Childhood gaming memories

vrst

Childhood memories!

Remember back in the day when you were truly and utterly captivated by games? That you didn't know the difference between the game and the real world? When you didn't know about publishers, release dates, patches, forums and copy protection? Ah yes, it was a marvellous time, just playing every game you could get, and... pretty much like them all.

This thread is about those memories of (meta)gaming, because I think its interesting, and often hilariously funny to read about how stupid children really are.

Anyway, I'll kick off with a few points:

- When I got Street Fighter II for my SNES (after months of waiting and telling my grandma all about the characters) I was utterly confused about Street Fighter I. What was this game? I finally found out: I also owned Final Fight, and I was sure that that must have been the first Street Fighter, since they fight in the streets, and... the packaging looked exactly similar! Little did I know ALL packaging is the same...

- When first playing Zelda on the NES, whenever I got to Ganon, I had to let somebody else play and leave the room because I was so afraid of Ganon. I could not remain in the same fucking room because of this creepy fuck. For reference, this is what he looked like:



A bunch of pixels...

- When I first saw the dad of a friend of mine play Dune II on his PC, I was absolutely blown away by the scale. In fact, when he told me he was only going to attack in a couple of days, I simply couldn't believe it. The fact that you could build something that was still there after a few days boggled my mind and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

So tell me yours!

yalborap

I was obsessed with the SNES Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers beat-em-up when I was younger.

I could never beat the 5th stage's boss. I needed to have one of my parents do it, because he was just too hard.

...I spent 4+ fucking years trying to beat the game's final boss, who has a second life meter. I eventually accomplished it.

May he burn in the pits of Hades.

Daebunz

I'll always remember when I bought Super Mario 64. I was with my grandparents at wal-mart, and it was the last copy they had. The old man in the electronics department who got it out of the glass case for me said in a creepy voice...

"Arrr, It's the last of tha' mohegans!"

I'll always remember that crazy old bastard.

vrst

Blackbeard7 wrote: »

I'll always remember when I bought Super Mario 64. I was with my grandparents at wal-mart, and it was the last copy they had. The old man in the electronics department who got it out of the glass case for me said in a creepy voice...

"Arrr, It's the last of tha' mohegans!"

I'll always remember that crazy old bastard.

Mario 64 also has a special place in my childhood memories, because I can still vividly remember the toy store in my town in went to EVERY DAY to marvel at the Mario 64 demo screen. Man I had a lot of free time then.

Robos A Go Go

There was a time when blowing up the White House, the Washington Monument, and the President's motorcade in Jungle Strike was the coolest thing ever. I was like, "Take that Mr. President, sir!"

Vulpine

Lemmings, on the Acorn Archimedes. I was young, around 6-7, and just getting into computer and video gaming, and when my dad brought home the computer from work with games, this was one of the standouts. The fact that one had to sit and think about how to approach a level, how best to use the few available resources, definitely made it quite a different experience to platformers or shoot 'em ups. Finally figuring out how to beat a particularly tricky level was definitely quite satisfying.

The music in the Acorn version was much better than on the Amiga, too.

Craigopogo

I remember renting Final Fantasy 3 for the SNES when I was 10 or 11. I had no clue how to play it, to the point that it took me like 10 minutes to figure out A was the "Do Stuff" button. I managed to get to The Lete River on that first rental, and I was fucking hooked. Fifteen years later and I still love that game.

Ceno

I remember Zelda getting me in trouble with my parents. I had beaten I think the 6th dungeon, but I was playing secretly way past my bedtime. When I picked up the triforce piece, the epileptic flash that the screen produced alerted my parents in the next room, who promptly shut down the NES before I could save.

GOHMA 1988 NEVER FORGET.

vrst

Craigopogo wrote: »

I remember renting Final Fantasy 3 for the SNES when I was 10 or 11. I had no clue how to play it, to the point that it took me like 10 minutes to figure out A was the "Do Stuff" button. I managed to get to The Lete River on that first rental, and I was fucking hooked. Fifteen years later and I still love that game.

Heh, this reminds of the fact that I finished Mario Bros. on the NES without knowing you could actually shoot fireballs when you ate a flower....

Maf

I remember when my family got our first computer that I didn't have to use MSDOS to start games, it came with a bunch of free games like MDK, Interstate '76, and Age of Empires.

I couldn't really figure out what Age of Empires was about, because when I started a new game, I just had three guys standing around a hut not doing anything, surrounded by a sea of black. No matter what I clicked, I couldn't make anything happen, so I just stopped trying.

