I remember a few from various stages of my life (born 1984).
Seeing the demo footage of Sonic 2 in Woolworths and thinking the leaves falling down in Aquatic Ruin zone was so cool and advanced.
The original Sega arcade of Virtua Racing with the moving cars completely blew me away.
I remember my uncle loading up Cannon Fodder on his Amiga, and a REAL song with REAL music came out, along with REAL photos. I was amazed haha.
A few years on I remember a PlayStation demo disc having promo footage of the first Gran Turismo and it looked so real to me, I watched it over and over. The first Driver on PS1 looked absolutely amazing to me also.
Pairing two TVs and two Xbox consoles together for an eight player local Halo death match. Online gaming will never match the energy in that room.
My buddies and I had easy access to a theater, which had giant curved walls on each side of the stage. We hooked up three projectors to three Xboxes; One projector for the stage, and one for each of the curved walls. Then we ran them into the sound system.
We did it two or three times a week for months.
The funny part is that you could always tell who was screenlooking, because the screens were so big that you had to physically turn your head away from your own screen. And at that point you just die, cuz you start missing the people right in front of you.
Starfox 64. I played it at Toys R Us…oh, uh, kids Toys R Us was a toy store that had been around for like 80 years. And everybody knew it was never going to close, because there was always going to be more kids…and then it closed.
Anyways, they had a demo unit you could play. It reset every 10 minutes. Then Mario would pop up and say “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING NINTENDO 64, WHO’S NEXT???”
And like a stupid teenager, I yelled “I AM!!!” as if it were voice activated. It wasn’t. I was just a dumb teenager telling at a CRT tv.
One time I got so invested in it, that I didn’t even notice a kid was behind me for like 20 minutes. And eventually he said “Excuse me…you went 3 times in a row. Can I try please?”
Man I felt like an ass. He probably felt like I was bullying him out of playing. I was twice his age, twice his size, and even compared to other kids my own age I was always a kid who was at the top of the food chain. I genuinely didn’t see him, and thought I was alone. I let him play all the turns until his family made him leave.
But those visuals…THE RUMBLE PACK!!! OH MY GOD!!! THE CONTROLLER SHAKES WHEN YOUR SHIP GETS DAMAGED!!! And it had 3D space ship flying and voice acting, and oh my god…
It was all very overwelming. I’m not saying Mario 64 is a bad game. I loved it. But Starfox 64 was the game that made me buy a game for a console I didn’t even own. I was THAT sure that I’d have to have an N64 one day…that day was like 6 months later.
There are some very memorable games.
No game has ever matched the freedom of Morrowind. You are only limited by yourself. Even Oblivion and Skyrim feel restricted by the game itself.
Half-Life 2 interacting with the environment. I must have played with the can for hours the first time.
Final Fantasy VIII though was the single most impressive game for the hardware it came out on. The character models being actual human proportion, the summons looking like actual monsters, and the FMVs where people look like damn people in a movie.
In the same vein, FFX being described as looking like FFVIII’s FMVs but all the time. And then living up to the hype.
Final Fantasy 6, the three mechs marching through the snow in 3d… followed by the emotional impact of the game elevated gaming to another level I had never before seen
