This thread was originally conceived by user Versus_Evil, so all credit goes to him!

The topic is simple: List one memory you have of a game that's stuck with you. Whether it was playing the game itself, going to pick up a copy at the store or you crying when the credits rolled!

If somehow such memory were to bring spoilers, be sure to cover them!

I remember when you didn't need DLC.



Ahhh, good times.

Well one memory is some nearly twenty years ago I knew I'd be headed to the airport to travel to a relative's house for a week or so and desperately wanted my Banjo & Kazooie for the journey. The problem? It was releasing that day and Toys R' Us wasn't opening early enough for me to pick up the preorder.

So I got up super early, got ready, packed, and convinced my VERY (in retrospect) accommodating mother to bring me to Toys R' Us well before it opened. There, I knocked on the door until people showed up, explained my situation, and they eventually actually gave me my game nearly two hours before opening. Really, I'm surprised anyone was even there that early.

Everyone was so unnecessarily nice and I was probably the first person to buy the game in West Palm Beach because of it. I remember later that year we traveled again to some relatives house for about a two week stay with my cousins so we called each other ahead of time and I wound up bringing very nearly my entire library consisting of Mario 64, Banjo & Kazooie, Starfox 64, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Twisted Metal 2.

Needless to say, while I'd always liked games to some extent, it was that trip that really cemented my love for them. We had so much damn fun swapping between those titles; seriously, looking at that list now it's rather incredible how many all-time great games there were between 96 and 98, not just in regards to reviews but the type that sear their experience into your mind for the remainder of your life. I'll never forget that trip.

Oh, and while I was already a fan of the original Warcraft, they introduced me to the original Diablo on that trip too. Damn, that was the best two weeks I've probably had with video games.

The rage inducing jumps in Alundra. I remember a segment where you had to make several jumps in succession while the platforms crumbled under you. If you didn't make it, you had to start all over again from the floor, where enemies were running around. My hands were painful claws by the time I finally made it. It wasn't one of those "yay I finally made it" feelings, either, it was double middle fingers at the screen after I made sure mom wasn't looking.

I feel like I've played enough platformers to last me a lifetime. Also, controllers used to seriously suck.

I remember getting 101% on the 1st jak and Daxter game. Back then I didnt use walkthroughs or anything and spent a lot of time looking for everything. After that I was able to do it all in less than a day lol.

I remember when people played games because they were fun, not because of how realistic they looked. Those days are long gone.

Dating back to the Intellivision when they advertised their superior graphics to the Atari VCS, people have always cared about visuals. We may seem to have an obsession today, but to some degree it's always been there and there has to be decent gameplay accompanying the high res graphics.

That said, even now a beautiful game won't necessarily sell as well as a fun one (such as the Order). Heck, in the past ten years probably the two most successful games were Wii Sports and Minecraft.

There's still a "hardcore" stigma against games that look like cartoons. I understand that intellivision and atari and commodore had a bout about graphics but that's as good as graphics were back then. Now we have all different ways of approaching graphical art styles and visuals, to me, should take a back seat to gameplay. 

My way of thinking is more eastern. Atari, Intellivision...are American made companies. Western companies. They usually put graphics ahead of gameplay which is a trend I continue to see today. Yeah, NES didn't look like the Master System but guess what sold better? This is a subject that could take either side as Wii Sports and Minecraft are casual games. They're not really aimed at hard core gamers. This in itself breeds another topic or thread.

I've heard people on VGChartz ask why people play games that look bad and cartoony like Mario or Zelda. The amount of people who think like that are enormous. Not that there's anything wrong with that type of thinking, everyone is entiteld to their own opinions but that doesn't change the fact that people criticise graphics before even playing the game. So, in short, I guess my way of thinking is more eastern in design philosophy. Make a game that plays well and graphics that aren't complete crud. If they look amazing, that's even better! But at least for me, I'm not going to not play a game because it's too realistic or too stylistic.

I suppose there may be something cultural there. If you were to look at some of the contemporary art styles of the two regions over the past few centuries, the west did seem more focused on imbuing nearly photo-realistic paintings with some romance, while one thing I've often enjoyed about some of the painting in Japan is that it seems to take a minimalist approach, preferring to use as few strokes of the brush as possible and often leaving the background almost completely abstract.

That's generalizing, though, and western art began moving away from that well over a century ago. If anyone started pushing graphics and cinematics to the edge on consoles it was Japan with Squaresoft and such; the only competing western studio I can think of in that time frame would have been Blizzard, but then PC gamers have always enjoyed seeing how much performance they can squeeze out of their hardware.

For the record, I don't believe Atari or Intellivision ever put graphics ahead of gameplay, or at the very least that was not their usual mode of operation. Just as today, graphics were an edge or a trump card, selling people on it only if the gameplay was also there to enjoy. Given that the NES you mention had more success in the North American market than in Japan or Europe and that, overall, North America has been Nintendo's steadiest market, it seems clear to me that westerners are not somehow concerned only with visuals over gameplay.

I get what you're saying though, as it can definitely be difficult to sell some people on "cartoonish" graphics. Really, I believe if the Wii U had 3rd party and online support you'd see greater acceptance of it and I know first hand that people still love games like Mario Kart 8, but they also want those games like the Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 that are pushing the envelope of what's possible.

Even still, the indie scene is bigger than ever, bad graphics and all. If anything, I'd say people are harder to sell on graphics alone than they used to be, as the improvements are becoming increasingly difficult to discern and at this point you'd need some very expensive hardware and monitor/televisions to truly experience the cutting edge. 

Stop making stuff up.  That's not true and you know it, otherwise games like Ryse, The Order, and Crysis 3 would have been much more popular and recieved far less criticism.  There is no reason for you to derail this thread because people have different taste in gaming than you.