What's your greatest "gaming high" you've been chasing ever since? Please take care not to spoil anything, if you are going to be story-specific.

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨eru777@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨retrogaming@lemmy.world⁩

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For 90s kids, there will be no explanation necessary. For others, well, pokemon was a phenomenon. It was everywhere, on TV, in magazines, toys, stickers. You could trade pokemon at the school excursion on the bus. You felt alive in this world, pokemon gen 1-2 were the pinnacle of pokemon for me. And in gen2, finishing the game, and lo and behold, there’s a whole other region (kanto) waiting for you to explore it. The night cycle in the game blew my mind in ways that I have been chasing ever since. I know it will never be reached again, but the memory will remain as powerful as it was that evening of the early 00s. What is your greatest gaming high, that you know will never be topped again, and that you have been chasing ever since?

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
LAN party 2012ish. Playing Farcry 2 team Deathmatch multiplayer on the Clear Cut map. First team to 100 kills win. I got 60 of the 100 kills to win and from that point forward I was no longer permitted to use the 50cal sniper rifle.

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olafurp@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not sure which one I would pick. Pokemon Blue, Oblivion, Star Wars KOTOR, Warcraft 3 or Super Mario 64 maybe. All of them were amazing and had a lasting impact on me.

More recently I played Enter the Gungeon, Slay the Spire and Return to the Obra Dinn

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Olap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Total Annihilation on a LAN

Red Alert cut-scenes

Halo on a LAN

Battlefield online with voice comms

Couch co-op gears of war, and Army of 2

Finishing Mass Effect

Worms, hot-seat

Instagib. Oh fuck, instagib is pure adrenaline

Just one more turn

Last 5 in Battle Royale, never yet finished last!

You have died of dysentery

Hitting that last alien

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Console_Modder@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The first game I ever sat down and played for extended periods of time and the first game I ever completed was Majora’s Mask on the N64. It was and still is such a weird game from the town and the people living in it, to the masks, the Moon, and Skull Kid. I loved every little piece of this world, but the constant counting down to the end of the world and the reactions of all the characters when the end was near scared me. It made me anxious, stressed, and fucking terrified, but I would always go back to it. I honestly don’t remember how long it took me to finish it, maybe a couple months, maybe the better part of a year, but eventually I did finish it. And it literally felt like the weight of the Moon was lifted from my shoulders, I was excited and relieved and… I literally cannot explain the mix of emotions lil 6 year old me felt in that moment, but it’s what really made me interested in video games.

A couple of years later, a cousin gifted me a copy of Halo CE. Instantly became obsessed with it. My parents’ computer at the time was absolute dogshit (we didn’t really have much use for a computer anyway) and we only had dial up internet for maybe 2 years (we didn’t have much use for the internet either lol) but that didn’t stop me from playing both the single player and multiplayer as much as I could. Fast forward about 2 decades, and in college one of my friends starts playing Halo CE out of nowhere. It was also a cracked copy of the game so it very quickly got floated around to everyone in our friend group. We would have little lan parties to play games and in Halo we would play 3v4 or 3v3 matches, but everyone quickly started to see a pattern. Whoever played on a team with me would win, and I would always be on the top of the scoreboard by like 10 kills. Everybody decided to do me a favor (gang up on me) and humble me (wipe the smug look off my face) by tricking me into a 5v1 match. I won. We played two more games like that, cuz the first one had to be a fluke. I won those as well. I don’t know if I held onto those Halo skills and muscle memory for that 2 fucking decades, but at the time I was also feeding a pretty bad CSGO addiction, but ya know. It’s what it’s. And that’s why I can’t play fps games against my friends, because I was playing at a completely different skill level and it felt like I was bullying them 💜

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Toes@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
When I was a young kid, I didn’t understand that the NPCs and game world were essentially fixed. I genuinely believed they were just as alive as I was, and was participating in their world.

I would go around following NPCs, try talking to them and felt like I was really helping someone when I would do quests and such. The games I remember that feeling the best was Zelda OOT & Majora’s Mask. Doing the couples mask quest line all on my own and my little notebook I kept track of what people needed was wild. Man I wish I didn’t lose that book so I could look at it again.

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- k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I was well-aware by the time I played OoT that NPC were just NPCs, but I think I felt the same bewilderment as you did when I first played Shenmue. I haven’t played in a long time so I’m not sure if it still holds up, but at the time, that world made me feel like the NPCs were real people with actual lives.
  
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Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
TFC “Sillyzone” server. so many fun mods and oddities like the dj/lightshow nights.

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boogiebored@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Also most all my friends and co workers getting on Vent to play WoW regularly and leveling up characters shortly after Burning Crusade released. Gaming hasn’t been the same since.

Next best would be COVID era playing Red Dead Online and drinking IRL and fishing in game until IRL dawn with a friend. Sunrise in that game is such a good representation of a sleepy sunrise.

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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The experience of a brand new game with a new computer build that upped the standards. Particularly from the ‘90s to ~2010. Games pushed ahead with more expansive levels, better graphics, better sound, larger worlds. All more incredible than what you’d ever played before. It was a joy just to see it and experience it on top of whatever storyline and toys were in the game itself. Every year there was a leap in some facet of gaming.

