fenris]

[VertigoProcess]

Beating Sonic 2 on its release day to a crowd in a Circuit City. I started playing and slowly the crowd grew as I kept going and going. The applause made it hard to squeeze my head through the door

I think you win... haha

[Steven]

1989-1996... indeed the greatest era of gaming for my money. AH, the 16-bit era. What a great fukking time. Not only did gaming grow up, but so did I with it. It was a special time that I'll always remember fondly.

-Convincing my mom to buy me my first SNES game, King of the Monsters, at Software Etc. (remember that?) on a cold chilly late December evening. I still remember it being 54.99 and I was doing my best sales pitch to convince her. I remember telling her only $55! and she retorted with $60 with tax, dear. . When I finally got her to agree, and I saw her reaching to the top shelf to pull that shiny new game off, I swear I almost died. The port left a bit to be desired but did I play the you know what outta that damn game

-Memories of renting! See here for more: http://www.rvgfanatic.com/7443/259301.html

-Magazines ruled! See here for more: http://www.rvgfanatic.com/7464/96301.html

-E-G-effing-M baby! Being a subscriber (well, at least my older brother was) and eagerly anticipating the latest issue in the mailbox. It was like Christmas morning to a degree, it really was (for me)


OH HELL YEAH!

-Mom n pop rental shops... the smell of oak wood shelves and bells as you entered

-Speaking of which, loved me some Evergreen Video. Before they closed, I remember renting Ultraman in early '92



-The legendary local gaming rental heaven outlet known as GAME HUNTER. Imports galore. Never forget when my best friend Nelson and I came in one Saturday morning and saw Muscle Bomber (Saturday Night Slam Masters), Fighter's History and King of the Monsters 2 all sitting next to each other. This was BEFORE the US versions were released! We about fainted that legendary June morning of 1994. That was the ABSOLUTE peak of the SNES imo. Summer of '94. It was literally the stuff legends were made of. I rented KOTM2 and Nelson rented FH. That weekend we engaged in some serious gaming heaven



-Sonic/Mario clones left and right. Some were great, some were good, some were OK, some were bad. But man, what choices. If you love platformers, 16-bit era was made for you, my friend

-Ditto fighting game genre. I also feel 1994 was the peak of the 2D fighter, same year that I felt the SNES peaked. What a great time

-Ditto the beat 'em up genre. There were so many during '89-'96

-First SNES experience: Winter 1991, vacation in Lake Tahoe. Playing Final Fight and F-Zero alone in the giant cabin while my family and friends went out for breakfast (my mom let me sleep in because I was up all night the night before). Both games blew me away. It seemed like the SNES was so powerful

-Seeing arcade conversions pop up on SNES in mere seconds. I remember one day at the mall I played Power Instinct for the first time, liked it, and then went to Walden Books, picked up a gaming mag and saw a preview for SNES Power Instinct. Fukkin' blew away my 10 year old mind!

-Remember when arcade conversions had you excited to have the arcade at home? Sure it was watered down, but at the time you thought your 16-bit SNES had so much damn power. The SFII port blew all of us (me, bro and our friends) away

-Super Mario Kart memories. We had the game and suddenly became the kings of our neighborhood. One time my brother's friend woke me up at like 8:45 on a Sunday morning when he knocked down our door to come in and play SMK

-Super Bomberman/NBA JAM 4-player goodness. Man. My out of town friends and I killed many hours on our legendary sleepovers in '93 and '94 just blowing each other up and slam dunking on one another

-World Heroes 1 and 2 for SNES. Such special memories for me. Loved both ports, loved borrowing my best friend's WH cart and playing endless matches with him during the winter of '93

Man I could go on and on. Great thread, brings back a lot of joyful memories of an era long passed. I just remember the vibrant innocent joy of gaming back then. Appreciation. Magazine for news. Renting and friends for try-outs. Genesis vs. SNES (I was lucky to have both, but SNES won me over post '93). I am lucky now to say although I missed out on a lot of classic SNES games back in the day, I have the honor of playing many of them for the first time today. It's been a blast. There are still many SNES classics I have to play. In a way, it's like going back to the mid '90s. A couple years ago I finally played and beat both Final Fantasy II and III. What awesome gaming experiences.

Thank you, 16-bit era. You rocked.

