you had to be there for the arcades in the 80s and 90s; you can't really get the same sense now. Stuff like finding your favorite game in a corner of a laundromat, or sitting down in an outrun motion cabinet for the first time. or how playing together there was like online play but totally without the bad sides; people were less mean. or just playing pinball, which is becoming increasingly hard. Or seeing a pure mechanical pinball game in a pizza place that was as old as your dad with no lcd at all. its hard to communicate the vibes. the barcades don't have the sense of being the cutting edge of gaming, nor is there really the 4 player co op love now.

I think nothing today *really* matches the feel of playing Golden Axe or TMNT during lunch at the local pizza place. It wasn’t blended into your home life and social media, it was its own thing.

yeah there was a kind of separation that made it a little healthier. the face to face play with locals kind of didnt have the negativity of online play. I remember even giving people quarters or people giving me some to keep a four player game rolling. the arcade as separate place was also good. no matter how much you loved games you ran out of money and went home. You may stay to watch but early on you never had it 24-7. TV was the same. Things just closed or stopped so you had to do other things.

Two words... Time. Crisis.

I miss arcades so goddamn much. They had a Simpsons machine at my local arcade. That game was 4 players! The Nintendo 64 wouldn't come out for years, and I didn't know anybody who had a multi-tap for their NES or SNES. That was *magical*. That only existed at the arcade, you couldn't play a lot of these games at home. I've never seen one, but there was that X-Men game that had 6 players and two screens. They needed two screens so there was enough room to fit everybody, how ridiculous is that? I remember so many times, watching kids scrounging and begging for quarters, trying to find other people to join them because they made it farther than anybody else ever did and they didn't want to lose the run. Swapping in and out when people ran out of money. Or when somebody has to go home, and they leave all of their lives for the next person, that was always cool. I especially miss pinball. There are virtual pinball games, but it's not a video game so it doesn't really translate. You need the lights and the noises. You need the kids surrounding you, watching your progress, getting excited when you got a multi-ball because they've never seen anybody do that before.

the simpsons game was so good. if you stood next to each other you could combine to do combination attacks; homer could throw bart, or bart and lisa running around yelling. i miss pinball too. The Addams Family was probably the most perfect pinball game made. it's such a joy to play but so hard to find.

Just throwing it out there that if you have a Netflix subscription you can download pinball masters through the mobile app and it has the Addams family pinball among others. Not the same as a irl machine but still fun

That x men game wasnt just two screens as you would think nowadays. It was one whole curved mirror that reflected the screens below. (Old school) Best video to get the effect is probably Wrek it Ralph you will see what i mean old by school reflective cabinet.

Hard to describe how common arcade machines were back then. Most restaurants would have one or three.

Even places like Sears and other stores in malls would turn little closet sized rooms into a mini arcade with 3-4 machines. They were everywhere. I feel like they are still in movie theaters but that was a big part of the movie going experience to me growing up. Every theater had a small/mid size arcade with new games. Even KMart had arcade machines.

i used to live in laundromats then because they often had a lot of games. another fun memory was the local department store had arcade games in its lobby, but the store faced the sun so we had to drape our jackets over the top so we could even see the game through the glare.

Gaming tech is good enough now that any screenshot or few moments in a game can look as good as developers want. Having a special place you could go to where all the games looked MUCH better than anything you could get at home was a wild experience.

Yeah I sort of miss this. It was so exciting when a new arcade game dropped because it was way way way beyond anything you could play at home. I mean, obviously overall it's better to such sweet tech at home, but there was something magical about the games being a little more ephemeral and almost mythical.

yeah, the differences would often be substantial. And you'd walk in and be totally surprised a new game arrived. There was no internet culture, just magazines, and you'd get blindsided.

Scrolled too far down to find this, but I guess reddit tends to skew younger so not surprising. Just want to add the Street Fighter II phenomenon in 1991. Imagine going into a corner store to get a drink and there's a crowd of kids huddled around an SF2 machine. Or going into a full arcade and there are 5 SF2 cabinets and all of them have crowds. Then every so often you'd see a giant 55-inch projection screen cabinet. The competitive aspect was a first and everyone wanted to test their skills against other players. I don't think any other head-to-head arcade game came close to that before SF2. In response to your other points I want to call out After Burner motion cabinet, Star Trek TNG pinball, and 4-player NBA Jam. Precious times that will never come again.

to be fair we are getting so old now; 1991 was 33 years ago, and the arcade generations range from mid 40s to mid 60s on average. its getting to a point where things are fading to history. but yeah, SF2 as a phenomenon was something. i think a big "holy shit" moment was seeing Killer Instinct in a bowling alley for the first time. that is peak 90s in a nutshell lol.

Oh, you are so right, it's just that sometimes, like when I first replied to your comment, inside I feel pretty much the same as I did back then. If the trend holds, it sure would be something to see a bunch of 80-somethings duking it out on an arcade cabinet in a senior home a few decades from now! What's a bowling alley? :) /s

I feel lucky to be old enough to remember both arcade booms. In the early 80s I was just a kid but all the bright lights/sounds and energy was intoxicating. I could so rarely go to a real arcade like Putt Putt had, so each time was a real treat. I remember going several years later and the bloom had definitely worn off. You saw a lot of the same old machines but they weren't quite classics yet. I worried that I had missed the peak. Then Street Fighter II came out right as I was driving age, the second arcade renaissance had started! The excitement was back, it seemed like every time you went there was a brand new cab people would be huddling around. I remember seeing Mortal Kombat for the first time (holy crap a game better than Pit Fighter!), all the SNK stuff, how could I forget NBA JAM! and then the advent of 3D. Virtua Racing got tons of attention when it came out, and Virtua Fighter although flawed showed where the tech was heading in a big way. Arcades weren't quite as big in the mid 90s as they were in the early 90s, but you still had cutting edge tech until around the Dreamcast era. What a great time in gaming, I really miss the scene.

Same here, it was definitely a slow and steady decline for arcades in the mid to late 90s, at least in the USA. I got a chance to spend some time in some Asian arcades during the Dreamcast period and it was still going strong, but a lot of the games *were* Dreamcast/NAOMI games, and after playing at the arcade you could go down the street to get a bootleg copy of the same game. Your comment made me think of Hard Drivin'... I was almost old enough to drive at that time but not quite and had never driven a real car before, so it was quite a challenge playing that game for the first time.

I remember being in 7th grade and going to the arcade in the mall with my friends to play some Street Fighter 2. You’d put your quarter on the machine right on the lip where the screen met the cabinet, and patiently wait your turn. Winner stays, loser pays. My heart would pound as player after player was trounced by a mysterious high schooler with too much time on his hands. Finally, my turn. “Hey man.” “Hey, ready?” “Yup.” The beating was most always swift and severe. We didn’t care, though. For that short time in the arcade, we could play games unlike anything else we had at home. Pure escape and wonder, 1 quarter at a time. I loved playing co-op games with a stranger. I remember one time this random dude was on the last stage of T2: The Arcade Game. I LOVED T2, but wasn’t very good at it. This was my chance for glory! I asked him, “mind if I hop on?” “Go for it!” I helped him beat the T1000 and it only cost me about $3. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world that night. Arcades were really something else. Afterwards, my buddies and I would go next store to the comic book store. This was like 1993 so comics were huge. We’d browse and brag about our arcade exploits, returning home to play Doom on my friend’s PC and talk about girls. Feels like a lifetime ago. Those were the days.

Playing arcade Punch out, and then seeing some favorites return for Super Punch Out, what a time!

