What was your happiest gaming memory?

[Detail]

I wanted to make this thread to spread some happiness, looking back on things like this often brings a smile to people and we all have tough days so I am hoping that maybe at least one person here may be reminded of something incredibly joyous which brings them a smile.

So I will share mine, my happiest gaming memory was when my parents bought me an N64 for Christmas with Diddy Kong Racing, we didn't have a lot of money so I was incredibly grateful to have one.

I remember sitting there on Christmas Day, racing through frosty village thinking how magical it all was, the music, the story mode, the fun I was having, it's just one of those really warm fuzzy memories from my childhood that will always stick with me.

So, how about all of you? What is your happiest gaming memory and why?

Also feel free to add pictures of the game.

 

[Dyashen]

Recently, playing Sea of Thieves with randoms and fellow ERA members. First time i used voice chat in a video game and the proximity chat only enhanced the experience.
I've never really been a vocal person but the way how the game is built just made for moments that put a massive smile on my face.

 

[Prophet Five]

I'm a sucker for stupid emotions and shit. It's super easy to make me cry. I cried during the Mega Man reveal for Smash 4 because I fucking love Mega Man so much and it just really made me happy. (Let's ignore that I suck as Mega Man and can't play him for shit.)

Otherwise, I think getting Ocarina of Time at Christmas in 1998 was probably the happiest I ever was. My dad ordered it through Nintendo Power to get the gold version and the subscription and everything. He always wanted an athletic son who went outside and shit but he always made sure the nerdy indoor kid he got had what he wanted for Christmas (within reason!)

 

[Aaron D.]

Playing Zelda: LttP over Christmas holiday the year it launched.

I was up late with only the lights of the TV & Christmas tree illuminating the room. It wasn't snowing, but there was snow on the ground outside.

I had only been married a year or so and was still in that "honeymoon glow" phase of the relationship.

All was right with the world.

 

[Deleted member 864]

Don't know about happiest, but one of my favorite memories is getting a 3DS for Christmas in 2011 and staying up late playing Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. That, and I remember getting the Gamecube for another Christmas and playing Super Mario Sunshine.

 

[cecilpaladin32]

I wrote dozens of letters and left cookies and milk months in advance for Santa as a 5 year old. Shortly before I turned 6, I got an SNES for Christmas. I was rarely spoiled as a kid but this was one of the few (and by far most memorable) exceptions.

Playing Super Mario World for the first time was a magical and unforgettable experience.

 

[Kazooie5659]

I think the giddiest I've ever been playing a game was probably just fucking around the Great Plateau in BotW for hours and hours on end, just messing with the physics of the world, finding Koroks, doing the shrines, dying a lot to Bokoblins, climbing everything, laughing at dick-shaped rocks. A lot of my old memories I attribute to just being a dumb kid who was happy with like... Everything. But BotW stands out as actively doing things that make me smile and laugh.

 

[Silky]

Beating my sister fair and square in a fighting game

 

[shtolky]

Two memories tied for happiest:

1) Playing Super Mario 64 for the first time with my parents watching. Couldn't believe what I was seeing. The jump from 2D to 3D is something I'll never forget

2) Playing Ocarina of Time on launch day after my HS jazz concert. My favorite game of all time and I'll never forget that day.

 

[El_TigroX]

January 1996, the big blizzard in the northeast that dumped 4 feet of snow.

My friend had just gotten DKC 2, and I was stuck at his house for multiple days on end and we played the hell out of it until we beat it.

The next year, similarly, got stuck there another night or two and we played through DKC 3...

Just loved it, and such a good memory I have.

 

[Detail]

Playing Zelda: LttP over Christmas holiday the year it launched.

I was up late with only the lights of the TV & Christmas tree illuminating the room. It wasn't snowing, but there was snow on the ground outside.

I had only been married a couple years and was still in that "honeymoon glow" phase of the relationship.

All was right with the world.

Click to shrink...

That sounds lovely, thank you for sharing that, sounds like a really happy memory.

