Post a random classic gaming memory. Tell us a story!

[celerystalker]

When I was in fourth grade, I got invited to my best friend at the time's tenth birthday party sleepover. About six kids were there that night, and we all hung out and played Nintendo games in his parents' den, where we eventually set up sleeping bags and their couch hide-a-bed. I remember it being odd that they had us go to bed, lights out, at, like, 10pm. Most of the kids went right to sleep, but I've never in my life been a very good sleeper. Anyway, maybe half an hour later, I hear his parents fighting in the next room. Arguing, I should say. Apparently this was happening a lot, and my friend whose party it was heard them as well. We whispered about not knowing what to do, and he asked if I'd watch him play Castlevania II, and I agreed. As quietly as we could, he turned the game on with no volume, and put in the old "HELP ME" password. He played up through the first mansion while we tried to pretend we didn't hear his parents arguing, and as it died down, he started to get tired. He asked me to play something for him to watch, so I put in the old Baseball (the black box game). I vividly remember being afraid that his parents would come in and see me playing, but I needed the distraction as well. I remember playing as St Louis vs LA, and I remember hitting a few home runs, which impressed me friend. I won the game, and started another when we heard his dad leave the house, and we quickly turned the game off, fearing that his mom would come in, and I just closed my eyes for what felt like forever until I fell asleep. We didn't hang out in the morning, and I know I got picked uo early, maybe 8am. His parents divorced a few months later, and we only hung out a few more times, always at my house, before drifting apart. It wasn't a long friendship, but that nighthas stuck with me for more than 25 years.

[celerystalker]

I had a really bad breakup in early 2004 with a girl I was crazy about, but she ended up cheating while away at college. I was really down and out, and most of my interests at the time I'd been sharing with her, from console games to anime to travel, and so it all reminded me of her, and I was getting depressed. I'd spend my days like a zombie, working, going home, having trouble sleeping, and looking for something to do that had nothing to do with her. So, for awhile I was doing time wasting crap that even I didn't enjoy, like watching Becker and doing puzzles... you know how you can get when you're young, stupid, and mopey. One night while I was busy not sleeping, I got out my Futurama DVDs and started watching them with the commentaries on. While doing so, I fired up my Neo Geo Pocket Color with SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters Clash (Capcom version).

Next thing I knew, hours had gone by and I was starting to enjoy myself. This became a nightly ritual, and I'd fall asleep with the NGPC in my hands. It cost me some batteries, but I was sleeping at least.

I slowly worked my way into a reasonable mindset, and then started showing the game to my friends. Soon enough, five of my friends had NGPCs and the game, and we were all having fun showing off our new cards. One day, one of my buddies went to a Toys R Us and saw a stray copy of Pac-Man for NGPC, and asked if they had anymore games. The guy went in back and found an unopened case of the SNK version of Card Fighters Clash, knocked down to $5 each! We all ran and got a copy, and we played the hell out of it that year. It kept me distracted enough to get right, and we all had a ton of fun with that game.

Too bad the DS game sucked.

[sfchakan]

When life is rough like that for, I break out my Saturn and play some shooters. Time goes by so fast and before I know it, I feel a little refreshed.

[ave1]

I remember when I was around 11 or 12 my dad agreed that we could get an Atari VCS. We went to a locally-owned electronics store and got a brand new Atari with Combat (pack - in game) as well as River Raid. Within a few more weeks we also got Night Driver, Dodge 'em, Missile Command, and Yars Revenge. I played for hours and got really good at each game. I remember choosing not to get Pac-Man or Defender because I felt these ports were shoddy. I also played Atari at a couple of friends' houses: mainly Donkey Kong, Starmaster, Adventure, and Megamania.

I had other friends who owned Colecovision and Intellivision which were plenty of fun, but I liked the Atari joystick and paddles more than what the other systems offered.

A couple years into owning the game system, I entered a contest to recruit new customers on my paper route and won the 1st prize. Three Atari games of my choice were awarded to me- Jackpot!

