For 90s kids, there’s no need for explanation. For others, well, pokemon was a phenomenon. It was everywhere, on TV, in magazines, toys, stickers. You could trade pokemon at the school excursion on the bus.
You felt alive in this world, pokemon gen 1-2 were the pinnacle of pokemon for me. And in gen2, finishing the game, and lo and behold, there’s a whole other region (kanto) waiting for you to explore it. The night cycle in the game blew my mind in ways that I have been chasing ever since.
I know it will never be reached again, but the memory will remain as powerful as it was that evening of the early 00s. What is your greatest gaming high, that you know will never be topped again, and that you have been chasing ever since?
Halo 1 LAN parties
Also, Halo 3 custom games with full lobbies and super creative customs. Honestly, just Halo 3 in general
Same except Marathon 2
Unreal Tournament LAN parties.
Splinter cell: Pandora Tomorrow.
Spies v Mercenaries, screens were set back to back so you couldn’t peek at the other team. We were rotating around for a while before people settled into their preferred play style and shit got intense.
I miss that game.
I know what you mean about Gold and Silver. Everything you mentioned, plus events that happened on specific days of the week, “mystery gift” functionality via IR, and more stuff I’m forgetting. There were also radio stations you could “listen” to (read text) that made the world feel alive.
Even in gen 1, trading/battling revived link-cable culture, which I’d only ever seen people use for Tetris, years before.
Psycho Mantis
The result of waking the Wind Fish in Link’s Awakening broke something in me at such a young age that I don’t think I’ve since experienced as profoundly.
The awe and grandeur of Occarina Of Time… at the time.
Disco Elysium is the best literature I’ve ever played.
I still feel like used to live in Skyrim. It was a place where I wanted to be and explore.
TF2/Halo CE multilayer mix of copetitive adrenaline and funny shenanigans
Those are the game experiences which stuck with me.
I have a few from childhood, but the gaming high I am chasing now is whatever Outer wilds was. A beautiful story told through exploration and discovery. I just want to go back and experience for the first time again.
d00d. I keep trying to play it. The world resets and I’m like wtf is going on? Something is not clicking for me. Boy do I suck at piloting too.
You’re out there collecting info maaaan. Information is the thing that unlocks new areas.
Did you beat the echoes of wisdom DLC? It’s fucking incredible and easily on par with the base game if not better
FF IX. I’ll never get that again.
The absolute peak of gaming for me was the first time I got stoned out of my mind and played Minecraft. Probably like… circa 2012. I’ve never been able to get back to that place ever since lmao the colors were so vibrant, each pixel was absolutely perfectly placed. The light grey ui elements in your inventory… everything just tied together so perfect. It was like seeing a new color for the first time, but then every time after that is just, eh…
Probably Halo Reach Forge mode, couch co-op with a friend of mine. We’d spend countless hours building bases, doing races, all sorts of stuff in Forge. We played other stuff in Reach too but Forge was always my favourite.
We haven’t spoken in years. We used to be super close, I hope he’s doing alright.
Playing Wing Commander very late at night, hit a large glass water bottle off the table with my elbow, and catch it with the same arm/hand before it reaches the floor to shatter and wake up the whole family.
Peak reaction times induced by VideoGame adrenaline never reached again.
Man, I was playing Borderlands (1) on PC, playing as Roland with the support gunner class mod. I had a couple of Tediore legendaries, I believe it was the revolver and the combat rifle, and I just reached this zen state near the end of the game, shooting at these seemingly endless waves of enemies just coming from everywhere. thanks to the guns and class mod I never had to worry about picking up ammo, it was just constantly spitting lead in every direction, and it just clicked, it was golden and beautiful.
Borderlands 2 was fun, but Borderlands 1 is the game I replay.
The only way that Borderlands 2 was a real improvement over the first one was the auto money pick-up. I know many or most will disagree with me, but I don’t care. I have beaten both games more than once and I always go back to the first one. I find it much funnier than the second, and the second went overboard with the variety of weapons to the extent that everything was basically garbage. I did enjoy using keys to get mystery loot, though.
Also, Bloodwing for life.
Crawmax. That was really fun with a group.
Learning I only beat half of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and then playing the rest. And then playing it again and again, and finding new crazy weapons I’d never seen before. Learning that some weapons (like Sword of Dawn) do something other than just slash. Later reading GameFaqs .txt guides to learn about even more stuff I had no idea about, so end up playing it even more.
And playing Final Fantasy 7 right before all of that. When the demo disc of Final Fantasy 7 came out (inside a Playstation Underground magazine), I lost me shit. I had loved, loved, loved FF4 and 6 (2 and 3 in the US), and 7 was just insane. The graphics, the music, everything. Absolutely revolutionary. That game was a reason to buy a PS1. I remember maxing out the playtime at 99 hours in my first playthrough.
Rhythm Doctor boss stages. Each one is an amazing showcase of visuals on a rhythm game with the simplest control scheme ever. And the game’s final stage, the full release is in December 10.
With each stage exceeding my expectations by a long shot, I can’t wait to see what they’ll do this time.
The immersive world of Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV). Morrowind had been great, but the high-fantasy realism of Oblivion blew Morrowind away. Skyrim wasn’t as immersive for me, mostly because the guilds and other side-stories weren’t as deeply developed. Oblivion remains THE high water mark for open world RPGs.
Skyrim has the best bars in any video game that I know of. I used to dump all my crap on the floor of the Whiterun tavern, so the npcs would kick it around as they moved. Hundreds of baskets and pans and garbage items. I’d leave the game running as I slept, listening to the trash being kicked, local gossip, awful minstrel, and pleasant sounds of people drinking.
Oblivion was the only game that came close to how I felt the first time I stepped out of the dungeon and opened the world map of Daggerfall. I couldn’t stop making new characters that I wanted to explore the world with.
But Oblivion really was something special too. Felt like an alive fantasy world.
Two different things:
I was infatuated with Halflife and unable to function in life for a certain amount of time. I would say it did a number on my first run at college, but there was a lot going on there.
As a teen, I was the annoying kid that didn’t have their own games at home, or at least any of the good ones. I would go over my friend’s house and they would be stuck on a boss level only for me to win when the controller is passed over to me.
What do you think of Black Mesa? I haven’t finished the whole game. I did play the Xen stuff when they first released it.