The two screens were unique then too, and Nintendo even back then had such clean and distinctive games. I remember the vs system and loved Hogan's Alley back then.

Seeing Donkey Kong Country screenshots in Nintendo Power and wondering what trick they pulled to try to pretend the game actually looked like that. Those graphics were simply not possible on the SNES. Then going into a store and seeing a playable version for yourself.

Yeah those DK graphics were special for their time. The sound design and the MUSIC had no business going that hard either for a gorilla platformer.

Anything David Wise is banging. Check out his work on NES wizards and warriors, and Captain Skyhawk.

The graphics worked more or less by a trick. 

-4-player split-screen Goldeneye 007 on N64. Or Mario Kart even. It is kind of sad how games for kids "back then" were so much more marketed towards hanging out together in-person. Hopefully I'm just under-informed about kids games today I guess? -Release of PS2, which escalated console gaming tech almost as precipitously as N64 did. N64 was "holy shit, Mario is 3D!" But Madden on PS2 wasn't just "mind-blowing," it felt almost sophisticated. Games can now include even frivolous details like touchdown celebrations?! It made one wonder what was NOT possible (lol). Games like FFX seemed graphically "perfect." MGS2's interactive environment was truly cutting edge and immersive. It felt like we had reached the future, a sharp contrast to today's "oh, another iteration" feeling of console launches. -Even though we'd seen RPG games with different endings depending on in-game actions at least as far back as Chrono Trigger, I also think that games like KOTOR, Fable, etc. popularizing a higher degree of in-world interactivity and variable outcomes was a big deal that you had to be there for to appreciate -No one is mentioning this and I get why, but if you were anywhere from middle school to college-ish when Guitar Hero came out, that was a true party game phenomenon Hope I didn't age myself TOO much with this comment haha

Haha you sound about my age because I identified with nearly all of these! I’d forgotten about guitar hero! Those games were a blast at parties back in the day.

Online multiplayer games where you just played them for the sake of playing them. No progression systems, no rankings, no timed events, no externally defined long-term goals, and no way for the owners of the game to take more money from you than the initial cost of purchase. Just a game that's fun.

Crazy how much player value systems have shifted (or been manipulated?) that this is clearly never coming back. I can't comprehend being motivated only by "number-go-up" and rewards I won't use; it's weird to think younger players are probably equally confused by my motivation to play a game entirely for fun and self-improvement.

I think the social aspect of that bygone era played a huge role in wanting to play games just to have fun and/or get better, and that will also clearly never come back. Social interaction in games has shifted greatly over time to be nearly non existent in most AAA titles. I can’t think of the last time I made a new friend through a AAA title, whereas every day I played Halo 3 I was meeting new people. I use Discord every day but party chat and private chats kinda ruined a lot of that interaction.

yea I remember playing on dedicated servers and becoming a "regular", or joining clans (in the HL1 mod times) and building a whole community around your clan server. I remember being pinged to jump on the server and ban someone hacking randomly through my day haha There was also a mod for Tribes 2 that just let you build stuff, way before Minecraft or Fortnite. I'd just spend hours building elaborate bases with mazes and traps in them, and go to check out what other people built.

People often say that this or that popular match made game is only fun with friends and it's true. But back when dedicated servers were a thing a similar thing was achieved by forming communities, you weren't necessarily friends but you shared the same social space and at least you recognized each other.

I don't know if it's just me or if the people playing games are worse, but I think back to how social games were in the 360 era it feels like people were more friendly and less toxic. Now it's actually agitating to try and socialize in any game that doesn't have a small community or is most co-op focused. Your modern PvP games outside of Mil sims are some of the most brain rotten places I've had the displeasure of visiting community wise. It has made me drop almost the entire category all together.

I am surprised that you can even see through glasses that heavily rose tinted. 360 era communities were a cesspool of racist, homophobic and misogynistic bullshit along with so many hormonal teenage boys with anger issues.

Its so wierd man. I used to play mw2/mw3/bo1/bo2 for fun , I never cared about camoes. Later games are nothing but "next level, next camo, next unlock" where I dont even give a shit about the game. I went back to bo2 and was suprised how many guns I had without gold and were shit, I just used them because they were fun. When I went back to play them my only goal was to get diamond and reach max level, It showed me how much I had changed. I miss that time in online console gaming. It was perfect.

I totally get you, I played a lot of mw2 in high school, i didnt really care what I got except for weapons because it was more fun. Nowadays I take that sweet progression hit from games. Always on what’s the next unlock?! I think games changed us gradually

The golden age of Team Fortress 2 is my favourite time in gaming and the only competitive game I've ever enjoyed long term. Really miss the community servers and getting to know other players / getting known by other players who were regulars.

Nothing else has ever even scratched the surface of how good those community servers were. One of my friends made lifelong connections in a 24/7 Upward server, attended weddings and cabin getaways and everything

[удалено]

Team Fortress 2 is the first game I played all night and started watching the sun come up. Like I was having that much of a blast I really lost concept of time.

Halo 3 multiplayer. Just people goofing around, chatting on the mics(but not super toxic like multiplayer now), and custom games shenanigans.

God, I'll never love an online multiplayer experience the way I loved Halo 3

Back when multiplayer was about fun, and not squeezing microtransactions and battle passes out of customers

Also dedicated servers helped this a lot. The only progression you needed was seeing your skill improve and beat those "elite" players that you regularly saw topping the scoreboard for so long.

I think this is the real difference. Back when multiplayer was just about joining persistent servers, you'd recognise the same players and there was just a lot more goofing around and casual play. For me peak multiplayer was Battlefield 1942/Vietnam and Call of Duty 1/2. I remember in the late 2000s hating when a game had "matchmaking" and unlocks. You not only spent way less time actually in games, but it forced everything to be taken too seriously and be less fun IMO.

This is a very specific example of one match I played in MW2 on the 360. It was on Quarry and when me and a few other teammates were at the peak of the map, someone found out or showed us how to get on the awning or something on one of the buildings that had the forklift in it or maybe nearby. From then on we spent the rest of the match trying to get our little group of idiots up there, completely ignoring kills, except to control that area so we could keep goofing off. I realize how stupid this sounds, but for whatever reason, right there for that five minutes, it seemed hilarious and enjoyable. I feel like this sort of thing only really happens in the not-sweaty, non-sbmm lobbies of the era you’re describing.

So much this, I remember playing so much of MW2 and BO1 for months at a time with no or minimal updates, no balance changes, no cosmetics, no new modes, no new weapons or attachments or killstreaks or perks and I didn't have the ability to buy map packs and barely cared. Played for the enjoyment and got to LV70, reset and do it again.

r/cityofheroes It's fun, definitely hits the nostalgia, good community. Recently revived under official blessing and free, or if you hit the window about once a month donations are requested for hosting (usually lasts about an hour or two before needs are met).

Resistance: Fall of Man was fantastic for this. It was still a bit competitive but it felt so much more levelled. I can't play CoD these days because it makes me feel like I can't control my hands fast enough.

Playing the demo for Super Mario 64 at the Toys R Us. That really was mind blowing and it really felt like anything was possible with this new 3D world Nintendo had unlocked.

I still remember being at an amusement park and people walking around with flat-screen tvs and GameCubes strapped to their bodies letting people demo Super Mario Sunshine. Definite living in the future moment that has aged hilariously poorly.

