Video Game Memories

[Luc of True Wind]

Wow... everyone has shared some awesome video game memories! Now I don't even know where to begin! I guess I can start by saying that I have been around video games since I can remember. My two older brothers have always likes video games and when I was about 5 or 6 years old I began to play games on my NES with my older brother. We were never able to have many games, so whenever we were able to get a game, my brother and I would play these games FOREVER haha. I can remember playing Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt for hours and hours since those were the only games we had on NES for years. We then got Mario 2 and 3 later, but the game that sticks out in my mind is Dragon Warrior. This is the game that got me into RPGs. My brother received the game for free from Nintendo Power (I can't remember why), and even though I never played it myself, I watched my brother play it and I was transfixed!

I had no idea what was going on sometimes, so I would ask my brother all the time, and I would still be lost haha. I can remember the final boss Dragonlord being terrifying (as terrifying as an 8-bit boss can possibly be haha) and my brother and I were sitting at the edge of our seats super nervous as he battled this half man half dragon boss with epic music. It was so amazing!

Shortly after this, my brother and I sought more games like this, and when we got our super Nintendo, we bought Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy II (or IV), and this would be the first RPG I ever played. I took a lot of cues from my brother as to when to grind and what to buy and equip, so I did ok, but I can just remember how captivated I was by the story. I would write about the characters at school, I would draw pictures, I would do anything to keep the story alive and immerse myself in it when I was not playing. I was sold on Final Fantasy after this and when we bought Final Fantasy III (or VI) I knew I had found my favorite game in the series.

When we bought Chrono Trigger, I could not stop playing that game! To this day I have the same saved file I have been using since 1995 hahaha, and I have done everything I possibly could with that data, but the game just never gets old for me. This will remain my favorite game forever. My brother and I would talk about it to no end and we would write stories about it, it was simply amazing.

Because of these games, I got into series like Breath of Fire, Suikoden, Valkyrie Profile, the Tales of series, and so many other RPGs.

My brothers and I also played a lot of multiplayer games and fighting games. We liked to play Street Fighter games and the Battle Arena Toshinden series (man I miss those games!) and multiplayer games like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros (another one of my favorite games), Mario Party, Mario Kart, the list goes on. I was never any good at shooter games or fighting games, but I enjoyed playing them with my brothers and my friends.

When I got into online games, I began with Phantasy Star Online and played that for a few years, but nothing will top my experiences with Ragnarok Online I began that game in my senior year of high school, and I was hooked the moment I began. I made friends with a cool group of people in the beginning and we had a small guild. We would do random stuff and hunt for things but nothing big. These friends moved on to play World of Warcraft, but I wanted to stay playing RO. I sort of wandered around playing with friends and joining small guilds here and there for a few years, but I really wanted that group of friends again, and that's when I met Bear and Pie

I am a timid and introverted person by nature, so when I joined their guild I was reluctant to open up at first, but as I spend more time with everyone, I began to feel welcomed and part of a family. I always hated PVP in online games, but I loved playing with all of them so much that I decided to do PVP with em. It took me a while to find out what I liked to do best in PvP (since I was always support class oriented), but when I found my role I was hooked! I was never really great at my scholar role, but I always felt like I contributed something every time I played. Bear didn't know this early on, but I would panic so much when we would do PvP, so I would not say much on vent because I was so terrified hahaha. I treasure these experiences so much, so that's why to this day I will always join Bear and Pie in as many games as I can

There's a bit about me!

[RollCasket]

Reading some of these has reminded me of a lot of my own memories also. It's especially nice to see memories with parents people have shared so I'll share a few of mine though they aren't as big.

Like others my parents couldn't afford to get me many games, but we did get one every so often. One in particular I remember was Sonic & Knuckles. Since we had gotten the Sega (got a SNES much later) we obviously had the Sonic games and when we heard S&K coming out with the ability to lock on other Sonics for additional features me and my brother knew we had to have it. We left notes and drew pictures, leaving them in spots they'd see them, of course verbally expressing our want for the game too, it ended up being the first release day game we ever got and boy did we play the crap out of it.

