First Time a Game 'Wowed' You

[BoredAussieGamer]

When the cutscenes in the LOTR: Return of the king hack and slasher transitioned from movie clips to gameplay footage surprisingly smoothly. Especially considering that these were the PS2 days and I never saw that ever happen.

 

[Zeraki]

The Opera scene in Final Fantasy VI was the first time a video game had ever made me get all misty eyed. That entire game has some of the greatest music I've ever heard in video games. The emotions that game managed to convey with the limited SNES hardware was simply astounding. Some people take that kind of stuff for granted nowadays.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

When the cutscenes in the LOTR: Return of the king hack and slasher transitioned from movie clips to gameplay footage surprisingly smoothly. Especially considering that these were the PS2 days and I never saw that ever happen.

Gamecube here, completely agreed - the LOTR hack and slashers were astoundingly well presented, and along with Star Wars Battlefronts 1+2, managed to put up a damn good case for movie-to-game transitions. It's just a shame every other M2G sets fire to the case, insults its mother and chucks eggs at its front door.

OT: Bioshock, the first cutscene finished but I didn't realise it. It took me about 30 seconds and a stunned breath before I realised that the water I was in was being rendered right there, and I was blown away.

How simple it seems in retrospect!

 

[Ti0k0]

Is it done Yuri? No Comrade premier, it has only begun...

 

[azukar]

Final Fantasy VIII. There's a short FMV at the very start of the game when you're leaving Balamb Garden and the camera pans up to show you the view from above.

Might not be the very first "wow moment" in a video game, but it's the first I can remember off the top of my head.

 

[Ascend]

It was when i first played Battlefield 2 i was amazed at how you could just jump in to a tank and how everyone had a role and how easily you could die and how you could feel mortal. That was just against bots when I was younger.

 

[Dree]

I loved all my 64 games growing up like smash brothers and OoT but I think for me it was definitely "Morrowind" for the first time I felt like I was submerged in a whole new world and I could have a unique and varied impact on it.

 

[Raddra]

It was around 2000 and I was fairly new to the internet having got my first computer a year or so before. I played a game called 'Everquest' and it was the first time I had seen an entire online world. I was enticed by a Kunark box I had picked up along with the original game. Suddenly I was confronted by this amazing online world.. with real people around! Playing characters in a game! I had an entire world to explore! It was amazing to me at the time. I had grown up on Megadrive and Playstation. This was the first time I had ever played a game that wasn't 1 or 2 player. The feeling to me at the time was amazing. I took my Iksar SHaman off exploring, fighting monsters and making friends. Back then the community was very strong and you would recognize other players around and make friends and group up (and you had to, the world was dangerous and solo adventurers didn't last long.. unless you were a necro or something)

 

[Shinsei-J]

Klonoa, just such an amazing game to play and I could tell at the age of four.
My eyes sparkled as I fell in love with gaming.
Before that the best point was the opening of FFVII but I was too small to comprehend how grand it was at the time.