BUMP

My fondest memories of gaming are from playing EverQuest in the magical lands of Norrath. I know you asked for just one but there were many for me over the many years I played the game. The greatest moments included completing the quests to get the Temperance hit point buff spell at level 44 which was a must have for young clerics. Everyone wanted Temp cast on them. It was fun to be so popular with other players and among my guild mates. Following that, it was easily the night I completed my Epic weapon quest for the Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh which allowed me to resurrect fallen players with no mana cost. It was an essential cleric item for getting everyone back up following group or raid wipes.

Another big one was getting the Virtue spell as it was a major upgrade to temperance and then earning the AA points to be able to Mass Group Buff the masses gathered in the Plane of Knowledge at the main bank or the Nexus stone. Everybody loved me for casting that. It was such fun. I earned more AA to maximize how long it lasted for them too.

Last but not least, raiding in Gates of Discord zones and later in the amazing Citadel of Anguish in the expansion that followed Gates. I can't believe i forget the name now. That lead to the completion of my Epic 2.0 shield which granted me an amazing ability to instantly save a group by evening out everyone's hit points followed by a decent heal over time spell, just like that. It was yet another huge milestone for a cleric in the game. You did not get tons of epics like you might in a game like WoW. Playing EverQuest for years, you could earn exactly two epics but the quests for them and the epics themselves, truly were epic.

Sorry, I went on kind of long there but maybe I could just say more simply that it was the experience of playing EverQuest and all the many good people I enjoyed playing it with.

I would be very happy with a $5.99 GOG should I win. Thanks for doing this. It was fun to remember all of that just now.

< [Already owns Witcher 2.]
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Who is this Mairy Kirstmiss? Oh do I hope to get her!


Let's see. Definitely related to [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/knights-of-xentar]Knights of Xentar[/url]. Oh the sweet memories...

Plainly put, it had helped me realize I was not a three-legged monster, but a boy!



Slightly more seriously put, I would say Ultima Underworld - The Stygian Abyss. I still have the cheap looking double-jewel-case-only EA Classics release of both games carefully stored away in the closet. By all standards they were not costly, but for a little boy I was at the time, the expense was huge, and otherwise significant. They were the very first games I have ever bought to myself, with what little money I could scrap together on my own.

Thing is, all this time and countless games later, Stygian Abyss remains the best thing I have experienced gaming-wise. And probably always will. The more I know and experience, the harder it is for me to get genuinely impressed or immersed.

When I was young (hey no no no I am STILL young... when I was little... yes), I still remember very well how while other kids were (probably) doing whatever had caught their fancy under the sun, I had spent most of my summer holiday exploring the dark depths of the great Stygian Abyss. I had literally lived in the world Looking Glass made. I knew every being, every corner, every stone of the abyss. Okay, maybe not EVERY stone. And I loved it so.

Good days.

Would like to enter for $5.99.

One favorite game memory was the first Drizzt encounter in BG1, the way he moved so fast and all the beasts guys were exploding to pieces around him was like wow, also spent a lot of time trying to kill him and get his defender sword.

Thanks for the giveaway!

Not in, just bumping for the sake of it.

Last-minute bump above the Great Spam Flood of December 2012.

Will pick the winners tonight! That would be in about 10-11 hours, to all you not-in-my-time-zone people. ;)

Yet another shameless bump!

Also, happy-induced boast warning:

I got my school results today.

They... they were good. :D

Entering for the 5.99 game. Congrats in the good results.

Best video game memory, playing Tecmo Bowl on the NES with my dad when I was a kid. We always had a great time, sometimes even setting up tournaments.

An entry for the $5.99 prize. Thanks for the giveaway, and congratulations on your "good" results! I am assuming this means you are now some sort of smarty-pants.

As for my favourite video-gamey memory? I'm not sure... how about a decent one, selected at random?

[1d20 => 4 ==> MEMORY #4 : MM3]

This selected memory was getting Megaman 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Such a wonderful game! Megaman 1 & 2 were already among my favourites, so I was super excited to play it. Holy crap, there's a robot dog now! And a weird dude who goes around breaking things with his whistle! One of the Robot Masters is a snake! Dr. Wily is working for the forces of good, what?! MADNESS. It was awesome.

Long story short, I beat it within 4 hours, thereby making my parents wonder if they had wasted their $50+.

I'll enter for the 5.99 game, thanks! :)

I've got way too many fond memories of playing games, from the day when my father brought home our first computer and we played Chip's Challenge, to the day a few years later when I received a Gameboy Colour.

My fondest video game memory has to be from childhood, when I managed to beg my parents to buy me a Gamecube for my birthday (willingly selling myself into slavery in the process).