Slight tangent on buying games, the first game I bought with my own money was Megaman 5 (2nd was Kirby's Adventure) and that started my love for Megaman and platformers. Oddly enough, I didn't know the Megaman games continued on SNES till we had rented a SNES and saw MMX and grabbed that as well, falling in love all over again =P

Sadly though my parents were never really much into games but there were a few specifically where dad or both mom and dad would join. The one that got the whole family together was Sonic Spinball, which is kinda funny as some turns lasted longer than others as we all took turns, some of which were short lived. Still, we had fun with it and I'll always remember us all playing it and laughing and helping each other through it all. The first time I saw dad REALLY interested in a console game though was much later with Star Fox 64. Since he (still to this day) works at Robinson Helicopter where they obviously build helicopters, he liked flight sims and other similar games. I would do my best teaching him how to play and what to do and even though he was never that good he had fun with it. Normally though he played PC games, like many of the old school Adventure games and anything Star Wars. It was kinda fun cause we'd both play on a file, or our own, and help each other through puzzles and explore the world together. Both ways were fun as sometimes watching each other play our own files would lead to finding things the other didn't or different decisions made.

Other than that there have been some smaller memories with introducing mom to the Wii...a random call from dad about which of the newer systems he'd enjoy most (which was super random to me). Next post will be MMOS lol.

[TheNesta]

Oh man... Okay. Hold on to your butts.

Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest)

When I was four years old, I got my first video game console. A Nintendo Entertainment System. Not usual for most people my age. For a while, the only game I had was the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt combo. And it was amazing. Simply the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my entire short life. Then, a while later, we got a copy of Dragon Warrior. As Luc mentioned above, there was a promotion in 89-90 where if you subscribed to Nintendo Power they sent you a free copy of Dragon Warrior. See, it was a pretty genius marketing move that allowed the budding genre of JRPGs penetrate the Western market, and it worked! But I digress...

So here I was with this limited exposure to what video games had to offer, not to mention very little, if any ability to read. So, I watched my Mom play the game for a while, and I was totally entranced by it. It was a grand adventure of Knights, and Dragons, and all this stuff I was started to love as a child. And the world was huge! There was so much to do, and I dunno, the whole thing just kinda blew my mind. So, I decided I had to be able to play this game. So, I did. I started playing it, and my Grandma and Mom both helped me learn to read by playing this game. I know I tell this story a lot, but you have to admit, it's pretty damn cool. And after many trials and tribulations, I was finally able to complete the game by the skin of my teeth. The Dragonlord was one tough cookie! And I obviously didn't have a full grasp on what I should actually be doing in terms of leveling up and what not. To this day, the game remains special to me, and I will always remember it.

Dragon Warrior IV (Dragon Quest IV)

Fast forward a few years to another Dragon Quest game. At this point I was pretty familiar with JRPGs. Some concepts still eluded me, like grinding. Actually, for the longest time I had this terrible habit of running away from battles! It made things quite difficult when my party was so underleveled. Dragon Quest IV remains my favorite game in the series, because it took something I already loved, and multiplied it by several magnitudes. The characters and the story of IV were so breathtaking when I was a child, they still are!

I remember having the chart of Monsters/Equipment, it was so terribly thrashed by the time I was done with it, I must have taped it half a dozen times, haha. This was also the first game where I had a strategy guide for, and that too was quite tattered by the end of the journey.

The two big memories I have of the game though are such: I had kind of a... strange childhood. My parents divorced shortly after I was born. I'd visit my Dad on weekends, and lived with my Grandparents most of the time. My Mom... well it was hard living with her for reasons I won't go into. So, one day I'm sitting there playing Dragon Warrior IV in my Grandparents living room, and I fight the boss Estark. Man, he was so hard! And when I finally beat him (while my Grandparents were watching no less) I was so excited that I just had to call my Mom and tell her about it.

I remember the call pretty clearly. I got the answering machine, so I left a message: "Hello? Mom? Are you there? It's an emergency! I beat Estark!" A little while later she called me back and scolded me severely, because the structure of my message sounded like there was a real emergency! I had actually scared her pretty bad, and it was all over some dumb video game boss, haha. It was a valuable lesson.

The other memory is just fighting the final boss of the game Necrosaro (Psaro The Manslayer). As I mentioned above, I didn't level up much at all throughout the game, and I was way, way underpowered for this admittedly pretty difficult boss fight. So, I must have tried fighting this guy... I dunno... 30 times? And it wasn't like I was getting completely wiped every time either, I was getting close, I knew it. So, finally, one time, I guess the planets aligned, and I just had a lucky streak and was finally able to beat him. It was such a hectic battle that I had fought tooth and nail for, and it was honestly one of the coolest experiences I'd ever had.

Final Fantasy VII

First, let me just say, that even though I don't have any memories that particularly stick out for me during the 16-Bit generation, The SNES is still my favorite console of all time. It also has some of my favorite games too. So, when I jump ahead here all the way to 97, I just want you to know that.

