Video Game Memories

[Adol The Red]

Just wondering about some of your favorite video game related memories. Maybe something that happened in a game, or involving games in general. Here are a few of mine.

I didn't become a serious gamer till early in high school, but before then I dabbled with my parent's NES(wish I knew what they did with it). Played Tetris, Contra, and Stealth. Tried to play Defender of the Crown, but had no idea how. And then there was Dragon Warrior 2. I messed with it once but didn't get far. Then I became friends with Alexx, and he came over to check out what I had. He popped int Dragon Warror 2, and quickly found a Copper Sword. Then he equipped it.
My immediate reaction was, "What did you just do?"
There you have my first experience with RPGs. Suffice it do say I've come a long way from not knowing how to equip weapons, or that equipping them was a thing you could do. I've had many great RPG experiences since then, but that memory never stops being funny to me.

Another was just a great end to a fight in Final Fantasy 7. Also early in my RPG career, this was before I know about grinding. So I played straight through, never stopping to level at all (this eventually forced me to restart because I could not beat Hojo's third form). When I got to Cosmo Canyon and had to fight Gi Nattak, I got whittled down fast. The fight came down to one of those moments where you have one character alive and you can either heal just enough to knocked right back into the same spot next turn, or you can throw out your last shot because you know you'll be killed on the next hit. I happend to get a Limit Break with just Cloud alive. I had blade beam at the time, which has a bit of a cinematic pause before he unleashes it. This turned out to be the victory strike, which made for a pretty cool down to the wire finish for a boss battle.

This last one is just one of those sometimes annoying occurances in games. Was playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PSP and spending loads of time trying to get a Crissogrim. If you don't know, it's a relatively rare drop sword that shows up as a mad slashing blur when you attack. Not the strongest but the speed of its hits makes up for it, and just a fun sword to use. Well, after pushing the limits of patience and nearly giving up on it, one finally drops. On my way back to the save point I come upon the enemy type that drops the sword, kill it, and get another Crissogrim. All that time, and then I get two in a row. Well, I did what any respectable gamer would do. I equipped both of them and became a walking terror of dual-wielding multi-slashing madness.

Okay I think that's enough from me for now. Hope those were interesting or funny. I'm curious to know about any of your cool or funny memories and experiences involving games.

[Farore]

Oh man, your story about not knowing how to equip an item reminded me of an experience I had with Ocarina of Time. I was playing and had gotten up to the point where Lord Jabu Jabu becomes a dungeon. I went in headstrong and ready to destroy his insides, but to no avail. I couldn't get past the very first room. Day of anger and frustration later I accidentally discovered that what I though was a wall was a door. From that day on I vowed to always try the simple answer first.

Another good one one happened while playing God of War II. At some point the narration lady told me to use the Rage of the Titans because my bar was filled. I was in the middle of getting my tushie pulverized so I replied to the TV, "Sounds Good!", and did just that. Roll began laughing hysterically and after he caught his breath he finally told me about my conversation with the TV. Apparently I like to have a real conversation with the games I play.

The most epic gaming moment for me had to be finally completing Ocarina of Time (I know everyone is so surprised!). I had played games on and off before that, mostly watching my parents play on the NES, but nothing compared to the sheer awesomeness of completing such an epic tale! I think I must have played through the ending four or five times that day just to see that ending.

[RollCasket]

There are quite a few that I can think of, even just off the top of my head, so I'll just throw a few in this post and maybe do another later or somethin. These all happen to be RPG related, I'll diversify next post =P

All you fellow old folks like me remember when there was no internet? Most of what you heard about a game was in magazines or from friends. So that lil game that's become my favorite of all time, Chrono Trigger, I actually learned about through my baby sitter of all things. It was a gamer girl (who I remember being pretty cute...) who brought over her SNES and CT and as I watched her play I was blown away by the game and just HAD to get it. Of course I was already into RPGs so seeing this one was like love at first sight =P

I'm sure many of you remember when FF7 was coming out, there were THREE separate commercials for it, which is pretty crazy especially at the time as game commercials weren't that common. My hype levels for this game were through the damn roof, lol. Having played so much of 4 and 6 I could NOT wait. Sadly...I didn't have a PS1...so when it came out I rented a PS1 and FF7, got home and cracked the hell out, literally. I played it from the moment I got home till I passed out on the bed that I was playing the game from...woke up and continued playing =P It was probably the longest time straight of playing games I've ever done.