I haven’t really experienced that since. PC builds are just way more expensive for minimal gain, franchises are just rehashes of old games, and it’s hard to find storylines and worlds that are fleshed out enough to make me want to invest the time.

On an individual game level, Battlefield’s Gunmaster mode is a real rush. Success can be ripped away instantly, you’re on your own skill, PvAll, and it’s a race to the top. Intense AF to win, got my heart rate up.

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- LePoisson@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Gonna have to check out that gun master mode, hopefully it’s in BF6
  
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cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Hearing that we were missing half the game in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

This one IS a bit of a spoiler… but not much. For one, everyone knows it. Two, the game came out in the 1990s. That’s why everyone knows it. So anyway.

So you play this game. It’s like a Super NES game, but it’s on the PlayStation. It has CD quality music and voice acting (actually pretty shitty voice acting, but, I mean, it’s CD quality audio). Actually, let’s qualify that with a 45 second video. Aside from Dracula’s final line in the exchange, the lines are poorly read from a poorly written script and it shows. And yet, it’s still awesome.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tV33Ewf_hw

Anyway, it’s a fairly long game as far as Super NES games go. You go through the entire castle, you eventually confront the bad guy (who isn’t Dracula — he’s dead, and has been dead, you kill some other guy) and the credits roll. You won. Fine game. However, shortly after the game came out — it didn’t really take that long, but we weren’t all on the Internet then, so it took longer to get to some people — that if you did a few very specific things, you would instead see this ball above the last boss. Attack that instead, and the last boss is revealed to be a puppet, and he lets you pass… into the inverted castle. It’s the whole ass castle, but it’s upside down and has harder monsters. And take a wild guess who you fight at the end?

Its Game Boy Advance sequel, Aria of Sorrow, attempted a similar thing. Beat the last boss and you win, but do it with three souls equipped and… well, I’m actually not gonna spoil that. A cool thing happens. And you can go to this final area, it’s not a long area. If you win, you win the game harder… but if you lose in that final battle, you get this awesome cut scene that calls back to the video I posted above. So while they reused the gimmick, they did it in the best possible way.

None of the Castlevania games have captured that magic since. Bloodstained, the spinoff by the creator of Symphony of the Night, kind of does a similar thing in a couple spots, and it does have the false final boss, but I think it’s more clearly called out and I think you’re meant to know it’s not the end of the game. And I feel like it’s not a win if you take it, the game kinda laughs at you. Another game that poked fun at this was Shadow Complex, the shameless ripoff of Super Metroid on Xbox 360/Live Arcade. (Great game though!) After losing your girlfriend to paramilitary thugs in the Pacific Northwest and exploring a bit of their compound, you eventually get back to your car (Jeep?) and you have the option to leave. Credits roll and you pop an achievement called “Plenty of Fish in the Sea.” They knew you’d try it and rewarded you for doing so, but it’s clearly not the real ending (it’s too soon).

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GerardsGuitar@retrolemmy.com ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Playing Skate 2 for the first time on PS3 whilst blasting Fall Out Boy on my CD player.

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vga@sopuli.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Alundra for PS1 perfected the Zelda genre and I haven’t quite ever played anything like it.

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WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
When Myst first came out and then me and all my friends carrying our controllers around with us for spontaneous (but constant) quake 3 arena battles on the Dreamcast. Those were the days I’ll always remember but never be able to relive.

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urata@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The early days of Asheron’s Call. One of the earliest MMORPGs with a 3d game world. It was cool being in a giant world with thousands of other people who were all trying to figure out the game and explore the world. There were monthly updates that were adding all kinds of new stuff all the time. I don’t really care for MMOs any more but it was a cool experience at the time.

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otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I still chase after the first playthrough experience of Okami. It was a time before novel ways of interacting with the game world were the norm. Everyone I knew at the time was playing CoD (some even just played Zombies mode and nothing else), Battlefield, Halo, GTA, Pokémon, Mario, Zelda… all titles that “everyone” played at the time.

When I saw Okami on a commercial, I knew I had to own it. There was nothing like it at the time and the way it pulled from Japanese culture was such a new concept to me. The way you can stop time at any point and paint shapes on the screen was just too cool to pass up. Not to mention, the almost hand-drawn aesthetic was still one of very few at the time.

I will admit, I can’t stand the experience on Wii. I can only enjoy it on controller because of how awkward painting with a 6-foot brush is.

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fdnomad@programming.dev ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In Cookie Clicker when you manage to stack 3 fortune cookie modifiers. Numbers going up so fucking hard.

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brax@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I dunno if it was a high per se, but I used to love playing Dreamcast with my friends at lunch every day in high school. I dunno if I long to do it again, but the memories are nice.

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Arkhive@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Not retro at all, but Destiny 2 Forsaken. I’ve always loved the Bungie game feel and gunplay, and I finally kicked my D2 habit right after Edge of Salvation week one. I’ve tried many single player shooters since and have yet to find something that comes close to scratching the itch.

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sundray@lemmus.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Metal Gear Solid V: Mission 16.

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poolhelmetinstrument@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Arma 3 Exile

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