https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE8PS7r3IGM&t=359

Being a 7 year old kid in the pre-internet 80's and playing SMB for the first time, totally unaware that when you save the princess, that it really isn't the princess. To this day, it's still the biggest fuck you I've ever had in gaming.

PC gamers of the late 90s know that the most amazing moment was walking out of Vortex Rikers for the first time, it was the first living breathing 3d world ever in games.

Eh that was 1998. Plenty of 3D games well before that. Unreal's tech however was unprecedented.

I never said it was the first, I said the first living breathing - it had the most realistic skybox with moving clouds, wildlife, rivers and lakes, waterfalls. Stepping out of Vortex Rikers was breathtaking and I got to experience it just when Unreal came out in summer of 98, consolists had to wait for years for something like that, na mean.

Super Mario Galaxy:
I bought this game in anticipation of Galaxy 2, I was 13 years old at the time. Going in, I thought, "OK, it's a 3D Mario game. 64 and Sunshine were really great games. I'm sure this one will be no exception." I was expecting another really great game, what I got instead, was. to this day, the only video game I have ever given a 10/10 perfect score and (still) my absolute favorite 3D Mario game!

And I realized it as soon as I began my first save file, got to the first level of the game, Good Egg Galaxy, and was greeted by this:


At that moment, I said to myself, with a huge smile on my face, "Ohhhh, it's one of those games!"

And from there, absolute beauty and majesty.

Pokémon Gold. No doubt.

I will always remember when I was like 7 years old, I surfed to the right from New Bark Town... and some NPC told me "Hey, you're in Kanto now, check your Pokégear!". When I saw the previous game map on that thing... no words can describe how thrilled I was. It was magic to say the least.

There was a part in GTA San Andreas where we left the original city that the game starts in. By that point, I felt like there was already enough content for a full game. Then I had to travel to another city and the drive to that City even felt natural. I said to myself, "This is actually a world."

Similarly, Final Fantasy VII when the team decides to go after Sephiroth. All of that initial conflict with Shin Ra? Just the introduction of the grandest adventure my young mind could comprehend.

I don't think I ever finished Grandia I (though loved Grandia II. I remember really enjoying it. I wonder if I still have my old save data....

Even though a cliché, I was the most awe struck when seeing the sun go down in Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina of Time.

Running around the garden of Peach's castle in Super Mario 64 is a close second, as is the a fore mentioned Unreal stepping outside Vortex Rikers.

The late 90's was an awesome time to be a gamer!