Incredible gaming moments

In the late 90's, I got hooked on a game called Subspace. This was a MMO in which you controlled a small ship from a top down perspective and had to maneuver around an arena collecting these green orbs and killing other players ships in the process. The more green orbs and kills you wracked up, the more powerful your ship would get. There was also a bounty that would increase on your ship as you leveled up. The higher your bounty would be, the more desirable it would be for other ships to take you out.

One night, I logged in with a friend and somehow I ended up with a ridiculous bounty, somewhere around 1500 or so. The game turned into survival mode with my friend helping to cover me as I tried to stay alive in the arena. Lots of high speed chases and mine dropping later, I finally got taken out, but that last hour was the most adrenaline filled pc gaming I think I've ever had.

Back in my uni days, one game dominated a whole year for us, Pro Evo 5. We used to have leagues between our mates, all going around to a flat to play. Going into the last round of games I had to win to keep the pressure on the guy in 1st place, I was completely dominating but unable to score, then, in the 4th min of injury time I blast one in from 30 yards! I went mental, enough to annoy the people in the flat below. (I didn't win the league though, since the other guy waltz to a 5-0 win)

Football Manager (or Championship Manager as it was then) - I'm in charge of PSV and have taken them to the Champions League final against Liverpool. Due to an injury crisis, I only had 2 fit strikers, who were both playing but I had to have another option on the bench, so I just put one of my under 19s on there, who had never played for the club before.

Liverpool taken the lead, and going into the last 10mins it is time to go big or go home so I throw on 18 year old and go to 3 up front, still time is running out, 5mins left and still no goal, then in the 90th min the lad scores! 1-1, then in the 94th up he pops again! 2-1! We are champions of Europe.

And what happened to the 18 year old? Well he never played for PSV again but he will always have Rome

Back somewhere in Deep Time, I used to play a lot of Infocom games; they were some of my favorites, even though I didn't finish most of them. And one that really, really engrossed me was Trinity. Warning: spoilers for Trinity ahead. It has been almost thirty years, so I won't spoiler-tag anything.

The beginning of the game was set in the Cold War, and London was about to be vaporized in a nuclear explosion. Problem was, you were a tourist there that day, I believe sightseeing in Kensington Gardens. And just one nuclear bomb can really mess up your day.

But, or so the story goes, a nuclear weapon rips a hole in reality: shortly before an atomic explosion, a portal appears at Ground Zero. And you, of course, travel through this tear to an alternate universe. Your goal is to explore this strange place, and eventually to stop the original nuclear explosion from happening, at Trinity, New Mexico.

Okay, that's more or less the box blurb.

I played that game for weeks, exploring and trying to understand what I was seeing. The thing about text games is that almost all of it is mental; you're imagining what you're seeing, and in some ways, it can make a place more real than running through it visually. (which, of course, was completely impossible at the time: just being able to read and respond to English text was a hell of a technical feat.) So I gradually built up a mental map of this place, and after noodling away at that game for so long, I think I was more there than I was in real life.

That world was shaped like a sundial; they were a very strong theme of the game, and I gained at least one vocabulary word, 'gnomon' -- the post in the middle of one. The gnomon in this world was an immense tower, and at each of the 'hour' positions was a giant mushroom, with a door in it. As each day progressed, the shadow cast by the tower would gradually cross each mushroom. As soon as the shadow hit a mushroom, the door would open, allowing you to step into a world where a nuclear explosion was about to happen. You had only a brief time in each world, because as soon as the shadow left the mushroom, the door would close, and the bomb would go off shortly thereafter. So each world was a frantic hurry; you had only maybe ten or twenty turns in each. (You could go back, over and over, but each time you were there, it couldn't be for long.)

Well, of course, the various worlds had various puzzles in them, but many puzzles were unsolvable because I simply didn't have enough time. So I just kept noodling away at it, slowly solving what I could. I was abolutely, utterly immersed, in total game thrall. For weeks. For me, I think only Civ 1 and Counterstrike have rivaled Trinity for depth of game lock. I think this must have been during summer vacation, because I put one hell of a lot of time into it.

