What was your first emotional moment in gaming?

G

gvx64

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2022
Messages
236
For me, it was this:



I started gaming when my parents bought me an N64 for Christmas 1996 along with Mario 64. After about three months of unhealthy amounts of gaming (and my parents banning me from playing on numerous occaisons) I finally reached these end credits. I don't know why but I felt sad the first time I watched it and I still choke up a little even when I watch it today. There's just so many incredible memories from this game as well as the memories from my life when I played it that come back to me when I watch this. Watching these credits along with that amazing ending theme always makes me feel like I am being forced to say farewell to these memories.

Anyways, I would love to hear your stories.
 
pendragon1 said:
which emotion are we talkin aboot? there were several nes games that brought out rage... but nothing like bison on hard in snes sf2 turbo.
Click to expand...
OK good point. I was thinking something deeper than rage. Maybe a feeling of awe, a shared emotional connection with a character or just some profound feeling that surprised you and that you never expected to experience from a game. Maybe something that shakes you unexpectedly and changes the way that you view gaming or life. It doesn't necessarily have to be a positive emotion, either. Maybe something that was deeply disturbing...
 
Finding out how many people were sleeping with my mom. She didn't love me enough because she was out loving everyone else.

I can't think of anything that's left an impact that I recall. Interesting topic though and I hope to read some great replies.
 
Metal Gear Solid is the first game that I recall playing and feeling a sense of awe. It was challenging and for me had a depth of story that I hadn't experienced or connected with in any game before. Prior to MGS games for me were just something to do while bored, hack n slash, race in cars, run and gun, etc. MGS really made an impression that I still feel today thinking back to playing it. It showed me how a game could be more and have an imersive storyline like movie. After MGS it was probably Elderscrolls III Morrowind that really sucked me in, but MGS was my first game to really leave a deeper impression.
Thanks for asking the question, this is fun thinking back from this perspective.
 







Playing VS: Cousins or the Arcade
or my friend across the street who had a Atari 2600 before I had one.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: gvx64
like this
First? Pong. Awe struck that a mere twenty five cents into a machine at local pizza parlor gave us control what was happening on the screen.

pizza.pong.gif


(get off my lawn!)
 
First one of significance was definitely loading up and experiencing Tomb Raider Greatest Hits on the PS1 for the first time when I was around 8 years old. The beautiful greatest hits menu and game menu with Nathan McCree's wonderful music playing in the background. Pulling a switch for the first time in the game's first cave level. I was so deeply touched and awestruck.



 
When I was introduced to Counter-Strike in 2000.

Dads friend brought it over and installed on our computer. I came home from a little league game and he was doing it up.

The sound, the base, the action, the awe... I was hooked immediately.

Sure, I loved playstation at the time, but a multiplayer shooter? Wtf is that?

My life changed on Labor Day, 2000...
 
When I helped Atrus put both his sons in prison for life.
 
there have been some great story driven games like Bioshock, Last of Us etc but none of them have made me cry or get all emotional...seeing maxed out ray-tracing on my PC got my insides feeling good
 
Movies and shows make we tear up all the time because I'm a softy. I don't think a game ever has.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Axman
like this
Finding out that my dad actually bought us the Vectrex that I wanted so badly. I used to play Mine Storm on the display unit at the NEX in Naples, Italy every time we went there.
 
Zepher said:
Finding out that my dad actually bought us the Vectrex that I wanted so badly. I used to play Mine Storm on the display unit at the NEX in Naples, Italy every time we went there.
Click to expand...
How much hentai snatch was in Mine Storm?
 
OFaceSIG said:
Movies and shows make we tear up all the time because I'm a softy. I don't think a game ever has.
Click to expand...

When I was in high school, my friend Viet's house got robbed. They lived in a shit neighborhood, I mean, we lived in the same neighborhood, so we both did, and his dad just bought him and his brothers a Playstation. He was deep into Final Fantasy VII's first act. His dad made the mistake of putting the PSX box in the trash in the alley. Then they got robbed.