[Nebagram]

Seven years after last picking it up, finishing Sonic 3 without losing a single life. In under an hour.

[Rickstilwell1]

These are my top achievements:

* Beating Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on Genesis with an Atari 2600 joystick and all emeralds

* Beating Abadox for NES without any cheats

* Beating The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy for NES without losing any lives and in 2 hours 10 minutes

* Beating every challenge in Super Smash Bros. Melee

hmm did somebody say Alundra hell? I beat that game too but wouldn't consider it as hard as the above things.

[Berserker]

- Playing an adventure game for the first time, Quest For Glory II, which used text commands, typing in some idea that popped into my head that I had no expectation of actually working, and having the game respond to it graphically

- Playing Daggerfall (the demo) for the first time, walking forward and watching an entire three-dimensional city materialize before me in the fog

- In the earliest days of Everquest, being charmed - possessed basically - by a roaming NPC, following him around as a pet completely out of my own control, and then watching helplessly as I was used to attack another player, who killed me

Just little things like that. I've overcome obstacles and achieved higher skill levels and all that, but these are the sort of moments that I remember most.

[SpaceFlea]

My greatest achievement is when I (quite gleefully) beat SoulCalibur on the hardest difficulty using the Dreamcast fishing rod controller.

Back then, I was so confident in my skill at that game, I also told a friend I could beat him blindfolded. Of course, he didn't believe me and scoffed at the perceived arrogance of my claim. So, I got up and stood behind the TV, and even closed my eyes for good measure. He chose his best character; I took my second best character. I then kicked his ass 2-0 flawless.

[Mynamesukx]

Wow, there are some really good stories out here. Beating sonic with a grip of people watching you is awesome Sabz5150!

For mine, it'd be when I was able to get my mom to sit down and play a game of Ikari Warriors with me and we used the ABBA cheat to get to the last stage.

Playing with the mom was a rare instance for sure. I got mine to rock out on Rampage for the nes for about 3 hours with me once, that was freaking RAD!

So, What is the highlight of your life as a gamer? Just out of curiosity. And if there's more than one feel free to post it!

Heh, guess we had the same idea about about the same time. Thanks MOD for merging all of this gamer excitement into one thread.

3.) Killing the Emerald and Ruby Weapons. Especially considering getting the KOTR materia is just part of killing these guys.

Oh man, beating the Ruby weapon was a pain in the arsehole. I didn't have any help or ideas from anyone else, I just had to make my own strategy. I ended up fighting the thing for like 14 hours in one fight, but I took the beast down. It was not very fun, but no one else I have met has killed it. Well, one person has, and I only heard about that like a year ago.

Awesome everyone, keep up the bad arse stories people.

[G-Boobie]

I played Wolfkrone in a first to three this February. He won 5-3, but my Blanka got two perfect rounds. I had him scared for a while.

[Sunnyvale]

Playing with the mom was a rare instance for sure. I got mine to rock out on Rampage for the nes for about 3 hours with me once, that was freaking RAD!

[kupomogli]

Being an anime fan, I sometimes hung out with people at a store called Anime Florida. Reuben brought his PS2 to the store regularly and Mega Man Anniversary Collection just came out. Someone there had purchased it and they started off on Mega Man and were passing the controller around. When I took the controller I got past the stage in a single try and passed it to the next person.

At one point Reuben was just like. "Just give it to the master." Which from then on out they just let me play through the game. I finished off the remainder of Mega Man and everyone just wanted to keep watching me play. So finished Mega Man 2 and 3 before I left.

It's one thing people watching your playthroughs on Youtube another in person. It was pretty satisfying playing through the first three Mega Man titles in front of an audience who continuously commented on how good I was. It's very rare that I actually play any retro games in front of anyone unless it's a video I post on Youtube as most people I know aren't interested in older titles.

[PentiumMMX]

Effortlessly defeating Bowser at the end of Super Mario World, while everyone in the room watched in awe of me curbstomping him. That felt so awesome...

[G-Boobie]

Being an anime fan, I sometimes hung out with people at a store called Anime Florida. Reuben brought his PS2 to the store regularly and Mega Man Anniversary Collection just came out. Someone there had purchased it and they started off on Mega Man and were passing the controller around. When I took the controller I got past the stage in a single try and passed it to the next person.