I'm a sucker for stupid emotions and shit. It's super easy to make me cry. I cried during the Mega Man reveal for Smash 4 because I fucking love Mega Man so much and it just really made me happy. (Let's ignore that I suck as Mega Man and can't play him for shit.)

Otherwise, I think getting Ocarina of Time at Christmas in 1998 was probably the happiest I ever was. My dad ordered it through Nintendo Power to get the gold version and the subscription and everything. He always wanted an athletic son who went outside and shit but he always made sure the nerdy indoor kid he got had what he wanted for Christmas (within reason!)

Click to shrink...

Another great story and Ocarina of time was incredible.

 

[Jerm411]

Late night 4 player Left 4 Dead marathons around the holidays with my wife, her sister, and her husband....so much fun and great times.

 

[BadWeddingSpeech]

Hmmm....in recent memory...Finally getting Hawkmoon to drop in Destiny after hundreds of hours of grinding was pretty great. (And I will never grind for anything like that again. Ever).

Older school. Finding a warp zone with my mother in the Super Mario Bros days. Getting Link's Awakening for my birthday way back when....and just falling in love with it. Playing FFVI over a spring break. Playing through Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.

Firing up Demons's Souls for the time and playing 1-1 for 4 hours straight. Racing Roach across a field at sunset with the music swelling in The Witcher 3. Just walking around in Skyrim with the Day 3 theme going. Playing all of Red Dead 1 in 3 days when it was iced over in my city. Finally beating Bloodborne and being super confused!

 

[Scottius]

So many good ones come to mind but hands down unbeatable would be the first day getting and playing with my PSVR. Popping the headset on and diving into the Robot Rescue mini game had me grinning like I was a kid playing video games for the first time again.

And all the games that followed just added to that feeling as I tried Batman VR, the various VR Worlds mini games, etc.

 

[Acquiescence]

Opening my PS1 on Christmas Day very early in the morning, playing the Crash Bandicoot demo on the disc that came free with the console and thinking it was the best thing ever while simultaneously being gutted that I didn't own the actual game. A couple of hours later my big brother gets up and hands me two gifts. One being Ridge Racer and the other being...

 

[Ernest]

My first time playing the very first Zelda, back when it had just come out.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

When I was a kid, I tended to see games a bit more as time killers than as a dedicated and focused interest -- I didn't care enough to know release dates, announcements, or anything like that, and my parents bought all the games me and my brother owned for us (they had found a lot of interest themselves in the arcade scene of the 80's when they were in their 30's).

That said, I had never ever even heard of the N64 or knew it was a thing in 1996, but come Thanksgiving 1996, my brother and I basically cheated the wishbone splitting tradition and colluded to wish for our Christmas present early. My dad came downstairs with an N64. Neither of us knew wtf it was. My dad hooked it up for us and we started playing Mario 64 and Waverace 64. It was mindblowingly good, and seeing 3D rendered graphics at that fidelity on a home console really blew our minds. We obsessed over the thing the remainder of the holiday season.

It wasn't quite the start of my enthusiast approach to videogames -- that wouldn't come until 1998 -- but that certainly was a very pleasant surprise. Going from not even knowing about the existence of the N64 to owning one was like going from -5% to 500% amazement.

 

[lt519]

Without a doubt having sleepovers where we'd play GoldenEye until our eyes bled. We had such fun contrived scenarios for made up games within the game, our imaginations were wild.

Kind of non-gaming specific were the days we used to ride our bikes to the local video store to rent NES games and had no clue what they would be. Totally judging them by their cover and getting home and praying that they'd actually boot. I can still remember that video store and the excitement that came along with getting the chance to play a new game. It eventually had to close and it was selling it's entire NES library and we pooled all our money together to buy a ton of games from them.

As an adult, beating Destiny raids with my friends. There'd be a notable high/buzz after finally beating the major bosses in a raid and something about it just clicking with guys you've played the game with for hundreds of hours made it special. I'll always remember the way that we beat Golgoroth was entirely different than any other group I've seen and ultimately when I went to play with DestinyERA later on it felt hollow, mechanical, and stripped of the fun we had figuring out how to defeat it on our own. It was all about efficiency and less the discovery or bonding of playing with IRL friends.

