Gaming Related Childhood Memories

[Randoman]

Do you have any particularly happy/memorable childhood memories regarding gaming?

The main one that comes to mind for me was finally finding and reaching all 96 exits in Super Mario World all by myself, without using the internet or anything like that (well, aside from my younger sister did help me in realizing that the Boo Blocks were crucial to completing the Chocolate Ghost House, a friend of the family showing me that you just needed to jump on Morton 3 times to beat him and you didn't need to do anything ridiculously fancy like putting yourself between Morton and the ceiling, and I think it was either me or my brother dying in Vanilla Dome 2 that ironically showed me where the secret keyhole in that level was). I still remember all the memories of finding/reaching secret exits like attempting some crazy flying/crouching maneuvers in the Valley Ghost House to reach the keyhole room, trying to figure out how to exit the Forest of Illusions after it sent me looping back to Forest of Illusion 2, the loads of misery Tubular and Outrageous caused me trying to beat them, thinking there was a secret exit in the Vanilla Ghost house and even flying to the top of the level to reach that area that was supposed to be accessed with a Beanstalk thinking that led to a secret exit, taking so long to find the secret exit in Vanilla Secret 1 and not finding it until 20+ attempts, not realizing that Yoshi wings did not count as a secret exit and the Cheese Bridge Area and Valley of Bowser 2 being the last two secret exits I found as a result.

...yeah, I actually remembered all of those specifics with Super Mario World and my childhood days of playing it. It was one of the few SNES games I had for the longest time.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Randoman

[Jingle Jangle]

I remember after completing Chrono Trigger, it made me have a warm heart, after the experience. It just does everything well.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

-I remember feeling pretty triumphant about beating Pokemon Yellow at ten years old, although it took me four years. I was content to just keep starting the game over whenever I felt stuck. And Pokemon Yellow is legitimately hard compared to the rest of these games. Most of the gym leaders have pokemon about ten levels higher than in red and blue.

-Similarly, I remember feeling pretty great some time later playing Paper Mario on N64. Me and my other siblings were all stuck in Chapter 2. But I happened to discover where the oasis in the desert was, as well as what to do with the Lemon. Minutes later, my older brother and sister watched in awe during the cutscene where Tutankoopa's temple rose from the sand. I probably had the dumbest smirk on my face. 

-Basically any of the Star Wars games we could get our hands on. Rogue Squadron, Shadows of The Empire, Episode 1 Racer. 

-Playing Conker's Bad Fur Day, one of the most adult rated games I can think of. Boy, I learned a lot of things I shouldn't have at such a young age. And then returned to the game numerous times as a teenager as I started understanding more movie references and jokes about sex and drugs. 

[Florete]

The Cheese Bridge secret exit in SMW is a pretty big one for me. This is back when my brother and I were both still pre-teen and the internet wasn't really a thing. When we saw Torpedo Teds in the credit roll we wondered where in the game they were, eventually believing that they didn't actually exist. I also wondered what the arrows at the end of Cheese Bridge were there for, but my brother was convinced it was nothing. However, I eventually realized that all the levels with more than one exit were marked by red dots instead of yellow, and Cheese Bridge was red. At some point I got the idea to jump off Yoshi under the gate (remember, I was very young; such ideas didn't come easily), and my brother and I were wowed like nothing ever before when I found a separate exit gate and it took me to that little island...and we found the Torpedo Teds.

Some similar stuff happened in Donkey Kong Country 2. There were a few levels we just couldn't find DK coins in, and we came to believe some levels actually didn't have them. It felt wrong to me, though, and I specifically remember finding the DK coin in Chain Link Chamber and convincing both myself and my brother that every level had to have one. Then it was the bonus levels. At one point we thought we found them all, and since we had ignored the lost world levels we had little reason to believe otherwise, but eventually I noticed that some levels had exclamation marks at the end of the title whereas others didn't. Somehow I connected it to the bonus levels, but a couple levels still eluded us, and I remember which ones they were: Haunted Hall and, once again, Chain Link Chamber. I found the one in Haunted Hall when I noticed the ceiling to one of the bonus levels seemed low and tried jumping in. My brother found the one in Chain Link Chamber (this one), and I remember him going "aha!" and just running in all the while I was sitting there confused as to what the hell he had just done because I hadn't seen the open doorway.

