I remember a few from various stages of my life (born 1984).
Seeing the demo footage of Sonic 2 in Woolworths and thinking the leaves falling down in Aquatic Ruin zone was so cool and advanced.
The original Sega arcade of Virtua Racing with the moving cars completely blew me away.
I remember my uncle loading up Cannon Fodder on his Amiga, and a REAL song with REAL music came out, along with REAL photos. I was amazed haha.
A few years on I remember a PlayStation demo disc having promo footage of the first Gran Turismo and it looked so real to me, I watched it over and over. The first Driver on PS1 looked absolutely amazing to me also.
3 of them:
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watching an Amiga 500 load from disk having only seen 8bit games on tape. Everything that machine did at the time was like magic.
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watching the castle fly through intro for Unreal on PC when the first 3D accelerators appeared. Everything changed after that.
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experiencing the shark diving demo on PlayStation VR. And also how nothing changed after that! xD
And to have been able to experience that evolution from space invaders to cyberpunk in a single life time has been a privilege.
We’re the only generation that grew up alongside video games. We watched them grow up into what they are today, and our kids don’t even know of a world without them.
I don’t know what “Age” we’re in right now, but I think 1970-2024+ should be referred to as the Video Game Age.
I feel the same way about it being a privilege. I missed the earliest part… but even to have lived through the NES and Master System era through to today has been amazing.
Games will continue getting ever more impressive, but nobody again will witness the kind of seismic leaps in what games could accomplish that people saw between the 70s and 2000s.
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For me it was the jump to 3D in the 32 bit era. We already had some games in 3D prior to that, but with the arrival of Playstation and Saturn the landscape changed forever.
But of an odd one, but who remembers the dos installer for the original command & conquer?
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For me it was the original Resident Evil on the Playstation.
It was the first time I saw live-action digitized full-motion video on a gaming system. I know there were a lot of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in that era on other systems, but I didn’t own those other systems and I didn’t know anybody who did. So, it was all new to me once I played a Playstation.
Resident Evil was also the first time a video game had ever given me a jump scare. Early in the game a zombie doberman bursts through a window unexpectedly and I was hooked! I loved introducing my friends to the game, specifically so I could see their reaction when the dog shows up. So much fun.
Honestly seeing and hearing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo was kind of wow, too. The graphics boost compared to the 8-bit systems I was used to was incredible. And the sound quality compared to the other 16-bit systems I’d played (Genesis and TG-16) was a leap above. The experience probably pales in comparison to modern games, but back then there was wow factor to it.
To young me, Street Fighter 2 Turbo was pretty wow as well. It was “literally” the same as the arcade version to child me. I could not believe the home version was so close to the real thing, because prior generations of game systems like the NES couldn’t come close to that level of performance.
Yeah, playing Resident Evil for the first time was something incredibly atmospheric and special. I rented it from Blockbuster and knew straight away I had to buy it.
Before it released my friend and I used to speed-run the Resident Evil 2 demo which let you play as far as you could get into the full game, but with an 8 minute time limit.
The first thing that jumped to my mind was Half Life 2. The facial expressions on the characters, and the physics of objects in the game world.
Playing Call of Duty World at War for the first time, if that counts as retro. I had always played co-op games with my brother, and when he was gone for a weekend, I decided to try and play for myself. Spent countless hours replaying missions until I finally beat the campaign. And if I remember correctly, it drops you straight into zombies with no warning. I remember it being way past my bedtime, sitting alone in the dark. I was absolutely terrified because I was genuinely shocked by the premise and maybe too young for something so scary. Didn’t sleep at all that night.
Stepping out of the sewers in Oblivion for the first time. Nothing has really captured that feeling since.
Yes! That is a true masterpiece that at the time set a new standard.
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Everything about Metroid Prime. Incredible soundtrack, gorgeous scenery, interesting wildlife, challenging bosses/puzzles, and so so so much lore. It’s still probably my all time favorite game. Can’t wait for Prime 4 to come out!
When you could walk up to the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D and they would flash their titties at you.
Shake it baby!
Playing the Mario 64 Demo at Walmart.
My brain had a hard time trying to navigate in 3D.
That game was so futuristic. It was nuts.
Back then, the camera didn’t feel as shitty as it does today. It was all so fresh and new.
UT2004
EverQuest, playing a 3d online fantasy game with some sim elements with other people, was something very new and felt like the future. Limiting fast travel to specific places and classes made the world feel huge. Stumbling across the weird stuff like giant chess boards or a whole underwater dungeon made it feel unique.
Playing side scrollers my whole life and seeing Mario64 at a Walmart. Being able to play in actual 3D and thinking at no way they can surpass this.
Just remembered that seeing Doom for the first time is another obvious one. Man that game was incredible when it came out.
And was re-released last week. I was pleased to see the 2024 console ports still support LAN play.
I remember my brother telling me about Wolfenstein 3D. I insisted that something like that, that moved smoothly at your command in any direction instead of in clunky 90° turns and blockwise steps, was impossible with the current technology.
I was wrong.
you were right, the computers couldnt do the math in time. the trick was to precalculate the sin/cos tables for angle steps into tons of lookups instead.
It wasn’t just the trig tables, but realtime raycasting altogether felt like sorcery.