 

[Daysean]

Either beating FFV on PS1 at like 8 years old or playing DoA 2 Hardcore with My Uncle, His Friend and His Friend's Little Brother (who was also my friend) with the PS2 Multitap in 2v2 Tag Battles

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Super Mario 64 felt like playing with magic and I was 18 years old when it came out.

 

[Kurdel]

Probably a PSVR game. Being in the world and experiencing VR games for the first time was something exhillirating.

 

[fargodog]

I don't have too many of them. My friends and I did an Extra Life stream two or three years ago and I managed to run through Bloodborne in under eight hours, which was pretty special.

I would have gone after more of the optional bosses but I got caught up on The One Reborn, of all things.

 

[Prine]

Hmm perhaps Halo 2. Changed my gaming life that game did.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

Getting Pokémon Gold on Christmas day 2000. It hadn't been released in Europe yet and my Grandma had gone to America in the October to visit some of our extended family, coincidentally around the same time Gold and Silver released in NA.

She got me two of my cousins a copy Gold version each, but we weren't allowed to have them until Christmas day. What an arduous 2 months, especially in an age where internet wasn't really a big thing, and the concept of a new generation of Pokémon was fresh and new.

Goes without saying that Christmas day was a blast, especially when my cousins arrived.

 

[shaneo632]

Getting a PS1 for Christmas 1997 after begging my dad and him telling me he couldn't afford. SURPRISE MUTHAFUCKA.

 

[Kaji AF16]

Playing Captain Tsubasa 2 (Tecmo, NES, 1990) at my best friend´s eighth birthday party. We knew he was going to receive it as a gift and our anxiety was infinite. Once we started playing, our minds were blown. Not only we were fans of its base material (a japanese manga about soccer), but it shown us the potential of videogames like nothing we had seen before: for us, it was literally magic.

I was already playing on both Atari 2600 and NES but that game changed my life. I still play it from time to time. It went on to become my favorite of all time.

 

[L.O.R.D]

getting PS1 in 1998 instead of getting more Sega genesis games, we wanted the crash 3 bundle but it was finished, so we got Die Hard Trilogy bundle.

playing Crash CTR and Crash Bash with my brothers and friends
watching my big sister play RE1-2-3 and i keep watching from behind because i didn't managed to use the tank controller in that time.

finishing Sonic 2 for the first time in 1994 (i think).

getting Golem for the first time in Pokemon blue with my friend, it was like....holy shit, a real golem by trading? this is cool.

 

[Deleted member 9971]

Playin through twilight princess with my sister and my childhood friends when i was a lil teen.

Its why i have a imp midna and wolf link tattoo its cuz of those memories.

 

[StrangerDanger]

First time playing through Metal Gear Solid 3.
The moment i stopped playing it was when i started dwelling into video editing to make music video mash ups on youtube for the game

 

[JudgmentJay]

Probably getting an N64 for Christmas. Playing Mario 64 that morning was magical.

 

[ethanradd]

Going through the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, I had grown so attached to my team, it was intense and an amazing, epic, experience.

 

[Strangelove_77]

Getting a Sega Genesis as a kid. It came with the first Sonic and it was pretty cool.

 

[MDSVeritas]

When I was near the end of my time in college I was on an incredibly stressful and time-intensive project. It was work I loved doing but I basically stopped playing any games, watching any shows or movies, or spending any sort of real leisure time. The project was a game and soon my concept of games was completely eclipsed by my time on this project. Games were data transformations, and memory allocation errors. Games were continually-broken physics systems and control input problems. My weekdays were programming and prototyping and meetings. My weekends were programming and prototyping and meetings.

But one Sunday, for some reason or another, I had a full day free. Some random stars aligned. And so I went out, and I got fresh groceries and food, and I got to my apartment and I got the urge I wanted to try a game. It'd been weeks since I had. I hadn't bought anything recent but I'd built up some PS+ games so I decided to look through them and came across Grow Home. A unique little whimsical platformer from Ubisoft Reflections. I'd heard pretty good things, so I downloaded it.

