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Thread: My personal "WOW" moment in console gaming. You wouldn't guess. What's yours?

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    Default My personal "WOW" moment in console gaming. You wouldn't guess. What's yours?

    I had posted this comment elsewhere, it ended up much longer and more detailed in trying to convey the moment so I will paste and share it here as well as well invite all to share their own personal jaw dropping "WOW" moment in console gaming whatever platform or time period that was 😎


    It was in answer to basically what was my "WOW" moment in console gaming, I think even those that know me and my long history in it might be surprised but it is my most honest answer -
    Well, see I recall reading so many articles about Sega's new console coming, seeing pictures of the Dreamcast logo, the designs and rendering of the case, reading all the "specs", that was all fine and dandy.


    Then one day arriving at my local mall I went to the second floor and as I walked off the top of the escalator facing the gaming store I began to approach, as I was getting close enough to make out what was displayed on 2 - 3 15 inch TV's hanging in the store front display I was thinking "Ugh, wtf? WHY are they playing a damn football game ?" I figured it was early in the day, the store was pretty empty, I assumed the manager maybe put to on to "catch the game", I kind of rolled my eyes but then, as I got closer it dawned on me, no, no way, can this be?

    Then running up the rest of the way, I confirmed what blew my mind, this was no broadcast game, this was my first time seeing something running in person on the new Dreamcast console by SEGA 😮Yes, from a distance and admittedly maybe because I had zero interest in Football I assumed, if only for a few brief seconds that an actual football game was in progress when in fact it was NFL 2K, I think in demo mode, I only noticed the players movement, some cut scene of interaction on the field and of course the sounds of the crowd and commentary where being amplified outside the display.


    It did not matter that I could not care less about football or sports games in general, hell outside of possibly trying the game sometime later on a Dreamcast Demo disc I never even played it, yet for those few seconds I was fooled, I was more impressed than if they had been simply displaying Sonic adventure, in my mind, at that moment at least the Dreamcast realized everything I had heard or read up to that point and I was convinced that not only had Sega made a fantastic debut in the new generation but that it was surely the future of console gaming. And while we all know how things actually would turn out in the long run, that will always be for me my most WOW moment in gaming. 🤷😎


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    My ex-father-in law had the same reaction! My ex brother-in-law and I were playing that exact same game in the basement and the father-in-law came down and looked at the TV. He asked if we were watching a recording of a game.

    I wrote about my "wow" moment waaaay back when Digital Press had their "Lore" section. It was the release of the N64 and seeing Mario's big polygonal head on a 13" Wal-Mart display TV made my jaw drop. That system just "clicked" for me and no matter what the controller haters say, I LOVED the N64 controller. That level of precise control is still unparalleled in my opinion.

    EDIT- I read your post on Atari Age asking the same question and after looking at the responses, my memories kicked in. Dang I must be getting old or I'm just letting the world put me into a fog. So I'll tack on to this list.

    Sega Genesis-I read about this powerhouse of a system in numerous magazines. Being an arcade fan, I loved what Sega was bringing to the table with the Genesis and I loved the looks and the specs (yeah I got sucked into that). My last paycheck from my summer job in I want to say 1990 went to a new system along with "Golden Axe". While the pack in "Altered Beast" was cool, seeing the spinning letters and hearing the opening theme in "Golden Axe" made me think that the magazines weren't kidding about this being the "next generation".

    Xbox and "The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind"-The first time I saw an Xbox (the original behemoth that had warnings that it could injure or kill a child if it fell on them), I was not impressed. I played "Transworld Surf" at the last Gen-Con in Milwaukee. That's when the controller was still "The Duke" and my Carnie hands couldn't comfortably grab all the amenities of that thing's real estate. I passed on it and gave it a small-thumbs down.

    Fast forward some time to the release of the "Type S" controller. I see a display at Gamestop with "Morrowind" playing on it. Mind you, I had this game on my PC but that machine didn't have the horsepower to really play that game. I tried the game out on the display and was really impressed that I was playing a game that looked better than on my PC! Plus I could use a controller and not a stupid keyboard! Double-wow!
    Last edited by YoshiM; 01-24-2022 at 10:58 AM.