Anyway. As several people have mentioned already, Final Fantasy VII was a big deal. I was a huge fan of the series, and SquareSoft in general after the SNES era, and when I saw the commercials for VII I lost my friggin' mind. I remember the first time too. The commerical came on and I was like "Oh my GOD! This game looks absolutely friggin' amazing! It has like the best graphics ever! And holy shit! Look at that guy's sword! Look at his HAIR!" and then when it showed the logo that let me know it was a Final Fantasy game, well, I probably ran around the house screaming like an idiot. Problem was, it was for Playstation. Before that point, the Sony platform wasn't even on my radar. But now I HAD to have it.

So, for that Christmas, my Grandma got me a Playsation and Final Fantasy VII. I was so excited opening it up that I ripped apart my finger, haha. But, that didn't matter. I immediately went into my room, hooked up the Playsation and started up the game. I was glued there for two hours before my Dad showed up to take me to his house for my Christmas morning with him. This meant more presents. But I didn't care, at all. I just wanted to stay there all day playing that game. Eventually I gave in and went with him, but couldn't wait to get home to play more of it.

I was obsessed with the game. I played it during all of my free time. Hell, I even wrote an entire report at school about Chocobo breeding, and how to get a Golden Chocobo. All the while I was explaining the game's plot to my Mom. It was around the time where I was like: "...and this guy Sephiroth carries his Mom's head around with him!" where she decided she had to play it for herself. I was so friggin' excited about this, because it hearkened back to the days when my Mom played Dragon Warrior. I was so excited that I made a hand written mini guide to the game for her. We shared so many discussions about the game, and it was all we could talk about for quite a while.

Tales of Destiny

Not only was Destiny my first exposure to the Tales series, like many people, but there's also an interesting story attached to it that I also like to bring up when I can. I remember liking the game quite a bit, but I eventually got to a certain boss... I think they were on a ship. And for whatever strange reason, I just could NOT beat this boss, no matter what I tried. It got to the point where I just gave up on the game, accepting defeat.

A while later, my Mom decided to play the game as well, and when she got to that boss, she beat it! I was so surprised, and probably a bit mad too, haha. But, it just inspired me to start the game over myself, and finally get past that boss myself.

Sadly, that's one of the last memories I have of my Mother. She passed away shortly after that. But, if you couldn't already tell, she played an important role in establishing my fascination with the hobby, and I have some pretty great memories of playing these games alongside her. I just wish I could show her how far we've come with this stuff.

Phantasy Star Online

PSO is special. It wasn't the first online game I'd played. It wasn't even the first MMO I'd played. But it was the first one that hooked me. I hadn't really had any experience with the Phantasy Star series at this point, so it wasn't even on my radar until I saw a bunch of people talking about how amazing it was. This was also the start of the age where internet video was becoming popular, so I watched a bunch of videos for the game. And it looked incredible.

So, I jumped right in. I bought a copy of PSO, a Dreamcast keyboard, and signed up for an Earthlink internet subcription, alongside my current cable internet! I was just really ready to jump in head first. And I was not disappointed. If you played PSO back in the day, you probably have similar fond memories of the game. It was a beautiful game, the artstyle was amazing, and the music, oh god, the music still makes me feel warm inside. But it was the game itself that was so special. I know that some people like Roll had only played the offline version of the game. And it holds up, it's a really solid action RPG wrapped in a beautiful presentation. It was also one of the only games outside of Diablo that was doing loot lust back then.

But it was the online that was so groundbreaking for me. I spent... I think... 500 hours playing PSO. Aside from a few alts, my main character was a HUcast named Tackstar. I got him all the way up to level 98 after 200+ hours of play. And one day, while I was playing, for some reason I can't remember, the VMU fell out of the controller, and wiped ALL my data. To say I was devastated would be putting it lightly. What did I do? I turned the game right back on, remade the exact same character, and started leveling him all the way up to 100. Yeah, I was addicted.

PSO was also the game that single-handedly turned me into a Nocturnal person. I would stay up all night playing the game, and I still feel the repercussions of that to this day. Also, along the way I met some really cool people. Like a guy named Dreamweaver, and his Mom, oddly enough, who helped me learn the ropes. I also met a really cool, older, deaf dude who told me a really interesting story about how he solved a sound based puzzle in Resident Evil Nemesis by feeling the vibrations from the TV. I also made friends with a group of friends who I spent most of my time leveling with. Ahh... good times.

