Best Ever Videogame Moments

• Making it look like Mario was flying by timing successive jumps just right in Donkey Kong Game & Watch. Has infected my dream life ever since
• Finishing primitive Defender rip off on Spectrum (forget name) to be greeted with fireworks and 'CONGRATURATION YOU SUCCESS' message. (early All Your Base moment)
• Making it look like a whore is giving you a blowjob in Grand Theft Auto 3.

  ― N., Tuesday, 12 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The appearance of the T-Rex in the original "Tomb Raider".

The final battle of "Baldur's Gate II: Throne Of Bhaal".

Others will be listed as I think of them.

t-rex in 3d monster maze (obligatory mention)
Blowing up the Death Star in the original vector arcade game.

Tom: tetris for gameboy could be completed on the "B" setting and you got this penguin and a space shuttle and other weird things.

Remember the first time you played mario one and went down that tube and were like... damn there's just coins all over this room! That was a great moment.

I think I may be developing an unhealthy tank-based obsession.

sword fighting in secret of monkey island

Ah, the eighties. Such innocence.

Oh believe me, I KNOW. That game just blew my mind all the way around.

Another great thing from that game; switching from fighter to thief to mage and back, eventually becoming frighteningly bad-ass at all of them. Also, the conversation with the old witch in her weird lair was out-of-control cool.

Some of the great lines from Grim Fandango make for hilarity: "Run you pigeons, it's Robert Frost!", "It's the mug rack... at the end of the world!", "Say hello Mr. Rag" ("hello Mr. Rag!").

The first time you get Cool on Parappa the Rapper, and you get to go off on some herky-jerky freestyle shit. Yeah.

Or the cheat code for Contra.

That's why I always plumped for Ryu: perfectly balanced.

Best Gaming Moments:

- Shoo-ryu-ken (Ryu's Dragon Punch) - Haa-do-ken (Ryu's Fireball)

Poetry.

Props to Chun Li for having the simplest, most powerful move - keep pressing KICK, yeah!

From "A boss by any other name":

"Of course, nothing could beat the feeling of beating up one of the bosses, the infamous rogue's gallery composed of Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison. But do you remember scratching your heads in wonder because some arcade machines apparently messed up the names of the bosses? Everyone knew the high-flying Spaniard with the nifty claw was named Vega, but in some machines he was called Balrog, while Balrog the boxing character was called M. Bison! What gives? A glitch or did someone drink too much sake?

"Nope, those machines weren't defective and you weren't seeing things. The truth is that Capcom decided to switch around the names of the bosses when they released the game in North America. In the Japanese original, M. Bison was really the name of the boxing character, which was a caricature of Mike Tyson. A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, right, but Capcom was concerned about causing a stink. This solves another mystery about the "M" in "M. Bison," because it originally stood for Mike.

"So, with the switcheroo that transformed M. Bison into Balrog, the Spaniard Balrog became Vega, and the Vega in the Japanese version became the infamous final boss M. Bison that we all know and love (beating up, that is). Sagat remained Sagat. "

In Halo when the Flood first appear and there are those creepy Aliens ripoff cut-scenes and then the whole game does a sort of backflip because having become adept and lets face it probably a little cocky at fighting Covenant over the previous levels suddenly there are spores everywhere and zombie-things and you are shitting yourself and you get killed out of sheer panic straightaway......wow.

Also: Ico, meeting Yorba. Prince of Persia, the first twenty minutes. Jet Grind Radio, Grind Square and the last level. And Rise of Nations, jumping into a 1v1 for the first time, the way it just keeps on accelerating, draws you into the horror and frenzy, so un- RTS (so what RTSes should be).

Also the sheer exhilaration of finding the rat tail in the first Final Fantasy game with like two hit points left, wondering how I'd make out of the dungeon alive and then being magically transported out to have my guys be turned into ninjas and such!

Longer, which is why I never beat it most likely. I do remember hours of hanging out in that one grove by the elf village killing ogres for exp though.

In Final Fantasy 8, right, there's this bit where you're fighting in a floating military academy airship thing, and the enemy dudes have these massive armoured full body suit things that can fly, and one of them rushes you and hits you so hard you burst through the wall of the ship and fall out. You end up both hanging off this flying thing in mid air, zipping in and out of this massive FMV battle going on in the background having to button bash as fast as you can to punch and headbutt the guy, causing him to fall to his death.

All the bits of Final Fantasy 7 with Sephiroth.

Lots of the running along walls and elegant dismemberment in the recent Prince of Persia are really good as well.