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    Dreamcast for me as well. seeing the commercial for it and seeing NBA 2K and Ready 2 Rumble just blew me away

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    Believe it or not, I never really had that kind of moment on console. I did a ton of PC gaming in the 90s so most of the technical improvements were witnessed there. When new consoles came along with huge 3d modeled/textured improvements, it was exciting but I'd seen it all before. I was more wowed by game play. Obviously first time experiencing Super Mario Bros., John Madden Football, Sonic, Goldeneye, Halo, etc. Aesthetically, I would say when NASCAR 4 came along from Sierra/Papyrus in late 2000, I was enthralled. It was a huge improvement in so many ways including realism and graphics over NASCAR 3, and the on-line play actually worked, I was hooked, played every night all night for weeks.
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    I remember the 1st time I’d seen a CDTV demo at an Amiga store in Dallas. I didn’t really know what FMV was at the time, but I was floored by the demo of a jet fighter flying and dropping it’s arsenal on a target. I had thought that I was witnessing unreal real-time graphics.

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    I'm probably younger than most of the people here, but I remember Gran Turismo 3 wowed me when I got it on June 11, 2002. I was 9 at the time, I'd been playing my PS1 up to that point, stuff like Crash Bandicoot games, Ridge Racer, Destruction Derby, etc. But GT3 looked realistic. This was the generation where 3D wasn't just "functional", it looked good. Again, in 2006 when I got my Xbox 360 as a belated Christmas present (it came in on January 26), Project Gotham Racing 3 wowed me once again. At that point I wondered how they could even make a game look more detailed. There wasn't much room for improvement left.

    Technological development was flying at the time, and being born at the very end of 1992 (and playing my first video games in October 1998), I had no frame of reference to how far video games had already come. Back then, games dated fast, and I was a stupid kid who thought that good graphics were a necessity for a good game. I remember in 1999 finding even early PS1 games, like Destruction Derby 2, to be ugly; the Sega Genesis games I had, which dated to 1993-1995, looked positively ancient. I remember being about 8-9 (2001-2002ish) and over at a friend's house, he was playing Final Fantasy on NES. He was the same age as me, but I remember thinking "how could he ever get into such a primitive game?" even though just 6 years before I first played a video game, the NES was still very much a current system. Just as games dated quickly, new generations of games always had something to wow you.

    Nowadays, technological improvements have basically ceased in video games. 5-year-old games (2017 at this point) pretty much look like the current ones, even some games over a decade old, like Skyrim, still could pass for 2022. Even 20-year-old games (2002) still look more like new games than they do like 25-year-old games (1997). PS5 and Xbox Series X have been out for over a year and I still don't have either, don't see the point. In the '00s I chomped at the bit for the new systems. The PS4/Xbox One generation lost the magic, I remember that being the first generation where I went "meh" at the improvements.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gamevet View Post
    I remember the 1st time I’d seen a CDTV demo at an Amiga store in Dallas. I didn’t really know what FMV was at the time, but I was floored by the demo of a jet fighter flying and dropping it’s arsenal on a target. I had thought that I was witnessing unreal real-time graphics.
    Sad to say I was kind of wowed by the cD-i which I recall had VCD's running of Star Trek VI at the time at a Nobody Beats the Whiz!
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    2 for one post here..

    Playing Adventure for the first time when I was 8 - I was always well behind the curve when it came to game systems, I grew up in an upper middle class family with lower-middle class income. So my first console, in 1989, was an Atari 2600 VCS. And we had this old game called "Adventure" with what looked like a snake made out of mandarin oranges on the cover holding a key. Anyway, I was obviously curious so....of course I had to play it.

    And play it I did, and from the minute I turned it on I was not ready for the total mindblowing weirdness this game was. On one hand, it had the wonkiest, most horrible graphics of any of the Atari 2600 carts I had. You were a square, you carried an arrow - a literal arrow like you'd see in the user's manual - for a weapon. You had brackets for a bridge, and a bat that looked like a highly animated flying moustache. About the best graphics in the whole thing were the keys and the chalice....

    But, on the other hand, here we had 3 variations, all rather complex quests for an Atari game. Most Atari games - do the "thing" for high score - but not Adventure, it was - "do this thing so you can get at that thing so you can do this other thing, and then carry the thing, to the other thing, to get the other thing, that will unlock this thing and give you that thing so you can win the game"....basically, I would compare it more to a PC Graphical adventure game than to a console game of the late 70's/early 80's. This was already pretty darned awesome, but the awesomeness did not end there....

