Games

Playing Left4Dead2 versus with 8 friends, running my own custom 'Random' mod. That game was so great to play matches in with the right people - and very fun to code sourcemod plugins for as well.

Subspace (now known as Continuum) circa 1998 via 56k modem - mine repping a 2k+ bounty 5-person turret in Chaos Zone West

Such adrenaline and joy 😂

A recent one that comes to mind is playing 4 player Bopl Battle with some buddies and just laughing our asses off.

Just a small thing.. I must have played Civ II for hundreds and hundreds of hours as a kid. Then one day a large civilization in civil disorder had its capital taken and one half of the empire seceded as a brand new civilization. I yelped for joy.. one of those true wtaf moments..

Clearing Star Fox 64 with the good/true ending for the first time ever was an indescribable feeling.

Me and my cousin played FFXI starting in the beta. I got the game for free at official launch and we played for a long time. But the greatest moment of gaming excitement is when we got the peacock charm drop from a super rare NM. I'm pretty sure it was the rarest, most valuable item in the game at the time. The NM was deep in a maze, and had a huge spawn window. I think it was something like an IRL week or something, and even if you managed to tag it from the countless other players camping it, you still had a very low chance of the drop.

I spent the night at my cousins one weekend and we went to bed one night after camping it for hours and left our characters logged in at the spawn point so we could check the combat logs to see if anyone got it while we were asleep. When I woke up, it had not spawned, but my cousin had already got up and left the cave. I was surprisingly alone in that room for the first time ever. No other players. After about 30 minutes, it spawns. I'm alone, and not strong enough to kill it by myself. My cousin somehow managed to make it from Jueno to the maze (like at least a 10 minute run) before anyone else showed up, and we got the kill and the drop.

We were literally screaming and high fiving so hard that his step mom thought we had won the lottery or something.

We both put it on at least once just to say we had, and sold it for more money than we'd ever imagined. We then bought the best gear for our characters and felt like gods.

Never even made it to max level, but holy crap nothing has ever come close to that level of excitement in or out of a game.

Getting powerleveled by a high leveled player on Turf Battles at Tiaz.

Beating most any "hard" video game is always a great feeling just due to the sheer hours that go into it. In some cases, you have to develop the memory and skill to do the whole thing in one sitting. I can't count how many from the NES era fit this criteria. Top of that list are: Contra, Bionic Commando, and most Zelda and Mega Man games.

The best one happened in the middle of my Dark Souls play-through. I kept having to quit playing after short sessions, as skill and vigor checks kept wrecking me. This lead to anger and rage that just made it impossible to proceed. Once I made the connection that I could concentrate more and flow through combat more easily while calm, I changed tactics to calming my own mind and keeping it that way. The game just "opened up" after that. From there on, it was much more about meditation and breathing than equipment and leveling - skills I now carry with me everywhere. DS literally made me a calmer and more resilient person.

"Rock 'N Stone!"

My most recent was playing Saints Row 4 horrible pc port. The Enter the Dominatrix dlc was awfully hilarious. Seeing that they didn't have enough money to do everything they wanted and seeing actual story boards in my game was great. Also the character commentary was fun. The thing that the said was too crazy for Saints Row was definitely true and did not expect.

I got Kim to dance with me in the church in Disco Elysium

Breath of the Wild: stepping out of the cave in the begining, seeing that vast world in front of Link waiting to be explored

The Switch was the first console I had since the PS2, and the PC "gaming" I did in the meantime was mostly retro games on emulators or a bit of Stardew Valley, so the contrast to that was HUGE.

Another one was re-playing Ragnarok Online months after quitting (and giving away all equipment and deleting all characters) with a friend. We were barely second job class (he was Hunter, I was Priest) and rudimentarily equipped enough to beat Abyss Knights, so we went leveling in the area where those sometimes spawn. AND ONE OF THEM DROPPED A CARD! Cards are extremely rare (allegedly 0.01% drop chance) and monster-specific, and the Abyss Knight card is extremely valuable. So from one second to the next, we practically went from piss poor to rich AF.

Another extremely lucky moment was in Diablo 2: a regular cow in the Cow Level dropped a (perfect!) Windforce, at the time one of the best unique items in the game. I don't remember exactly but IIRC from some online calculator the chances for this drop were under one in a million (I wasn't even wearing anything with lots of MF%)

I like the fart button in Grand Theft Auto 1&2, have no idea if it's still in the newer games

I think my purest moment of gaming bliss was experiencing completely blind the last handful of worlds in Super Mario Odyssey while buzzed with a few whiskeys. God, my soul was in orbit with that experience. Pure, unfettered joy and whimsy through and through and cinematically epic when it wanted to be. I wouldn't call it the best game ever or even my favorite game ever, but god damn it, it struck me just right way at just the right time. It was something truly special.

More games I will cherish will certainly follow, and have followed. But for that specific set of vibes and circumstances, I don't know if I'll ever top that peak from playing a video game ever again.

When I finished my first run of Subnautica, something definitely came over me. I ran around in my base cleaning up, I organized all my spare food and water in a cabinet "for the next person stranded here," I released the fish in my alien containment, said farewell to my cuddlefish, parked my Seamoth in the moon pool, turned the lights out in the Cyclops, the whole bit. An amazing adventure was at an end.