So, eventually, I figured out some super-key puzzle: I think it involved getting an icicle somewhere important before it melted, but that's all I can remember. Solving that puzzle gave me access to the central tower, which I'd been locked out of. And, at the very top of the world sundial's gnomon was another sundial, with a lever and some grab handles on the side. It was missing its little gnomon, and I had to come up with that from somewhere... maybe that's what the icicle was, not sure. Once I got the small gnomon into that sundial, I tried pulling the handles, which didn't work. Then I pulled the lever, and pulled the handles again, and the sundial swung freely. And, when I turned it, the sun itself moved in the sky.

I was there. I saw that happen. I saw myself moving the sun in the sky, and it was such a powerful image that it made me literally shiver in my seat. I had to get up and leave the computer for awhile, because I was so floored that I needed time to process. It's a shame that "shock and awe" is no longer useful as anything other than an ironic descriptor, because it would have been exactly perfect here. I think it must have been twenty or thirty minutes before I sat back down again. If I had actually, genuinely moved the sun in real life, I don't think my reaction would have been any stronger.

And that is a memory that will stay with me. I've accumulated a lot of gaming memories, but that one is probably strongest. When I was a teenager, sitting at my computer, in an ordinary house, in an ordinary town, I gained the ability to move the sun wherever I wanted it. It's one of the strongest memories I have, and it would never have been possible in a graphic game, or in a game where I could look up hints online. It was just me, that computer, and that world for several weeks, and only that perfect immersion (plus, no doubt, my youthful impressionability) made that impact possible.

(Some of you might be wondering what that actually did. Well, it let me put the sun wherever I wanted, and then throw the lever to lock it into place, so I could go into any mushroom-world and explore as much as I wanted. Solving the central sundial puzzle was the high point of the game; things went very quickly after that. )

Chromehounds, back at the beginning of the 360's life. I met a bunch of guys through the CH forum, and we played a couple of times a week. I had never played online before, so was a bit apprehensive, but we all fell into natural roles and became good friends.

After a couple of months, I had become known as the rush-in shooter of the team, with another guy as my wingman. I generally got a decent number of kills, but only survived the map about 50% of the time.

We were playing a 5 on 5 battle (getting 6 on 6 was an impossibility most of the time) and we were in bad shape from the get go. The other team sent a base killer in, we got pulled out of position, and flanked by the 4 remaining enemies after I took out the base killer. They hammered us with artillery, and I only my wingman and I escaped. He only lasted into the next engagement, doing some damage to the others, but no kills.

I have never managed this kind of thing since, but I ended up winning the game singlehandedly, taking down all 4 of my enemies over the next 11 minutes. The final battle was incredibly tense, my limping and smoking wreck of a hound winning a mid-range rifle battle with no ammo to spare.

Eco round (money saving) in Counter-Strike; team buys pistol and armor on the Terrorist side. Start off rushing a site with a split push and teammates start going down to rifle fire. One Counter-Terrorist pops out of an entrance on my left and hops onto a railing. Gun him down and pivot right to see another CT and immediately drop him with a headshot. Reload. Move up on site away from where my teammates died. Plant the bomb. Last person left. 3v1, but now I've picked up an SMG. Hear one approach from my left and pop out and cut him down quickly. I know the other two are coming so I peek a corner spotting another and he goes down in a blaze of gunfire. One left and I figure he's lagging behind, I'm low on ammo in the magazine and start to reload; he comes around a corner and starts pounding away with his rifle. I head left to the nearest cover while cracking out a few rounds from my handgun. He assumes I am going to continue in the same direction and when I emerge from the angle he's not expecting I get a shot on his helmet which rocks his aim and leaves him open for the kill. He dies and I pull off an ace in an eco round.

CS is my gaming nirvana when I'm on point.

One that always sticks out for me is the first Black Guard encounter in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. They are revealed through a musical queue where things are pretty intense in the soundtrack, you turn down a hallway and open a door and the music stops dead. Certainly something important is about to happen, and in come the Black Guard paratroopers with their FG42 rifles. The resulting scramble and fire fight was really rewarding and intense.

