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Thread: Classic gaming memories, what are some of your favorite times as a gamer?

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) Manga4life's Avatar
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    Default Classic gaming memories, what are some of your favorite times as a gamer?

    Okay, I'll start!

    I remember the year being around 1990 or so and my downstairs neighbor got an NES for the first time, it came with Mario/Duck Hunt and that was the only game he had. Since I knew the game a little bit (had not beaten it at that point) I remember going downstairs and helping him set up the NES and he fired up some SMB for the first time, boy was he enthralled by it having only had an Atari 2600 leading up to that point. I knew some tricks but not many and we both kind of learned the game together, we literally played for hours and before you knew it it was like 9PM and my mom came down stairs to get me, I was 10 at the time, and she said I could stay there the night if his mom was okay with it (she was). We stayed up until about 3am continuously playing SMB and Duck Hunt, it was a really special time for me and we had a lot of fun. I'll always remember that, those are memories today's systems just can't offer.

    Time to share some memories of yours!
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    I remember renting Castlevania II when I was young. Over the course of 2 days me and my sister found all the items and beat the game without tips or nintendo power. I always think of this when people complain about Castlevania II being too hard or cryptic because I was able to beat it when I was probably less than 10 years old.

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    I still recall the 1st time I beat Mike Tyson. By the time I got to the 3rd round, I was really nervous and shaking. It was the deepest I had ever gone into a fight with him, and was scared out of my mind. Previously I had only got into the 2nd round like once or twice, so I was really in uncharted waters. I managed to beat him by decision. My buddy was trying to keep my calm between rounds and coax me on to victory. It was probably the most ridiculous interaction of all time.

    In the next few weeks I mastered beating Tyson. I would go to Walmart and play the NES there and put on a show for other kids, as I beat Tyson.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bb_hood View Post
    I remember renting Castlevania II when I was young. Over the course of 2 days me and my sister found all the items and beat the game without tips or nintendo power. I always think of this when people complain about Castlevania II being too hard or cryptic because I was able to beat it when I was probably less than 10 years old.
    I'm not exactly gonna call bullshit on this, but...
    I love Castlevania 2, it's one of my favorite games, but the complaints are warranted, I feel, if you are simply trying to beat the game (my perspective on that is down below). The garlic in the graveyard summoning a stranger is easy enough to figure out, as are some of the others, but a lot of the clues are way too skewed to be figured out outside of trial and error. The villagers lying and saying cryptic shit is all part of the charm and aesthetic of the game for me, but I can recognize it as being fucking annoying and hindering gameplay to the point of where, if you choose to play through without any outside guide, the game would become an infuriating game of trial and error.

    With all that being said... Castlevania 2 was the first game I became completely immersed in the atmosphere of and it was the first game to genuinely creep me out. I was really into roaming the Romanian countryside and feeling the heavy wave of depression that seemed to hover over the villages of Transylvania. It was a weird juxtaposition, the freedom to roam the land while the people were still recovering from the reign of Dracula while still being terrorized by beasts and monsters in the countryside and at night. A lot of the shit the villagers said really stuck with me as I first learned to read. Everything was so odd. Now I can recognize it as a shoddy translation, but back then I didn't think or know that at all. I thought these folks were just fucked in the head and odd because of them still feeling the rule of the Count. The green floating zombie women that came out in the villages at night were the first aspect of any video game to ever frighten me. I would avoid going into the towns at night because of them. Even to this day I'll play through Castlevania 2 once a year around Halloween time and I still think they're still eerie. The entire game is eerie and I think the poor translation into English helped that aesthetic out rather than hindering it. When I played Castlevania 2 it was never to get the end and kill Dracula and to be done with it, but to immerse myself in all the odd shit going on. The aesthetic holds up to this day and it's a very unique game for me.



    -GoTaS

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    I remember having a NES as my first system and loving it. It was around 1990 I had went to friends house and they had a Sega Genesis. I played Sonic for hours until I had to go home for dinner. Suffice to say my birthday was coming up soon and I begged for a Genesis. That was a birthday I will cherish forever! The Genesis was the first system I really wanted, the NES was a crapshoot on my parents part.

    The following Christmas of 91 I got another system I didn't ask for but was blown away by it. That system was my NEOGEO AES with Fatal Fury and magician lord. Ahhh the memories. All my friends were green with envy and my older sister wanted to trade my Aes for her Snes....I said no .
    Last edited by BricatSegaFan; 05-11-2013 at 04:14 PM.