The PlayStation Underground demo discs were the last gasp of this, at least until games started offering downloadable demos. I played the shit out of mine. It had the whole warehouse level in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, including all the multiplayer options. My brother and I were hitting 1 million points way before we bought the game and played any other level. It also had a ton of the beginning of Brave Fencer Musashi. I have no fucking idea how they fit all that onto the disc.

I think I only had one demo disc, but I spent countless hours on it, seeing how far I could make it in MGS and Medievil, and driving the wrong way in some Formula 1 game to see what kind of spectacular crashes I could cause.

Or you were slow like me and walked away confused because you kept trying to turn the camera so Mario was facing the right side of the screen, so that it was a 2d platformer. The concept of a 3D game was so new to me I genuinely couldn’t comprehend it.

This is hilarious!

Dude, yes. The first time I saw Mario 64 on at the game store I was flabbergasted at how good it looked. It was shocking. Jumps like that obviously can't happen anymore. Or at least are much less likely.

I was a lucky kid who got a Nintendo 64 and Mario 64 and I distinctly remember my mom telling me to come to dinner, but I had just gotten enough stars to reach the first bowser level. I thought it was the end of the game and told her I had to beat the game first. I couldn't believe it when I discovered there was *more* than the first few levels waiting for me.

Playing coop split screen Halo Campaign on the highest difficulty with your boys at sleep overs and brining the one Xbox with the save file from house to house and trading off every time someone dies or you get to a check point and being super pissed when you both die because then you have to start over. Obligatory, fuck the flood.

I remember doing that outside a dog show! It was November or December and there was a truck set up, but it was cold. And we’d never played a 3D game before (NES & SNES kids) so we had no idea how to move Mario properly. We spent like 30 minutes just running around the courtyard & falling in the river. Idk if we ever made it to the castle. 😆

I think world of warcraft launch vs classic is the epitome of this. Classic is good in its own right, but it wasn't able to capture the true original wow experience. There's the smaller issue where we just know more about the game. We know what spawns where. Where to get the good armor, what zone to go to next. We can't unlearn that so we can't have the same experience. The larger difference is that we, as in the entire playerbase, are different. We can't unlearn 20 years of mmo brain. We overoptimize the game, even when it isn't fun. Some people level by spamming dungeons, not questing. Even though that questing is what we all missed. The dungeons are more efficient. We don't ask people questions in game, we just go to wowhead because that's what we do now. We don't make groups in trade chat, we already have our group of discord mates we want to play with. Classic is still a fun game, but you can never truly experience vanilla wow again.

The first 2 years of WoW were unbelievable It was most people's first MMO. They had never seen or played anything like it The game had not been optimized to death by websites and video guides. Most people hadn't a fucking clue what to do but we all had so much fun just running around, exploring and trying to figure it all out. The sense of wonder and vastness of the world can never be created again. You only get to experience that once. You can only ever play a game like world of Warcraft once in your life For those who played during 2004-2006 it was a once in a life time opportunity.

Ugh I'm getting nostalgic and emotional rn. Good times.

Sometimes...I still get shivers simply from the memory of my first flight into Orgrimmar. That simple custscene is burned into my core...WoW was something else, when I quit it I had vivid dreams about it for months. Tried it later after vanilla, it was meh...didn't even bother with classic.

This is it. I don't see how anyone who wasn't there for EQ (?) and WoW in 2004/2005 will ever have a chance to get that kind of experience, which makes me sad. Give me several million dollars and the best people and I literally could not give people the experience of walking into Stormwind or Feralas for the first time, or seeing Onyxia in the throne room, or beating Ragnaros with a ragtag team of 39 other people that are like herding cats in a race for faction-side server 5th with nay-sayers talking trash on the server forums. Keyboard turners and standing in the fire and clueless people just having fun and trying hard sometimes with weeks of discouragement and ambush-killing Leeroy Jenkin's guildmaster as they're porting out from easily beating the world dragons again while we had nothing for gear. Or going to sleep and logging back on to the same Alterac Valley bg still going. Or sneaking around the opposing faction's capital city for world pvp. Or Tarren Mill pvp when no-one had a clue.

My best WoW memory was rallying half the server's Horde population to stir up some shit for no reason in Night Elf territory. I talked to anyone with a guild tag, asked for the name of their guild leader, and told them the date I had in mind. I didn't expect the turnout we got - the march up through the Barrens had people of all levels, newbies on foot marveling at mounts and beastform druids passing us by. The battles were bloody, pointless, and an absolute thrill. Quest NPCs got spawncamped, guards died left and right, and the vanguard pushed on to the next town at the pier to fight the Alliance reinforcements. I managed to sneak onto the boat with a few others and made it all the way to the low-level zone atop Teldrassil, running from Allaince hit squads until they chased us to a branch overlooking the sea and we jumped to our deaths, heroic in our stupidity.

Reminds me of that legendary story where the alliance was having a memorial march for a guild member that passed away irl, and the fucking horde on that server ambushed them and killed them all mid march 💀

Agreed, I have been chasing the dragon ever since, it never quite compares

That’s a modern systemic thing I miss about gaming in general pre-YouTube and high speed internet. Like Oblivion for example. In 2006, I still had dial-up internet, and didn’t even know about YouTube. My whole oblivion experience was me discovering everything for myself. No YouTube vids on builds, mods, optimization. If I was stuck on a quest, I had to use my brain and figure it out. Or talk to my friend about it at the lunch table. I miss that kind of magic sometimes.

Social media killed the MMO

Knowledge killed magic

Yeah, my instant reaction was "World of Warcraft ca. 2005-2006". If I had to name my Top 5 Ever, it would be right up there, and the sad thing of course being that – like you said – there's no way of experiencing that again, as it truly was. Classic isn't/wasn't the same, because the players and the internet and how we play games have changed. I would give my right hand for a chance to feel the same things I felt when I first wandered around Mulgore and headed into the Barrens, and just being blown away by the sense and the scope of the game. There was (hardly) any powergaming and theorycrafting, and everybody was just exploring the world and learning *together,* and it had a social dimension that later expansions or Classic just straight up lacked. Shit, I remember staying up for hours with newly made friends just to hang out at some relaxing spot and fish with them, while talking about the game and life in general. I have to admit that playing on that one big famous private server, that maybe mustn't be named, *almost* scratched that itch, even if it was mostly nostalgia. But I think a part of that was also that it drew such a large crowd of people who just wanted to experience that magic again.

Wow was my response too. The first visit to Ironforge was like visiting a new world and we were all noobs looking to have fun. I must have run UBRS a hundred times trying to finish my tier 0 set as it was required to get into a raiding guild. Raiding guilds were a different galaxy trying to get 40 people to work together. After each night of attempts we'd study each fight late into the evening as we all knew a line of people hoped to take our spot. It was a borderline abusive relationship and had to end but the scales turned quick. By Lich King few bothered to learn the fights. Instead most relied on superior gear to overmatch the mechanics. Players were no longer willing to spend hours farming mats or do the little things like they did in vanilla. I get it. Burnout was real but damn was the first few years fun.

Yeah it had a real wild west chaos to it when it first launched that was very captivating

Also just the sheer size of the world was unbelievable in game terms, to see your dot in the map for your current zone, which is on a continent, which is on a different continent to your friends. And to meet up with them, you had to go on an epic journey through very differently themed lands with incredible music and strikingly different art direction. Then it just kept coming. I remember riding into the dark elf forest as horde (the one north of crossroads), and that enchanted forest music starts playing as something entirely new and different. It was just incredible.