Finally, Xenoblade, which I have to mention because other than being an amazing game in so many aspects, there were several moments that I remember while playing the game. Without getting spoilerish of course, first moment was realizing you could jump off of cliffs o.O Thankfully it so happened to be into water, but yes you can VERY MUCH die by falling, and a few times I very purposely jumped off the tallest thing I could find because it is immensely fun lol. Shortly after that moment was when I fought my first named monster. These special mobs are quite a bit more challenging than anything else in the area and have their own epic music when you fight them. I fought my first prolly a bit early...and literally BARELY finished it off with other memebers dead except main guy who had one hit's worth of health and finished him off with one final auto attack slice just as I was about to run away cause I thought I was going to die, lol. Well this is already pretty damn long so I'll cut it there, but there's good reason why this game skyrocketed into my 2nd favorite game of all time, way too much awesomeness.

[Farore]

Oh man, when Roll got home he reminded me of another one that nearly caused the end of the world. We were playing Street Fighter IV shortly after it came out. This was the first time I'd ever played a fighting game attempting to not button mash for my life.

We played a bunch of 3 round sets. I played Ken each time, and Roll made his way through each character until the ultimate battle became unavoidable: Ken vs Ken.

The suspense was tangible as we entered the third round with a win under each of our belts. The battle was close; both Kens down to their last specs of life. In an earth-shattering moment we each tried to land the final blow. What resulted nearly killed us all.

Double Shoryuken KO!

That's right folks, Shoryuken has such a high priority that they both hit at the exact same time. As we sat there on the floor, leaning against my bed mere feet from the screen we waited. We waited for an explosion of Michael Bay proportions that we knew would come.

But it didn't. Not wanting to tempt fate further we hesitantly turned off the X360, changed the TV input and watched a movie, fearful that our doom was simply delayed rather than avoided. As the night wore on the tension finally gave way to relief. We would all live to Shoryuken another day.

And that is how the world almost ended. Always remember, with great priority come great power.

[Alexx]

I WILL ADD TO IT:

- RPGs slowly leaked into my life with the advent of Super Mario RPG. The funny thing about that is that I had no idea how the simplest things worked (though obviously Adol can claim the same, since he didn't know how to equip things early on and he had met me sometime after I was already familiar with it). When I had first played Mario RPG, I had no idea how to tell if something was better than something else unless it said something in the description or was the new weapon to buy. So I bought whatever was in the next town and equiped it, and if the description didn't tell me anything, I didn't use it! So there was great stuff like the Amulet from Booster that gives you some great stat boosts, but I didn't use it because all it said was "Great item, bad smell!" I was like "WTH I don't know what this does!" Totally didn't notice the arrows pointing up or down next to the stats telling me what it did.

- I started to become familiar with RPGs when Final Fantasy 7 came out with thier confusing commericals. Roll: You stated above that you were geeked for it to come out, and I'm sure lots of folks were as well! I however, had NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS. I was excited too, but the commercials told me nothing about what it was! Hilariously, my friend Jason told me he had rented it and it sucked. He said "it was pretty much all reading and words and I didn't understand it." I somehow didn't make any connections to Mario RPG and took his word for it.

Fast forward to christmas and my friend Chris getting a PS1 and Final Fantasy 7 and OMG. Perhaps it was just the meeting of fate - this game was perfect for me. 'Course that was just from watching my friend play; I didn't touch the game myself until a couple years later. What that DID spark was research - I looked back as far as I could to get to the source of this "Final Fantasy" business, and I began my journey with the help of a friend named George, who had grown up with this stuff. He let me borrow Final Fantasy 1, which I loved, and told me to check out Final Fantasy 6 (then called 3, of course) if I got the chance.

So when I did my usual Summer Vacation thing and stayed with my grandparents for three weeks, my grandpa and I went to the video store to rent some SNES games: I chose Final Fantasy 6, and some game named "Chrono Trigger" that - from pics on the back of the box - I thought was a side-scrolling action game. Since I thought Final Fantasy 6 was going to be the main event I tried out Chrono Trigger instead and there went my three weeks at grandma's. I had a day or so left when I beat Chrono Trigger and played into FF6 a little, but obviously that wasn't much time. I borrowed them both from George later and that began my RPG history!

Wait, this isn't "your life in video games"....oh well. Perhaps I'll leave it at that for now and add things that follow the topic a little better later on!

[Adol The Red]

[chrisb]

I was 14 and severely depressed. I never left the house or talked to my friends and grew very distant.

One summer I found myself rather alone while visiting an out of town relative. He took me to rent some movies and games and I randomly chose Skies of Arcadia.

Nothing major at first. I had a lot of fun, but eventually I came to love the characters and plot to the point that it actually made me really happy and brought a smile to my face. It didn't change my life, but it turned what would have been a lonely and miserable summer into something entertaining and it brought me honest joy. Took me all summer to beat that game (I was never that good at RPGs.)