His dad said fuck it, and bought a new TV, sound system, and Playstation. Viet gamed through the weekend to get back to where he was.

His dad also put all the brand-new boxes in the alley, and called a bunch of Vietnam vets over to play security in case they got robbed again. They got robbed again. But this time, a bunch of actual soldiers popped out from underneath the Sponge-Bob blankets and Furbies with AKs and machetes shouting Vietnamese war-cries at their Mexican looters that they all basically shit themselves and fled for their lives.

Viet, however, had been power-leveling Aeris to 100, and passed out on the couch. So he woke up to a war zone, and in his fractured coma, loaded up the last save. Her last save, as it was.

He was in tears when I got to the bus stop.

High schoolers should be allotted an amount of rum, like in the good old days. I'd have given him mine. Dude deserved a double ration that day, for sure.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure what the first would be, I've played many games but have a hard time picking out the best. So I'll just list ones that made me emotional even if the stories themselves weren't that great. In order that I played them:

Ace Combat 4
Mass Effect 3 (this one edges out 1 and 2 even if the ending was lame)
Dues Ex Human Revolution

Honorable mentions of more recent games:

Metro Exodus
Cyberpunk 2077
Final Fantasy 7 Remake

A lot of good games I am missing, but these days I have a hard time remembering what games I've played. I should probably take note of what I play going forward.
 
t1k said:
First one of significance was definitely loading up and experiencing Tomb Raider Greatest Hits on the PS1 for the first time when I was around 8 years old. The beautiful greatest hits menu and game menu with Nathan McCree's wonderful music playing in the background. Pulling a switch for the first time in the game's first cave level. I was so deeply touched and awestruck.



Click to expand...

Thanks for the videos. I never actually played Tomb Raider but I absolutely get being in awe of it especially if this was your first game coming into the 32-bit era. I mean, this compared to a side-scroller on the SNES must of been like a whole different universe of gaming. When I got my N64 in 1996, most of my friends at the time were absolutely blown away by Mario 64 and the graphics. I never got to experience that feeling since I basically started my life as a gamer with Mario 64 but I could tell just how special the experience was for those coming from a Genesis/SNES to be able to play in a fully immersive 3D world for the first time.
horrorshow said:
Got this game for Christmas when I was.... 7....

Talk about RAGE.... This game was so cruel/bad it still ranks as my worst game of all time:

Click to expand...

This video was frickin hilarious. I have played NES games that have had un-intuitive menu systems, but that Select + B thing in this game is a whole different level of bad. Besides that, the game looks basically unbeatable due to horrible design. It makes you wonder if this game had any beta testing, whatsoever. I wish developers would understand the consequences of making garbage like this. The amount of frustration and misery that this type of game causes young gamers can be unbelievable, especially for people with my type of personality who are extremely poor at knowing when to give up on things.
Axman said:
When I was in high school, my friend Viet's house got robbed. They lived in a shit neighborhood, I mean, we lived in the same neighborhood, so we both did, and his dad just bought him and his brothers a Playstation. He was deep into Final Fantasy VII's first act. His dad made the mistake of putting the PSX box in the trash in the alley. Then they got robbed.

His dad said fuck it, and bought a new TV, sound system, and Playstation. Viet gamed through the weekend to get back to where he was.

His dad also put all the brand-new boxes in the alley, and called a bunch of Vietnam vets over to play security in case they got robbed again. They got robbed again. But this time, a bunch of actual soldiers popped out from underneath the Sponge-Bob blankets and Furbies with AKs and machetes shouting Vietnamese war-cries at their Mexican looters that they all basically shit themselves and fled for their lives.

Viet, however, had been power-leveling Aeris to 100, and passed out on the couch. So he woke up to a war zone, and in his fractured coma, loaded up the last save. Her last save, as it was.

He was in tears when I got to the bus stop.

High schoolers should be allotted an amount of rum, like in the good old days. I'd have given him mine. Dude deserved a double ration that day, for sure.
Click to expand...
Well I can't relate to the AK part of your story, but I can totally relate to that miserable part with your friend's lvl 100 Aeris dying.