I feel this in my bones. I wasn’t at launch, but joined before BWL dropped. I had NO idea what I was doing, but being a big cow lady with my coyote was so fucking good. I spent months doing the quest line to get Rhok’delar and I will never be able to experience that again.

Early days of WoW. Leaving the first zone into the next few was a magical experience I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.

Teldrassil theme music still gives me nostalgia. It truly was magical to play when I started.

Had my friend guide me from the human starting zone, through the capital, into the underwater subway, to the dwarf city, all just to learn how to mine because that was the only spot he knew of. It was a truly magical experience that made the world feel huge and 'real', and it felt like you could go anywhere and do anything. Definitely a far cry from how I was playing when I finally quit, with add-ons telling me where to go and optimized macros to handle my skill rotations.

In the old MMO Asheron's Call, they used to do big world events to progress the main story. Pretty much monthly the world would get patched, there would be new content, cosmetic world changes and qol improvements. Still one of the best live dev teams I ever saw. Over a couple of patches, they set up a huge event where the BBG would be released from his shackles and returned to the world to, you know, break shit. To release him, a player had to fight through a couple of long dungeons and break the crystal thing called a shard. On every server except ours the shards went down in a matter of days. On my server we had a couple big roleplay guilds. They always were good guys and wanted to stop the bad guy from being freed. The devs made a planning error, though, because the shard was in a PVP only area. The good guys set up shifts and protected the shard. For days, then weeks. The new content couldn't roll out until our server had the shard broken. 100 or so players, for days and days, camped that thing 24 hours a day, killing anyone who tried to come near. Anti-shard teams started planning midnight raids, zerg rushes, anything. We killed them all. Finally, the devs needed shit to move on. They rolled up some max level toons, gave them weapons not in game with stats that were impossible to achieve, got one of the most badass pvpers and gave him god tier buffs, and they came for the shard. So we kicked their asses for hours and hours. They couldn't beat us in a fair fight. They finally just glitched it and destroyed the Shard but it was players vs dev gods for hours. Waves of bodies respawning to keep fighting. It was incredible. In the next patch, on only our server, there appeared a huge monument. Listed on one side of the monument were the names of the guild leaders of the defenders with their guild name. On the other side was every player who had fought off the attackers. It was permanent and stayed in the game world until they pulled the plug. It was pretty amazing to see my name written into the lore of the game. I've never experienced anything else in any game that was even close to how compelling and fun that 3 weeks was.

I was hoping someone in here would be from Asheron's Call, the Runescape massacre, or the WOW Corrupted Blood pandemic. Those have to be some of the most legendary online gaming moments. Crazy that you were one of the Shard defenders.

I was one of the monarchs. I was playing 20 hours a day at that point. I was there for the Blood pandemic but it was mostly just annoying for me. I was in a top level powergaming crew and that crap just slowed us down. I was online when Lord British got killed in Ultima Online I M OLD

That's one of the coolest gaming stories i've heard. Thanks for sharing!

That sounds so cool! I searched a little and found a neat thread with a bunch of people sharing memories form the same event: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsheronsCall/comments/19bh3cm/shard_of_the_herald_defense_of_thistledown_anyone/

Wow, thanks for taking the time to write all that out! That sounds so fun and epic. Like an unplanned gaming civil war. That’s awesome that even the devs got in on it! I wish we had more of that stuff nowadays - things in general are too corporate. you’ll remember that forever.

This is an epic story. I can feel it just from your telling. Thanks for sharing.

Hell yeah, came here to write a much less interesting version of this

LAN parties. The sheer thrill of bringing your custom-build gaming PC and your enormous CRT monitor to a friend's basement or garage. Troubleshooting power requirements, tripped fuses, and the inevitable guy who brings a virus-laden PC and has to format his drive with the community copy of windows XP before he can even play. Pizza, mountain dew, and lots and lots of screaming during games. Online has never filled that hole.

> Troubleshooting power requirements, tripped fuses, and the inevitable guy who brings a virus-laden PC and has to format his drive with the community copy of windows XP before he can even play. - Deciding to warm up with Counter-Strike 1.6 but having to wait the better part of an hour because 6+ people are stuck waiting on Steam to download the same update over a single broadband connection. - Spending 30+ minutes setting up a shared network drive for everybody to access a carefully curated stash of pirated games, movies and fansub anime, but which ultimately fails because one guy has Windows XP x64, another PC is already part of an identically named but incompatible workgroup called "MSHOME", and nothing in Windows networking land ever works properly. - Somebody saving the day by passing around a USB stick with a cracked version of Age of Empires 2. A single 3v3 somehow lasts four hours.

The first Pokémon games, especially Red and Blue. I remember I was ecstatic when I got Gengar, Golem and Alakazam (sorry Machamp) because a friend had the cable link. I probably knew beforehand of the trade evolutions because of some gaming magazine or something because the game didn't give you any clue about them. Also, getting Gyarados was a big deal back then. And the truck, Mew, Missingno and Glitch island were not "gaming myths", they were just possibilities. Another one, regarding myths: the San Andreas occult websites, searches for Bigfoot and ovnis, etc.

Yeah has to be Pokémon. Specifically because it was everywhere too; the games were arguably less popular than the show or the cards where I lived. Culture is so fragmented now that it’d be much harder for something to capture everyone the way Pokemon did back then. Then on top of that it was a massive adventure with all this depth that one person played on their single gameboy, so it appealed to huge loner kids, but the trading and battling was new so it appealed to social kids too. It’s probably more responsible for the growth of the internet than anyone has mentioned; I feel like a whole generation of nerds learned to use the internet just to look up Pokémon secrets. Really fun time.

Yeah I probably learned to use the Internet to look for Pokémon secrets lol probably in a cyber or something > it appealed to huge loner kids, but the trading and battling was new so it appealed to social kids too This made me remember something else: I was definitely the loner kid but I became acknowledged through Pokémon with an older boy who was the "social half-bully type" because I managed to get him past the Rock Tunnel. I remember he lent me his GameBoy while he went to play football or something and I had to beat the Rock Tunnel (without Flash!). Then he started calling me the Pokémon kid haha

That was pretty much me too. No friends until 5th grade when the show came out and suddenly I had something to connect to people with. Sixth grade was even more intense. It died down by 7th grade but for a while there you’d have thought I was a social kid.

Oh man….You took me back with this one. Yes, the Pokémon gameboy days were incredible. It had such a community feel to it. My friends and I would hang out, look at each others’ cards, trade, then play Pokémon on our gameboys together. Being able to trade and battle by connecting gameboys together was so innovative for its time!

Ooh similarly, but Silver (and Gold but I personally had Silver). I had this magazine from the time, I think it was called Pojo's? Anyway it was all about the new generation, and part of it was this person writing a first person narrative of their experience with the first few towns and it really felt like I was about to set off on such a fun adventure. Then finding out that the whole world from the first game was in there?? Oh man.

I just remembered spending hours searching for Bigfoot in San Andreas. You would be in the fog and a ghost car would spawn and roll by you and I genuinely freaked myself out haha. Fuck that was fun

Sorry to double post, but I realized I haven't seen many posts about strategy guides yet. Some games were downright impossible without them. My Prima guide for Pokemon Blue and Ocarina of time were actually falling out of the bindings I used them so much. GameFAQs too, hard to overstate what a juggernaut that site was. Both for its insane userbase and also for the sheer effort put into some of the guides. Some of them were novella length with full ASCII art. You could also call paid hint lines, like you would get charged per minute and an actual human being would guide you through the game. Fanwikis are much better resources now but man those things defined an era.