Ninja Gaiden

This one will be quick, I promise. And it's not even like, that great of a memory compared to the stuff above, BUT- I beat Ninja Gaiden on the X-Box. Yeah, that's it. Wait, hold on! Yo, I don't know if you know this, but Ninja Gaiden is effing HARD. And at the time I hadn't really pushed myself as a gamer, I still don't as a rule. But, I'll be damned if I didn't sit there and beat that god damn game. All the while I was listening to shitty early 00's alternative music. Good Times(?)

Tales of Symphonia

Aside from being an incredible game, Symphonia was also a pretty interesting experience for me. As I've mentioned before I wrote a rather lengthy for Symphonia. While I am pretty embarrassed with where I was as a writer at that point, I am still extremely proud of that guide. It was a radical experience, it took so much time and work. And I loved it.

I'm a huge fan of FAQs, even though I use them more sparingly nowadays. I look up to guys like Split Infinity, and A l e x, people who I've used there guides for countless games. And I'm glad I was able to be a part of that community, if only for a short while.

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, it's one of the very rare games from this generation that I would consider on that list. The first time I played it, I played it on normal, with my canon Commander Shepard, Argilla Shepard, and it was amazing. This particular memory though applies to my second playthrough of the game.

Somewhere along the line, I decided I wanted to play Mass Effect 2 again (It was actually later that year, But I digress) and I also decided I wanted to S rank the game. I needed that Insanity achievement. So, I made a new Shepard, PUFF DADDY Shepard, and rushed through the first Mass Effect. Then I played through Mass Effect 2 on Insanity. It was one of the greatest gaming experiences I've ever had.

Again, I don't usually play games for them to be challenging. I'll freely admit to playing a lot of games on easier difficult settings. At least the more twitch-based ones. But, much like my time with Ninja Gaiden, I just powered through it. Except, this time, it was an extremely rewarding experience. It was... fun. And I think that's part of the reason the game is so special to me, so yeah, it was pretty radical.

Phantasy Star IV

This one is pretty recent. But, I played Phanstay Star IV for the first time a few months ago. It was the first time I really gave an honest try at playing an old school Phantasy Star game. And it was so, so friggn' cool. Imagine, if you grew up playing JRPGs during that era, yet you just so happened to miss one of the best JRPGs from that time. And you were finally able to experience it, for the first time. That was me a few months ago.

As I was playing the game, I was honestly surprised with how good it was. But I wasn't until after I finished the game, and the months that followed, where I would realize that "Wow, that really is one of the best JRPGs I've ever played." Phantasy Star IV does some amazing things with it's story and characters, that are still cool today, but at the time? Groundbreaking.

To round off this massive post though, I will share my most recent, cherished memory. It was final boss fight. Phanstay Star IV can be a pretty tough game, but at this point in my storied career, what was really going to stop me. The final boss of this game, that's what! I went into the battle, fully expecting to finish the game then. What followed was one of the most grueling boss fights I had ever experienced in a game. And... I lost. It was the COOLEST thing ever! Just like Necrosaro back in my childhood, I fought tooth and nail to beat this guy. And they bested me. It was so friggin' invigorating.

I immediately reloaded my game, grinded a bunch, and then went back for round two. It was STILL super difficult! But I clawed my way to victory, and it was, it was just... so cool.

In Closing...

Well, if you actually read all of that, Thanks for reading! Guess what? I'm not done yet though. But that will have to wait until next time. I'm dedicating the next post to a very special game called Ragnarok Online, as well as a little bit on my competitive gaming career. Phew.

[Adol The Red]

Whew, glad to see this thread doing so well. I love how most of us who came to love RPGs have a common thread of putting our first one in and having no clue what we were going. Even when I did, the first time I ever saw Xenogears being played, I thought it looked way to complex for me to figure out. Eventually I tried it out anyway, and the rest is history.

I've never played many online games. I did dabble with World of Warcraft. Had lots of plans, and started a bunch of characters. I did enjoy the game, too, but the highest character I had was a level 40 human paladin. Multiplayer games can be tough for me because I think my anxiety over social situations is actually worse on the anonymity of the internet. It took me two days of lamenting before I signed up for this forum, and I sat there staring at the previews of my first few posts for minutes before I finally hit the submit button. (Glad I'm here, by the way. I really enjoy this place so far.) So when it comes to getting into the community of an online game, I can't help but worry about being the person that brings the team down. I can do just fine playing by myself, but the rules are somewhat different for a group, especially if you have healing abilities.
That said, one of my favorite gaming memories does come from World of Warcraft. I was right around level 20 and hanging out in Westfall. Out of nowhere about 13 or so high level Horde guys start attacking the province. All of us there were lower leveled, but there were a ton of us so it evened out pretty good. We battled back and forth from the guard tower to Moonbrook for at least a couple of hours. That inpromptu battle was great fun in a way I couldn't describe at the time, and was the first time I had experienced the thrill of what true multiplayer gaming could be like. I didn't even have a way to talk to the others except the chat box, and no-one really planned anything. We just went at it.
One battel in particular ended at the small pond between our two main battle locations. We were all standing around and cheering another victory, when I noticed a splotch of red in the pond. I went in the water and there was a loan orc hiding at the bottom of the pond. By the time I came back out to sound the alarm, someone else had spotted him. He ran up to the top the hill, and died with an arm flailing flourish in the moonlight. Rather cinematic and awesome moment.
In the end, though, I just have a hard time being a multiplayer gamer in big games like this because I'm a creature of mood. I might play something for weeks, and then lose the mood for months and not touch it. This makes me unreliable for multiplayer guilds. At least, that's how I see it.

