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I tried to do a search on the forums to see if this had been asked before, but I cannot find anything, so here it goes.

Inspired by similar stories around the internet, I have a simple question to ask you all: What are some of your favorite moments or memories surrounding the video games you play? Sometimes it has more to do with what we were going through at the time, the type of person we are, or the people we were playing with in times past. Talk about whatever you want, I guarantee you'll get a lot of feels remembering them!

I'll share mine:

In 1992, I was a typical 7-year-old doing 7-year-old things, and have a brother 2 years older than me. In winter, my brother loved to go skiing and was getting pretty good at it. I on the other hand only tried snowboarding and after 4 hours of falling down, I hated it and gave up quickly.

On one fateful night in January, my mom and I went to go pick him up after ski practice. When we got there, he was still skiing, and wanted us to watch him go down the hill. I watched him go down, but my mom was talking to someone else's mom in the area and wasn't paying enough attention, and my brother noticed. My brother got angry and demanded to go one more time and to make sure she watched. As he was going down that last time, he hit a ramp that he didn't know was there, which launched him in the air. He couldn't control his motions, and had a very bad landing. The skis are supposed to unhook and release you if you don't land properly, but unfortunately these skis did not dislodge...and snapped his legs like they were twigs.

My brother broke both of his legs in the incident, and he was screaming in agonizing pain while being taken first to the ski lodge, and then to the emergency room. After some long hospital nights, he was wheelchair bound for 6 weeks, give or take. He had to stay home for his first few weeks of recovery and get his homework sent to him, which led to him getting very bored very quickly.

My brother would always dabble in video games on the NES and SNES from time to time, but nowhere near the level and depth that I did. He would play some games, beat a few levels, but not be too concerned with mastering them or beating them if they were incredibly difficult. However, when he was in that wheelchair for 6 weeks, we discovered the incredible game that was Street Fighter II. Maybe it's selfish of me to think of it this way, but those 6 weeks while he was bound to his wheelchair were the greatest video game moments in my life. My brother, my dad (who also plays video games) and I would take turns fighting each other, with the loser having to give up his paddle to the one sitting out at the time. We must've played 5+ hours every day. I can't even recall which version we played, I think it was Turbo. I played all of the characters and enjoyed the silliness of Dhalsim and the wrestling moves of Zangief. My brother played Blanka almost every time, and my dad was a madman with E. Honda and Chun Li and their stupid kick/slap moves. This was the major time in my life my dad, my brother and I all came together to just sit down and play video games for hours on end, and time seemed to stop for me when we did. We even took turns watching each other beat the game on single player once in a while.

Of course, the 6 weeks of recovery ended, and my brother resumed his normal stance of playing games only once in a while (until we got our N64, a story for another time). I still play games with my father all the time and we have great memories, but having a game we could all talk about endlessly for those 6 weeks is something I'll always fondly remember and count among my favorite memories.

This post has been edited by TheEvilEye on 6th April 2016 14:36

For me, I have mainly general memories of a lot of my gaming time. I don't know that any of them are all that interesting on their own, so I'll touch on just a few briefly:

One of my earliest memories in general is tied to gaming; I must have been barely three when I was at my first daytime babysitter outside the house, as I spent most of my time with my grandparents around then and I had not quite started preschool. That was my first time playing videogames - the sitter had teenage kids of her own, and they had an Intellivision. I remember getting to play Mouse Trap and Pac Man - I'm sure not at all well, but well enough that the older kids found it hilarious that I could do it.

A lot of my other gaming memories also involve my brother, though nowhere near as traumatically as EvilEye's. He's my half-brother, didn't live with us when I was very young, and is quite a bit older than I, so I always looked at him as a grownup even though he was barely in college by the time my memories of him really kicked in. He liked to hang out with me, especially when I was young and cute enough to help him attract girls, but as I got older I was able to play the video games with him that he would sometimes play in his fraternity while he was away at school. We played a lot of games like River Raid and Combat on my 2600, and moved into the NES with Super Mario Bros. and a lot of co-op games like Rescue Rangers and especially River City Ransom (a game for which I still hold the absolute highest regard). He and I spent a lot of good times together, and I distinctly remember being incredibly proud when he'd choose gaming with me over going out with his friends.