...You activated my nostalgia. There are more, though before too long I got good at games and such scenarios no longer happened.

[LucarioGamer812]

For me, it was just excitement whenever I beat a boss or level. For a long time though, I felt like I was the protagonist in Pokemon, probably the most so in Platinum, since that's the game I've played the most by far (pokemon at least). Another memory of mine is playing against my parents in street fighter 2 turbo on the snes. I'm by no ways that old, but it was nice playing against my parents (though I mainly spammed with the guy who had the longest reach) and then we switched to the wii. Ah, good times, rip us selling our snes though.

[Dismissed]

Slogging my way through the LeafGreen Elite Four with only Blastoise and Articuno. Lorelei was pretty annoying. Meanwhile, Bruno (Fly and Surf), Agatha (Bite) and Lance (Ice Beam) were easier than her. Meanwhile, in Emerald, I had Sceptile, Aggron, and Rayquaza. Getting to the top of Rayquaza's tower the second time around was frustrating enough, and made even worse when it spammed Rest, restoring it to full HP.

[Miky225]

The memories when i finished Tomb Raider 2 for first time when i was a kid.I was realy scared of traps.

[Reality]

My parents and I spent a lot of time seeing who could get to the furthest stage in every one of the game's on a namco pug and play. I think my mother won Rally-X and Galaga, I won Galaxian and Pac Man, and my father won Dig Dug.

Getting through  the rock tunnel in Pokemon Red without flash and also without batteries (played in the kitchen by hooking the Game boy color to its charger plug)

Cloning Mewtwo by accident due to batteries running out while trading.

Handing my mother Pokemon Red and her asking me how to punch people.

Getting through the vampire section  in King's Quest 2 with - helpful - input from my sisters and father. 

Becoming Kool Kat Bad in a certain game included in the E-games 100 pack.

The discovery of how to make Bobsled Coasters that didn't crash in Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater- This game was the revelation that made me realize that Consoles had a point. I remember the epic struggle to get the hidden tape over the fountain in the Streets of San Francisco level. I remember the statue>building climb being amazing nevermind that you do this casually in the other games and the final jump off the ramp onto the pagoda being the hardest thing ever due to just barely missing over and over.

Playing Rampage World Tour with Cousin and sisters. The box might say it is a co-opperativee game, but I will never believe it.

Playing Mario Party 3 with sisters and getting cheesed out of a win on the literal last turn due to a chance time star trade.

Defeating Bowser in the final match with the first character I got to the Planet Cup of Mario Tennis N64.

My Grandmother seeing the boxart for the Gamecube (director's cut) version of Sonic Adventure and assuming that Sonic was the bad guy because of how evil he looked and that Chaos was the player character. 

[ping]

I remember playing Pokémon Blue (or Blau - I'm German, after all ;) ) with my neighbor and choosing the best starter Pokémon:
-All right, the manual says that Bisasam/Bulbasaur is recommended for starters, so I guess it's the strongest one! *cue losing to Asshat (can't remember what we called him, but it was certainly along these lines ^^) and his Glumanda/Charmander*
-Huh, I guess the manual was lying and Glumanda is the superior choice. *cue winning against Asshat, but getting wrecked by Brock since we only caught Rattfratz/Rattata and Pikachu before tackling his arena*
After that, we finally discovered the holy truth that Schiggy/Squirtle is the only correct answer to the agelong question. And Schillok/Wartortle is still my favourite Pokemon, even though the English name (yes, I had to look up most of the English names)  is pretty dumb. :D

My brothers bought the first two Monkey Island games when I was 6 or 7 years old - I don't remember much of my reaction to the game, except that I was absolutely terrified by LeChuck, especially his line "On days like this, I'm really happy to be dead" (or whatever the line is in English) for some reason. Going through the tunnels at the end of MI2, being chased by LeChuck, was pretty bad as well. :D

[Dismissed]

17 hours ago, Reality said:

Cloning Mewtwo by accident due to batteries running out while trading.