Like many of the people posting above, I had many fond memories in the Delta Force series. It was the first game I ever played that had a really open space and accurate (ish) ballistics. I remember hiding in the long grass trying to strategically approach some base with my sniper rifle, realizing that I actually had to lead, compensate for wind and distance.

Similar to Delta Force for me was the first Ghost Recon game. I think it was the first time I really got into meticulous mission planning. I had played Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear before that but Ghost Recon felt a bit different. Perhaps it was the improved open natural environment or graphics, but man was it a lot of fun. I am in the process of downloading that again right now actually, if gog will start behaving.

And of course, I recall being blown away by the first game I saw with polygons. I think it was a Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II demo from a PC Gamer disk or something. But I vividly recall the little blue alien dude that was the first enemy in the level. After shooting at him, I walked past and did a triple take. It wasn't rotating like Duke Nukem 3D sprites. What is this black magic?!

Good thread

Great thread.

Duke Nukem 3D has one of the most memorable quotes for me: 'Time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all outta gum!'

In the late 90s, one CS match with high school friends against random players: Aztec map starting as T with an MP5. Gun down two guys, run out of ammo in a firefight. Threw it away and pick up a Colt Carbine from a downed opponent, took out another two CTs with silencer on. Ran out of ammo again and was getting chased by the last surviving CT, picked up an AK47 and finished him off. I literally finished off the whole opposing team myself on that round, never equalled that feat again.

Finishing Time Crisis 2 arcade machine at university with only 1 credit became a routine for me once a week. I was never very good at those X-Men vs Capcom or KoF games so this was the only way I could show off my 1337 skillz.

Pirates! Gold: one run as an English buccaneer in the earliest era, I caught two Spanish golden fleets and a silver train in the same season. Limped back to an English town with about 40 sailors crewing my Spanish and English galleons, made every one of them rich men!

Getting 2nd place in a Tekken 3 tournament way back when that game was actually new. Atypically, I picked Xiaoyu for my main before the community figured out that she was actually pretty gosh darn powerful in that version. My friend picked his main, Lei Wu Long, but he had the bad luck to have been matched against me in the first round. Had to treat him to lunch with the prize money.

Most of the participants were actually not that good, this being mainly a college-level tournament. I estimated that my friend would actually have placed third if he hadn't been eliminated so fast. Most people didn't know what a ground game even was, let alone haha step and wave step shenanigans. I won game after game mainly by side-stepping and throwing or pounding on the unwary with sleazy wake up games. There was this guy who played Paul whose main strength was that he knew several of Paul's ten hit combos. Too bad I knew them, too. I figure he never played anyone who exploited the hit breaks since he never feinted. Just went for the straight combo over and over.

The final match was fantastic, though. The guy was actually really good! He played Xiaoyu as well, and he was at least a class above me; so instead of blasting me away with pure combo stuff, he played the counter-evasion game for entertainment value. Both players being Xiaoyu, it was a dizzying contest of backflips, sidesteps, ducks, backsteps, and feints. The crowd absolutely loved it. I lost, but I felt like I won. It was fun.

I remember playing Doom and my room wasn't very well lit.
Got in one of those areas where the light blinks and it's quite dark.
Turning a corner, a demon suddenly roared. Made me jump in my
chair. Thought that was awesome.

The day I started to play Civilization...wow. That game blew my mind
back then already.

Aww man I got 2.

First is fanboyish but honestly Dark Souls. The whole stinking thing. First time I beat that game without lookin anything up online was just awesome.

Second is silly to most but..

I was trying to get my then Fiance into gaming (which she is now) and was playing the first Modern Warfare on 360. I was going for the "Mile High" achievement and telling her how impossible it was, how it just couldn't be done. I then turned it on and proceeded to "show" her. I beat it. Just like that with her standing there. She wasn't impressed. But now all these years later she gets it. It stands as one of my best gaming memories of all time.

Malor wrote:

Back somewhere in Deep Time, I used to play a lot of Infocom games; they were some of my favorites, even though I didn't finish most of them. And one that really, really engrossed me was Trinity.