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) Manga4life's Avatar
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    Another NES specific memory I have is of Punch Out and one Saturday afternoon when me and a friend at the time spent probably 2 or 3 hours trying to figure out how to dodge Tiger's barrage of punches, he knew there was a way and we tried what seemed like everything to stop him but we just kept failing over and over. It sucked! Finally, after all of that I was able to knock him down 3 times before he went into his barrage and won the fight. We cheered so loud that the neighbors banged on the ceiling of their apartment up through the floor to shut us up, we were that loud. Even my mom ran in to see what the racket was about, it was definitely a classic gaming memory for me.
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    Peach (Level 3) PreZZ's Avatar
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    I remember going to a friend's house when I was 9 years old, and we played the original Castlevania. When it was my turn to play, I made it all the way to Dracula but I lost the fight! My friends were all anxious and amazed that I made it to the final boss, and I was too! When I got killed, they said: do it again!, but I could never reach it! Guess that was one of those days when everything just works for you, but I got my streets respect for my mad skills!

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    first games I played were at a cousins he was a teenager I was 7 so I thought he was so cool having all these systems and a tv in his room. He had an NES and genesis maybe a master system and a virtual boy. I hated the virtual boy visuals but still thought it was neat. Loved contra on the nes. And of course sonic on the genesis. in less than a year I convinced my parents to get me the n64 at launch

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    Quote Originally Posted by Guru of Time and Space View Post
    I'm not exactly gonna call bullshit on this, but...




    -GoTaS
    Nope, not bullshit at all. Only 3 tricky parts in the game: 1st where you have to hold the 2nd crystal orb to reveal a mansion. Second is using the diamond on the river-guy and 3rd is using the 3rd crystal to summon the tornado. By tricky I mean confusing, especially if you dont know what the crystals do. Gotta talk to the villagers to get clues, which is essential to progress without outside hints.
    Otherwise its just making sure that simon belmont is leveled up enough to kill the monsters with 1 or 2 hits. Not too hard.

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    First time I tried to play Romance of the Three Kingdoms II multiplayer. A friend of mine had attacked this one warlord (I forget who it was) and kicked his ass, but the dude escaped... right into a state bordered by hostiles on two sides. So naturally, dude got attacked again... and escaped... and attacked AGAIN... and escaped... and AGAIN... and escaped... until finally this dude (who we had been trying to kill) managed to get to the opposite side of the map and set himself up a solid foundation.

    We still make jokes about that to this day.

    Also, did anyone else ever used to rent games from local gas stations? I remember this was how I first discovered Gargoyle's Quest. At another one, they had Little Samson... which I was not interested in because I thought it was a bible game. Sigh... if only I had known...

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    Nope, I will call bullshit on the Simons Quest thing. I played through the game recently after not touching it for 20 years. I talked to everyone, wrote down all clues, tried everything to make it through the game without outside help. Even having played through the game dozens of times as a teenager didn't give me enough info to complete this. I was very thorough. There simply are not enough accurate clues to know what to do. Unless you are playing this in native Japanese, where there may be enough accuracy to figure things out, the game is essentially impossible to complete. You'd need an enormous amount of time invested trying absolutely everything; 100 monkeys for 100 years.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zing View Post
    Nope, I will call bullshit on the Simons Quest thing. I played through the game recently after not touching it for 20 years. I talked to everyone, wrote down all clues, tried everything to make it through the game without outside help. Even having played through the game dozens of times as a teenager didn't give me enough info to complete this. I was very thorough. There simply are not enough accurate clues to know what to do. Unless you are playing this in native Japanese, where there may be enough accuracy to figure things out, the game is essentially impossible to complete. You'd need an enormous amount of time invested trying absolutely everything; 100 monkeys for 100 years.
    Maybe there was a game genie involved.

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    Playing below the root nonstop on the apple IIc

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) Manga4life's Avatar
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    Another memory I have is about a year and a half after I sold my original Nintendo I got the itch to buy another one and with some money I had saved up I went to Funcoland to pick one up in mid-1995 and bought it alongside Mario/Duck Hunt and The Legend of Zelda. It was fun because for some reason I remember being so excited to play the system and I raced home and caught every bus I could to get there as soon as I could so I could play, and aside from the two games I bought tha day I got the console again I focused mainly on games I've never played before and discovered some true gems such as Faxanadu (which became a personal favorite). It's weird, back in early 1994 I sold my NES and the 20+ games I had for it because I had a Super Nintendo, but in only about a year and a few months later I realized that I loved my NES and I absolutely NEEDED to own one, that year or so I didn't have the system really felt like multiple years because when I played the system I felt as if I haven't seen or played one in 10 years and instantly felt nostalgic.