Ended up getting Enduro and two others which i don't remember.. mightve been Omega Race and G.I. Joe Cobra Strike... Played Enduro till I got sick of it around 2 months later Never did get sick of Omega Race!

[celerystalker]

When I was a pretty young kid... I think about 9 years old... there was a bithday party for one of my friends from church. I was really more friends with his younger brother, but most of the kids from church between the ages of 8-12 or so were there. There were enough of us to play a pretty good game of kickball in their back yard while it was still light outside. Anyway, it was a sleepover, and after the kickball game, we all went inside for food, cake, and ice cream, then we all went down to the basement to play. There were some toys (they had a lot of He-Man and Thundercats stuff along with those goofy WWF thumb wrestler action figures where you put your thumb up their asses and tried to knock them off of each other's hands), but I was more into GI Joe, so I mostly hung around the Nintendo. This was the first time I saw and played Kid Icarus.

I was already into Greek mythology, as we had to check out a book at the school library every week, so it was either that or Choose Your Own Adventure books for me. The music immediately caught my attention. I've played and owned thousands of games since, but Kid Icarus for me contains some of if not the very best chip tunes of all time. I can still just sit and listen to the title theme several times before I press start each time I fire it up. The graphics were also so dark and brooding, and the march remix of the title theme as the music for the first few levels really set the mood for a young hero forging his way hopefully through a dark adventure.

I didn't get past 1-3 that night, but the game was in my head, and I knew I would own it eventually. As I laid there in the dark as the night wound down, though, it felt increasingly creepy. I decided to try to go to bed as the older kids turned on a movie as most of the younger kids were falling asleep. I wanted to be cool, so I sat up to watch as Empire Strikes Back came on. I'd never seen it; my dad had a copy of A New Hope he'd taped off of TV that I'd seen a million times, but my mom was afraid I might have nightmares from Empire. Well, I don't remember many dreams from my life, but I know the scene in the cave on Dagobah did not help, and I slept uneasily, filled with creepy imagery and haunting music.

The next morning, while waiting to be picked up by my parents, I played Super Mario Bros., which I was rather familiar with, even though I partly wanted to play Kid Icarus... but that bright blue sky, green little hills, and cheery music in level 1-1 were like a warm blanket after a long, creepy night. Still, Kid Icarus was destined to become a favorite of mine, and Empire certainly is the best Star Wars movie...

[BlastProcessing402]

I had a bit of a nightmare buying the Saturn. I heard about the early launch and somehow had enough money for it at the time, so I ran over to Electronics Boutique (my favorite place to buy games at the time) and plunked down my cash (note that, I paid in cash) and walked out with my shiny new system.

I went to a local rental place (one that only rented games not movies) and rented a few games that seemed interesting. So far so good.

Played for a few hours that night in the family room, then took the Saturn up to my bedroom to hook it up. Played for a few more minutes and then... nothing. It just stopped working. Unplugged it plugged it back in, nothing. Took it back down to the family room, nothing. Thing was dead.

Next night, boxed it up and headed back to EB to exchange it. Oh so sorry, we're all sold out. Well then, give me back my money, so I can head two doors down and buy one at Babbage (I didn't say that 2nd part out loud). Oh we don't have that much money on hand, we can mail you a check. A CHECK?!?!? I pay you in cash and you asshats want to mail me a check and leave me without what I paid for for weeks if I'm lucky?!?!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!??* Finally they called another EB and they still had them. But that EB was way across town and no way could I get there before closing. But it was somewhat near my mom's work, so she said she could take care of it after work the next day.

She comes home the next day. I open the box... and something's not right. Things look a little off. The little protector for the battery is already pulled, and things just in general look a little disturbed. Hook it up... and there're already saves on the system. Welp, I'm not putting up with a used system when I just paid $400 for a new system. Take it back tomorrow, please, Mom.

And she did, and the next one actually was new, and it actually didn't fail the first night, and it's actually the same Saturn I have to this day.