As far as I'm concerned, this wins the thread.

For me, it was the first time I made it to Area 6 on Star Fox 64.

silentsod wrote:

Eco round (money saving) in Counter-Strike; team buys pistol and armor on the Terrorist side. Start off rushing a site with a split push and teammates start going down to rifle fire. One Counter-Terrorist pops out of an entrance on my left and hops onto a railing. Gun him down and pivot right to see another CT and immediately drop him with a headshot. Reload. Move up on site away from where my teammates died. Plant the bomb. Last person left. 3v1, but now I've picked up an SMG. Hear one approach from my left and pop out and cut him down quickly. I know the other two are coming so I peek a corner spotting another and he goes down in a blaze of gunfire. One left and I figure he's lagging behind, I'm low on ammo in the magazine and start to reload; he comes around a corner and starts pounding away with his rifle. I head left to the nearest cover while cracking out a few rounds from my handgun. He assumes I am going to continue in the same direction and when I emerge from the angle he's not expecting I get a shot on his helmet which rocks his aim and leaves him open for the kill. He dies and I pull off an ace in an eco round.

CS is my gaming nirvana when I'm on point.

I've struggled so much in that game. I love it, but I'm just terrible. My aiming is always dodgy, things happen too fast. Hats off to you, sir. That is indeed an amazing gaming moment.

Just remembered a couple awesome NES moments from my childhood. First, one I did. I was having some friends come over for something and one was running behind and another showed up early and so we fired up the NES. My friend didn't feel like playing so he told me to put in anything. I grabbed Double Dragon III, which I had beaten in the past, but always struggled. By the time the other guy showed up I had destroyed that game like it was nothing. I could never repeat that again.

Second, I had a friend over on a Friday the 13th after school and he brought Mega Man (1). He had never been able to beat it, but somehow he managed his way through with me watching that time. Of course, now that game doesn't seem so impossible any more.

Finishing Guitar Hero 2. Bark at the Moon, on Expert. Boo-ya!

One of my most sublime moments came after clearing the medical wing during my first Bioshock run. I started making my way to the boss and Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" came on the overhead PA. The song's first two verses go as follows:

Then that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

It seemed a perfect summary of where I was in and with the game and what Rapture was. I admire the designer's choice not to make that moment triumphant, but to make it melancholy. Yeh, I cleared the level, but the focus was on the human condition in those circumstances. That I was the strong one, the one that has, and yet it was the strong and the haves that had driven to Rapture to that collapse took any sweetness away from my victory, and it was good.

Vanilla WoW. They'd just added some World bosses, these 4 Green dragons. My guild at the time was high end. We'd just had a really sweet run on a Friday night. Real quick, in and out in just a couple hours. A bunch of people got great upgrades and we were riding high. Very few people said they were signing off so our GM asks if anyone wants to try a dragon and 36 of us stay including 2 main tanks. We head to the Hinterlands and set up. We try him twice and wipe. GM says one more and then we'll call it. We start.

Don't know how it ended up this way, but about 10 random 60's, some even Alliance, show up and start helping. It's not quite enough. He's down to 9% and the main tank goes down. 3% and off-tank bites it. So now dragon is ripping through our healers. 2% and its just 8 or so left. 1% and there are only 3 of us. Me (tauren shaman), a druid, and a rogue. Druid goes bear form to try and tank. Rogue gets behind and starts doing what rogues do. I'm healing for all I can. Bear goes down, and he turns to the rogue and starts a spell. I earthshock to interrupt but with high aggro. He turns to me and swipes and I'm down to 15% health. Rogue backstabs or something and the dragon keels over.

Every screams over vent. People stop running back to their corpses. The Alliance there are emoting congrats. One of the best moments in WoW I've ever had.

Grenn wrote:

Vanilla WoW. They'd just added some World bosses, these 4 Green dragons. My guild at the time was high end. We'd just had a really sweet run on a Friday night. Real quick, in and out in just a couple hours. A bunch of people got great upgrades and we were riding high. Very few people said they were signing off so our GM asks if anyone wants to try a dragon and 36 of us stay including 2 main tanks. We head to the Hinterlands and set up. We try him twice and wipe. GM says one more and then we'll call it. We start.

