What's your best video game related story?

[lupos]

I also finished contra force!

You poor ****! Why do you hate yourself? I curse the day I picked that up from the bargain bin at laneco in Leighton PA. The bargain bin directly across form the Sega CD section. Such a peculiarly vivid memory.

[Peralisc2]

What? Why? I really liked that game. o.o

[lupos]

I don't remember, I just remember hating it. Though to be fair i sucked at all the contra games.

[DanTheTimid]

I have such horrible and wonderful memories of the contra games, especially the original, I whiled away far too many hours of my life playing that game with friends and being incredibly happy to get just a tiny bit farther each time only to be incredibly frustrated when I'd die much earlier the next time. Don't believe I was ever part of a team that beat the game with out the konami code. Though to be fair I was like 5 or so when I played that game, back then I couldn't even beat the original mario brothers, yet I played mario again years later when I was like 12 or so and beat it on my first try, then beat it again in the hard mode (you unlock by beating it normally) also on my first try, and sat there scratching my head as to why I had found it so hard as a kid. Guess it just took me a while to develop my hand eye coordination.

Lets see, video game related story... hmmm... I have one thats more about my friend then me and I think I posted it or most of it on the forum before but just cause no other stories are coming to mind right now...

Well a few years ago as much as I considered WoW a crime against nature (taking my beloved warcraft RTS series and making it into an MMORPG, my least favorite of all game genres) I let a friend talk me into joining the game. I didn't want to pvp but he talked me into joining the pvp server cause thats where he played. The game wasn't horrible, but I spent 90% of my play time in incredible frustration while I walked back to my recently ganked body, killed by a ??? level player (aka one so high they couldn't have even gotten any honor points out of it, just the satisfaction of knowing they were ruining my play experience). I got frustarted and didn't pay for another month.

Months passed and my friend kept bugging me to get back into the game, it gets better later he said, he'll help me out this time he said. So I bought another month to play with him, only to find he wasn't on my server anymore! He'd payed the 30 bucks or whatever to transfer to another server -_- So then I had to shell out another 30 bucks to join his server too. He helps me a little but mostly I never see him on or if he's on he's doing something else. My experience is much the same, I don't get to do almost any of the instances cause I can't find teams and I can't do quests cause every quest zone is being camped by pvp gankers, all I can do is try to find places to mindlessly grind enemies, but even there I'm getting ganked. The month expires and I'm certain I'm not paying for another month to put myself through this torture again.

Months pass and then I get a free month of play in an email from blizzard so I sign in again cause hey its free, hoping that now that everyones moved on to the new expansion these old areas will be less pvp ganker filled. I sign in to find my friend has again changed servers on me The only reason I'm even playing again at all is because its a free month, I'm sure as heck not paying 30 dollars to transfer again. I play for a while and while I'm still getting ganked and not having much fun, I am making some in game friends and actually managed to do a few intances with them, things are starting to get a little bit better. Then my friend tells me, hey your playing again, I want to play with you, join my server. I tell him I have friends on here and don't want to pay 30 bucks to transfer. He says his friend paid to transfer him so he'll pay the 30 bucks to transfer me. So I accept, he pays to have me transfered. We still barely see each other, I no longer have any of my friends from the old server so I never can find groups again, I'm still getting ganked and not having much fun, just frustration and my months about to expire and I tell him I don't plan to pay to keep playing so he tells me to give him all my value items and gold and if I ever play again he'll give them back to me with massive interest since he'll be getting tons of money from the new expansion. Since I'm quitting the moneys not doing me any good so I give it to him.

Months pass and I talk to a friend of said friend who tells me my friend has yet again transferred servers!!! Thats right, not only did he transfer again, but he did so with all of my money and valuables, so that even if I ever do play the game, I'll have to pay 30 bucks again to transfer to get my stuff back.

More months pass, I find out, said friend has sold his account! Thats right, with all my money and valuables still in his accounts possession -_-

Needless to say I have not played WoW since nor have any desire to do so.

[Peralisc2]

I don't remember, I just remember hating it. Though to be fair i sucked at all the contra games.

I was probably the worst player when i started playing it, but for some reason i liked it and tried my best until i managed to improve. And i did improve a lot!

Did anyone play Adventure Island? I so hated console games because you couldnt save and load your achievment. I think i got at level 6-3 or something like that. It took usualy like ~20 minutes (from what i remember) to get close to where i left off last time, thats how often i played it and improved. XD
My reactions were perfect and my play was flawless for the levels that i played at least twice before. Each time i played i progressed a little bit further. It was all so damn frustrating because of the lack of save/load feature. T_T


Dan PvP is for sado-masochists, dont play there if you dont fit into the category. Nothing ever really changes with PvP servers, they stay PvP. What do you expect?
Also usualy when you lend something in RPGs or in online games, it should be something you dont mind losing.

[edgarfigaro]

The tales told in this thread were certainly a mighty lot. I suppose I can recant my tale of yore.

It's funny because no video game playing, waiting in line buy video games, or any console hacking or modification of any kind. This was the birth, the (sega) genesis (ah you like that don't you?) of my video game love. I have an older brother, 8 years older to be exact, who had an Atari when I was was born. Talk about luxury. Whenever mom would take me for walks, she'd always bring the Atari game catalogues along to stop me from crying. Yes, I was only months, old unable to read yet I was mesmerized by the pictures. I knew there was something golden on these pages. Big blocky pixels that could be manipulated into hours of enjoyment. I was less than eight months old at this time.

I can fondly remember playing both the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 at two years old. Never looked back. Well except to see that camper try and run up and melee me in the back. He's dead now.