Several months later, I tried it out again. This time, I must have had the presence of mind to right click after picking one of the guys. I saw the black sea change into grass, trees, and deer. I ran and told my brother and we were both hooked.

Chen

Way back when there was no Internet and I couldn't afford magazines, I had to rely on my older cousins who showed me the coolest tricks. Like how to get the magic flutes in SMB3, the Konami code or pulling off Ryu's tatsumakisomethingmouthful. It isn't anything special nowadays, but I thought it was the coolest thing back then.

Wank

This one boss in Donkey Kong 64 scared the ever-lovin' SHIT out of me...giant Jack-in-the-box type deal that was always laughing and also turned invisible and shit. Had to pay a friend's older brother to beat that bit for me.

SimCity was a blast, even though now I can't really remember it at all.

CygnusZ

I remember being very scared of the ALF game. In the game you control ALF as he walks around the neighborhood collecting parts for his spaceship. If you collect all the parts and bring it back to the Tanner's house you win. A dog catcher is patrolling the neighborhood, if you get caught by him you see a picture of Alf in the back of the his truck and it's game over.

What really made me scared though, was that my brother told me that after they catch Alf they disect him and turn him into dog food.

shyguy

vrst wrote: »

- When first playing Zelda on the NES, whenever I got to Ganon, I had to let somebody else play and leave the room because I was so afraid of Ganon. I could not remain in the same fucking room because of this creepy fuck.

Along these lines, I doubt if anything in my life will ever instill the exact brand and magnitude of terror as the bosses in Contra did when I was five.

Particularly this fucker...



... and his goddamn arms.

korodullin

FFVII, when you first look into the Jenova tank in Midgar and that shrill, creepy music plays. It was like 3 AM Christmas day and I was 13 years old. That creeped me right the fuck out and left a pretty long-lasting memory.

Henroid

The first very clear memory I have of video games (this is aside from the brief vague images of Atari games) was the Christmas we got Super Mario Bros 3. I was so excited over it that I didn't want to open any other presents, but had to sit down for it. When we were done, we ran over to the living room where the Nintendo was hooked up...

And my older brother and cousins didn't let us play that night.

The_Scarab

This. Over and over and over.

Spending a billion hours gouging a fucking hole in the Earth just because it was easier than doing basic math at that age to work out the angles.

Judge-Z

Zelda. First time I played a game from the time I opened it (it was a birthday gift) straight through the night until my Dad and step-mother woke up the next morning. They weren't mad, but they gave me a lot of shit for being a "Zelda Zombie" and made me go to bed.

I woke up to discover that my step-mother, intrigued by the game, had started playing, and sat there chain-smoking and playing the rest of the weekend, and every time I went to my Dad's, I had to bring Zelda and my NES along for her. My Dad even made up some lyrics about our co-addiction to go with the Zelda music.

Eventually my step-mother broke down and bought her own NES. Just for Zelda. And an SNES for that system's Zelda. She was a friggin' Hyrulian addict (but the best possible step mom - the woman even took me to my first ever D&D session, and played in the group with me, despite being as far from the stereotypical gamer as possible - female and attractive).

ALSO:

Being one of like four computer-literate kids in my high school (mid to late 80s), and going to the computer lab during study hall to play Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Autoduel, and Mail Order Monsters on the two C-64s they had. We got away with it because the teacher who supervised the lab had a class, and could only see the tops of our heads through the glass from his classroom.

Hearthjaw

Beating Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, first game I ever beat, so many hours. And playing A link to the past and realising there's another world thats all dark!
Not really childhood but the endless hours me and my mates sunk into Perfect Dark and Conkers Bad Fur Day multiplayer.

zimfan

korodullin wrote: »

FFVII, when you first look into the Jenova tank in Midgar and that shrill, creepy music plays. It was like 3 AM Christmas day and I was 13 years old. That creeped me right the fuck out and left a pretty long-lasting memory.

oh my god this

except I was 7 and I couldn't go on

it freaked me out

mwoody

I purchased and attempted to play the Infocom text adventure "Sorcerer" when I was... probably around 12, based on the computer I remember playing it on. I was doing fine until I got to the locked chest in the basement. Around its edges were all different colored buttons that merely clicked when I told it to push them; it drove me mad. The only other thing I could determine was that elsewhere in the first area, a piece of paper would change every playthrough, its contents consisting of random creature names. I.e. "the current password is Dryad" or somesuch.

