Top 10 Memorable Gaming Moments

#10 - Discovering that Exodus was a computer.

#9 - Kicking the alien in the crotch, rolling and grabbing the gun and shooting him in Out of this World.  (Closely followed by the sequence where you're running down the corridor, doors slamming behind you, which are then blown away by blaster fire.)

#8 - Realizing the shotgun damage was inversely proportional to distance in Doom, after which I started charging enemies like a madman to get the point blank shots.

#7 - The reveal in Bioshock.

#6 - Prince of Persia 2 (the original 2D one) - running and jumping and catching the boat as it pulled away on the first try.  Apparently POP1 had the shift-key-grab burned into my muscle memory.

#5 - My base being invaded in X-Com.

#4 - The opening sequence from Half-Life.

#3 - Playing Diplomacy at a convention;  they all had me figured for the weak player (which I was) but I surprised a bunch of them by cutting a support army in a key play and ended up coming in 3rd.  "Who told him that move?" one of them asked.  Came up with it myself, thank you.

#2 - A one-on-one Kohan game against a guy who usually won but always played skeleton hordes.  The answer is priests.

#1 - Beating my dad for the first time in chess.  "Today you are a man," he said.

What about you guys?

Comments

[Jay]

-Playing Wizard of Wor with my dad.

-Winning a match in my first Street Fighter II tournament.

-Getting my first star ever in Super Mario Bros.

[kert]

System Shock 2, SHODAN pulling the mask
FreeSpace 2, the ending, almost made me cry
Dizzy 6 i think, on ZX Spectrum, machine reset after almost beating the storyline in roughly 20 hours ( there were no saves )
Master of Orion 2, first Guardian encounter.
F19 had couple memorable moments as well, when i finally figured out how to open bay doors and use other weapons apart from the cannon.

[Angus McQuarrie]

- Pulling out the Master Sword in Link to the Past

- Finally winning Mario Bros. 3

- Discovering Arcadia in The Longest Journey

- Being rescued by the (no longer) infant metroid at the end of Super Metroid

- Listening to the G-Men Talk in Psychonauts

- Building a ball that encompasses entire weather systems in Katamari Damacy

- Shoalsbridge

- Beating Psycho Mantis in MGS

- Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows

- The Oceanside Manor in Masquerade: Bloodlines

- Reaching the sanctuaries in Earthbound

- Assembling all the silver boxes in The Pandora Directive

- The Antiqua Market in Secret of Evermore

[greggman]

I'll have to think about mine but...

> #4 - The opening sequence from Half-Life.

I'd put that as one of my most memorable BAD gaming moments. On the one hand it was very cool technically, on the other hand it was completely ridiculous. Who the hell would build tram that had the most convoluted path ever, took people over radioactive areas, block paths of traffic and construction, etc. etc. etc.

Sorry to pick on it but it's one of the things I that pushes a button in me. That is, the amount of story/setting baloney we except just because "it's a game".

Examples:

The tram in the opening sequence of Half Life

The casket in the end of HL2

The "strike a pose" moment in the opening of MGS2

The flirting in MGS1 when (a) there's a guard 3 feet away and (b) there's no time to spare to save the world.

The weapons guy in RE4

etc. etc. etc.

[Nathan McKenzie]

greggman:

I have to assume you're tons and tons of fun to watch big blockbuster movies with too.

[Koen]

- The arrival of the spaceship in Civilization II
- The final battle with Ganondorf in Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- The opening sequence of Command & Conquer: Red Alert
- The easter eggs in Doom and Doom II (the Commander Keen maze and John Romero's face behind the Icon Of Sin).

[CDriK]

- winning my first game of go 19x9 online
- owning my coworkers on tactical ops fps
- going all aaahhh in doom III levels in the dark

[nagard]

- Seeing a map of Jet Set Willy levels in a computer magazine many years after playing the game, and realizing that it has Willy's shape, every room representing one of the sprite's pixels
- "Defeating" the mirror image in first Prince of Persia finally, after (too) many replays of the whole game.
- Seeing the main character die in intro of Out of This World and after restart, realizing it is not an intro at all :)
- Realizing what a meadow full of flowers in Grim Fandango really means :)
- bunnies + minefield + Vagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" in Full Throttle. Hillarious.
- Discovering there's map with other locations in Monkey Island (after trying to solve the game by just walking around the town streets for days :)
- Discovering that in Le Chuck's room only, the compass CAN be used in combination with other object (after a month of desperately trying everything else - I discarded the idea prematurely, based on all previous experiences - exactly what Lucasfilm guys expected me to do. briliant.)
- Revealing of the master plan in Day of the Tentacle
- Searching the crypt with flashlight in Gabriel Knight I, and finding dead Mosey.
- This one no one will ever believe me: having my ZX Spectrum accidentaly over-heated in the summer while playing Zorro: the processor somehow got into (non-existant) "turbo" mode - the game's speed suddenly doubled, and after about 10 seconds of playing incredibly fast and smooth action, never seen before, the machine crashed. I felt like I was given a glimpse into the far future, where computers could perform at enormous speeds of 2Mhz!!! :)))

[Jamie Fristrom]

I forgot the bunny minefield! I can't believe I forgot it! I guess (by definition) that means it's not in my top 10 memorable moments, but wow. That's probably the biggest laugh I've ever gotten from a game.

[nagard]

Apologies for disinformation: I've just searched for a Jet Set Willy map on the web, and realized it doesn't look like Willy at all, neither for JSW I or II.

It seems that my memory failed me miserably, because I clearly remember seeing it - it could be a map for some of many unofficial "mods" of the game that existed at the time, or it was some other game altogether, that I've mistaken for Willy in the course of the years.

I'm sure I didn't make it up, because when I saw it, I thought: "how come that I never come up with something as clever as this?" :)