    This game was so complex it was my first encounter with glitches, easter eggs, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, all those mazes were not assembled inside the game cart in what I'd call "logical order". See, I fired up a round of game three - and learned what awesome power this game held. Immediatley I was outside the neon yellow "castle" with Yorgle, the fat duck (Dragon) who I managed to evade till the lower left corner of the screen...only to have the head without my body in it in his belly. Then I pressed hard-down on the joystick and summoned up a glitch - apparently Grundle and Rhindle (Green and Red rag-o-Ducks (TM)), and possibly I think even Yorgle somehow respawned and managed to pile on each other, adding me to their stomachs, forming almost a hurricane symbol type formation....but if I let go of the joystick, I could go back up to Rhindle on the opening screen....yeesh.....and then....Greg Hawkes of The Cars disembodied moustache came flying by (the bat) and picked me up for the grandest tour of all of Adventure-Land. I mean it was insane - despite being dead, despite being in a dragon's stomach (Rhindle), I could almost - I'd say about 75% - direct the bat around with the joystick as he flew about, and it seems this particular round of game three gave me NOTHING to work with, no keys, no bridge, no magnet, no chalice, no sword - nothing, because I probably spend 2 1/2 hours - until we went out to dinner - riding around via Bat Airlines in a Dragon's stomach.

    Today it would seem like nothing to me as I have since sort-of-studied bits of Atari source code, I get the idea between a 2K/4K/8K Cartridge, and I realize this is one of the more primitive titles, which does make it all the more impressive. But to my 8-year old head at the time, it was amazing that on a system where Pac-Man, Pong, and space arcade games were the norm, that there was a cartridge that managed to jam all this into a measly 4K. Imagine my surprise in my teens when I started surfing on the internet reading about Atari stuff in the mid-late 90's and found out about the mystery dot. Warren Robinette surely created a masterpiece.

    About six years later, age 14 - So it's the summer of 1998, and I'm itching to try out something new, maybe an RPG. After all, I am a "secret nerd" whose a rocker on the surface. So I visit a friend, Will, and he has a copy of Dragon Warrior IV on NES. So I borrowed it.....for about eight months. The story is similar. So it's july, I'm in the Spirit of the South Marching Band, school has not yet started, and I'm spending every day from 7-noon and then two-6pm at "boot camp" for marching band, out in the 104 degree Alabama sun, busting my ass for hours (there's a reason we made "1"s at contest). Coming home feeling like I just went to a military boot camp.

    So during lunch I'd lay in bed and play Dragon Warrior IV. Right off the bat, I liked it, and by about 2 weeks in, I got through "Chapter 1", except I'm VERY forgetful, so I forgot there was even a "chapter" at the beginning. So I just finished killing off some frog-fish looking dude in what looked like a pork-pie hat and a stick figure with a magic eyeball, who had been tricking children into flying away with a pair of fancy Adidas shoes in a well. The wording at the end of the "chapter" made me think that I had beat the game...maybe it was the Alabama heat, maybe it was because I was half asleep from High-Mark-Timing for the last 4 hours, but I was largely dissappointed because "wow, that was a short game" I thought....

    ...then came Chapter 2. Then Chapter 3, then Chapter 4...then Chapter 5....."how deep does this game go" I thought, and not just on that level, but also on the complexity of the stories. See, I was used to the usual tropes - princess was captured by a dragon, now you have to beat up a bunch of monsters and grab the magical artifacts to save her. Not five chapters of deep story involving magic, lore, resurrection, love, hate, fighting, wars, peace, commerce, art, banks, deals......I mean the original FNaF had a simpler story than Dragon Warrior IV had.

    Months passed, and the game just kept giving and giving and giving, it was long, deep, and I could not believe that anything on an 8-bit console could be so darned complex, deep, and emotion provoking. I mean I almost shed a tear when those two assholes beat up Rosa - yeah, me, a big, burly, 6'3", long haired rocker guy who MIGHT cry at a funeral, who gets ire of his wife because of my lack of "emotion", and here I've got a 512 Kilobit NES cartridge provoking deep emotions. And the story just kept going on and on and on. I mean, Dragon Warrior IV, it's a mortal sin the NES release never gets as much appreciation as the DS or other releases. I swear, it's one of the NES games that should be reissued. When I returned the god-level save-game filled catrirdge back to Will, I wished I could have kept it. But I'm a good guy. Then I bought his NES collection years later but DWIV was nowhere to be found...and now, 20+ years of chasing that darned cartridge, and $156 later, I finally have my own darned copy and it's every bit as I remember it as a teen.

    THAT is when gaming blew me away on a console. I could keep going on the PC page with diatribes on Monkey Island and Ultima VI back when they were new but I digress and will save it for sometime in the computer gaming section.

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    for me...there are several wow monents....first time seeing DKC on snes...MK 2 on snes...and believe it or not both nhl stanley cup and ncaa basketball on snes....all of which i still love to this day...the next wow moment was crash bandicoot on ps1 ...then finally nfl 2k on dreamcast...also the online functionality of the dc to me was remarkable back then as i never owned a computer

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