Learning I only beat half of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and then playing the rest. And then playing it again and again, and finding new crazy weapons I’d never seen before. Learning that some weapons (like Sword of Dawn) do something other than just slash. Later reading GameFaqs .txt guides to learn about even more stuff I had no idea about, so end up playing it even more.

And playing Final Fantasy 7 right before all of that. When the demo disc of Final Fantasy 7 came out (inside a Playstation Underground magazine), I lost me shit. I had loved, loved, loved FF4 and 6 (2 and 3 in the US), and 7 was just insane. The graphics, the music, everything. Absolutely revolutionary. That game was a reason to buy a PS1. I remember maxing out the playtime at 99 hours in my first playthrough.