My sister and I (both video game addicts from an extremely early age) would stay up all night playing Super Smash Bros. Melee and Legend of Zelda: Windwaker.
I remember one summer, my parents took us to visit our relatives who lived in Finland, out in the country side. I packed my Gamecube and game collection with me.

That summer, we lost track of time in the old country cabin as the sun never seemed to set and we played through Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. I remember one night/morning we finally reached the ending cutscene (those cutscenes were long!) and were staring at the TV, enthralled, when our mum walked in and shut off the TV.

Apparently it was 8AM; we had stayed up all night without even realizing it. Of course, we were both incredibly upset that we had missed the final cutscene (we seemed to think that the story was amazing, back then) and had to replay through the final moments of the game later that night so that we could watch it to its conclusion.

Another memory from later that summer was when I first fired up Resident Evil 4. I remember how terrified I was of playing that game, and yet the determination I had to see it to its very end was much stronger than my determination to finish games these days.

My sister and I sat in the darkness of autumn listening to strange noises emanating from outside the wooden walls of the cabin as we played through the game. We would jump every time an owl hooted, or a twig snapped outside. The branches of trees outside scratched against the window panes, and the old cabin would creak as it settled down in the silent night. The atmosphere was just perfect.

I often woke up my mum due to violent yelping and swearing as yet another possessed villager or monk popped up behind me.

Again, neither of us could play the game for very long before our nerves started to shatter, so we would literally throw the controller back and forth to one another whenever a scary scene came up.

Somehow, through long gruelling hours in the night, we managed to finish the game before we went back home to China.

I think that it was the proudest achievement of our lives up to that point.
That summer also marked the end of my childhood, in many ways, so I hold these memories very close to my heart.
I don't think I've ever been closer to my sister than through the gaming moments we shared that summer.

In for either game (though I prefer the $5.99 game if it can be Planescape Torment, which I think is on sale still)

My best game memory would be playing Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis when I was 13 or so. I was blown away with the huge open world and got ridiculously sucked into the atmosphere of the whole thing. I had never played a shooter before (remember this is before the market got swarmed with them), and OFP had an ENORMOUS world. The mission was simple, me and my squad were supposed to push into a nearby Soviet held town. I still remember clearly running over the hill on the outskirts of the town and then a couple men from the squad setting up and firing on the soviet guards in the town while the rest of us rushed into it. Pure adrenaline, nothing in gaming at the time came close.

We took the town and started heading for the secondary objective of another village to the south down the road... but soon a truck loaded with Russians and a BMP in escort started coming at said village from the east. I grabbed our squad's LAT weapon and hid in a bush, taking out the BMP first and then firing a shot at the truck nearby but missing (I think, this happened a long time ago so I'm doing the best I can ;)). Russians started spilling out but I grabbed a PKM from a nearby dead body and started raking the area with fire but not before they got a couple of squaddies. At this point only about half of us were left.

But... before you know it the rumble of enemy tanks could be heard from the east... this we were not equipped to handle. I radioed in to headquarters to request an evac. We're told to move to the south by the beach to get picked up. We rush down that way but before long the distant sound of armor materializes into something more tangible - T72s- and they're supported by an entire platoon of Russian infantry. Tracers fly through the air as we and the last few survivors of our ill fated attack run through the bushes to the beach. We just barely make it to the UH-60 blackhawk before being completely overrun and clamber on. That feeling of "having made it" I frankly haven't felt in any other game since. There was this feeling of exhilaration that I felt that very few if any games since have been able to give me. Exhilaration at having barely got away by the skin of our teeth. Remember this was back when games were HARD!

We're catching our breath in the chopper when, only a few minutes out from the evac zone, massive 23mm rounds start flying through the air at us from a nearby Shilka anti-aircraft vehicle. The black hawk gets hit and starts spiraling out of control but the pilot tries to keep us from flipping so we can survive the crash... we're still behind enemy lines and will have to evade massive Soviet patrols to make it back to friendly units.

...and that's the end of that mission ;) The beauty of OFP was how basically every mission in the game was up to that level of quality and many unpredictable things could happen. (although in this case the shilka was scripted) I played that mission probably 30-40 times no joke and it always turned out differently. (it was actually the demo mission for the game, before the full thing came out and I bought it)

thanks for doing this

Okeydokey! Thank you everyone for contributing to a lovely thread!

SO! The winners (all chosen randomly) are:

- MoP for the $5.99 game
- retsuseiba for The Witcher 2

Aaaaand because I'm terrible with money and self-control I have another copy of the Witcher 2, which goes to Elmofongo!

Thanks anyway for the opportunity, have a merry Christmas!

Congratulations to the winners, may you all enjoy your early "Kristmiss" presents!

Thanks for the great giveaway, ellyandroid! (+1)

Congratz winners!
Thanks ellynandroid for your generosity!