I found a cheat/bug for SWOS and wrote into Amiga Power, and they printed it. Jon Hare's response? He told me to stick a banana up my arse.

"you fight like a dairy farmer."
"how appropriate. you fight like a cow."

yeah, that game is incredible.

final fantasy tactics

Actually, Half Life generally. That game flipped my wig.

- actually managing to pull off Ivy's Summon Suffering throw in Soul Calibur

- the ending of Starcraft

- the first time you get attacked by a Fiend (or whatever the jumpy spiky-armed things were called) in Quake.

- lots of FFVII (the first time you hear the boss music, escaping on the Tiny Bronco, getting to the end of the dungeon in Cosmo Canyon, the first time you get onto the world map from Midgar, &c&c&c)

Base Wars for four reasons:
1. Hitting a grand slam. Camera cuts to a space ship and four little shuttles fly out and do some crazy maneuvers to reveal "GRAND SLAM"
2. Intentionally beaning a low-HP cyborg with a pitch. They kind of freeze, flicker, and then explode right on home plate-- and you don't even have to walk them.
3. Fighting any other cyborg as a moto-borg, and trapping them in a perpetual back-flip-wheel-uppercut.
4. After you get the laser-sword, going up to your opponent and just sticking them with it and automatically winning the battle

In Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in the dark world when you've retrieved the flute and play it for the kid sitting on the stump. He says, "I'd like to hear it one last time," then you play it and he turns into a tree... Still get choked up about that one.

Mega Man 2 for a few reasons:
1. In the final stage, walking through that creepy yellowish cave where with NO sound excpept the occasional drop of acid from the ceiling.
2. Beating Dr. Wily with bubble man, and then he's revealed and throws himself on the ground and begs for forgiveness.
3. The closing sequence, where megaman is walking through the seasons (rain, falling leaves, snow) and his helmet keeps changing colors as he walks along a desolate road. 2x the choke-up.

Catching the falling boss wand in Super Mario Bros. 3 before it can bounce.

Dhaslim (streching limbs, yogas flame and fire, etc.)

Ultimate (*Ultimate*) combos in Killer Instinct.

Any interactions with the grim reaper in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

The entirety of Final Fantasies III and II, the two best video games ever made, respectively.

Most recently (i only get to play video games when i visit my parents house) the Prince of Persia games have several rowdy moments.

you are a fucking idiot.

the more i drink, the more i remember: Twisted Metal

the music for robocop on the amstrad.

nearly all of link's awakening.

breaking records in olympic gold

the music for robocop on the amstrad.

nearly all of link's awakening.

breaking records in olympic gold

also this gold rush game on an ye olde apple mac that we had to play at school (because i was in BENDIGO, OSTRAYA world capital of stupid hicks at the time) where i was the only one smart enough not the get caught in the quicksand trying to find THE BIG GOLD NUGGET while owning shares in some chinese bloke's garden

i ws all like yeah this is ok ("time for u to jump off this mortal coil, frog!" = class) but wasnt getting the magic.

then i get to TEH TRIAL!! oh my days the chancellor is banging me over with these witnesses, aah its too much

it did? this almost - almost - makes me consider firing up the iMac, where Fuse lives, to check. was this the spectrum version?

i think my single favourite gaming moment ever was seeing this:

http://www.bhlegend.com/screenshots/Spectrum%20Jet%20Set%20Willy%20Screenshot%2001prev.gif

simply because my mate's copy somehow didn't have the little protection card thing, and rather than go back to the shop and ask for it, we spent most of an afternoon guessing at colour codes, reloading, guessing, reloading ... until suddenly, with odds of ... it can't be as low as 256 to 1, surely? ... we got in.

of course, we ended up in the attic on the first go. and you know what that meant ...

I used to draw those cards out with felt pens. It would take hours but I'd get to steal the game and so worth it.

Actually my Amiga version of Elite was a non-cracked copy that asked for a word from the manual when you loaded it. I would keep re-booting until the word was 'TEH'.

No, the Amstrad one.

I was so pleased when I finally managed to win on Starquake. I can still remember most of the useful teleporter names.

cheops

er ... er ... er ... FUCK, i know they're in there somewhere. come on, brain, it's not like you have anything useful to remember.

what are you guys talking about!

dan, you haven't lived.

elixa
dulon
talis
quore

(quore was the most important, obv)

oh man, i remember how excited i was when i figured that out! best weapon in the game.

I think my best ever video game moment was pwning "Clowns and Balloons" on the TRS-80 to the point where I

FLIPPED THE SCORE

That was the first night I had the famous video game dreams.

Also: ICO, the entire game. Grande classique, as the French wouldn't say.