On another note, I really like all the stories of people bonding with their families, or getting through tough times with gaming. Our hobby gets a bad rap sometimes. Some of these complaints have merit, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm bad at playing games in moderation. For a while I really was addicted and would do nothing else. I think I've balanced it out a bit since then.
My parents were never big games. They play casually, but we never had that came that all of us just sat down and played a lot. Glad to know that so many have had good experiences gaming witht the family.

[Farore]

Early games, RPG's and MMO's

Early Games

Growing up I watched my parents play a lot of SMB 3 and Legend of Zelda. I always though it was cool because my mom knew exactly which pipes to go in for everything, but in reality she just tried going into all of them and didn't have the heart to tell me until later on. Better than that though was that my parents had notebook pages of handwritten maps for Zelda. They weren't fancy, and they weren't pretty, but they did detail each dungeon, each wall to bomb, and each brick to push. They had the sequence to get into the graveyard, and which bolder to bomb to find Ganon. Which old ladies to give your money to, and which ones to avoid all together. It was their own homemade strategy guide based completely on trial and error. It was also the coolest thing my young brain could fathom.

Pretty sure I've said this somewhere else, but at some point in elementary school the building we lived in got zapped by lightning and poor ol' NES got fried. A while late we got an N64 and this gigantic box full of games. My parents didn't buy us every new system that came out, not even close. But they bough them in a way that it didn't matter, because said new systems were usually accompanied by a gigantic box full of on sale games. We got our N64 slightly before Game Cube came out. I did not care one bit. I played that thing to death, literally. Before we got our next system I'm pretty sure we went through at least 5 N64's. One we just burnt out. One my brother plugged into a 220 outlet. After than because they were cheap enough my parents got me, my sister, and my brother each one. I still have mine <3 I've already talked about Ocarina of Time so I'll skip that here.

It wasn't until I got my Xbox that I ever really understood the genre distinction between games. I'd pop in a game and if I enjoyed it it was good, if I didn't it was bad. Those were my genres.... Good and Bad. By the time we got an Xbox I was in 8th grade. Prior to getting a personal one I would go down to "The Club" on base in Spain with two of the other 8th graders (there were only 5 of us!) and we'd play Halo on a bunch of system linked Xboxes. We played a lot against the airmen coming through on TDY's. I was almost always the only girl there. I wasn't the greatest, but I wasn't bad either.

The Club would put on random tournaments with little prizes here and there. I played in a bunch but never really won anything crazy, not until we did a free for all. Now, I really do try to play games for fun. I try not to stress out and whatnot, because if they're that stressful it isn't really a game anymore. That aside, there was a free for all match. Single death elimination. I don't even remember what map it was on, all I know is I ran for the sniper rifle like my life depended on it (it kinda did lol). I got the sniper rifle, holed up in a corner, and started picking people off. After what seemed like hours the match ended, and I was the only one alive! Being a 13 year old girl I did the only thing I could think of: Jumped up, vigorously clapped my hands and started squealing. I won a $99 little CD player/alarm clock.

RPG's

After this my parents finally broke down and bough us an Xbox. In the accompanying box o' games was a title that will stick out in my mind forever: Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. When I first tried this game I actually despised it. There was so little structure. Where was I supposed to go? What should I do? I quickly moved on to other games and stuck with my Good or Bad distinction. One day for whatever reason I went back to Morrowind. This time I read the instruction book (and damnit it was a book) and started to understand. I played an hour or two, most of which was devoted to character/class creation. I made a tall, redheaded Dark Elf. She and I would go on to spend and entire summer together.