I do cloning shenanigans in Generation III with the help of savestates and sacrifices. It can also be used to duplicate items. Also, cloning a clone? Cloneception!

Also, seeing Rayquaza wreck the Kanto Elite Four is pretty satisfying, after all the crap I went through the first time.

[DragonFlames]

On 20.11.2017 at 6:32 PM, Reality said:

Handing my mother Pokemon Red and her asking me how to punch people.

Your mother is a badass!

I have many memories with Pokémon, since my mother and father were in the process of a divorce at the time. As my mother kept abusing me, Pokémon was my refuge, so to speak. A world I could escape to whenever I felt bad. That's why the first generation of Pokémon is precious to me to this day.
Somewhat off topic, but still related: The second movie especially means a lot to me, because going to the movies on the day it released was the first thing my dad and I did together after the divorce was through. Seeing that movie was... basically a turning point in my life, which is why no other Pokémon movie will ever be as good as the second one to me. It's also the reason why Lugia was and remains my favourite Pokémon.

I also remember being overjoyed when I caught my first shiny Pokémon back in Pokémon Silver, a Hoothoot. At the time, my dad and I didn't know shinies existed (outside the red Gyarados, of course) and we even thought evolving my Hoothoot would revoke his shiny status, so I saved before leveling it up and sure enough: there was my shiny Noctowl. It wasn't until much later that we found out that yes, shiny Pokémon a) exist, b) are super rare and c) actually had pre-determined IVs back then that decided whether a Pokémon was shiny or not. We didn't even know IVs were a thing until we compared our Pokémon to each other and found out they had different stats and even then, we didn't know what exactly was behind it.

My personal favourite memory, however, is playing Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire with my dad during the summer of 2003 where we basically beat the game together, because we kept training each other's Pokémon, catching each version exclusive, grinding our nails and teeth into finding and evolving Feebas and finally completing the Hoenn Regional Dex with all 200 Pokémon available at the time. We would also share tips on how to beat each category in the Pokémon Contest, we knew every possible enemy in those things inside and out. We even had some "rivals" in there (that freaking Pichu, Vileplume and Wobbufett... those things made us rage... in a positive way). I remember climbing Sky Tower on a rainy evening and finally reaching  Rayquaza, catching it after a brutal battle and right afterwards utterly annihilating the Pokémon League. I remember my first run through said Pokémon League which I won by the skin of my teeth; my Kyogre was the last Pokémon I had left and he beat Steven's last Pokémon - Claydol - at only 27 HP remaining with the last Surf he could muster.
It was a time where we didn't know what EVs were, what Natures did to a Pokémon's stats and that the total EV you could have on one Pokémon was reduced to 510 since the third generation. I even thought Natures were predetermined by the kind of Pokémon it is, since all my Pokémon's Natures pretty much exactly matched their personalities in the anime (Calm for Treecko and Jolly for Torchic, for example.

So... it's no exaggeration to say that Pokémon was indeed my childhood.

[Wist]

Do card games count? When I got into the Pokemon TCG (shortly before Fossil came out) my dad read up on how to play and started collecting his own cards. Nearly every time I saw him we'd make a few stupid crazy decks and battle it out. There came a point when we stopped buying new cards because we didn't want to invest in keeping up with power creep. But we kept playing for years and years. I usually lost because he had a much firmer grasp of strategy and metagame than I ever did. But it was great fun. I have a huge soft spot for the Pokemon TCG because of those memories.

I also remember linking up Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance with friends after school. The Fire Emblem 'multiplayer' was pretty crap, honestly. But we didn't care. Multiplayer FFTA was more involved, but the battles took longer.

I never thought about it before, but I guess the most nostalgic memories were the ones shared with other people. Reading through this thread, I noticed maybe half of you also mentioned at least one shared experience with family or friends.