Then a couple months later they drop the price buy $100. Yeah, VFremix free in the mail really made up for that...




*before anyone says things like that are common practice, they weren't back at that time, and it certainly wasn't the policy written on any signage or the receipt when I was buying the system.

[celerystalker]

I'dve been pissed, too. That was a ton of money at the time to get that kind of runaround. Glad it worked out for you in the end, as Saturn is a fantastic system.

[celerystalker]

I remember in 1999 I'd been working at a FuncoLand, and every Friday we'd get in a box of new and used games from UPS to supplement trade-ins, and of course the employees would raid them pretty hard. At that time, I'd pick up pretty much any NES game I didn't have that was $2 or less, so I'd occasionally bring home a big bag of games to try out. My brother was my play tester, and he'd come to my room and play everything for a few minutes and give me his always funny, yet very accurate capsule reviews. Every now and then, though, a game would stick.

The biggest of these was when we got in a pile of new, sealed copies of Suikoden, and a few magazines had raved about it posthumously. I picked one up for ten bucks along with about 10 other games, and we settled in to play. I'd been having insomnia issues and hadn't slept for about 3 days, so I was kinda drifting in and out. I remember him trying Amagon and Zanac before firing up Suikoden. He was lukewarm for the first few minutes, so I gave in when I started to fall asleep. I woke up almost 3 hours later to find him still playing. I chuckled, and asked him if he'd been playing that same game the whole time.

"Uh huh. Dude. This game is awesome."

I watched for awhile as he told me a little about McDohl and Gremio's rebellion, then I fell asleep. I woke up around ten in the morning, not expecting so much time to have passed. The game was still running, and there was my brother, asleep in the floor, controller still in hand. I laughed to myself and went back to sleep. It was just a calm, quiet, comical moment.

He finished the game within days, then again immediately after to collect all of the stars of destiny. Still one of his all-time favorites.

[celerystalker]

I remember the first used game I ever bought was Mike Tyson's Punch Out! in 1989. My brother's best friend had brought a copy over recently, and though I sucked at it, I loved the huge characters, catchy music, and the feel of the punches. A few weeks afterward, a kid named Jason in my third grade class offered to sell me his copy for $7! I had my allowance saved in a big pickle jar in my parents' room, as I was trying to save up for new Nintendo games. I asked my mom if I could have some of my money to buy the game, but she made me promise to put half of my money in the bank first, so I did.

I had this plastic little BB box that was meant to clip to your belt that I used to put little things I thought were cool inside, like my Lego knights or Silly Putty. I put the money inside and took it to school the next day. I had trouble going to sleep, I was so excited, so I did some reading in my copy of How to Win at Nintendo Games... I think volume 2. The tips didn't mean much to me yet, but I memorized the password to fight Mike Tyson, which I'l never forget: 007-373-5963.

The next day, I bought the game before school, effectively making it impossible to pay attention the rest of the day. As soon as I got it home, my brother and I started taking turns like maniacs until my mom made us turn it off for the night.

I played the hell out of that game, and beat it within the year. However, not having the manual, I had no idea about star punches, which I'd somehow glossed over in Jeff Rovin's book. It wasn't until I was a teenager and my buddy Tim started throwing uppercuts that I had my mind blown!

Nothing overly special, but it made me happy.

[dgdgagdae]

Celerystalker, you have some great stories. Thanks for sharing.

[celerystalker]

That was very kind of you to say. Thank you very much.

[sfchakan]

However, not having the manual, I had no idea about star punches, which I'd somehow glossed over in Jeff Rovin's book. It wasn't until I was a teenager and my buddy Tim started throwing uppercuts that I had my mind blown!

I think it's impressive you beat the game without them as a kid.

[celerystalker]

I think it's impressive you beat the game without them as a kid.

Heh, thanks, but it's not as impressive as it sounds... the later fighters get pretty tough to even get a star, and often recover so fast that it's tough to land one. I'll take the compliment, though!