I fell in love with the game. Being able to do whatever I wanted was something I'd never experienced in a game. Every single piece of equipment I put on changed my appearance. I could be a caster and wear heavy armor! I could do whatever I wanted, and I did. I played that game so much that the gameplay timer stopped at 999 hours. I loved this game so much that I looked up everything I could learn about it on the Internet (the dial up kind where your computer would scream at you). I learned that it was an RPG. I learned what that actually meant. I then went back and pulled out all my other beloved games and looked up their genres. I found that the majority of my "Good" games were Action-Adventure. "Bad" games tended to be Fighting games and Superman 64. Morrowind was really the first RPG I'd played, and since then I haven't stopped.

MMO's

My first MMO experience was World of Warcraft, and honestly it was really my only MMO experience until more recently. I started playing during the Burning Crusades and made a cute little Blood Elf Warlock named Vacira. I was with my ex at the time so I played on his server, Dragonmaw. Now Dragonmaw is a PvP server, and I tend to despise PvP because it causes far too much anxiety for me. I made my way through leveling, mostly alone and with little or no help along the way. Stranglethorn Vale was a huge camping sport for 70's to gank anyone leveling, and though I begged for him to come help me my ex adamantly say that everyone goes through being ganked and I just had to accept it. I very nearly quit all together, but I toughed it out.

I was also told that the only way to get any amount of gear was to PvP in Alterac Valley. After about two minutes in there I decided this was the worst game ever. It was like being in high school all over again where the older kids could pick on you whenever they liked and you couldn't do anything about it. Because I don't like to quit when I'm so close to beating a game (I was 67ish) I pushed my way to 70. I learned about dungeons and heroics and decided I would try those out before brushing off the game completely. I absolutely loved them. I loved them sooo much.

I went on to one of the top raiding guilds on the server at the time. We downed Illidan pre-nerf and raided 4 hours a night, 3 nights a week. I fell in love with the idea of working with others to beat a boss. No one could do it alone so we had to work together. Downing a new boss was always so exciting, and vent of course would be an explosion of sound. As a team we had achieved a feat no one could alone.

Shortly after Wrath of the Lich King came out I server transfered my warlock to Kirin Tor so I could play with Roll. I didn't join a big guild but enjoyed playing with him and seeing the new content. I eventually made a shaman and fell in love with healing. Towards the end of Wrath we joined a guild that we were founding members of, but because of friction and the guildleader's inability to accept any opinion or point of view other than his own (i.e. when you stand there the healers can't reach you) we left.

Since then I've just stayed in good ol' Canard and pugged into whatever I can. Not to sound pompous but I'm pretty well known on Kirin Tor. When I reply to someone saying "I can heal", 9 times out of 10 I get "Oh man Farore! Sweet!" or similar. I get random whispers from people I don't even remember >.< . I've made both a Resto Druid and Holy/Disc priest since then and still just pug my way into healing anything I can. If I'm on one of them and someone asks if I know the fights I usually respond with "My main is Farore", and no more questions are asked =p .

I will say though that WoW has really sucked away my life, not that I feel it's a bad thing since I enjoy it; I have 384 days played time between my characters. There's just something about it that keeps me hooked. I love being able to work with others towards killing bosses, but I also enjoy the more single player geared aspects, like Achievements and questing.

[lumais]

Hammer time with fairytail in ragnarok without have to be my favorite moment. It was when we had completed a set of items needed to make Mnolnir, a legendary weapon. The process involved collecting the items from woe(guild vs guild) castles, conquering and keeping a castle in a crowded guild vs guild area. rolling seals(quests that needed to be completed multiple times to activate the npc that would allow you to make the item and finally competing with opposing guilds who wanted to try benefit off our hard work and get in first and steal the opportunity to make the god item from us. Long story short, after a ridiculous amount of hours online (20+) we made our mjolnir! One of our greatest triumphs in the game.

[Adol The Red]

Wow. That seems like a lot of work, added to it the chance to miss out on the thing you've put all that work towards. Thought I would add my own memory of working that hard for something, but I don't really have one. There was a game of FFVII i never completely finished where i was making a rediculous materia setup. I know I had a Master Magic materia for everyone, and at lest three or four Master Summons made. Also had mega alls for everyone, millions of gil, and a maxed out game clock. Never actually finished it though.

One memory that still sticks in my mind involves the side scrolling shooter Einhander. I've never gotten very far myself, but I have seen one epic playthrough. When we were younger Alexx would have huge overnight get togethers for his birthday. I was late to that group, but still went to one or two. Slept on a big ole footstool that night. Anyway, our friend Chris brought over Einhander, which is a tough game, and let us all mess around with it. Then came his turn.