I'm glad to say these days I am a happy and positive person, but whenever I play Skies of Arcadia now it reminds me of a time I was in so much pain and a little video game made it go away for a bit. Makes me smile and fills me with a bittersweet (more sweet than bitter) feeling I can't describe.

[Pie]

My Beginning RPG Experience!~
I pretty much stayed away from RPG's until I was eleven because of the idea that when I watched anyone else play, I was afraid that I wouldn't know what options on the menu to choose in battle. I didn't have much console RPG exposure at the time so I thought every battle decision made was a big deal. A friend came over with his brother's Japanese Final Fantasy 5 one summer day. He seemed really excited and told me a bunch of stuff about the different character jobs having different special abilities and even showed me some of the final dungeon and last boss. It piqued my interest a bit so I asked if I could borrow the game for a while. I didn't know a word of Japanese at the time of course and had no idea what was going on or what I was doing, but at the time I just tried different options and tried deciphering the story through character actions (I used to do that often as a hardcore otaku with raw Japanese anime later too. XD) I didn't know anything about items and armor sold in shops so I always just bought one of ever item in towns and eventually got stuck at a pretty early boss battle. I told my friend's brother and he laughed at me. ^^ It was the "age of no internet" and I was stuck in my first RPG which was in a foreign language, but I was still intrigued.

Luckily not long afterwards, I found a copy of Final Fantasy II (4) for twenty dollars at a game rental store! I played the game like an addict and got to the last boss at level 50 (Cecil had 4040 hp. XD) but couldn't beat him until weeks or so later, making attempts every once in a while. I guess the option of grinding levels never occurred to me. lol I was really blown away by the epic presentation of the final fight! The music was adrenaline pumping and the background was animated with such grandness and style that it just shouted "This is the moment everything's been building up for!" It's something that I will always remember and will think of as one of the most epic fights I've ever seen in a video game. Many RPG final battles over my gamer life have failed to live up to my expectations because of this. XD

After beating Final Fantasy II, I went back and played Final Fantasy 5 (which I traded a game for with my friend) with much more ease. XD I learned how to buy equipment, stock consumables, and to strategize with skills and abilities. I pretty much went through the game three times, each time my file becoming progressively perfect. XD I actually didn't reach the final boss my first two times because of friends. It was frustrating because I did a lot of grinding and mastered all classes in both of those files. My first file was saved over by accident by one friend and even though I saved BACK UP files of my progress on my second play, my other friend who borrowed my cartridge thought it'd be okay to progress the story and play around on my files and save over ALL of them. -anyway, I played a LOT of FF5 and it will always have a place in my heart. Watching the title screen and opening credits roll as the main theme plays always feels very nostalgic to me, reminding me of the early weekend mornings when I'd wake up excited to play, even though I wasn't 100% sure of the plot though I ended up learning as internet became more and more available over the years. ^^ -oh and the final boss battle and ending do not disappoint. =D

Super Mario RPG
I was really interested in the game when it came out, probably because of all the buzz Nintendo Power was giving off about it. XD It's a really awesome game, something I highly recommend! =D Though my dad dislikes video games, he would often let my brother and me rent one as we visited him when we were small. My brother, my cousin, and I decided to rent Super Mario RPG one weekend and though it's only a single-player game, the three of us were really into it and excited; this made me especially happy because my cousin, though a Mario fan, wasn't really a gamer. XD My dad came into the room in the middle of the fun and said something like "Next time we rent a game, don't rent one out of the sake of just renting one." I guess he didn't approve of our choice. >_>

Final Fantasy 7
I had a friend in high school who'd often buy Japanese games, so as a hardcore gamer, he got FF7 just as it came out in Japan. The friend would come over and hang out with my brother and me pretty often on weekends during which we'd have our all-night gaming sessions! XD He brought FF7 every time then and after he'd pass out, I had permission to play the game on my own and have my own save file on his memory card! (I didn't have a playstation at the time). Unfortunately, he had a tendency to forgetfully erase my file resulting in me playing the whole segment of the beginning of the game up till you reach Sephiroth's mansion way too many times. ^^; I always thought it was kind of funny that I'd always end up stopping at the same spot before my file would mysteriously erase. I did enjoy the game though. XD

[Bear]

Here are some of my most impressionable game memories:

Gaming with Dad - My dad and I used to play games together quite a bit when I was a kid. I remember playing a lot of Life Force with him and buying a NES advantage joystick just so we could put it in slow motion to beat some of the hardest fast-paced levels. Trying to down the bosses was so memorable.

