Defining moments of gaming (for you)
Nightingale Offline
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Resident Manic Farmer
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Dragon Quest Final Fantasy Splatoon 
I have always been very interested in what others consider the crowning achievements of their gaming experiences (such as defeating a particularly-strong boss they had been trying to hack apart for days, meeting certain self-imposed -or not- criteria that made the whole thing much more palatable... or maybe something as simple as doing better than they had expected while still fully enjoying the game they were currently playing).

For me, there's two examples that rose above all others while I was thinking about experiences to write up this post, both because of how significant they were to me.

Beating Pokémon Yellow: I know you are probably thinking "what? That's it?" and you would be right in saying that highlighting that would be pretty lame, but the circumstances that surrounded the act is what made it be forever burned in my memory.

Back in 1999, a friend of mine got me a red diskette which housed one of the first Gameboy emulators (and my very introduction to the word, as well as the emulated world) and a translated copy of Pokémon Yellow. This was enough to blow my mind to the point my friend could have been easily charged with manslaughter, because the Pokémon anime had been around for a solid year by that point, and we were addicted to it (and all its related merchandise, which included much more useless junk that I'm willing to admit ever wasting my hard-earned allowance money on). I pulled my very first all-nighter playing this game (much to my mom's dismay) and, because I was a DOS gamer first and foremost, didn't really know you could do stuff like saving the game thru savestates, so I kept playing it like nothing mattered, making it to Brock every time and starting anew each time I got bored enough of playing, because I was just a kid and starting over was nothing foreign to me (must have done a million times on SMB).

This would have been ok, even endlessly fun if that was all that was to it... but no, it really didn't go that way. After four days of playing Pokémon, the diskette broke (I never once thought of copying the files over to the PC itself). My friend was very accepting of this, not even complaining about it, but I was devastated. Pokémon was my life at that point in time, and I had just lost the chance of being a part of it.

I wouldn't have another chance to play it until the advent of dial-up connections, when I was able to track down a copy of it and a better emulator to give it another go... by which point the calendar had already rolled over to 2004. What followed was this agonizing, almost fever-like state in which all time not spent forcefully doing homework was spent playing the game -which never stopped being really fun-. I think I must have been doing that for about a week... and it really wasn't pretty, as I was as green as they came when it came to playing RPGs, so I kept committing costly mistakes that kept delaying the conclusion of the story and even getting me into almost unsolvable situations. I had so little of a clue of what was going on, I deposited all my Rare Candies on the PC, because I couldn't use them on battle and therefore decided they were useless xD

Despite all of that, beating the game was unlike anything else I had experienced up to that point. It really did feel like the conclusion of something big and that I, myself, had put in motion. It also cemented my love for the franchise, that would not stop being put to the test until after Black and White 2 (anything beyond that, I couldn't afford playing due to monetary reasons).

The second item I would like to tell y'all about would be the -rather recent-...

Throwing a Perfect Game on Nintendo's Baseball: This one earned its spot on the list simply because I have been playing the game for nearly two decades now and I don't think I will ever be able to repeat it.

For those of you not aware of it, in baseball a Perfect Game is achieved when the opposite team uses only the bare-minimum amount of batters it could send out on a nine-inning game (27) and none of them reaches a base by any means (hits, HBPs, nor walks). Doing that in the game was so impressive because, sooner or later, the computer would get lucky with a swing and send a ball flying just out of reach for your players, ruining your whole attempt (I have had games going perfectly fine until the fourth or fifth inning and then... ooops! Base hit). It just happens, and I guarantee you that if you play this game, the AI would be cheap enough to lay a bunt or bite on a pitch just enough to make it fall for a base hit and ruin it for you.

That day, however, everything just went according to plan: 27 up, 27 down. Twenty-four strikeouts, a fly out and two ground outs to finish it off. I'm sure I will never win it like that again, but that's fine, really. I'm glad I got to get back at the AI-controlled teams for always bunting or stealing bases in the middle of my carefully-planned games :XD:

What about you, though? What happenings or achievements made you either laugh at your luck or feel awesome because you managed to do the impossible? :D
When leaves have fallen.
And skies turned to grey.
The night keeps on closing in on the day.
A nightingale sings his song of farewell.
You better hide from her freezing hell. ~ Ice Queen, Within Temptation.