He started out, talking about how tough the game was, and how he had never beaten it. You know how it is when you're good at something, except for when you're trying to show someone? Well, this was the opposite of that. He started playing, and managed to go straight through to the end. The signature thing I recall is an attack of the end boss. It flies out way ahead of you and shoots a massive beam back at the screen. You have to be in either of the bottom corners or you're toast. Chris managed to pause the game with the beam right in front of him. It would have made a great screenshot. We were all impressed, but more impressive was his managing to retreat to the safe zone before getting hit by it. The beam had been right on top of him when he paused the game, so it was a pretty great feat to dodge it. As I said, he did go on to beat it. It was awesome run, and that pause screen full of beam is something I will likely never forget.

Another fun time with this group was when Chris (again) was showing off Metal Gear Solid. This was the first time he had played it with other saves on his memory card while going into the Psycho Mantis fight (I'm sure plenty now know where this is going). For days, maybe even a week before this, he had also been playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which had just come out, and couldn't stop talking about it. So we were all caught off guard when Psycho Mantis reads Snake's mind in MGS and comes out with "Sooooo... You like to play Castlevania." We were really freaked out for a few moments until someone mentioned that the same company makes both games, and he was probably just reading the memory card. Still, it was hilarious. (This also works with a Suikoden save. Not sure about any others.)

[TheNesta]

I know the thread kind of died down at this point, but I wanted to come back and talk about the other two memories that I mentioned in my previous post. I'll try to keep it short this time.

Multiplayer Gaming

I was fortunate enough as a kid to have a little sister, and a best friend who I played a lot of multiplayer games with. In fact, it was always a thing where on the weekends, and during breaks we'd rent a game and play it all weekend long. Some examples are some I'm sure many of you have experienced: many of the fighting games that were popular in the 90's, my favorite was Killer Instincts as the time. Golden Eye, Perfect Dark, and our personal favorite, The Time Splitters series. We even had a lot of fun with Mario Party, and eventually Smash Bros. kind of took over.

Aside from that, I didn't really get into big, competitive multiplayer until the early 00's. At that time I finally got a PC of my own and played a lot of the popular multiplayer shooters at the time. Like Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal Tournament 99. Similar to Bear, I got into a clan too. It was for Unreal though, instead of Quake, even though I liked both! I remember practicing a whole bunch for like a week straight, leading up to my tryout for the clan. And I got in. It was pretty awesome.

The real magic happened with Starcraft though. I used to frequent a Pokemon centric message board community named Pojo. While I was certainly into Pokemon at the time, I was mainly drawn to the Video Game section of the board. At the time I also got really into Blizzard's games, and Starcraft was one of my favorites. Anyways, one time I setup a match between two guys on the forum. It was a great match, that I ended up winning, even though I was admittedly very, very terrible at the game at the time, haha. What happened was those two guys ended up wasting all their time trying to kill each other, and I just turtled behind a field of Photon Cannons.

And that was the start of something awesome. We became close friends, and eventually established a community called Team Clouds. We picked up a few other key members, and we had a pretty radical thing going on. And as you might imagine, we played A LOT of Starcraft. Two other games we got super hardcore into were Return to Castle Wolfenstien, and Final Fantasy XI. RtCW is still one of my favorite games of all time, and we played it constantly. FFXI... well, I ended up kind of hating it, but not until I got my Dark Knight to like level 62.

Eventually we grew apart as we all grew up, and went on with our lives. I'm still friends with a few of them on Facebook, but I couldn't tell you the last time we talked. It was a lot of fun while it lasted though.

Later on, Roll and I met up with a different group of friends, and all rolled characters on the Kirin Tor server in World of Warcraft. Again, I was already in love with Blizzard games, and WoW kind of blew my mind. I played a fair bit of the week long Open Beta, and got to about level 40 when the game first launched. But eventually got tired of it, I guess. Then a little while later, a couple friends from the Team Clouds era were starting up a Horde guild on KT, so we jumped over there. It was a strange time, and eventually things went pretty sour with that group of people, but it was amazing while it lasted.

Near the end of Vanilla, Roll and I joined a freeform alliance of guilds on the server who did casual raiding late at night. The group was unofficially known as Late Night Raiders. We were pretty into it for a while there and it was a lot of fun. Even though raiding was so crazy back in the day. Meanwhile, I was doing a lot of Battlegrounds with our group of friends, and causing all kinds of mischief there. Eventually Burning Crusade came out, and a bunch of people from LNR formed an actual guild called Late Night Elites. At this point things were going kind of south with our personal guild of friends, so Roll and I jumped ship over there. LNE became like... the top raid guild on the entire server, and I dunno, still might be today? You'd have to ask Farore about that. But the landscape of raiding is so different now, that I think it hardly matters. But I digress...