In terms of Final Fantasy, I remember poring over the FF1 strategy guide even before I got the game; I remember picking up FF2 at the store and being in awe of the bold red packaging, and I remember having to wait a couple long days before I could pick up my Final Fantasy III preorder, the first game I ever reserved in advance. I remember very distinctly sitting in my bed for six hours one morning of my Christmas break in 1994 because I was determined to finish Final Fantasy III that day. I remember getting off the phone with my girlfriend (now wife) one night at about 10pm during my winter break in 1998, and staying up until 3 to finish Final Fantasy VII because I'd just gotten my PlayStation for Christmas a few weeks prior.

I don't know what I'm going to permanently remember of my gaming after I became a real adult. I didn't play many games for quite a while. I will always remember the broad strokes of hundreds of hours of Unreal Tournament with my CoN friends, some of them sober and some of them very much not. Hundreds of hours of Grand Theft Auto and Left 4 Dead shenanigans, too. I'm sure I'll remember being awestruck by Portal 2 and playing it the entire day it released despite my then-pregnant wife falling down stairs and ending up on crutches early that morning. And I'm sure I'll remember how much my daughter has enjoyed watching Final Fantasy XIII as I played the series.

I can only hope I have more coming!

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

No BS, I actually jumped back the first time I saw this. Mode 7 was the weirdest thing man...to a 10(?) year old.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 6th April 2016 23:13

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

I first remember playing video games when an Oddyssey showed up at our house...I must've been between 4 and 5?

I beat my dad at Pong that day. He was nonplussed...he has refused to play games with me since that day.

I first played Super Mario Brothers on a rented Nintendo entertainment system at the age of 5 or 6. I was enthralled. My sisters and I sat there trying to get farther and farther, but the lockout chip kept keeping the game from booting, and it got worse around bedtime, so my mom was like "the Nintendo is telling you to go to bed, it's Nanny Nintendo." The wry humor of my mother is far better appreciated now that I'm an adult. Nanny Nintendo indeed; she was able to proceed with housework unaccosted by three rambunctious toddlers for a change.

I first played Final Fantasy at a friends' house; we played two games, first FF4 (or "2") and then FF1 on the NES, which I remember having been made vaguely familiar with by the teenager across the street playing it a lot.

The teenager across the street had a Nintendo before I did. He was very mean to me, but never outwardly abusive towards me in any way. He grew increasingly irritated with me as time went on, and I did not understand until many years later how difficult the games he was playing are, how frustrating. I now know why the constant barrage of questions and observations were annoying to him; he wanted to win.

I didn't end up getting my first NES till my 9th birthday. I got SMB/Duck Hunt with it; what you'd call "the action set." That Christmas I got Double Dragon and Ninja Gaiden 2.

My mother began to be concerned about the content of games I was playing beginning with Ninja Gaiden 2. Ashtar had a name that was similar to some un-Christianly stuff she was into as a college student, I guess, and his ramblings about the "gate of darkness" and generally creepy evil satanic vibe really made her worried.

I got Final Fantasy 1 for Christmas when I was 11 or 12. I had wanted a Snes and FF4 ("2"), but a used NES cartridge was all my mom could afford to get me that year. I loved it. Me and my sister fought over the one save file though. :/ My sisters got meaner the older they got.

I got a Super Nintendo for my 13th birthday. My brothers had convinced me I was getting 3 NES games...sly Devils indeed. I was so utterly shocked that I swore in front of my whole family.

I got FF4 for Christmas that year, and FF6 ("3") I did not get until '95, a full year after it came out, but I got the strategy guide this time, and that was when I found out that I had abandoned shadow at the floating continent, and that he wasn't coming back.

I started a new game immediately.

This post has been edited by Spooniest on 7th April 2016 03:31

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X is blue.