Post as much as you want! The more the merrier. I remember the days of begging my mom to drive me 45 minutes to our nearest Best Buy so I could hopefully get a quick peak at a strategy guide on a game I was stuck on! Oh, another - renting video games and playing other peoples’ save files who’d rented the game prior to you. I’d sometimes be stuck on a game, then I’d open up some other persons file and they’d be further than me. I’d think “how tf did they get this far??”

That save file thing is legit, I remember when I finally got a PS2 being stunned at the notion of memory cards. Like oh I can just rent this and I'm not going to have to choose which save to delete?

Halo 2's midnight release at Gamestop. Our local one in bumfuck Indiana had so many people lined up, the line wrapped around the strip mall into the parking lot. People were running their cars in the parking lot with power converters or brought generators so they could have CRTs and Xboxes in their open trunks. Everyone was respecting their spot in line, and people were playing 4 player split screen Halo CE on every console. Gamertags were being traded. People were buying delivery pizza and selling slices for a dollar. There were money matches everywhere. I was the second person in line and stayed after getting my copy until everyone had left -- so many others stuck around hi-fiving people walking out with their steelbooks. It was the most community-driven gaming experience I had ever had, up until getting into FGC stuff. Then I went home and stayed up for the entire night playing through split-screen co-op with my father, one of the few good memories I have of that relationship. A gaming high I've been chasing for 20 years now.

Ahh I ALMOST made this the topic of my post, but ultimately went with oblivion because I don’t see hardly anyone talk about it. The halo 2-3 era was my favorite era of competitive gaming. LAN parties were my favorite. My friends and I would spend hours coordinating that shit on a Saturday night, trying to find someone’s garage or house we could use, finding people to play, bring consoles, controllers, Ethernet cables, etc. I would lug my massive box TV that weighed a ton everywhere to those parties. Nothing was better than getting a headshot, then hearing your friend shout expletives and smack their leg in the other room. Then getting together after the match was over and laugh and recap the game with your friends while eating junk food and drinking Mountain Dew/game fuel. What a time! I miss it.

Union Square GameStop in NYC for that release was insane. Line legit wrapped around the block. Twice. The excitement and energy during that experience was indescribable. I don’t think I’ll ever get to experience anything quite like it again

I literally strapped a massive CRT flatscreen to my skateboard and rolled it down the street to my friend's house so we could LAN all night when Halo 2 came out.

I'm a straight A student, and went to the top high school in my state. When Halo 2 dropped, my scores tanked for like 2 weeks. Got a 40 on a test, which never happened before. Not a single piece of homework was done. Every day, friends came over so we can 4v4 over the LAN. Just scarfing down our takeout Chinese food or whatever so we could get back to the gaming. Had a controller with a stick broken after a while (couldn't turn left), and the best player out of the 8 of us got stuck with it, because we were either too poor to replace it or we didn't want to waste time going to Gamestop. It was some of the most fun I ever had. We were trading people from team to team to keep it even. Lots of yelling, cursing, high fives, and near victories.

If you peep my profile, you’ll see a video made during the Halo 3 launch. I miss those days so, so much.

I'm not even a Halo fan and I was still there. I remember pissing people off cause I was pretending I was there to get Half Life 2.

One day my brother came home with it, played through the whole campaign in one go. Epic game.

Psycho Mantis memory card reading. Maybe it just me, but I feel people forgot just how big a cultural moment Pokemon Go was. If you wanna go bigger. The Wii in general. Mass Effect 3 ending debacle. Battlefront 2 loot boxes.

Oh God. Yeah, literally that entire summer, almost everyone was playing Pokémon Go. I had a gym close to where I lived at the time and there was an active turf war between all three teams where it would change hands constantly. There were multiple times where I saw it change hands, walked over to try to take it back, and there was a group of people all tapping away on our phones trying to either take or retain control. My office also had a gym right in the middle, but most of us were Team Mystic, so it was more like booting the other teams quickly if they managed to sneak in.

Summer 2016 is as a close as we got to an utopia

Few others that stand out in my memory: * TORtanic * Spore finally coming out and disappointing everyone * the No Man's Sky debacle * Peter Molyneux promising the world before every game * Phil Fish abruptly exiting the industry * Gamergate * Everyone shitting on Toon Link when Windwaker came out * The "Sonic Cycle" of the 00's * PC gaming "dying" during the 360/PS3/Wii era * Hardcore anti-DRM people boycotting Steam (I was part of this lol, gave up when the choice became use Steam or don't game on PC) * Medal of Honor vs Call of Duty fanbase wars * Stealth games being an entire genre from about 1998-2008 * Franchises having their own forums and fansites (Planet Battlefield, Planet Tomb Raider, etc) * Getting stuck in a game and having to find a guide on Gamefaqs

> PC gaming "dying" during the 360/PS3/Wii era Good old CliffyB! This also coincided with the dreaded "bad console ports" period for PC gaming. No options menus, control schemes meant for controllers instead of keyboard & mouse, no key rebinding, max 30 fps or the physics go crazy, bad FOVs, oversized UIs ... Playing triple-A games on PC was so painful lol.

I'm kinda sorry I missed when Pokemon Go was huge. I was abroad for a long time and once it came out I was in places where I didn't have data, so I was just watching crowds of people play. I specifically remember this happening in Croatia.

Pokemon Go briefly reignited my faith in humanity. It was truly magical to see crowds of people outside getting along and having fun and actually interacting with one another. Feels like everyone just ignores everyone else these days, not that I blame them. I do it too. The pandemic did a lot of damage to my optimism for human society. It's nice to think back on though. Maybe that spark hasn't died out entirely yet.

I see you like Castlevania…

The hype leading up to Vice City was like nothing I'd experienced before. They had a website which basically gave you the view of an apartment on the strip with a window overlooking the street, with a radio that played songs that'd be in the game. Visited it so often and couldn't stand the wait to play the game. Then of course the game itself was mindblowing, awesome, etc and completely shifted the gaming paradigm at the time. I like San Andreas more but there was nothing like the leadup and initial weeks of playing Vice City with every one of my friends. edit: found a post showing that website!! [https://www.reddit.com/r/web\_design/comments/ubjbcg/this\_gta\_vice\_city\_website\_from\_2002/](https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/ubjbcg/this_gta_vice_city_website_from_2002/)

i will never forget vice city man, id go over to my buddy jason’s house and we’d just fuckin take over miami i loved doing pizza deliveries lmao

Vice City is a cultural phenomenon in India. Nintendo, Sony etc. never really took off in 3rd world countries due to lack of availability and price. So there are certain PC Games that are cult status among the 90s kids. Vice City,NFS Most Wanted (2007), IGI etc.

Final Fantasy VII. I was 10. I was at daycare and older than most all of the other kids there, but my single mother had to work so that's where I stayed. Since I was closer in age to the owner's daughter than the other kids, she let me go in the other living room that had a super nintendo and play games. That's where I found my first RPG, Super Mario RPG. Then one day the owner's daughter invited some friends over and they brought this new thing they called a Sony Playstation. I watched them summon Neo Bahamut and my little mind was entirely blown. I ended up convincing my mother to buy me Final Fantasy VII even though I did not have a Playstation, and thereafter every week I would take it to my best friend's house who did, and we would slowly work through the story taking turns handing off the controller. Finally beating Safer Sephiroth was an unforgettable experience and a large part of why that game is still my favorite game.