And I played through it all day, got all the hidden collectables I could. Just a lazy, easy Sunday with me and this wonderful, adventurous little game I got lost in. And for that moment games were adventure. Games were surprise. Games were easy, and fun, and welcoming. It reminded me every bit of why I did what I did. And it gave me one of my favorite gaming memories yet.

 

[Deleted member 13101]

January 1996, the big blizzard in the northeast that dumped 4 feet of snow.

My friend had just gotten DKC 2, and I was stuck at his house for multiple days on end and we played the hell out of it until we beat it.

The next year, similarly, got stuck there another night or two and we played through DKC 3...

Just loved it, and such a good memory I have.

Click to shrink...

I remember the storm(s), that was crazy driving through that stuff. Got stuck at a friend's house one night as well. No games there though, but at the time I was probably playing Tie Fighter, Wing Commander III, Full Throttle, Hexen, etc. on the PC. Fun times!

 

[Necron]

Playing Spyro for the PS1 on Christmas day.

 

[Laser Man]

Tho I have way older memories of C64 and Amiga times where a lot of my most precious gaming moments were created... I have a strong emotional link to the N64 days. I don't know what I would consider more important, the Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island days or the Pilot Wings 64 and Super Mario 64 days.

If I had to pick one game, I want to say Pilot Wings 64, the feeling of flying peacefully around strange polygon lands... my memory has faded quite a bit since those days and it will continue to fade more I fear.

(also playing Donkey Kong Country with family was special to me, those days will never return)

 

[bane833]

Playing Donkey Kong Country on christmas eve 1994. I was completely blown away by this game, the graphics, the music, there was just magic in the air that day.

 

[AllMight1]

waking up and playing Metal Gear Online

Beating Hybrid Heaven.

And yeah, playing Diddy Kong Racing.

 

[It’s Time To Go]

Probably when Pokemon heart gold came out. I mitched and left school early, went into town and bought it, started playing it before I left the shop, didn't stop for about 8 hours. Pure contentment.

 

[DaveB]

The happiest? Man, that's tough...

I remember I was pretty psyched the Christmas my sister and I got the NES set with the Zapper and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cart. We had an Atari 2600, but I was so jealous of my classmates who had a Nintendo.

Christmas a year or two later, I was over the moon when I got TMNT2: The Arcade Game for the NES. When I got to redeem the coupon for the free personal pan pizza (best pack-in coupon EVER), that was also the first time I'd ever eaten at Pizza Hut, so that made it doubly special.

 

[tatotiburon]

when i bought the n64 on launch, i saved all that year the money my parents gave me for lunch and playing sm64 for the first time....man that feeling was, amazing

 

[Oscillator]

Perhaps beating Halo 1 on Legendary. Would've been somewhere between 2002-2004.

It wasn't so much the end, as it was everything that led up to it. Halo was way bigger and more complex and more impressive than anything else I'd played to that point. It felt like a PC game on console, and an exceptionally polished one at that.

I'd never even considered playing anything on the highest difficulty before, but the reviewers were praising the AI and insisting that Legendary was THE way to play it. They weren't wrong.

So many epic moments. The first tower battle. The slow creeping and sniping in the first half of Truth and Reconcilliation. Getting back out of the bowels of the Silent Cartographer. The endless hallways and Sword Elites of AotCR. The incredible grinding gauntlet of The Library. The dark & snowy wastes of Two Betrayals. And the endless retries of the engine room in The Maw until, at long last, the final grenade blew. :)

NONE* of it was easy, but ALL* of it was satisfying. (*Except for Keyes, parts of which you can just run through.)

Official original Xbox screenshots

 

[Aswitch]

-My Mom getting me Xbox Live for my birthday and playing it for the first time (w/Counter Strike)

-Gears of War/ Halo 2 sessions with my Brother

-Playing MGO2 all the way into the mornings during college

-Gaming sessions with my dad and brother (Perfect Dark, Rush 2049, No Mercy, Soul Calibur)

-Finally snabbing a PS2 (slightly after they released and were scarce at the time) and playing the bouncer

-Midnight releases at Gamestop while i was at college were always fun

 

[leafcutter]

+1 for the Christmas morning N64 memory!