Anyway, another silly story. Shortly before Christmas in 1994, I was trying to find a good present for my brother. I used to roll newspapers on weekends for a few years for my neighbor across the street who owned a route for $5 a day, and I'd saved up a bit of money. It was somewhat of a golden age for clearance sales in my area, and the local Wal-Mart had quite a few remaining NES games and some poorly performing SNES games marked down under $20.

I started pawing through the electronics department and picking out the soundtrack to Top Gun for my dad on CD. As I started to get into the games like Phalanx with that goofy banjo box art, Godzilla 2, Battle Blaze, etc., I ran across some winners.

That fall my friend Tim had exposed me to RPGs. He had a neighbor with divorced parents that constantly bought him new games, and we had gone over to play a game they'd been playing through together: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I'd played a little Dragon Warrior before, but this was different. I watched them go through Pazuzu's Tower, and everything had so much more color... the music was cool, the battles were fast, and there was animation for attacks and damage... I loved it.

So, when I saw both Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for $15 each, I really wanted to buy both, but I didn't have money to do so and buy presents. I made the decision to buy one for my brother, and I went for the original Final Fantasy after long deliberation. I went home feeling that excitement of buying a new game, even if it wasn't for me, and was dying to talk about it.

I naturally immediately started hyping up to my brother this amazing present I had for him, and he was getting excited. He started probing, asking questions to try and figure out what it was. When I played coy, he started to brag about what he'd picked out for me. So, after excitedly poking at one another, we made a deal to tell each other what we bought. This was taboo in our house, and my mom always got upset when we'd spoil or figure out surprises. We didn't want her to overhear, so we for some reason we came up with the retarded plan to get out our copy of Baseball Simulator 1.000 on NES and write them out in the names of the players on a created team so there would be no evidence.

I went first, and he started giggling happily, both from excitement and because we felt like we were these sneaky geniuses, but I was about to find out there was another reason... he'd gotten me Mystic Quest!

That Christmas break, I got a TV of my very own for my room from my parents, and you'd better believe I camped out in my room pretty much the whole time playing Mystic Quest. I had a bunch of cherry Life Savers from a Secret Santa at church, and I sat on my bottom bunk playing the crap out of that game all the way through before New Year's Eve. It was so cool having this new game to play on my new TV, and my brother sat on the top bunk most of the time, sharing in my candy and playing Final Fantasy when I'd take a break. It was an awesome week, and every year since, it's been a tradition for my brother and I to tell each other what we're giving one another. The spoilers have yet to diminish the fun in the slightest.

[MadaoBob]

Alright, here's mine.

So about a decade or so back, maybe a bit more, my dad got us a GCN, that my siblings and I adored to death. We had a cousin who stayed on the 5th floor of our block, so he'd occasionally come up to our home up on the 13th, and us to his home on the 5th, since he had a GCN as well.

Basically some years after, my brother, cousin and I were playing Digimon World 4 that we had gotten on the GCN. We did loads of stupid shit then, with our childish thoughts what not. Back then we had this thing where each person took one of the four digimon, my cousin Agumon, my brother Dorumon, and me Veemon, this will be a little relevant later.

The very first of the funny things that happened being a weapon in the inventory of our cousin's Agumon, and we had the bright idea that the "Break" command was to break it literally into pieces that we could then share, and not that it would destroy the item. You can pretty much guess what happened.

The next one was us constantly going to the digivolve booth and spam digivolving to the other digimon, when we started to just run around and get slightly annoyed that we cant switch back to our own characters yet to continue the game.

Then came along what I'd call the apex of the shenanigans: I accidentally overwritten my cousin's Agumon save, which mind you by that time we were at level 40. He got mad at me for a long while until my brother offered to let him have his Dorumon save.

Other shenanigans included bastardizing the boss digimon names such as Apocalymon to Apple Curry Mon, and calling Malovamdemon "That guy with boobs on his shoulders that can open and shoot black balls".