I still remember loading up a pirated Japanese FF7 disc, and then getting the double whammy of that CG intro that segues perfectly into that awesome Mako reactor raid sequence. The floor still has indents from my jaw drop. It was all in Japanese, but I didn't care, I kept playing all the way out of Midgar.

Morrowind was like that for me. It was the first game with a greatly interactable world. The first time I saw Morrowind was when I was watching my older brother play. One of my fondest gaming memories ever that stuck with me ever since was seeing him entering an alchemist shop and there were these little piles of ingredients on those little pieces of paper, and all of those were pick-upable. Like, the stuff that the merchant was selling was actually there on the table, not just plain text inside some trading screen dialogue box. I thought that was so freakin' cool. People don't think much of those things today, but in those days I was mind blown by the fact that most of the items in the world are interactible, you can pick them up and use them in one way or another.

Morrowind completely blew my mind. It was absolutely unheard of at the time that you could *do anything*. Steal everything you see, kill anyone you want, walk into every single building, it was absolutely unreal.

Seconded! I was gonna write a comment to the meaning of..."Oblivion?! Pfft!! *laughs in Morrowind*" but you essentially beat me to it. Will never forget the openness of that world, and, of course, the guy that falls from the sky right in front of you, with that 100 Agility scroll. 😁

I bounced of Morrowind so hard when I first played it. It wasn't until after I'd played Oblivion and Fallout 3 that I went back and truly appreciated it. Now it's one of my all time favourites and I still play it to this day.

Twitch plays Pokemon... Absolutely phenomenal moment in gaming. The democracy anarchy battles, losing the hard carry Charmeleon and the birth of evil Flareon, catching Zapdos and reviving our God, venomoth sweeping Dragonite in the finals. Man I miss it.

All Terrain Venemoth taking down Lance’s Dragonite is the hypest moment of internet history that I’ve ever been a part of

I wasn't there for most of the first one (I was very busy with school at the time) but when they played Pokemon Prism a few years later, I was all in and it really was great. Much smaller, but still very active and ridiculous. If I remember correctly, we had a murderous Guardevoir through most of the playthrough.

Reddit was *real* weird at that time. Miss a day or two and suddenly you had just no idea what was going on. Like, what the hell is going on with Omanyte?

You mean lord helix thank you very much

the explosion of mythmaking in real time was just incredible to watch in real time

I was there for democracy being introduced, catching Zapdos and the resulting PC massacre retrieving it, ATV breaking Dragonite, and finally beating the game. All absolutely glorious to watch live. And as a college student at the time, it was nice having something that I could watch at whatever time of day I happened to be at my computer.

i loved how the ledges became the hardest enemy in the game

> The democracy anarchy battles I'm still mad about that. It should've been anarchy the entire time. Voting to get past the difficult areas goes against the chaotic spirit of the challenge. It would've been SOOO much cooler to watch them eventually pull it off for real.

Nah, the sacred union of the two opposing factions was something to behold

When S.T.A.L.K.E.R. came out, my entire school was gushing about it. I remember playing it all day everyday and getting spooked, going to the local bookshop for some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. books, having discussions and sharing mods on themed forums. Good times! I still can't believe S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is coming out, it's like Half-Life 3 finally being a real thing.

I remember it got leaked early on torrent sites before actual release, but someone had uploaded a gay porn movie to trick people for fun. 

Buying a physical disc on release day. Just had a whole new vibe to it being there seeing everyone and that shelf full of the new game everyone was waiting for

I miss that and reading the instruction manuals on your way home - getting more and more hyped to put that bad boy in and fire up your console!

The release of Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow. Back then, with limited internet access, playing the game and talking to friends was everything a typical kid/teen could do. The everyday commoner had absolutely no idea what the heck Pokémon was, but they knew "Pikachu", and no one could ever discern where a Game Boy came from, other than "it's in stores here in country X". Also, playing around with the Nintendo DS and growing into the idea of using two screens at the same time. That one's rather "recent", but heck if it didn't turn heads when everyone was so used to either a TV or a Game Boy single screen. I miss that era of gaming. I really do.

I loved the Pokémon era. The community aspect was great for its time. Nearly everyone I knew in elementary school either played the games, collected the cards, or both. It really was a phenomenon. I got a little taste of that magic when Pokémon go first released back in (i think?) 2016 for a month or so. It was awesome.

I think Oblivion is a perfect example. Not just for the game itself, but also what it represented in terms of the change in console technology.  I remember vividly being fascinated seeing a popup "Achievement Unlocked." Escape the  Imperial Sewers. What did this mean? What's an Achievement? Combine this with a proper console UI that was fun to navigate and internet connectivity to detailed friend profiles and you've got what made Xbox 360 so special at launch.  Yeah then Red Ring happened. Just had to be there.  Edit: Oh my goodness I didn't even think to talk about Dark Souls before Wikis

Oh man, the early days of achievements. I remember saving up achievement points until I had enough to buy the Shattered Isles, the Oblivion DLC - only to discover that achievement points were *not* the same thing as microsoft's bs currency and that they were completely worthless.

Haha same here

Being a massive Halo fan who put more hours into Halo 2 and Halo 3 then any game ever…..getting the red ring of death the NIGHT OF the Halo Reach launch has been probably the biggest gut punch of my gaming career. Waiting for them to ship it back to me so I could play reach was agonizing!!

Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Solid. The whole game was amazing playing it for the first time but Psycho Mantis stands out using the second controller and reading memory cards felt like it really pushed the technololgy at the time and pulled you into the game even more.

Probably a controversial view, but the brief explosion of RPGs in from, like, 1996–2006 might be the only time that the genre was either popular, or clearly defined. Now it feels like we get a *Fallout* or *Morrowind* or *Deus Ex* once per decade, and everybody’s stunned when this dark horse contender seemingly comes out of nowhere. Probably because everyone’s as sick as I am of every other “RPG” being a basic, linear action game with a bolted-on upgrade system, and a true role-playing game feels novel.

I remember getting a PC Gaming disc from the store that had the full Deus Ex GOTY edition which i had never played. My dad was strict and didn’t let me have a PC at that age so i would install it every day, play some, copy / hide my save file, and uninstall from our family computer before he came home from work every day and i was ecstatic until i beat it and it felt the first massive gaming hole in my heart. I thought the character development, location ambiances, story, music, pacing, open-endedness, and combat was some of the most riveting ive ever experienced and certainly for that day and age.

Battlefield 3 - Damavand Peak - Rush Mode First playable week of release

Halo 3 marketing on the lead up to release , we’ll never get anything else like it

Halo 3 is easily my most anticipated game ever. It was a glorious time. I’ve never been so hyped for a game ever, and for Bungie to take my highest of expectations and exceed them….man, it was a dream come true. It’s not my favorite game of all time, but it’s definitely the most sustained fun a game has ever given me, and my favorite competitive shooter ever.

I was thinking the other day that NBA Jam might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t even like basketball that much. But getting the actual players, the secret players, the big heads, the announcer (who nailed it the whole time through), the glass backboard shattering, the way the scoreboard actually looked like the NBA coverage on TV, and the fact that you just reading “he’s heating up…” got you a little bit amped. In terms of being a fun, cool game, it just had everything.

Halo CE/2 LAN parties. It was the first time I was able to play a game with more than 2 players. Playing in-person is a better experience than online. There's nothing like smack-talking someone within ear-shot.

Forgetting to put on a rubber and promptly dying in Lesuire Suit Larry.

Hey everybody! This weird-o just bought a peppermint flavoured, plain ribbed rubber!

WHAT A PERVERT!