Don't know how it ended up this way, but about 10 random 60's, some even Alliance, show up and start helping. It's not quite enough. He's down to 9% and the main tank goes down. 3% and off-tank bites it. So now dragon is ripping through our healers. 2% and its just 8 or so left. 1% and there are only 3 of us. Me (tauren shaman), a druid, and a rogue. Druid goes bear form to try and tank. Rogue gets behind and starts doing what rogues do. I'm healing for all I can. Bear goes down, and he turns to the rogue and starts a spell. I earthshock to interrupt but with high aggro. He turns to me and swipes and I'm down to 15% health. Rogue backstabs or something and the dragon keels over.

Every screams over vent. People stop running back to their corpses. The Alliance there are emoting congrats. One of the best moments in WoW I've ever had.

Awesome.

That is awesome indeed

Two memories came to mind. First is me at sixteen with a N64 rally racing game (I can't remember which). This game had a damage system where you'd gather through a race and after you had the option to fix the damage or save your money and race again.

At around 4am, we were getting stupid sleepy and just stopped fixing the car. We eventually started a race and the car wouldn't move off the finish line. I laughed so hard I cried and I still remember that moment.

Second, after years out of gaming, I was hoping to get back into it. I bought a Wii and got NSMB.Wii. The memory is me, with my wife and son cheering me on, beating the last level.

Most of my gaming memories are just snippets and themes, like visiting my cousins with my brother and playing the NES for hours.

Thanks for starting the thread.

B

There is was trailer for Battlefield 4 that showed a fleet of vehicles topping a rise and racing down into a valley as an attack helicopter swooped overhead. It looked fantastic, and stirred the soul of anyone who loves military based multiplayer, but the actual game never really lived up to that moment in terms of team work and co-ordination. The closest the game gets is the 'new' mode 'capture the flag.' Probably because the mode requires a flag to be transported from the enemy base to your own and the quickest way is in some mode of transport.

Returning to the game after a long hiatus I nearly packed it away for good after a few games were my team was being railroaded and cheap tactics seemed to abound. I stuck with it for a few more games and landed on a team that seemed to know what they were doing. We won match after match and I captured and defended a few flags. I regularly had an escort when carrying the flag and the helicopter even swooped down and gave me a lift to our base.

In the last match of the run we needed one more flag to win. I thumbed a ride in the second seat of a tank heading to the enemy base. The driver went wide and swept in from the side, between two rocky outcrops. I used the machine gun to pick off a few defenders as we arrived at the back of a small building. One shell from the main gun blew out the back wall. Two more startled defenders ran about as I tried to machine gun them. Through the hole we could see the enemy flag. Initially I'd thought we'd be providing cover for someone else to pinch the flag but, with it so close, I realised I could probably be out, take the flag and get back into the tank in a few seconds. It was a temptation I couldn't resist.

As I hopped through the buildings back wall I saw the defenders fleeing for cover. Sure I was about to die in a hail of bullets I snagged the flag, turned and headed back through the building to the tank. As I resumed the second seat and looked down the sights of the machine gun I hoped the driver would notice he was now carrying the flag bearer. He did. Kicking the tank into reverse he raced backwards away from the base then, in a tight turn, he headed down a small road along the edge of the map.

An anti air truck came hurtling after us. I riddled the cab with machine gun fire and it stopped dead. Engineers tumbled out of the truck and started lining up rocket launchers. I took out one or two then the tank rounded a hill avoiding any incoming rockets. Two enemy dirt bikes closed on us at high speed. Players have a tendency to load up bikes with C4 and then driving them into tanks so I was more than a little keen to take them out. As one raced by to our right another stopped. An engineer (at this point I was convinced the entire enemy team were engineers) dismounted and took aimed. We heard the shrill tone of a missile lock. He fell in a hail of fire from my gun before he could launch. Engineers from the second bike were setting up as we passed them. Another missile lock. Before they could fire the they were run over by a humvee. My view, looking over the back of the speeding tank, was suddenly filled with friendly units swooping in, the humvee, a light tank and dirt bikes.

