Bury My Heart At Ashenvale... Your most nostalgiac gaming memories.

[Tuxedoman]

It may not be that old, but Mass Effect...
I had more feels in that game then I did in any other form of media. I started that adventure in 2008, and didn't finish it until 2012. When it was finally over and the war was won... Well I first joined in with the internet rage, but AFTER that I took a step back and decided I wanted to play the game again from the start.

Then this theme played.

I was just frozen. I couldn't move let alone play. All the feels from the past four years came rushing back at once and made me remember why this series was one of my favourites of all time.

Then I got to the citadel and stopped playing cause that zone was awful.

 

[flying_whimsy]

The games I have the most attachment to are the ones I played with friends (funny since I mostly play single player): FFIX with the multiplayer controller thing; FFVIII speaking all the lines of text with a couple of friends; playing DOA2 and Bushido Blade 2 with a friend until we had unlocked and mastered everything; late night LAN parties with a friend playing Day of Defeat and Team Fortress Classic; X-Wing Alliance with the champion pilot down the hall in college; and so on. If I play one of those now all I can think of are the good times I had with the games and my friends.

There are a few favorites in my single player stable: Megaman Legends and Xenogears; they always take me back to long hours spent exploring and trying hard not to use strategy guides. Legends was one of the first games I really beat on my own and Xenogears really captured my imagination in a way that a game hadn't done before.

FTL's the first game in years that has enthralled both me and my friends: we talk about it endlessly and are super excited for the enhanced edition.

EDIT: I'm a little melancholy now: I hadn't realized how much of my love for some of those games came from the people I was playing with. Most of them have all drifted away and none of my current friends are as hardcore into gaming as I am; well, except for the one that lives halfway across the country working for a game company.

 

[Jaeke]

8-13?

Lord, I feel old now... WoW had only been out for like, a year when I was 13. Those are some good memories, though. I remember my first Kara run, and how I didn't know anything about what I was supposed to be doing on my PvP-geared Warlock. And to think I'd go on to become one of the best-geared tanks on an entire realm four years later...

Anyway.

Most nostalgic for me is the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy VII, Star Wars Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Pokemon Red/Blue, X-Men and X-Men 2 on the Sega Genesis... Star Wars Episode I Racer, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Kirby 64, Yoshi's Story, etc., all the games I grew up with.

I still replay some of them every now and then. In 2011 I actually started a new Banjo-Kazooie game and ended up beating it for the first time; I'd never gotten past "Mad Monster Mansion" when I was younger.

The music from the Genesis Sonic games, Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie, and Final Fantasy VII will be forever burned into my mind, I think. Final Fantasy VII had the first video game soundtrack I listened to outside of actually playing the game, I believe. Mostly because of tracks like this one:


Nobuo Uematsu is a god. Gives me chills every time.

Wow I goofed my math. I was thinking of the age I was when WoW came out, I got into it when BC released so I would have been 10 in 2006. Edited. Thanks for the check ^^



Banjo-Kazooie is another one that I oh so vaguely remember... I remember being scared like crazy by the witch for some reason... I think it may have been the music. I think the earliest game I can remember playing at all was Earthworm Jim on the SNES... whew that was a while back.

 

[Pink Gregory]

this one game that I forget the name of, where you're a little boy who... herds chickens or something? And your dad's sick, so you have to... go find a cure? And something about a magic flute? All I really remember is that the chickens drowned when in water. Kinda sounds like a Pikmin knock-off, now that I think about it.

Herdy Gerdy?

Herded little pink things called 'Doops' around? To my memory, they do actually go 'doop doop doop doop'.

 

[McMarbles]

Spending literal hours getting to level 100 on Defender for Atari 2600.

Getting to Level 60 on Gauntlet for the C64 (it conks out at this point)

World 1-1.

"It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."

Figuring out how to get to the bottom of the Great Deku Tree.

 

[shrekfan246]

Banjo-Kazooie is another one that I oh so vaguely remember... I remember being scared like crazy by the witch for some reason... I think it may have been the music. I think the earliest game I can remember playing at all was Earthworm Jim on the SNES... whew that was a while back.

Grant Kirkhope is a pretty damn good composer as well.

I played Earthworm Jim at a friend's house when I was growing up. Never owned it myself, and I was (and still am) dreadful at the thing.

I'm not sure I'd be able to recall my very first game, though...

I had a lot of edutainment games growing up, as my parents were fairly strict about letting me play "violent" games, but there were also a few Star Trek adventure games my father had, as well as Betrayal at Krondor and, of course, Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis. They were all tied so closely together that I doubt I'd ever be able to pull out a singular game as the first one I can remember. But I believe the first I can really remember actually beating is Desert Demolition, a Looney Tunes game featuring the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote.

 

[Strain42]

This memory is probably popping up for me because I recently ordered a new copy of it and have been playing it, but I'm going to have to go with Monster Rancher 2.

I was about 10 years old when I got this game, and lemme tell you, I wasn't very good at it...in fact as I play now I'm probably not too much better.

But my most nostalgic memory...is the first time one of my monsters died. I still remember the monster too. He was an Arrowhead. His name was Ebirah. And the first time you see that scene, it's a heart wrenching moment...'cause you see it all.

Spoiler

The shooting star flying through the night sky, cut to inside the barn where your monster just sort of...stops. Then you see that ghost fly out. The next morning you have to watch Colt discover the body of your monster. You have your old man friend give you the speech about how nothing lives forever, you actually have a funeral for it, at the church, people are dressed in black and expressing their sympathies, you see its grave, which by the way is on your ranch forever...they really just go all out with it.

Seriously guys...I think I actually cried. In fact I know I did.

Sooo...yeah. It might not be happy nostalgia, but that is a memory that will always stick with me when it comes to video games.