(Spoiler Ahead) Actually something very similar happened to me when I was playing Final Fantasy IV: the After Years on my Wii U. In the last chapter, Golbez is basically your best party member by a wide margin and so I focused on levelling him up. The final chapter is this nightmarish basement dungeon that was like 50 floors deep and it gets insanely hard. Once you're like 10 levels from the bottom the stupid storyline has Golbez die and after that point he is just gone from your party forever. My party simply couldn't survive without him and I ended up deleting my save file in a mad rage. The worst part is that I learned shortly after he died that if you keep two other particular characters in your party during the battle, they will ressurrect Golbez and he will stay in your party. The game doesn't give you any indication about that whatsoever, you would have to read a walkthrough beforehand to know. The problem is that I had already saved the game by the time I learned this and there was nothing that could be done. I ended up playing the game again a year later and beat it but my first playthrough was a horribly frustrating experience that I never care to repeat.
 
I felt awe when I saw FMV on a computer for the first time. It had nothing to do with the game or story, just the fact that a computer /486/ can do this. But I was awed by advances in gaming many times during the 90s.

My first experience of becoming immersed in a story was with System Shock 2. The most memorable moment from that game is when Polito says something that I thought was weird, but it all made complete sense later, it is one of the best reveals in gaming history.

I can't recall when and what game was the first that made me emotional, but there are several examples of it from later. Like the homeless scene in Beyond Two Souls. Escaping the cannibals in TLOU. The end credits of Infinite Warfare.
 
M y first emotional addiction in gaming was The Legend of Zelda for the NES - every time I finished a level, it was always emotional beating the boss.

it took me over a month to finish level9, but it was still engrossing enough for me to finish the second quest (with help from a game guide because seriously, who puts a level inside a mountainside, hidden by water?)

Zelda was the first game to include a second quest inside a single 112k disk, and it was good value for my money - also, excellent difficulty curve so you were not constantly throwing the controller at the wall until the second half of it!

I'd say my next big emotional response was playing half-life for PC -I'\ve been addicted to solid story + puzzle FPS ever since, and think portal was the peak.
 
Clan wars playing Unreal Tournament game of the year 20 years ago. Nothing will compare to that feeling.
 
RomeoGolf87 said:
Metal Gear Solid is the first game that I recall playing and feeling a sense of awe. It was challenging and for me had a depth of story that I hadn't experienced or connected with in any game before. Prior to MGS games for me were just something to do while bored, hack n slash, race in cars, run and gun, etc. MGS really made an impression that I still feel today thinking back to playing it. It showed me how a game could be more and have an imersive storyline like movie. After MGS it was probably Elderscrolls III Morrowind that really sucked me in, but MGS was my first game to really leave a deeper impression.
Thanks for asking the question, this is fun thinking back from this perspective.
Click to expand...
Yeah, MGS was prolly my first game I got emotionally invested in. I was like 12 in 7th grade at the time I played it. The voice acting was top tier at the time and the soundtrack was perfect for it as well. Looking back on it as an adult, it still holds up for the most part, but some of the parts are much more corny now like Otocon asking Snake if love can bloom on the battlefield, lol. I ate that stuff up as a kid though.

gvx64 said:
For me, it was this:



I started gaming when my parents bought me an N64 for Christmas 1996 along with Mario 64. After about three months of unhealthy amounts of gaming (and my parents banning me from playing on numerous occaisons) I finally reached these end credits. I don't know why but I felt sad the first time I watched it and I still choke up a little even when I watch it today. There's just so many incredible memories from this game as well as the memories from my life when I played it that come back to me when I watch this. Watching these credits along with that amazing ending theme always makes me feel like I am being forced to say farewell to these memories.

Anyways, I would love to hear your stories.
Click to expand...