[lupos]

My parents got PONG as a wedding present. Then they got a Coleco when it was first released (1982). So for as long as I remember, I had video games to play. In fact I specifically remember befriending people in preschool who had Atari or anything I didn't so I could play them.

My mom still tells a story about giving me a quarter one time so I could go play a centipede arcade game for a couple minutes and coming back to find I was on the high score list. I was like 5 and had to stand on a stool to reach the track ball and button. Sadly my gaming skills ended there and I pretty much sucked at games until MK, SF2, and Earthworm Jim all convinced to me really invest the time required to kick butt. I used to be able to run through EWJ in about an hour. I never really tried to "speed run" it as I never though to. I just got real good at it and never got tired of playing it.

Wonder what the speed run records are for that....

EDIT: looking at some speed runs of some levels it doesn't look like there are that many exploits... I coulda been a contender!

[DanTheTimid]

When I was young my family couldn't afford a tv, didn't get our first one till I was about 5 or so years old, so no video games for me, I was stuck reading books and now I'm stuck with this useless love of reading and writing that just annoys people do to my long rants and the fact that I actually read through and respond to everything in their long rants.

HOWEVER one thing being poor did teach me was how to find good deals, I found myself a state of the art PONG at a garage sale for a quarter! And if memory serves I found an old turn dial (aka no remote, had 2 dials with all the uhf and vhf stations you rolled through) black and white tv for a dollar that served me well for years. Later still I managed to find a Sega Master system, 2 controllers, 3d goggles (seriously why was sega master system the only system to use the plug in 3d goggles, those things were so fricking cool), a gun, and like 10 games for like 5 bucks!!! Some where in there I believe I found garage sale atari 5200 for a buck and thought that was the coolest thing ever cause previously all I'd played was my cousin and friends 2600 and this had double the... uh... digital total so I was sure it was superior in every way, also found a bunch of games really cheap at those stores that sell excess games the other stores couldn't get rid of.

Like with the NES some where in mid-generation my parents got me a sega genesis so it was my main system of my child hood, as like the NES it was one of the only systems I'd owned that was actually "with the times" when I acquired it so it meant alot to me, but it also meant I owned very few games cause they expected me to pay "current generation" prices for games instead of the dollar store prices I was used to for my other systems and as a youth most of my drive way snow shoveling, lawn cutting, paper route biking, and leave raking savings I earned went toward a bmx bike. Incidentally, that 300-400 dollar bike that took years of hard work and saving to get was a few years later given to my little sister by my parents because they felt I had grown too big for it and she wanted a bike. Its one thing when they take back something they gave you, but that bike thing always bothered me since it had taken several years of blood sweat and tears doing odd jobs for neighbors and the local newspaper to get enough for it, even if I was too big for it I felt like it was something they should have at least asked me if I was ok with giving up.

Actually that reminds me of another story. So as stated I did eventually get an NES, not sure how or when, but I loved it to death. But for a long time I just had mario, couldn't afford other games. So I saved and I saved my allowance and did chores around the house until finally I had enough and got the game I'd played at my cousins house once that I'd instantly fallen in love with, The Legend of Zelda. Oh how I loved LoZ, with its gold cartridge and crazy gameplay that was nothing like mario or duck hunt. Then one day my parents saw me playing and said "Hey are you using magic in that game?". I probably went white, you see my parents used to be overly zealous christians who believed even video game magic was evil. Once they determined Link did infact have the ability to use "magic" they made me throw out LoZ!

Eventually they loosened up and now a days I believe I own at least one version of every zelda game ever made, except 1, the original gold cartridge LoZ for the NES.

[Electriclynx]

I <3 everything about this thread.

That said, my story revolves around Soul Calibur 4. I got into the game by its third addition, but the online play of 4 and the endless ability to share costume ideas online before beating one another senseless hooked me for life.

One morning some number of weeks ago I was playing random ranked matches and came across two very loud trash talkers, one on the game and the other backing his friend up by talking loud enough to be heard over the headsets. I have a policy when I encounter individuals such as these: I pick my female Lizardman sporting a bright pink cat mascot outfit. They immediately cracked up, much to my satisfaction (I love that the character gets reactions, especially when she goes into the crawling stance in the cat suit), and they decided to ask over and over if I was gay or something. I hadn't spoken a word before the first time they asked, so for the rest of the match I was free to fake a terrible lisp and call him a silly goose when he made obvious mistakes.

At the time I was one of the more vicious Lizardman players populating XBox Live, so trouncing trash talkers was generally as easy as picking the character. The first round I took him down with ~90% health left over, the second round was a perfect, and the third round I pretended to be a cat and played with my prey long before devouring it. It was his friend who made it satisfying, however, because somewhere in the middle of the second round he started making fun of the player for getting beaten up by the girly, gay, pink cat thing and laughing loud enough that I could hear it through the entire third round over the other player's cussing and insults.

I've never had a victory against an anonymous player be quite as entertaining or satisfying. I didn't have to say anything as the round came to a close as that awesome witness was doing everything for me. I ended with a polite "Good match." He ended with a polite "F-you." As I left he promised to find me again and play for real next time.

I'm still eagerly awaiting our next encounter. If I were smarter I'd have sent him a friend request, but somehow I think I would have been denied...

[Phenoca]

Friend: Heard a train go by, and jumped out of bed. Looked back-and-forth and wondered, "Turret? Where's the turret?" (Metroid)

Self: Walking down hallway, tried to spin pencil, dropped pencil. Reached out with ring-finger of left hand and tapped the air. Stopped, looked down; realized the 'undo' hotkey ('U') does not apply to real-life. (Wesnoth)