As we raced on an enemy player carrying our flag bounded over a tree lined ridge. His heart must have sunk when he saw our convoy. The machine gun I felled him quickly. We stopped by the flag defending it as the timer ticked down. Once the timer ran out it would return to our base. Personally, I would have carried on and left the defence to others but the flag was soon safely back at base. We moved on. Our helicopter skimmed by looking for targets. Rolling into our base I jumped out of the tank and delivered the enemy flag. The game ended in a blaze of blinding white.

That sequence, combined with others in that run of games, felt like a fulfilment of the incredible promise in that early trailer.

Grenn wrote:

Vanilla WoW. They'd just added some World bosses, these 4 Green dragons. My guild at the time was high end. We'd just had a really sweet run on a Friday night. Real quick, in and out in just a couple hours. A bunch of people got great upgrades and we were riding high. Very few people said they were signing off so our GM asks if anyone wants to try a dragon and 36 of us stay including 2 main tanks. We head to the Hinterlands and set up. We try him twice and wipe. GM says one more and then we'll call it. We start.

Don't know how it ended up this way, but about 10 random 60's, some even Alliance, show up and start helping. It's not quite enough. He's down to 9% and the main tank goes down. 3% and off-tank bites it. So now dragon is ripping through our healers. 2% and its just 8 or so left. 1% and there are only 3 of us. Me (tauren shaman), a druid, and a rogue. Druid goes bear form to try and tank. Rogue gets behind and starts doing what rogues do. I'm healing for all I can. Bear goes down, and he turns to the rogue and starts a spell. I earthshock to interrupt but with high aggro. He turns to me and swipes and I'm down to 15% health. Rogue backstabs or something and the dragon keels over.

Every screams over vent. People stop running back to their corpses. The Alliance there are emoting congrats. One of the best moments in WoW I've ever had.

Wow (pun somewhat intended)! By the time I was done reading that... my palms were sweaty. I got an adrenaline rush from three simple paragraphs.

cube wrote:

First raidboss kills in WoW. Those are always special.

In a similar line, back in Cataclysm I pugged into a raid for ten man Bastion of Twilight on my rogue. During the fight with the twin dragons, the tanks both died as the second dragon was coming down. I was next on the threat table, so I popped evasion (we had no battle rezzes if I recall) and I "tanked" the dragon for a good 30 seconds to perhaps as long as a minute, long enough for us to down the boss. Now, admittedly we all overgeared the place by a good margin, but still, I always trot that out whenever people are comparing epeens. XD

I was playing a tricky 'pre-gate' map in the Skulls of the Shogun campaign and had whittled the enemy army down to it's general, one soldier and two fox monks. I was pretty sure I had the game in the bag until I realised that the general was becoming stronger each turn, he had more health than my scattered units could take in one go and the fox monks were healing themselves and the general up every turn. The monks were also annoyingly resilient and, despite several attempts, I was failing to kill them. Suddenly, as often seems to be the case in this game, I could see my victory turning to bitter defeat in the last moments.

As I pondered what to do I saw the little temples at the top of the map where the enemy general had summoned the monks. The rules were: You place one of your units by the temple to summon a monk. If an enemy unit takes a temple, you loose that monk. I had two units fairly close and ran them towards the temples. The enemy general, realising what I was doing, headed that way also. He was too late. I haunted the temples. After a turn 'poof' both enemy monks ceased to be and, better than that, two freshly minted fox monks appeared, next to their respective temples, looking resplendent in my armies colours :).

Nothing super special, but maybe my first systemic gaming moment that really made an impression on me: Unreal Tournament, the Facing Worlds map, a friend, myself, and a raft of bots. Standing up top the tower on our side of the map (as the name might suggest, it's an identically symmetrical map) I've got the Redeemer—a one-time nuclear missile, which you guide from first-person. It's a total bear to control in flight, and now I've fired and am trying to wrestle it towards someone, but whip past every bot by country miles. By luck an enemy running away, back to his base, is right in my path if I just keep it straight. As I (or the missile rather) flies towards him, the name appears: it's my friend; maybe prompted by the growing sound, he turns around—I see his character's face from the missile's point of view; his view, for that split second, must have been incredible. Then the missile strikes home.