Mario 64 is probably the most impactful game for me, and I can definitely relate to that feeling when I first beat the game as well. This was the first game where I remember getting to that final scene and the credits were rolling, and I thought to myself "I wish I could purge this experience from my brain so that I feel it again for the first time." The N64 gave me a few games like that as well, so it will probably be the most influential and nostalgic console for me.

The Tomb Raider games also get an honorable mention from me as well. I played through TR1 on PS while staying over a friends house a few times, then got TR2 on our first PC and played through most of it there but never beat it. It wasn't until a few years ago when I played them again on Android with a controller when I beat the first two finally. The Android ports seemed to be pretty good looking ports too.
 
The one scene which made me cry was Sarah's death in The Last of Us. Fuck that was difficult to watch.
 
As a kid, Final Fantasy 8 was a good one. The characters, the story, and the RPG elements were immersive. As an adult, Life is Strange got me pretty good. It can be cringe at times but the themes of that game are pretty deep.
 
As wacky as borderlands can get, the ending of BL3 kind of hit hard.

If you count jump scares, resident evil comes to mind.
 
Technical Awe type did occur quite often:
- First time hearing some voice out of a pc speaker
- First game that used photo asset (doom background, Mortal Kombat character), I mean it was photo realism on Dos game.
- The first 16 bits sound out of a sound blaster 16, it was the Gong on Mortal Kombat launch
- FF7 footage on a vhs recording of a friend that had rented the PS1 and FF7 during the weekend
- First 800x600 Voodoo 2 graphic going at like 25-30 fps, instead of 480-360 res at 14 and glide lighting
....long break....
- Playing Elite Dangerous 2 on a Oculus dev kit

Emotional that are not rage or yes I achieved to get through Double Dragon 2 or kill Ganon, some come to mind:

Ending of the Gabriel Knight Trilogy, quite the reveal
Ending of Mafia
The Wolf Among Us
 
In terms of me, personally, I'd say it was probably getting the NES for Christmas back when those things were nearly impossible (1987) to get. My folks did a good job of acting like they couldn't find one and I'd given up. When I opened that gift, I was on cloud nine for months if not years.
For game evoking emotion, I dunno if any games from that era went that far. Final Fantasy 2 (aka. IV) was probably the first game I can recall getting actual feels from. There may have been some older title(s), but that one definitely did.
 
Music from Final Fantasy 7 and especially Final Fantasy 8.

And double especially, music from Xenogears.

Scenes or moments which gave me emotional responses: Post credits sequence of ICO. and various scenes and aspects of Shadow of The Colossus.
 
HL2 Episode 2. The ending.

Going from the high of having defeated the 'boss encounter' to the feeling of despair at the end.

Not the first one but very memorable.
 
Seeing Doom for the first time, in the computer lab at school. I was like "finally things are starting to look realistic"
 
Forgot to mention in my original post, any time I come across a Galaga cabinet - I immediately acquire some change and spend at least 15-20 mins on it.

.... Just hearing the title track within earshot, makes me:
BoringTidyCub-size_restricted.gif
 
I'm 52 born in 71 and have gamed since the 2600 days but my first "emotional" moment came when in 1986 I bought my very first NES cartridge with money earned flipping burgers. That single purchase made me the talk of my circle of friends for months. I went into Toys R Us with two of my buddies, as we slowly made our way to the aisle with all the NES consoles and cartridges, and there she was, a golden box with the the lettering on the front " The Legend of Zelda" with the shiny, gold cartridge peeking out from under the plastic. I grabbed it as fast as I could while soaking up the envious, but excited looks of my two best buds. We walked straight to the register and paid a total of 55 dollars and change. My entire check of two weeks wages at 3.25 an hour. Once home that was all she wrote as we spent the entire weekend locked in my room only stopping to use the bathroom and get treats! Me, my buds J and V during March of 1986 were lost in the world of Hyrule for what was the rest of spring and summer. We came, we conquered and gaming would never be the same......................................
 

Attachments

  • Legend_of_zelda_cover_(with_cartridge)_gold.png
    Legend_of_zelda_cover_(with_cartridge)_gold.png
    84.1 KB · Views: 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top