    But yeah, that feeling I had when I was buss hoping to get home fast to play is the kind of feeling that you just don't get with todays games and systems.
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    Quote Originally Posted by TecmoBowlTerror View Post
    I still recall the 1st time I beat Mike Tyson. By the time I got to the 3rd round, I was really nervous and shaking. It was the deepest I had ever gone into a fight with him, and was scared out of my mind. Previously I had only got into the 2nd round like once or twice, so I was really in uncharted waters. I managed to beat him by decision. My buddy was trying to keep my calm between rounds and coax me on to victory. It was probably the most ridiculous interaction of all time.

    In the next few weeks I mastered beating Tyson. I would go to Walmart and play the NES there and put on a show for other kids, as I beat Tyson.
    Hahaha!!! Dude, I just beat Tyson on Puch-Out for the first time in the past year, by decision as well. I was freaked out and so nervous the whole time, and I went crazy when Mario called it for me. Such a high, let me tell you. I can put Kid Dynamite down in the second round now, but that first win melted away years and years of anxiety towards Tyson as an unbeatable force of programming.

    Other amazing memories I have are playing two different games with my cousins who lived next door: The Secret of Monkey Island on the PC and Double Dragon on the arcade. Both of those games had many loving hours poured into them by me and each respective cousin. Both games are such epic quests in such different ways: Double Dragon required my cousin and me to ride our bikes up to the local Circle K every Saturday morning, plunking quarter after quarter in, while Ron Gilbert's masterpiece held us transfixed in front of a glowing monitor well past night fall, day in and day out, while we worked our way through the different puzzles. Magic, man. It was magic.
    Last edited by treismac; 05-13-2013 at 09:55 AM.

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    I didn't get my first video game system until I was 11. I wanted an NES so bad. My first real gaming memory was going with one of my best friends to Toys R' Us to buy his NES with his mom. We got back to his house and proceeded to play it all day.
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    One of my fondest memories was finally receiving an NES Christmas of '89. I had already been playing SMB for years at various friends' houses, but never really had a chance to beat it. I was a pretty lucky kid back then because I didn't know many other kids, particularly my age, who had a TV let alone an NES hooked up in their bedroom. It didn't take too long, perhaps a couple weeks, before I called my parents and sister into my room as I entered the final castle and they all watched and cheered as (my five year old brain worked out that damn loop and) I beat the game.
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    Wow, I can remember getting my original Atari as early as age 4 and setting it up with my dad on a small television in my room. We played Real Action Sports Boxing as well as Megamania, E.T, Pac-Man, some racing game (Grand Prix, maybe?), and Defender. We both had a blast and were laughing when we died in the games and whatnot, it was a really fun time and I'll always remember this great catalog he had where we ordered games from. Gosh, those memories are almost 30 years old now.......where did the time go? I'm just glad I remember that kind of stuff, memories such as that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
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    As hard as the system is to look at now with color/backlit options available to play the games, a lot of good memories came from my first Game Boy Pocket system. This system alone was the key to sneaking in gameplay at odd hours of the night using a flashlight undercover, or in the space between the foot of the bed and bookcase pretending to work on my homework while procrastinating because of Pokémon being more important to me at the time. Never before was I able to get away with things like that. It would take four more years to figure out how to pull it off using a console that was connected to the TV and turn off the TV when footsteps were near.
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    When I rented Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, I'd already been playing games for about 5 years. This game was a revelation to me, though. It was the first time I ever experienced atmosphere in a game. I was no longer just moving a character around the screen, instead actively participating in a gripping, mysterious, epic (to me, anyway) story. The sound design added a lot to this, the wonderful music, and sound effects I can still clearly hear all these years later. The splash splash of walking through puddles, the sound a guard made when he noticed you, bwockbbbock when you whack a chicken. That eerie scene where the kid on the stump fades away gave me chills. I'm sure there were other games that had a sense of atmosphere out at or before this time, but they never got to me, or I never played them. This was the first, and Super Metroid was probably the second to elicit this sense of wonder and urge to explore, discover, and experience the environments painted before me on the screen. It became less about 'beat the level, beat the game' and more about the thrill of adventuring through an ancient land, interacting with strange characters and generally forgetting that I was playing a game at all.

    I didn't get this feeling was from the first LoZ, and as a kid, the second one just struck me as 'weird', though I like it now.

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