Good memories....

[celerystalker]

At the end of January 2000, I was still working at FuncoLand when this kid named David came in asking about trade-in prices on his Sega Master System. Funco didn't buy Master System, so I told him that unfortunately we couldn't offer him anything. He asked me if anyone local would buy it, so I referred him to a Game Xchange down the street. He thanked me and left, and I didn't think much of it. About an hour later, he shows back up, saying they only offered him $20 in credit for his stuff. He asked if I knew anybody else, because he really wanted to buy a Dreamcast. I asked him how much he wanted, and he said $30 for the system and some games, cash. I told him I'd buy it if he wanted at that price, and he said he'd bring it by sometime. This sort of thing happened once in awhile, and usually they'd forget, give up, or sell whatever it was elsewhere, so I didn't expect much.

On the day the Rams were playing in the Super Bowl I was working, planning to head over to my sister's after work to watch the second half of the game when I got off, when the guy calls me at the store, asking if I was still interested. I told him to meet me at the store after I got off, and I'd pay the $30, sight unseen, not knowing what games I'd be getting.

He shows up with this box, I pay the money after glancing at it, and hurry off to my sister's house.

When I got there, I ate some food, talked and watched the end of the game, which the Rams won, which was cool. Then, my brother and I broke off to her basement to check this stuff out.

The first surprise was that it was a Master System II with Alex Kidd built in. Awesome, as that was one of two games I'd had great memories with, the other being Safari Hunt. I'd never seen a Master System II in person at that point, so I thought it was super cool. He also had a Light Phaser, so that was neat, but it was time to check out the games.

Turned out there were nearly 30 in the box, most in the cases! On top of that, I couldn't believe what all was there... Phantasy Star, Y's, Wonderboy III... I didn't even know there was a game based on Alf! We started just trying games out shotgun style, starting with Alf, which we watched all the time as kids, even the cartoon... well, it wasn't great, but next thing you know we're playing Penguin Land for a couple of hours, as it just had that great easy to play, tough to master feel, and it reminded me a little of Lode Runner, which we used to play on NES.

I only saw that David kid a couple more times at the store, usually buying Dreamcast sports games, but he gave me a memorable night and almost half of my Master System, all for the low price of $30. Pretty sweet.

[Az]

Can't remember the exact year but I'm thinking '91 or '92. Went on a short trip to Pigeon Forge, TN and stopped by this outlet mall. I was browsing around in the toy store and noticed they had an endcap of SMS consoles and systems, right out in the open, which was rather odd. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it since I had most of the games but what floored me was there was a game I'd never even heard of called Double Hawk.

I walk up to check the Genesis stuff out behind the counter and my mind is blown: half the titles actually say "Mega Drive" on them. Hardly any of them are shrinkwrapped and most just have a small Sega sticker on the side holding the clamshell together. I sheepishly asked the clerk if she could open one for me because in my mind Mega Drive meant Japanese games which I obviously couldn't play. I explained that to her and she looked at me a bit funny, but grabbed Toejam & Earl and popped it open, only for me to see a US style cart! My brain locked up and I had no idea what was going on. I knew something had to be up because right there was Sonic 1 with a Mega Drive label on a white background, nothing like the US version, but the shells weren't Japanese?

I ended up buying Wings of Wor (US version) for either $15 or $20. I had no idea until years later that what I was looking at was a gigantic stock of European games that somehow wound up in an American store. I kick myself in the ass for passing on the import version of Captain Silver, Double Hawk, and other SMS games going for $10 or less. Now that I know what was going on, I always wonder what happened to the people that bought all those PAL consoles only to have them not work.

[Steven]

CS, had no idea you worked at a Funcoland. Overall, do you look back on that period of your life with a real deep fondness? Or no? And why or why not? I always found that place fascinating, and my mantra in the late '90s/early 2000s regarding Funcoland visits were "bring 20 bucks, stay 10 minutes and then get the hell outta there" lol.