After weeks of struggle and becoming so good at that first little section that I would literally do it with my eyes closed just for kicks, I gave up. It wasn't until college that I found the disks and manual in an old box and decided to try once again to figure out that damn chest. I'd love to tell you that my adult mind figured it out immediately, but nope - just as stumped as ever, only now with the distinctly annoying idea that I'd grown no more intelligent over the past 10 years.

My salvation came when I decided to take the little ""Field Guide to the Creatures of Frobozz" with me for reading on the toilet one lazy Sunday afternoon. See if you pick up on what I'd ignored for over a decade:

Yes, that's right. I was defeated for the entirety of my teenage years by the goddamn COPY PROTECTION.

Slapnuts

Weird that most of my video game memories revolve around some sort of medical problem.

I remember staying up all night to beat Super Mario 3 from beginning to end, then getting chicken pox the same day.

I had to have my appendix out and when my brother came to visit me in the hospital he brought me Street Cop (which was a Power Pad game). When I got to come home from the hospital my brother had to do the running and I did the controls. The system worked so well, that we continued playing that way for years.

When I was a kid I fell of my bike going at a pretty high rate of speed and had some pretty bad road rash burns. So bad, in fact, that I had to go to St. Jude's Hospital in Montreal to get treated. I remember one morning I had to get up incredibly early to go and couldn't sleep so I started playing Gunsmoke. It was a game I never had got past the second or third level on. For some reason, on that very day I ended up beating it just before I had to leave to go to the hospital. That is one of my fondest game memories.

I also remember being so obsessed with Mega Man 2 that I recorded the soundtrack on a cassette tape and listened to it when I wasn't playing the game.

Godfather

My first PC game as a kid was Star Wars: Dark Forces, which was basically DOOM with a star wars paint job.

The first time I saw the level 2 super storm trooper boss I paused the game and ran from the room. Scared the hell out of me, and I left my computer on for a good four hours before I had the courage to come back and finish the job.

Khavall

One of my strongest memories is UFO Defense. My sister would play it, and I would hide in an adjacent chair because it was so goddamn scary. I loved it but GOD I couldn't watch her play it because OH MY GOD ALIENS JUST SHOT AT YOU WHERE ARE THEY

DekuStick

I remember I rented Zelda OoT. I ran around the forest for two days. I couldn't find the sword. I was in the area where the sword was, and ran all around there but never saw that little jut out with the chest. And now look at me, I'm named an item.

Wasted the whole rental looking for it. Bought it and found it in no time.

Romantic Undead

Fondest memory was receiving the first issue of NINTENDO POWER IN CANADA which featured Mega Man 2. I got my parents to drive me to the video store in town (half an hour away) to rent a copy. Much to my dismay, all copies were rented but I could reserve it. So I did, only to discover that the game was completely booked for a WHOLE FREAKIN MONTH!

I kept my receipt, printed on a dot-matrix printer, pinned to my wall for that entire month, barely able to weather the wait when I would hold that precious, precious game in my hands. I DREAMT about that damn game, poring over my copy of Nintendo Power trying to decide if I would play the game in the same order the magazine proposed or end up a maverick and doing something different.

Finally, the fateful day came, and I, gripping my prize firmly, spent every possible waking hour devouring that game. The weekend went by oh so fast, and I sadly had to return it before I could beat it. But oh... the following christmas was a glorious season indeed....

anoffday

I remember when I was playing Super Mario World, I was beating it for like the 10th time and someone had flipped a light switch which was hooked up to my SNES. I was pretty mad.

Daebunz

I also remember spending an entire weekend at my friend's house when we were little, playing Yoshi's Island on his SNES. We'd pass the controller when one of us either died or finished a level.

EDIT: I also played the hell out of pretty much every crash bandicoot with this guy. We'd play Crash Bash for days on end.

Taya

When I was young my cousin rented a "Nintendo". He hooked it up and played a game where you played as a boy in green and there were three hearts in the corner. A few weeks later my cousin told me he was going to rent a Nintendo again. I was excited to see that game with the three hearts. Then he informed me that a "Nintendo" wasn't referring to that one game; it was a system that could play many games. I was a little disappointed.

I remember my Dad playing a Space Quest-type game on the computer. Whenever you checked your crashed spaceship it would say something like "The metal is thinner than before". This terrified me and I had nightmares.

My Mom liked to play Air Fortress which also terrified me. It was fun and games until the core was destroyed and you had to make your way back to your ship while the base shook and played creepy music and oh god you're stuck under that piston we'll never make it aaaaaa

I tried playing Air Fortress again when I was in high school and nope, can't play it, it still scares me.