Working for him as a kid, I was able to save up and purchase a nice big used cabinet ~18" tube TV for my room, and we had the SNES setup in it. I remember one weekend playing games with him all night and I passed out. I woke up at 6am or something and he was still in my room playing Sim City, sitting there on the floor being totally immersed in it. Since I'm an only child and had like no friends, my dad was kind of more like a big brother to me.

When he bought a PC for his business, he tried getting me interested in it. I really couldn't care less about it...until he bought a couple games for it - a racing game where you could build your own tracks and Elvira Mistress of the Dark RPG. That got me on a whole PC craze and ended up hogging his computer a lot, to the point where he and my mom bought a small Compaq PC for me. Then we got Warcraft 2 and would play battles with each other over modems. Nothing was better than running into his room after a successful campaign I launched and laughing after his bases got destroyed. Those were some of the best of times XD

Gaming with Friends - The interest in computers ended up getting me into stuff at my high school where I made a couple really good friends that were a couple years older than me. Playing Marathon 2 in the Mac lab at school was a hell of a lot of fun and all us computer geeks were close to the computer lab teacher who would encourage us to come in after class to play. We ended up helping her repair and do volunteer work to show our gratitude for the game time and LAN parties (complete with Pizza!).

After I graduated college and my parents moved out (yes, my parents moved out of our place and I stayed behind), I would have a lot of fun having parties of our computer lab friends over and playing various games and hosting LAN parties. Crystal Chronicles was still one of the coolest party games that we played. I wanted to get them into Quake 3 Arena, but it wasn't really their thing. I ended up joining my first guild back then, The Sailor Scouts, an all railshooting guild that would play it together. I was a huge Sailor Moon fan at the time and the guild leader was a death metal singer that traveled and did his own shows. That group was a lot of fun and where I first started using the DeificWolf screen name.

Since railshooting was one hit death, we got really good at being able to aim the railgun in the midst of very faced paced combat. One of the greatest feelings was running to avoid someones oncoming rails, jumping on a launchpad, turning mid air, feeling the arc of launch and fall and being able to kill my pursuer as we both fell from the sky. It was all sorts of crazy intense action and I played the hell out of that game XD

Gaming with Pie - I can't pinpoint one really clear event for us, but having cookie picnics online as we were falling in love was probably the most prominent. We shared a ton of great times together and I really enjoyed our whimsical adventures we would have in game =D

Gaming with Guild Mates - For about a year and a half I lead a newer guild in RO called Fairy Tail (based on the great manga turned sub-par anime). I lead under a female lord knight named Erza Scarlet because Erza is all kinds of badass and I wanted to re-create her in game. Anyways, we did guild-vs-guild PVP twice a week. To this date that game had the most exhilarating and rewarding team PVP in an online game. It was all about raw skill - no mods, no BS; just fast paced sprite action where the goal was to capture forts for the daily treasures by working as a cohesive team unit. You could have 54 people in a guild and up to 4 guilds could ally at a time, meaning up to 200 vs 200 player combat. If things weren't coordinated properly in the defense of castles, shit would go really wrong and people would die left and right.

Anyways, there were rewards for defending castles for a full siege period and so many times the battles centered around 2-5 maps out of a possible 30. The last 20-30 minutes of the 2 hour siege would have guilds rushing unattended castles to get the rewards - these were considered FFA forts; alliances would try and make sure allies had forts but it all came down to whoever could get them. Some guild might get lucky and get 2 forts for the effort and the biggest guild might even score 3 if they were lucky.

At the height of my guilds success, Pie and I had some friends/guild mates fly out and hang out with us to see Cali and just have fun together. Well, we were having drinking parties with the guild over vent and just overall having a great time. That Saturday night was siege time, so the five of us were at the house in our bedroom and the living room playing together. The attendance that night was about 35 strong - a good showing for us. We were doing really well in our coordination and battles and I think having so many of us at our house and being in good spirits made us especially potent.

In the FFA phases last few minutes we had our base castle secured and sent out a few people to scout FFA forts that were still contested to see if a last second additional fort could be secured. In the last few seconds, we were able to not only keep our 1 home fort, but score THREE additional forts. The house EXPLODED with cheer!!!!! It was like we had won the Super Bowl! Getting 4 total forts was RARE becuase competition was FIERCE and we weren't the biggest or strongest guild. But man, having our friends over and ending the weekend they were over with that was so epic that I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget all the screaming on vent from our guild mates being so excited about winning. It was completely magical.

It's events like this that make me feel like a solo console game can never measure up in how great an experience it can be. The social connection to others gaming together and having fun is just beyond measure.

[Bear]

Also, I wanted to mention that I like this thread. It is awesome. I really enjoy hearing peoples prominent and memorable game times XD