 

[Da Orky Man]

This is Fleet Command. Reporting Mothership pre-flight status. Command online. Resourcing online. Construction online. Cryogenic subsections A through J online. K through S online. Scaffold control, stand by for alignment.

Alignment confirmed. Stand by release control.

The Mothership has cleared the Scaffold. We are away.

Not much else to be said, really. And massively looking forward to the Remastered versions, plus Shipbreakers.

 

[VaporWare]

There are too many moments in my gaming history to meaningfully enumerate. Some good, some bad. If I had to pick one that, for some reason, had stuck with me from the moment I first experienced it and somehow never really dulled in it's ability to affect me, it would probably be the intro to 3D0 edition of Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters.


There was just something inspirational about the composition of the sequence, to say nothing of the game it introduced you to. In many ways, this was the moment I knew that I wanted not just to experience the medium, but to contribute to it in some fashion. I've lost a lot of naivete since then, but this still calls me back to a bright summer morning in California, and a more optimistic time in the life of the industry. A time when groups like Electronic Arts were still really challenging everything, and Interplay really was by gamers for gamers and I could still believe them when they said they were going to bring us amazing things. Teams like Toys for Bob hadn't been consigned to a Sisyphean shovelware hell. All around us the future lay gleaming with infinite promise.

I've long since come to understand and accept that it might be a time that was never quite real, but I remember it anyway.

 

[teebeeohh]

"i like to pick em off from a distance, I'll take the rifle" still goes through my head every time a game hands me a sniper rifle.

 

[Alexei F. Karamazov]

However, RuneScape might be one of the most powerful though since I'll never be able to experience the game like it was in High School again. I mainly just played for quests since at the time I couldn't really afford to keep buying new, non-grinding games to play like I can now. The MMO has seen so many updates since I stopped playing that it's hardly recognizable.

Apparently they released a new version of the game which is basically just a server from around 2007 but I don't think I can put as much time into leveling as I used to especially since none of my friends play anymore either. Plus part of the experience of the game was watching the world grow and seeing new quests arrive as I was playing. I'm not sure if they update the 2007 server and it would be sort of depressing to be leveling up in a MMO frozen in time.

I agree with Random Encounter, Runescape is one of the most nostalgic games for me, especially because it will literally never be the same. I played it when I was MUCH younger, starting when I was maybe 10 years old. Me and my brothers mostly just goofed off and familiarized ourselves with the world. It was quite the experience, and it took up much of my free time for a few years after. The world had so many memories attached to them, and now I can only look at what it's become: highly successful and probably much more complex, but it lacks the spirit it used to have. Or at least, that's how I perceive it. On a side note, Runescape taught me how to type, and was far better a teacher than the programs they were using in school to try to teach us typing.

Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 are basically summations of my childhood, followed closely by Ocarina of Time and Super Smash Bros: Melee, which are equally important aspects of my childhood (along with Runescape, of course). Oh, that and 007: Nightfire! Again, my brothers and I had no idea what we were doing, but we were 007, damn it, and we were awesome! Though maybe that was because of the cheat codes...

 

[FPLOON]

It was a GBA game where Mario and Donkey Kong duck it out in a haunted mansion, where the constantly blow bubbles at one another in order to push either the fireball or the Boo to each other to see who will be victorious. Days pass... Weeks pass... Either side not giving up or giving in... The points ranking up in the hundreds, then in the thousands... What keeps this battle from ending? When the player hits the pause button and turns off the system, putting the battle to a standstill until both the system and the game are turned on once again... The game was called Game and Watch Gallery 4 and the minigame I just described was Donkey Kong 3 on it's Hard difficulty...

Also, the many hours I sunk into Tales of Symphonia was both awesome and reminded me that it was the first game I've played where I fell asleep while in the middle of level grinding... as well as falling for Chain of Memories's plot twist during Sora's story on the GBA, since it only works if you haven't played the first game for the PS2 at the time...

 

[Saetha]

this one game that I forget the name of, where you're a little boy who... herds chickens or something? And your dad's sick, so you have to... go find a cure? And something about a magic flute? All I really remember is that the chickens drowned when in water. Kinda sounds like a Pikmin knock-off, now that I think about it.

Herdy Gerdy?

Herded little pink things called 'Doops' around? To my memory, they do actually go 'doop doop doop doop'.

Uh... I wouldn't know. I was a little wee one at the time. Can't remember much of it. Let me look that up...

Oh, hey, that is it! Cool. Well, no wonder I could never find the game again. I thought it was chickens that you herded. Thanks for the info.

 

[Eve Charm]

I still remember this intro from when I first got the game...


...and I still consider it a blasphemy to skip it. Such an awesome game, and one I shall never forget.

Yes Wild arms, once I saw they were remakes on the PSN when I got my vita bought them and never uninstalled.

For my own, Way before the 360 rerelease I ended up spending about 100 bucks getting myself a working sega saturn and a copy of guardian heroes to play at the time the last good side scrolling beat em up and even with rpg elements for tons of replay, and branching paths.

Also clock tower 1 and 2 on the PS1 which still creep me the hell out.

and Zelda 2 which took way to long to finally beat, and the first tmnt still haven't beaten but will buy virtual console releases. and punch out when criag was trying to beat mike tyson.

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

I started playing WoW during BC, and continued to do so until pandaria. For me, it wasn't outgrowing the game, more so the game outgrowing me. I already thoroughly disliked cataclysm, and hoped pandaria would save WoW (a fools hope, of course).
Yet despite my run in WoW ending on a negative note, it didn't sully the memories. I had a similar experience with the game as you. I'll never forget the hysterical fun we had with friends and the guild, just as I'll never forget the serene moments on exploration while playing alone.

Another, more recent trip down nostalgia lane was replaying the very first lego star wars game. Feels were had.