Beren39

It's amazing how many random things in games can scare us, even today I get all hyped up if something is chasing me in a game, no matter how benign, because of OoT. I loved the hell out of that game, but when I was 8, man was it terrifying. Howling wolfos, skeletons bursting out of the field at night, dry-humping zombies. Probably the worst one was the Forest Temple and that creepy music, plus the huge Moblin outside swinging his club. It was a pretty big moment for me when I replayed the game at 12 and found out that I could kill that guy by slashing at his legs, I'd always run screaming between them before.

Zerokku

Link to the past is one of those games from my childhood that is ingrained into my memory. I know every puzzle, every secret by heart. I can beat the game in a bit over half a day pretty easily.

korodullin

anoffday wrote: »

I remember when I was playing Super Mario World, I was beating it for like the 10th time and someone had flipped a light switch which was hooked up to my SNES. I was pretty mad.

How... does that even work?

One of the strongest gaming memories as a child was Christmas 1992. I was pretty pumped for the Super NES (I had an EGM Buyer's Guide from the year the SNES launched and I read that thing ragged looking at all the SNES launch game screens and info), but was still having fun on my PC (Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sierra adventures, and Gold Box AD&D games can make even a Tandy 1000 last forever) and NES, so I was totally not expecting my parents to tell me to get something out of a kitchen cabinet, which when opened, revealed a brand new SNES and several games including Zelda and Castlevania IV. If that weren't exciting enough, I was told to go to my room for a minute, where I saw a brand new 24" TV that had been set up some time during the night without my knowledge.

I was completely blown away.

Zerokku

korodullin wrote: »

anoffday wrote: »

I remember when I was playing Super Mario World, I was beating it for like the 10th time and someone had flipped a light switch which was hooked up to my SNES. I was pretty mad.

How... does that even work?

Switch is wired to give power to a certain socket, usually for lights. Instead of having a light in that socket he had his snes power cord plugged in there?

cj iwakura

I remember when I first played Dragon Warrior and sided with the final boss because I was scared of it.

When the screen turned red, I panicked and shut the system off thinking I'd caused the end of the world. (I was like 7 or 8, and the same reaction happened to Ninja Gaiden II's endgame not long after.)

Hitsuraptor

This


Would scare the crap outta me when I was little kid playing on the Amiga, I'd be happily playing New Zealand story trying to rescue the female kiwi bird when WHAM that would pop up, mind you I would've only been about 5-6years old at the time and I'd totally be ok with it now if it happended

I so wouldn't be

Khavall

Hitsuraptor wrote: »

This


Would scare the crap outta me when I was little kid playing on the Amiga, I'd be happily playing New Zealand story trying to rescue the female kiwi bird when WHAM that would pop up, mind you I would've only been about 5-6years old at the time and I'd totally be ok with it now if it happended

I so wouldn't be

I feel the same way about UFO defense still.


I play it like crazy, but it still has that really creepy scary vibe to me.. even though I'm looking back through more aged eyes, and I play Dead Space and most of what I'm thinking is "Aw SHIT this is some great-assed sound design" when I hear the "dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun" of UFO defense I shit my pants a little.

Zenitram

The_Scarab wrote: »

This. Over and over and over.

Spending a billion hours gouging a fucking hole in the Earth just because it was easier than doing basic math at that age to work out the angles.

Holy shit what was this game called? I remember the graphics and the banana-throwing, but not the title!

Godfather

I remember getting Yoshi's Island as a kid, having saved up all month for it.

Played it during the weekend, and got near the end of the first world, thinking that was the end of the game. After I beat the big bad of the first world, and found out that there were seven more to go, well...

Zerokku

Zenitram wrote: »

The_Scarab wrote: »

This. Over and over and over.

Spending a billion hours gouging a fucking hole in the Earth just because it was easier than doing basic math at that age to work out the angles.

Holy shit what was this game called? I remember the graphics and the banana-throwing, but not the title!

Gorillas

Just found a download for it here -

http://www.dosgames.com/forum/post-85146.html

Funguy McAids

There was one game on computer I think it was from the 80's somewhere. It had maybe 6 colors but mostly used black. It was a point and click adventure inside an old house and at some points the entire screen would suddenly fill with a bloody vampire face and scream. Scared the shit out of me as an 8-10 year old.

Anyone know what this was?

SirUltimos

Playing games with my grandpa. By "playing" it mostly meant that I would watch and give him a "tip" every now and then (Oh no! Jump!). It was especially exciting going through RPGs with him because it was like a story was playing out in front of me and I was waiting for the day that I could play it myself.