Random memory time. I always get nostalgic around Thanksgiving time because back in November 2002 when I was in my DIEHARD Sega Saturn (importing) stage, I found out Capcom Generations 5 contained the classic Street Fighter II games. World Warrior, Champion Edition and Hyper/Turbo. I bought a copy in time for Thanksgiving 2002 and just remember playing the sh!t out of it, and LOVING the intense bursts of nostalgia. From Blanka's stage to E. Honda's, the game overwhelmed my senses with memories from a better time in gaming. And mind you, in 2002, SFII was only 11 years old, so it was still kind of fresh in my mind a little bit. I was a sophomore in college, and I just recall that time very dearly. I played Capcom Generations 5 that whole week straight, and I loved every damn second of it. Damn I should pick it up again. As much as I love the SNES ports, the Saturn compilation was arcade perfect (or so it seemed). Blew the SNES ports out of the water, naturally.

[celerystalker]

Steven-overall, Funco was a bitter-sweet part of my life. I started working there the summer after high school, and my buddy Tim worked there as well. Within a month I promoted, and was pretty happy. They hired another friend of mine from high school shortly thereafter, and then a guy who became another close friend and later roommate for a few years. We were all friends, running the place together, and it showed in some great sales numbers. We sold so much that we surpassed even the mall stores in our market, and our customers were super loyal. I'll post some of the better stories eventually.

Anyway, eventually, the company sold out to Barnes and Noble after we all thought it was going to be EB, and had gotten new employee paperwork from them until B&N swooped in at the 11th hour. It went downhill from there, as they began to carry DVDs, move away from classic games, and really push for reservations on new games. The new DM was a dick from Babbage's, and he was terrible to work for. He directly told us to lie and say that everything was great, whereas Funco encouraged honesty, and simply offering customers asking for shitty games to try them first. I finally got fed up and quit in 2001 in the fall, as the last original Funco employee in St Louis not replaced by a Babbage's associate or someone off the street. I did go out on my own terms, which is a popular story among my friends, and maybe I'll share it sometime.

I spent just about all of the money I made back in the store, and up until the last 10 months or so, it was a blast; me and my friends running a store together successfully, and we're all still friends today. We even used to prank call our other stores, as we were friendly rivals... it was great. When it was Funco, I was allowed to be myself, and I had a great relationship with my friends and customers, some of which end up recognizing me all these years later at Walmart stores I've been a salaried manager in for years now. I can't imagine having that kind of fun at work again, but I doubt it was as much fun for everyone out there. I do, though, obviously hate GameStop.... just for more reasons than most.

[Emperor Megas]

Around 2000 or 2001, back when I lived in New Orleans, my girlfriend (who was living in MN at the time) came down and moved in with me. She didn't really game much, but there were a few titles that she enjoyed. We used to play Trip'D on 3DO a lot, and also Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast, which she REALLY enjoyed. Anyway, one day she was playing fast and furiously right out of the gate and when she drove her first fare to her destination at the base of the hill that you start on top of, she violently slammed into the wall of the destination zone while still holding down the accelerator, causing her to grind on the wall in slow motion, slowly creeping along the side of the building until she eventually broke. Well, the trick/tip counter was rapid firing, multiplying like mad, and the fare in back was going absolutely nuts, LOVING it. The woman in the back of the cab couldn't finish a single sound sample because another one would start a second after she spoke. She made a mint off of that first fare and that exploit changed the way we played the game. We dubbed the technique the 'Wall Ride', and from then on that's how we started every game of Crazy Taxi.

The trick was to get know when to stop the trick as to get the maximum tip while maintaining the best delivery time. I don't know if everyone learned this trick since I didn't really talk or read about the Dreamcast much online back then, but it was the shit.

Til' this day if Crazy Taxi ever comes up in a conversation and she's around, she declares "That 'Wall Ride'...yeah, I pioneered that shit".

[celerystalker]

That's awesome. I'll have to try that stunt out.