At one point Reuben was just like. "Just give it to the master." Which from then on out they just let me play through the game. I finished off the remainder of Mega Man and everyone just wanted to keep watching me play. So finished Mega Man 2 and 3 before I left.

It's one thing people watching your playthroughs on Youtube another in person. It was pretty satisfying playing through the first three Mega Man titles in front of an audience who continuously commented on how good I was. It's very rare that I actually play any retro games in front of anyone unless it's a video I post on Youtube as most people I know aren't interested in older titles.

You know, that's a very cool story. Let's Play in real life.

[jonebone]

When Perfect Dark was first released on the N64, I was a member of the pdark.net forums (long since dead), and we created a speed running competition on a few levels. For the first level, it was 7 of us and I was the leader.

That summer I competed very competitively and our "PD Elite" grew to almost 100 members. I was ranked somewhere in the 10-20 range based on total completion times across all levels and all difficulties.

All of these years later, that little forum-based competition is now http://www.the-elite.net/ , with members from across the globe competing for the fastest Goldeneye and Perfect Dark speed runs. While my original times are nowhere even close to the current records, its nice to see that one forum thread can turn into an impressive community.

Also, some of the videos on that page are amazing. Stuff like 53 seconds on 00 Agent Facility, back when I thought my sub 2:00 time was amazing (2:05 was the Invincibility cheat which was probably the hardest target time in the entire game).

[leatherrebel5150]

My greatest moment was beting Super Mario World myself, I'm talking not just beat it but got all of the exits and star world. This was back when I was like 8 or 10 years old before we had a computer/internet to look up the secrets.

[BetaWolf47]

As of recent, beating Mega Man 1 without the pause button exploit. Nothing special, but I'm still working on my backlog.

[Sabz5150]

Being an anime fan, I sometimes hung out with people at a store called Anime Florida. Reuben brought his PS2 to the store regularly and Mega Man Anniversary Collection just came out. Someone there had purchased it and they started off on Mega Man and were passing the controller around. When I took the controller I got past the stage in a single try and passed it to the next person.

At one point Reuben was just like. "Just give it to the master." Which from then on out they just let me play through the game. I finished off the remainder of Mega Man and everyone just wanted to keep watching me play. So finished Mega Man 2 and 3 before I left.

It's one thing people watching your playthroughs on Youtube another in person. It was pretty satisfying playing through the first three Mega Man titles in front of an audience who continuously commented on how good I was. It's very rare that I actually play any retro games in front of anyone unless it's a video I post on Youtube as most people I know aren't interested in older titles.

Hats off to you. Mega Man 3 is a freakin' gauntlet.

[MachineGex]

Back when Half-Life was big and Counter-Strike wasn't out yet, I use to be decent. There was a website that use to track all the servers and automatically keep track of everyone's score. If you logged in and played, it kept track of you and you automatically got ranked. At one point, there were more than 120,000 players ranked. I remember one of our friends broke into the top 1000. It doesn't seem that difficult looking back now, but it was a very difficult to do. Once he did it, all of us tried to get ranked higher. At one point, I was ranked at 48th. Like I said, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but 48th out of 100,000 people isn't too shabby. After that, Counter-Strike errupted on the scene and that was the end of Half-Life.

We ended up forming a pretty good CS clan. Out of that, we ran LAN parties down in the LA area which was a blast. Almost 100 people use to show up for a 3 day LAN party.
We rented an Elk's log for the party. It worked out great cuz it had a bar and kitchen, both didin't shut down for the whole 3 days we were there. Unlimited beer, food, and games! Good times indeed!!!

[Blitzwing256]

Back in the fifth grade I was the guy who could beat any game. I coudn't get past 6-2 on ninja gaiden and gave up when I rented it.

in the sixth grade a friend asked if I could beat ninja gaiden, I said I could (not that I did) and he begged to come over my house with the game and watch me beat the game to see the ending (he coudln't get past level 3)

I eventually relented and after school I played and played till I got up to that spot in 6-2 (you know the one) died a couple times, then my older smarter brain decided to hold onto the jump and slash technique to get past THAT spot, and it worked like a charm and was able to blow through the rest of the game. I kept it cool, and never told him it was the first time I finished the game!

[SonicBoom]

Beating Contra in under 40 minutes......Without dying.