#1
Nightingale Offline
Resident Manic Farmer
Posts:
Threads:
Joined:
Jun 2018
Currently Playing
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town
XP: 5,252 Dragon Quest Final Fantasy Splatoon 
I have always been very interested in what others consider the crowning achievements of their gaming experiences (such as defeating a particularly-strong boss they had been trying to hack apart for days, meeting certain self-imposed -or not- criteria that made the whole thing much more palatable... or maybe something as simple as doing better than they had expected while still fully enjoying the game they were currently playing).

For me, there's two examples that rose above all others while I was thinking about experiences to write up this post, both because of how significant they were to me.

Beating Pokémon Yellow: I know you are probably thinking "what? That's it?" and you would be right in saying that highlighting that would be pretty lame, but the circumstances that surrounded the act is what made it be forever burned in my memory.

Back in 1999, a friend of mine got me a red diskette which housed one of the first Gameboy emulators (and my very introduction to the word, as well as the emulated world) and a translated copy of Pokémon Yellow. This was enough to blow my mind to the point my friend could have been easily charged with manslaughter, because the Pokémon anime had been around for a solid year by that point, and we were addicted to it (and all its related merchandise, which included much more useless junk that I'm willing to admit ever wasting my hard-earned allowance money on). I pulled my very first all-nighter playing this game (much to my mom's dismay) and, because I was a DOS gamer first and foremost, didn't really know you could do stuff like saving the game thru savestates, so I kept playing it like nothing mattered, making it to Brock every time and starting anew each time I got bored enough of playing, because I was just a kid and starting over was nothing foreign to me (must have done a million times on SMB).

This would have been ok, even endlessly fun if that was all that was to it... but no, it really didn't go that way. After four days of playing Pokémon, the diskette broke (I never once thought of copying the files over to the PC itself). My friend was very accepting of this, not even complaining about it, but I was devastated. Pokémon was my life at that point in time, and I had just lost the chance of being a part of it.

I wouldn't have another chance to play it until the advent of dial-up connections, when I was able to track down a copy of it and a better emulator to give it another go... by which point the calendar had already rolled over to 2004. What followed was this agonizing, almost fever-like state in which all time not spent forcefully doing homework was spent playing the game -which never stopped being really fun-. I think I must have been doing that for about a week... and it really wasn't pretty, as I was as green as they came when it came to playing RPGs, so I kept committing costly mistakes that kept delaying the conclusion of the story and even getting me into almost unsolvable situations. I had so little of a clue of what was going on, I deposited all my Rare Candies on the PC, because I couldn't use them on battle and therefore decided they were useless xD

Despite all of that, beating the game was unlike anything else I had experienced up to that point. It really did feel like the conclusion of something big and that I, myself, had put in motion. It also cemented my love for the franchise, that would not stop being put to the test until after Black and White 2 (anything beyond that, I couldn't afford playing due to monetary reasons).

The second item I would like to tell y'all about would be the -rather recent-...

Throwing a Perfect Game on Nintendo's Baseball: This one earned its spot on the list simply because I have been playing the game for nearly two decades now and I don't think I will ever be able to repeat it.

For those of you not aware of it, in baseball a Perfect Game is achieved when the opposite team uses only the bare-minimum amount of batters it could send out on a nine-inning game (27) and none of them reaches a base by any means (hits, HBPs, nor walks). Doing that in the game was so impressive because, sooner or later, the computer would get lucky with a swing and send a ball flying just out of reach for your players, ruining your whole attempt (I have had games going perfectly fine until the fourth or fifth inning and then... ooops! Base hit). It just happens, and I guarantee you that if you play this game, the AI would be cheap enough to lay a bunt or bite on a pitch just enough to make it fall for a base hit and ruin it for you.

That day, however, everything just went according to plan: 27 up, 27 down. Twenty-four strikeouts, a fly out and two ground outs to finish it off. I'm sure I will never win it like that again, but that's fine, really. I'm glad I got to get back at the AI-controlled teams for always bunting or stealing bases in the middle of my carefully-planned games :XD:

What about you, though? What happenings or achievements made you either laugh at your luck or feel awesome because you managed to do the impossible? :D
Quote


Messages In This Thread
Defining moments of gaming (for you) - by Nightingale - Jun 11th, 2018, 03:08 AM
RE: Defining moments of gaming (for you) - by macGamr - Jun 11th, 2018, 06:24 PM
RE: Defining moments of gaming (for you) - by WR91 - Sep 28th, 2020, 12:38 PM

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