-----

This is a story I've told before, but I'll retell it here: Dirt 3, working on a dumb achievement for placing first in a multiplayer Hardcore race—cockpit cam only, no HUD, no rewinds, no resets. If I can get in a lobby with one other player I give it a couple tries before going back to my routine of placing 5th or 6th in regular races (the online racing—let alone Hardcore—is harder than my single-player inflated skills were capable of). So if I'm going to win a Hardcore race for that cheevo, it's gotta be against a single other opponent, who isn't that good, with luck on my side. Or do I need something else?

As I'm waiting for a Hardcore race to start, against two other players (the third joined at the last second, leaving me no time to chicken out), Mrs. Gravey, sitting beside me on the couch, is watching a video on YouTube. Some of her cousins are into selling some crap or other, P90 or Body By Vi or junk like that—they pump each other up on Facebook, and one of them had linked Coach Flowers' insane motivational speech, which Mrs. Gravey is now watching with a mixture of derision and horror. Crazy, yes. But is it effective? Providentially the video finishes as my race is about to start.

"Okay," I say, "let's see if it worked."

It's familiar Yatta Ridge, but at treacherous night. I tear off in my trusty Audi Sport Quattro S1. It's a smooth run, every corner is clean, I slip through the narrow straights unscathed—the new driver wrecks—I post a time of 3:50 with a slight spill on the last straight, and I stare at the leaderboard waiting for the other driver to cross the line—which he finally does at 4:14.

Somehow, I did it. That hefty 10 GS is mine, and no amount has ever seemed more valuable.

DEFEAT, RETREAT, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THOSE WORDS! I WILL RIP THE HEART FROM MY ENEMY AND LEAVING IT BLEEDING ON THE GROUND! WHO AM I? I AM A CHAMPION!

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All my other incredible gaming moments probably involve exploding trucks in Far Cry 2.

Too many to list but most of my favorite gaming memories involve playing with friends or experiencing something new for the first time.

-The first time I played Doom with some friends sticks out and was also the first time I played anything online. Soon after I discovered a local BBS and Dwango.
-The first LAN party I attended where Warcraft 2 was played the entire time.
-Playing Street Fighter 2 on my SNES - I dumped mucho money on this game for a long time in the arcades and couldn't believe I could play for free.
-Playing Mario 64 at Toys R Us before the N64 came out - realized right away the next gen would truly be something different.
-Playing Maniac Mansion at a friends house - my first PC game experience. Never played a point and click before.
-Getting accepted to the WOW beta - I was amazed right away by the scope of the game.

So many more but that's a few. Gaming has been the one truly consistent hobby in my life and I have many memories.

I know I've told this story before somewhere, but I'm going to tell it again because I like it and also I'm bored at work.

Myth 2 multiplayer, 2v2 capture the flag on "If I Had a Trow...". For those not familiar with the game/map, it's a big open area with a river running down the middle and a large hill at either end. Each team's flag is placed on one of the hills. My teammate assigns me a handful of Soulless (floating skeleton spear-throwers) and Thrall (slow, weak zombies) and tells me to guard our flag. He takes everything else and rushes the enemy flag. After a few minutes of calm, I hear a familiar thud-thud-thud and three enemy Trow come stomping up towards the flag. Trow are big, tough, and expensive giant units that will literally kick you apart. They pulped my thralls in seconds and captured our flag. Oh well, game over.