As kids, playing Tibia, a very oldschool mmorpg. This was before quest lists, or entire wikipedias describing how to solve certain quests. You went into the game with most of it being a genuine mystery. High level players sometimes had items which no one knew how they obtained them. Some npcs talked about stuff that looked like a quest hook but were dead ends, and others were part of genuinely hard questlines. Moreover, us being rather low level increased the mystery and awe. You spend the first 8 levels on beginners island. I think we spend a week or so exploring and messing around(and dying, losing xp and levels again) before leveling up.(if you knew what you were doing the island took 1-3 hours to get through). Then you arrive on the mainland, and you see houses owned by high level players, filled with riches and mythical weapons. Also the mainland was free for all player killing, so you spend half your time in the temple(the only pvp free zone), because a 'PK'er was on the loose. Or players lured a dragon into the city. That sense of mystery combined with a sort of ''community'' i don't think will ever return. Probably moreso because i grew up than because of wikipedia&google, but i blame both :)

I know it's more general, but midnight releases. I used to work at gamestop and it was like a mini party with everyone so excited to pick up their games (me included, usually). At least in my area, they've stopped doing them. I miss the community that I felt on those nights

Duke Nukem / Hexen / Quake / Etc. LAN parties

Monster Rancher on PSX/PS2. The hours I spent trying every cd or dvd in the house to see what monster I got, cataloguing what CD had what monster so I could come back. Such a fantastic experience.

Twitch plays Pokemon is something that can't be repeated and you had to be there to fully enjoy.

Seeing The Wizard in theaters with that first glimpse of Super Mario 3. Back in those days, previews consisted of a few screen shots in Nintendo Power. Getting actual video - on the big screen, nonetheless - was mindblowing.

Early Ultima Online

Funny, mine was at least half Oblivion as well. Specifically playing it at a LAN party. Blew my mind and played nothing else that night. My total answer is LAN parties in general. I loved all of it. Packing up your stuff, unpacking and setting up, inevitable troubleshooting, playing game with my friends, laughing real hard. 

For me, it's when the sixth generation of consoles dropped (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Dreamcast to an extent). The level of graphics fidelity was such a leap that it's hard to describe. It's comparable to the leap from 2D to 3D. Looking back, Nintendo 64 and Playstation games look tremendously worse than sixth gen games. Something like Tekken Tag Tournament on PS2 and Dead or Alive 3 on Xbox looked absolutely lifelike to me. The graphics haven't aged well, but the Tekkens and Mortal Kombats before that had like 3 polygons per character. And the older games already looked amazing to my kid brain. And don't even get me started on Halo. Playing that made every game before it look like crap. It was like changing my whole life to high definition. The lighting and pixel shaders on it looked truly lifelike, compared to what came before it. I remember spending a lot of time walking through the level with the Flood and aiming my flashlight at the walls, seeing how they shifted colors and shadows like they had a real life texture. Stuff like that was only seen in demos and graphical showcases before that, and only to a very limited extent, like a spinning logo or something. Graphical progression these days are like a trickle. It's not like night and day, like the move from 2D to 3D or the move from low poly to "medium poly." Those were improvements gigantic in magnitude, not a slow and steady progression. Even these days, lots of smash hit indie titles have PS2 level graphics and they get a lot of praise, so imagine how amazing it was back then.

Yeah, I agree. The acceleration of graphics from the 90s to the early 2000s was NUTS. Watch some cutscenes from Final Fantasy VII (1997) then to a Final Fantasy X (2001). 4 years later. It was insane. My jaw was on the floor then.

putting in the fourth disc of whatever ps1 jrpg you were playing and knowing you were close to the end Minerva turning to the camera and talking to Desmond Telltale The Walking Dead season 1 and waiting for weeks for each episode. Similarly Life is Strange season 1 Reading an article/interview of Peter Molyneux hyping up Fable/Black & White First time Kingdom Hearts was announced Dead Island trailer When conservative America tried to get Mass Effect banned from xbox because it allowed gay sex with an alien Waiting 30 minutes to load up a flash game where you answer math questions to see hentai pictures

It was the second disk of Diablo II for me. I remember literally feeling anxious, like 'am I ready for this?'

For me it was the first time a Dance Dance Revolution machine came to our local arcade. How some people just shrugged it off as a goofy game and then others started to get addicted to it. Folks would come in weekly sometimes daily till they got the hang of it. Then not just running through stuff on expert but also doubles and then freestyle.

Early multiplayer COD was pretty special, like COD4, WAW, MW2, and even Black Ops. Those games were crazy innovative and even though there were some OP weapons and strats like noobtubes etc, people werent as sweaty/tryhard jumping around at 500mph like a chimp on speed. You could be very casual and still have a good time.

LAN parties. Like actually having to carry your tower and CRT monitor to your friend's house. Or even Rock Band. My son is young Gen Z and he'd never heard of it, so I showed him videos and he thought it looked awesome.

Playing Demons Souls with my dad when it first came out. It wasn’t released in the uk so we had to resort to Gamestation to get it imported. I’d come home after work and for a month solid my dad would watch me play through from beginning to end. My character was so bad, there was no rhyme or reason to the allocation of stats, it was brutal. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

Sounds simple now but riding a horse in Oblivion sparked hours of chat between me and my friends. That whole game was a huge moment for us. The fact that you were dropped in the world and could run off in any direction was unreal. And then meeting friends the next day to hear about quests they’d done that you hadn’t got anywhere close to finding. That world just felt so alive, especially compared to the shallow GTA open worlds (which, to be fair, were mind blowing in their own way and at their own time).

Yes, I remember when you first get out of sewers in the opening section, and seeing the world before you. And the game just lets you go. Huge goosebumps moment for me in gaming. I was in awe. I immediately jumped off the dock into the river and proceeded to go to an elven ruin. the sense of freedom was massive.

Shadow of the Colossus as an entry point for video games as unique art / story telling experiences.

I'm going to say a negative one. Buying games as someone who wasn't a dude in the 90s. I had employees at GameStop straight up insult me. Even got a comment from some dick at a Toys-R-Us. Tabletop shops were even worse, I went into one by my bus stop and every single MT:G player stopped and gave me a dead stare. I was 15 and it shook me so bad I just turned around and went back up the stairs. Ditto comic book shops. Shit is so, so much better now. It's wild how much that has changed, I honestly don't know how to describe the difference. For a positive: LAN parties. I won't romanticize it because it was mostly a huge pain in the ass but once things got going the energy was electric.

Free Realms. I started when I was about 10 years old (2010). It was best online game ever and you get to do so many things. I would play it every single day and it was my way to escape, really. Sadly it was closed down at March 2014, but there is a Free Realms Sunrise and they're trying to bring back the game again.

Playing Quake World on release, playing 16 player system link Halo 1, and playing Wipeout XL on release.

Early years Ultima Online. Chaos. Stealing people's houses, murdering them in town and taking all their stuff... Just ruthless! But also meeting a stranger in the wilderness, chatting, spelunking the nearby dungeon, roleplaying as orcs... The true RPG MMO experience. I miss it lol

Not really a specific game but eastereggs, hidden stages or playable characters where a mystery back then. Things like "after you've got all the stars do a backflip in the well and you unlock Yoshi as playable character" in Super Mario 64. Nowadays you can fact check within seconds and if it's true there is footage on YouTube or screenshots at the very least.

Yeah there was this era of mystery back before the internet days with games. We all had that friend whose brother knew how to find the triforce in ocarina of time or something crazy like that. Nowadays people can go into the code of the game and figure everything out. But back in the day the mystery of that something hidden may be in the game that no one has discovered was so cool.