In 2005 I was playing Final Fantasy XI Online and met a group of 5 Japanese players in an expansion area. We wound up partying together for 8 hours straight. They all spoke English in chat for my sake, and we had an incredible rhythm together. We discussed new anime and a few English cartoons that had recently made it to Japan. We took a selfie together at the end of the 8 hours. It was the best gaming experience of my life. I'll never forget it.

Most recent one I can rememver was beating Tears of The Kingdom. I was SO invested in the final boss battle and I got really emotional. I was so immersed I was basically vocally taunting the boss for everything they had done. Only other time that happened was with Cyberpunk 2077 and only because of Edgerunners.

Then in the past (jesus has it really been more than 17 years??) the first time my buddy and I beat Halo 1 on Legendary after an all-nighter of gaming. That was awesome. Horrible smell in that room tho lmao.

Top 3, no order (can't pick):

Anytime a SoulsBorne game clicks, especially Sekiro

Winning a really tight match of Rocket League against people at a similar or higher skill level

Playing split screen Freedom Fighters with my buddy back in the day. It got so competitive we started taping cardboard on the screen to prevent screen-peeking

Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.

Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don't think I got hit once.

I don't track or rank joy like that, but discovering the dark world in The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is definitely up there. Just realising the world had this whole extra dimension to it.

I still love dimensionality / hidden depth in games.

I mean, who doesn't?

the ending of outer wilds, figuring out that the treasure really was the friends we made along the way, will always stand out to me as the most magnificent, joy-filled moment in my 25+ year gaming experience.

that, or getting the cool sunglasses in fez.

Probably local multiplayer with friends at school, like the DS and PSP, used to love playing Mario Kart and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite with others

Red Dead Redemption, when crossing into Mexico for the first time and the sun starts setting and Far Away by Jose Gonzalez starts playing. That shit blew my mind.

At least in recent memory, it was Dragon's Dogma 2 teaching me that I could pick up and carry downed party members by having one of my party members pick up another one and bring them over to me. There's so much that's possible in DD2 that just isn't in a typical videogame, that throughout the entire experience I was mostly learning niche interactions from my other party members instead of my own experimentation. It was a really cool experience, and felt way more impactful then a text prompt just lecturing me about all the mechanics the game has.

Beating Link’s Awakening as a kid. No internet no hints or help just hours of exploring when I was stuck on a puzzle. It’s so hard for me to get lost in a video game like that now and not just reach for an answer or check the internet to see what I’m doing wrong. It’s a shame now, I know links awakening now like the back of my hand and I’ll never get to explore a first play through of that game ever again.

Going to a big tf2 LAN in England and watching the games with a crowd of people that shared in the love for that game.

Made me realize for the first time why some people obsess over sports.

In college, quake 3 arena came out about a month into school. My roommate and I stayed up all night playing together. That was when we moved from roommates to friends.

Growing up:

• playing Perfect Dark either story coop or battle simulator with my best friend or brother
• getting totally immersed in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask
• Silent Hill 2 and 3 with best friend
• playing Star Craft online until way too late, also with best friend
• not only joy maybe, but FFX was very memorable for me
• organising Xbox lan parties at our house playing 16 player death matches in Halo

Adult:

• Getting a Switch totally re-ignited my gaming passion. Having a full time work and family it is hard to find the time to sit down and focus on a game, the Switch with its quick sleep/on/off and tv/mobile feature changed that. I felt like a teenager again when I lost track of time (usually late at night) while playing Breath of the Wild and the Xenoblade series
• FFXIV and getting immersed once again in a game world

Playing Solasta. Our D&D group had fallen apart, and we just didn't seem to be able to get a new game together. Solasta scratched that D&D itch like no game before it has. My wife got really into it, too, so we ended up adventuring for hundreds of hours together.

Finishing the Easter egg at the end of origins in black ops 2 zombies after trying all night and seeing the special cut scene with my friends on Xbox 360 has to be up there as core gaming achievement.

WoW probably holds the most cases of this for me.

World PvP was one front. Early on, just winning fights felt good. Then, as I got better, it felt more normal when it was an advantageous matchup for me. But the peak for me was during TBC, I was leveling my rogue and a hunter jumped me as I was mining. This was pretty much a worse case scenario, especially because the hunter was lvl 70 (max at the time) and I was still something like lvl 65. But even at the same level, a) a hunter is a natural counter for a rogue, and b) I was mining so I didn't even get the stealth advantage.

So there was a lot of dopamine when I ended up getting to finish mining that node and the hunter had to walk back to his corpse after I beat him anyways.

Also a lot of dopamine from finally beating raid bosses that my guild had been stuck on for a long time. Vael in BWL was the peak for that one IIRC.

Not too long after it came out I was good at Siege and I mean good I was ranked in the top 1000 players and I thought that was pretty badass. I got a DM from some guy who was like "Hey I'm from TEAM and we wanted to know if you wanted to try out for our Siege squad?" I said thanks but no thanks, I have a mortgage and a full time and then some job. I dont want to take on the obligation.

I then went and googled the team, I was being courted by serious professional players. I still decided I didnt want that headache but as someone who has always been an underachiever it was like an IRL achievement popup or a level up notification. Like... look what I can achieve when I actually give a fuck and put the work in.

Wandering around in Morrowind before I really knew what I was doing, being happy just to find a few coins in a tree stump or a crappy dagger.

Other games have given more extreme emotions. But no other game has instilled such a joyous sense of wonder.