That time was really cool too, and I even became the Shaman Class Leader in the guild, for all of like a month before I got fatigued of WoW. Again, meanwhile I was doing some PVP on the side. Roll, and I, joined a Rogue friend of ours and we started an Arena team. And it was awesome! We really wreaked some havoc there. But then that kind of fell apart too. Eventually, Roll and I left LNE, and formed our own guild, Cannard, and that's where we're at today. Things became a lot more casual for me. I've done a little bit of raiding, a little bit of PVP. And have way too many characters at this point. But, Roll and Farore could tell you some stories I'm sure.

Ragnarok Online

Ragnarok Online is like... I dunno. Major. I don't even know where to begin honestly. Well, for starters... I don't even know how I got turned onto it back in the day, but I was in the English Alpha for the game. I brought along a few of the Clouds guys also, and we had some fun there. Man, I'm still so nostalgic for the Alpha, it was great! I played a Swordie, but it hardly matters. Pretty much all of the classes were the same at the time. And Mage wasn't even in the game yet. Well, it was, but only GMs could be Mages. I remember getting to a pretty high level, and having all the "rare" items at the time. Like Two Handed Swords, and what not. I remember everyone hung out in Morroc, specifically the Inn there. I remember glitching the game to sit behind portals. I remember this chick named Rena used to trade rare items for Bananas. And of course, I remember the gigantic, screen-filling Baphomet. Good times all around.

When the Alpha closed down, I got out of it for a while. I remember coming back the day before Beta 1 closed, and making it out to some random Prontera field and embracing some stranger as we watched the server die. And then finally, came back full force for Beta 2 leading into retail iRO.

A lot of stuff happened during my time with iRO. We made a Team Clouds guild, and hung out in this corner of Prontera. We eventually made another guild called Time and Space based off the OneUps album of the same name. My main characters were a Knight named Tyrande, and an Assassin named Shandris. I deleted Shandris at one point, because her stats were screwed up. Got them both to around the high 70s before all was said and done. I also had some other characters, like a Blacksmith named Kissu, and a Rogue named Lapis Lazuli. We didn't really get into PVP, because... I don't even think WoE was around at the time. Hard to say. I mean, I'm sure it was near the end there, but what was our guild of 5 level 60-70s going to do, honestly? Eventually it just died down for us, and I got tired of how grindy iRO was.

So, there was a while there where I wasn't really playing the game, but was still a big fan of it. I actually met Roll, and my other best friend through...fanart... and I've been through a lot with those two people, so it's more important than I can really put into words. And, yes, I eventually returned to iRO for a while with Roll, and we did some stuff there. But, primarily, and to this day, I just play private servers.

Now, I don't know how you guys feel about them, I get the impression that you don't like them, and that's fine. But, as I mentioned, iRO is, or at least was, just way too much of a grind. And as time goes on, and other MMOs have been introduced, RO just becomes more and more archaic. Gravity has tried adapting, by adding in more modern functions, but I dunno, that's not how I want to play RO. I just want to kill stuff, and enjoy the game's beautiful sprite art. So, I bounced around to many private servers. I've done a lot of PVP on them, and I've pretty much done anything you can do in the game. I was a GM on a server at some point too. It's a lot of fun, and it's the sole reason I've been able to extend the longevity of the game for me.

I'm currently on the same private server I've been on for the past three years. It's a really stable, really awesome server. And it has a lot of the newest stuff on it, and they don't go crazy with custom stuff. About the only things that's missing is mounts, and that's pretty sad. Cause I really want an Alpaca.

Finale

Well, there's all my memories I can think of worth noting. Hope everyone enjoyed them, or at least don't think too badly of me for my private server antics. Phew.

[Tehwilburforce]

Possibly the best game memory I have is of playing Sly Cooper for the first time. I had been a Nintendo kid for a few years and was disappointed when I got a PS2 for Christmas one year. I only had a couple of games for it that I had gotten really bored with (SSX Tricky was all I really played on it before I found better stuff). However, when I took control of Sly for the first time, I saw that there was much more to gaming than Mario or Donkey Kong. The platforming was challenging and, while the one hit KO's from guards were kind of frustrating, they encouraged you to think before making a move in the environment. The premise of the game, which I think is beyond specifically commenting on, also intrigued me because it seemed a healthy balance of grounded reality and complete craziness.

[lumais]