[General Discussion] Your most memorable moments in gaming.

1. I honestly don't remember what year it was, but in a situation similar to yours, I got an SNES of my very own for Christmas. It was the biggest single gift I'd ever gotten at that point, and it really slingshotted me into gaming. I mean, I played NES before that, but I never had that many games. With SNES, I had the option of renting and playing instead of buying them, which meant I got to play a lot more of them.


2. 1996 or so, my father bought me Doom II, which I played repeatedly, but I found my calling when my step brother introduced me to a little game called Diablo. I can still remember the exact setting when it happened. He had just gotten into Hell, and he was walking around and showing me some of the combat. Watching as he chopped enemies into screaming piles of bones, and seeing the bodies of villagers upended on pikes in the ground, I knew do want.

He would later get me interested in RTS games using Dark Reign (a moderately entertaining game with a better than average storyline) and Dungeon Keeper (Which remains one of my favorites even today).


3. 1997-98, I started hearing the buzz on Half-Life, and saw some gameplay and preview videos. I knew with a fierce determination that burned like the sun that the game would be something really special. Not only did it look great, using good looking 3d models and skeletal animation, but it was one of the first games to have scripted action sequences, and true interactivity on the part of the player. For once, the AI had reached the point that enemies didn't simply walk into your bullets, and the concept of NPCs was born in the FPS genre.

This is the one that well and truly stands out for me, because I bought the game at full retail price as soon as it came out, but it would be another 9 months to a year before my sister got a computer that could actually play it. I distinctly remember trying to play it using software rendering and having a blast regardless of the slideshow.

My love for mods grew out of this from TFC, Front Line Force, and some single player mods. The thought of getting content for free because of a proprietary engine was like sweet gaming bliss to me.


4. 1998, My friend managed to convince me to play Final Fantasy 7. I was hesitant at first, because I didn't consider myself an RPG gamer. Heck, I wasn't even that sure what an RPG gamer was, but I had never played a Final Fantasy game until that day. Seeing the cinematic approach the game took, as well as the steampunk setting and (for the time) unorthodox video game characters, and I fell in love.

I guess I don't have that many. There have been awesome games I've played since then, but my life as a gamer hasn't really changed much since those separate moments.

Jam it back in, in the dark.