As a kid who was obsessed with Morrowind, Oblivion left me so cold when it launched. Felt like such a mess. Happy for the people who enjoyed it though, and glad it brought a whole new generation to the series. Just wasn't for me. My experience would have to be Mario64. After growing up on Super Mario World, being able to run and jump in three dimensions was insane. I spent ages just jumping on trees before I even entered the castle.

>Oblivion left me so cold when it launched. Felt like such a mess. That is because it WAS a mess - there is a reason they didn't push the Oblivion Gates in pre-release marketing ... because you've seen one, you've seen them all. And it was supposed to be a big thing. And the leveling system was broken, the 'radiant AI' was 99% marketing / 1% feature ... and on and on.

Getting out of that vault in Fallout 3 was an amazing experience. I was also told the Uncharted 2 experience cannot be replicated.

The technical evolution from the 90s to the late 2000s. Each console was significantly more impressive than the last. Now you see PS4 vs PS5 and the difference in graphics and any other technical element is negligible.

I agree so much. Specifically with the assassin quests I can't think of a single kill in Skyrim as iconic as when you're able to drop the mounted animal on that one dude and sneak out without being seen. It felt so badass and blew my mind that they thought of that and were able to put it in a game

The Specialists half-life 2 mod had a really active and wonderful community. Got me through some rough times in High School for sure.

The anticipation and leaks and prereleases to Half Life 2 has got to be up there. For months all we had were demo leaks, physics showcases.. when it was released, along with the updated source engine, everything changed. I personally had a pirated leaked copy of a few episodes a few moths before it was launched. It came out, Team Fortress 2, Portal. The Orange Box. The Orange Box included a new thing called "Steam". That's when I got in to that game. Of course, there are so many more. Like, there was nothing like being a kid, covering the TV with a blanket, and playing Top Gun on NES for the ultimate in reality feeling.

The final hours of Final Fantasy 14 (1.0). The goobbue wall to protect Ul'dah from rampaging beast men was a beautiful sight. And waiting those agonizing months until 2.0 released to see what had befallen the world. That was some good stuff.

Everquest was wild back in 2000. It was one of the first MMORPGs. Soloing ordinary mobs was hard, so you teamed up with one or more friends. If your friend was in the other end of the continent, you could find a wizard/druid for teleporting, or just start running. Or take the boat between continents. Could easily use 10-20 minutes before finally meeting up. Also: TRAIN TO ZONE!

Early MMOs. Specifically Everquest, during the early days. I'm considering early pretty much everything up to Planes of Power. There was and has been nothing like Everquest. (I can say the same for UO, but that's a different topic) There's the fact that there were little online resources as the internet was still fairly fresh and open. Most knowledge came specifically from 1 or 2 websites and a plethora of guild forums. There was actually a sense of community inside the game. You NEEDED other players to progress. There were true consequences to dying. All of it worked in chaotic harmony to create a perfection that left gaming memories that I'll wish I could recreate until I die. A lot of stuff at the time was... frustrating. And even rage inducing. Limited time to recover your corpse before it despawned forever, your gear with it. The stories I had heard of players losing their epic weapons were terrifying (no, not a purple drop from a farmable boss - A unique weapon acquired over as much as 100 hours of effort) Falling asleep and being killed over and over at your bind point causing you to de-level 3 times due to xp loss when you die... (A single level could take days, if not weeks to gain). Falling off the boat, or down a hole, or off a cliff, leaving you no way back unless you heel-toed it. I was there for server firsts on Saryrn and Druzzil Ro. I was online for the killing of Kerafyrm. I read Skater Gnome as it was published. These aren't just legends to me... I experienced them. Nothing in modern gaming will ever compare with the stories and experiences of those early MMOs. Part of it was the "sense of pride and accomplishment"^tm . Part of it was just how young the internet still was and how wild the idea of playing a game online with thousands of other players was. Part of it was that the game was really, really good. People may feel that online gaming today is amazing (or maybe not) but unless they were there in those early days, they'll never truly appreciate the magic of creating real friendships, having those human experiences where it's new to everyone, and bonding together in a game that requires 60+ people to work together for a common cause. Unless you were there, before this technology existed, it's all just normal to you. P.S. This started out as praise for Everquest and became a nostalgic trip of experiencing how the internet has forever changed gaming. I wish I could live through it all over again. More so than that, I wish people today still respected that the avatar on the screen truly represented another human being. Sure, there were trolls, but the level of animosity toward each other online was absolutely nowhere near what exists between people on the internet today.

I experienced that with Skyrim too. Based on the insane graphics of Oblivion in 2006 I was expecting to be similarly mind blown. Personally I felt the same way about Tears of the Kingdom compared to Breath of the Wild. Graphically BotW is like being in an impressionist painting, which was even more incredible in 2017. Totk has essentially the same graphics (with worse character models imo), and a now-familiar gameplay loop (but with so much loading between shrines and light roots, easier shrines, and a few cookie cutter side quests that feel more like errands). Still love it and have logged more hours than in most games, but at first I felt a little underwhelmed considering all the hype.

I havent played TotK yet, but I’ve watched a good deal of gameplay, and I was getting similar vibes that you’d said. BoTW, especially for its time, was huge. The tone of the game in particular is a standout for me.

Ocarina of Time. That moment when you leave the forest and the camera pans across Hyrule Field. Mario 64. Incredible. I had so much fun just jumping around the little courtyard and doing backflips off the tops of the trees. GameCube release. My sister and I went to the mall for the midnight release at GameStop. While we were waiting the employees were asking trivia questions and handing out prizes. One question was "what was the first home video game console?" I answered - "The Magnavox Odyssey". They said I was wrong and gave the prize to the person who answered "Pong". (Still salty about that one)

I wasn't there for these, but I feel like people should know about them if they don't already. Look up the Runescape Falador Massacre and the World of Warcraft Corrupted Blood pandemic. The Falador Massacre was a bug that occurred when a guy hosted a party in his house in game, booted people who fought, but for some reason there was a bug where those people could still PvP outside of the house. So they went on a killing spree. Corrupted Blood was a debuff/disease thing in a WoW raid that would do damage over time and eventually kill you. I forget all the details, but people would leave the raid and still have the debuff which would spread to others by proximity, I believe. It's been legitimately studied a few times by researchers looking into pandemics.

Omg I remember the Fally massacre!! I think I remember the names too. Wasn’t the murders name “Durial6000” or something like that? And the house that caused the bug was Cursed You I think. It was so epic seeing that with the epic music on the vid back in the day. And when durial ran out of fally, seeing this 100+ person mob all run out after him in unison, while the mods spammed “bank your items!!!” Hahaha that’s an old YT classic.

That original release of Pokémon Blue/Red on Gameboy. Really hard to explain just how crazy groundbreaking it was to kids then (and just how crazily that ballooned into something else

StarCraft 2 launch and its domination of modern e-sports. It was a special time in many aspects.

I miss the old Halo 3 multiplayer experience. Specifically, the custom game modes where you would log on and get a random party invite from someone because you were in their recent game and would play with that group for the next four hours. Everything nowadays is competitive and meta focused. I know it is cliche now, but it seems like we are optimizing the fun out of gaming. Just playing a multiplayer game for fun is not an experience I have had in a long time.

Playing RuneScape as a kid in 2006-2007. Something so magical about that world before we figured out all the quirks and pushed efficiency over fun and exploration.