...wait, why isn't the game over? Somehow my teammate had captured the enemy flag at the same time that ours was captured. You need to control both flags to win, so the game kept going. My thralls were all gone, but I still had my soulless. Now, soulless are pretty weak units, but they have one interesting feature: because they float, they can move over impassable terrain. When the trow arrived, I had retreated my soulless onto the steep, impassable sides of the hill. The trow couldn't touch me. Unfortunately, as long as the trow stood clustered on our flag I couldn't touch them either. They were out of range of my soulless' spears. Thus began a long and ridiculous game of cat-and-mouse, where I'd sneak my soulless up to the top of the hill, throw a few spears at the trow, and then flee back to safety when the trow tried to counterattack. They couldn't leave the flag because then I'd just recapture it, and the enemy couldn't send any reinforcements because they were still clashing with my teammate over at the other flag - a fight our enemies were losing, because the trow were the heaviest hitters in their army and they were stuck defending the flag they'd captured. Long story short, my teammate slowly elminated the enemy forces while I continually harrassed their trow and kept them bottled up at our flag. After a looong time we finally succeeded in recapturing our flag and winning the game. It was the most satisfying win ever.

Most of my other favourite gaming experiences come from Left 4 Dead 1&2: ridiculously well-coordinated Infected attacks, Tanks knocking down all four survivors with well-aimed car/log/forklift, and surviving against-all-odds whole-team-is-black-and-white mad dashes to the safe room. Also, the elusive Charger double-instakill.

muttonchop wrote:

I know I've told this story before somewhere, but I'm going to tell it again because I like it and also I'm bored at work.

Myth 2 multiplayer, 2v2 capture the flag on "If I Had a Trow..."

*sniffle* Myth 2... one of the all time great games (Myth: TFL is as well).

I somehow swindled my mother into thinking an M rated game was A-okay for a 10-11 year old (TFL and Soulblighter respectively). Something about it was a game requiring smarts... Ignore the Limbs, Heads, and Smoking Craters...

silentsod wrote:

Ignore the Limbs, Heads, and Smoking Craters...

That's just good life advice, there.

silentsod wrote:
muttonchop wrote:

I know I've told this story before somewhere, but I'm going to tell it again because I like it and also I'm bored at work.

Myth 2 multiplayer, 2v2 capture the flag on "If I Had a Trow..."

*sniffle* Myth 2... one of the all time great games (Myth: TFL is as well).

You've reminded me of a game I had on the same map but with 'regular' units. Thrall, slow undead with big axes, warriors with sword and shield, bowmen and bomb throwing dwarves. I was playing with a German friend. We had our moments but we weren't brilliant at 2v2. I split our army in half, gave my friend most of the dwarves and sent him off to take their flag. I stayed on our flag with the rest. My plan was just to hold them long enough for him to take their flag. My ace in the hole was a pair of ghol, fast moving scout units, carrying 'puss' an aoe that, when thrown at short range, exploded over units paralysing them.

A lot of time passed with me staring out over the desert wondering what was happening. Looking back on the film of the match I saw my friend meet the entire enemy army at the river and lose all his units except for three dwarves. He managed to run the dwarves off to one side and let the army pass. The two players on the other side had lost very little and had brought their whole army except for a few thrall back on their flag.

At our flag I started to see a massive army taking up position below the hill. They tried to send their dwarves in but my archers killed one. They did a spot of manoeuvring and then, to my horror, charged up the hill all at once. I tried to get a shot in with my dwarf but he died near the flag spilling bags of gunpowder on the ground. The two armies clashed. My men were a thin line, theirs were three or four deep. I ran my ghols in around the side of the enemy units. They threw their puss and it exploded over the broiling armies. It also triggered the satchel charges my dwarf had dropped moments earlier. The resulting explosions was enormous. The armies were vaporised in a shower of bloody limbs and weaponry. The few surviving units, some paralysed, some extremely low on health, fought it out. I the end I stood triumphant with a couple of warriors and two or three bowmen.

Fortunately for the opposing army their charge up the hill had left out their dwarves. I went from a full scale engagement to a tricky little fight with bomb throwing dwarves verses warriors and archers. I picked away at the dwarves with arrows while sending my warriors in to draw fire. One by one my warriors were blown to smithereens while my archers picked off the dwarves. It was very close but my surviving archers killed their last dwarf.

My friend arrived at the enemy flag with his three dwarves. The eight or so thrall tried to spread out and move towards the dwarves but it was hopeless. The dwarves systematically blew the thrall to body parts and bloody smears. Game over.