Besides that:

Having Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SNES) tournaments with the neighborhood kids. My older brother was really good, but even kids who didn't really like video games would hang out and play some matches.

Watching my younger brother play Sim City (also SNES) on Sunday afternoons after church. It was the one day of the week where we could play video games pretty much as long as we wanted, and it was really cool to plan things out with him and see his city get built into this giant metropolis over the months.

The hype buildup before the launch of Pokemon Red/Blue. Reading the Pokemon Power inserts in Nintendo Power magazine and talking about which starter we would pick. And then convincing my mom to take me to get the game on launch day (that almost never happened). The sheer wonder of playing that game for the first time after all that buildup was really memorable.

 

[striderno9]

Hmm so many swimming inside my head. Perhaps 9/9/99 when I lied and told my mother school didnt start until 9/10/99 and my friend took me to the mall and I picked up my DC, two VMUs, two controllers, and a bunch of games.

 

[Wood Man]

Coming home from school and my dad waiting with my copy of Final Fantasy VII for me. I've never been more hyped for the game. Must've played the demo dozens of times in every which way.

Just the happiness and excitement of finally being able to play this after all the build up. And I was not disappointed. It was everything I wanted.

And also the X-mas I got my NES. How could not be listed.

 

[Deleted member 2321]

90s, OG Mario Kart, everyday after school with my brother.

Match race. Ghost Valley 1 only.

 

[Christo750]

OP, that picture reminded me that whenever I played DKR as a kid, I always thought the back of the karts were mean faces.

I have a few happy memories. In second grade I broke my arm and while I was on the way to the hospital, one of my parents must've made a quick trip to Babbages to get me Banjo-Kazooie and the old BD&A Nintendo Collectibles of Banjo-Kazooie and Mumbo Jumbo. I had been looking forward to it for so long, I learned how to play that whole game with just my right hand haha.

When I first played through the original Kingdom Hearts. That series is very important to me and it all started here, not just because I was astounded by the game itself but I was playing it concurrently with two of my other friends from my neighborhood at the time. Kingdom Hearts 2 worked out the same way; a friend and I feverishly looked forward to that game and played it together. I was 14 when it came out and I remember my grandfather died on that day, so it was something good to have to get me through that difficult time.

Hearing the Fluffy Bluff Galaxy music for the first time in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Video game OSTs always had a huge impact on me as a kid but I was 18 when that came out and I feel like I could appreciate it more. I was more aware of what good VGM sounded like and hearing that song (along with the rest of the soundtrack, honestly) was a seminal moment in my gaming life; it came out almost a year after I moved away from my hometown after I graduated high school and it was kinda lonely because I wasn't away at college with my friends, but I dove deep into games that year and their soundtracks especially.

Lately it's BOTW. Anytime I ever feel anxious, I go to the Akkala region and wait for sunrise. That sound and that view are very calming. The same is true for the hills outside Kakariko Village during sunset, looking out over Central Hyrule. BOTW may not be that good looking from a texture perspective but from the perspective of ambiance and mood, IMO, it's unmatched.

I know it's a happy moments thread and my examples are all in spite of unfortunate things happening to me lol but I remember these moments particularly well because of how much joy they brought me despite the sad events.

 

[Link the Hero]

Playing Perfect Dark for the first time. I loved GoldenEye and was extremely hyped for its successor. The day it came out in summer 2000 was the first day of my 6 weeks long summer holidays. There was nothing I had to do, so I was able to play the game as much as I wanted. When I got it and finally controlled Joanna Dark for the first time I was so happy, I had to scream.

Other great memories are playing Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild for the first time. Breath of the Wild gave me a feeling I didn't feel for at least 10 years.

 

[HumanSmoke]

4 player perfect dark on Nintendo 64 when I was 15