So, I spent a good 15 minutes or so roughly brainstorming about my past 20 years or so of gaming experiences in my life and so many things flashed through my mind~
Please press "MORE" for my long introduction:More
From my earliest memories of playing the original Prince of Persia on PC when I was probably four or five...
For those who played this game... you know that sound... that death music... LOL!!!Playing Super Mario Bros 2 at my cousins house when I was 6...
Playing as Toad was probably still the most memorable thing for me~ So cute <3Playing Quake for the first time when I was 11 and falling in love with FPS games!!!
Oh~ this introductory hallway... so memorable~Installing ZSNES which opened so many doors to so many great classic Super Nintendo RPG games which I was never able to play when I was younger~ Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3, 4, 5, Tales of Phantasia, Lufia series, and so many more... ZSNES was such a great thing for my childhood~
Look at this magical screen... even now, I love this software~Playing Diablo 1 at a friend's house... oh man... music of Tristram will never leave my soul... LOL!
Game: "Stay awhile and listen..."
Me: "HELL YEEEE!!!"
Game: "AH FRESH MEAT!!!"
Me: "NOPE NOPE NOPE. I REGRET EVERYTHING"1998 was a HUGE year for gaming for me. I got my first gaming console, the original Playstation, for Christmas when I was 12 (yes... I actually never owned my own gaming console until I was 12... even though I did have the PC). Many of you know that feeling of receiving a gaming console for Christmas as a child... it is an easily forgotten moment, but if you reflect on it... it was probably still one of the greatest joys you've ever felt in your life. LOL!!!
So many great gaming things happened in 1998...
Oh god... Metal Gear Solid... probably still my favorite game of all time...
Oh the terrors of Resident Evil 2... this game literally gave me nightmares... but I kept coming back for me... the atmosphere of this game was unbeatable at the time... that first Licker encounter... NOPE.gif
Suikoden II ~ Probably the greatest JRPG of all time. No. It is the greatest JRPG of all time.
I was also introduced to this revoluntionary JRPG...
There are so many great moments in this game, but the introduction Mako Reactor scenario is still the most memorable part.
Seriously may be one of the greatest RPG intros ever, if not the greatest.
Confession of a PS fanboy of past:
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I admit... I had the occasional affair with Zelda Ocarina of Time at K-Mart...
I feel blessed to have been born early enough to have been around to experience these historical games in their prime. They filled my childhood with great memories of happiness and joy. The memories of sitting in my living room with my younger brother playing these action and RPG games, experiencing the story, the music, and atmosphere are truly unforgettable. Even all the trouble, fights, and ass-whoopings we got for playing too much are great memories for me. However, even with all these great childhood gaming experiences... I didn't have the most "MEMORABLE" video gaming experience until 2006... I believe for most people, their most memorable gaming experiences may be of the enjoyable kind... However, for me, it was of the unpleasant type.
Being the older sibling between me and my brother, I had much of the playtime on the gaming consoles, and my brother was usually left with less time playing, and was for the most part, a spectator. This wasn't really forced, and he was a willing spectator because of his young age and unwillingness to experience difficult challenges in some of the more intense and scary games like Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 2, Parasite Eve, etc. However, his love for RPG games was unparalleled. Having grown up watching me play so many RPG titles from his toddler age to his early teens, he only chose to play RPG games when it was his turn to play. Because I was the one who spent majority of the time playing, it makes so much sense that he would cherish his playtime so much... the pains and woes of the younger sibling...
In retrospect... even if he didn't feel that way... I feel like...
Anyhow, after I graduated from high school in 2005 (YES I'M OLD. LEAVE ME ALONE), I moved away from home, and also left behind my gaming consoles and PC to my brother. I can only imagine the freedom he felt was similar to that of how I felt moving out of the house. LOL!
Fast forward about nearly a year, and he has become an intense high school student in an IB program in a very competitive school where all his peers are at each other's throats for the highest scores...The majority of his classmates, with him included, had the highest GPA's and test scores in the state... freaking Asians, I tell you... Anyhow, I digress. It doesn't help that he had Hyperthyroidism at this time and was always anxious because of his fast heart rate and voracious metabolism. Being the super stressed out student that he was, his only release for stress and enjoyment was from the RPG games he played, and was still in the honeymoon stages with the Playstation 2, after I had given him 100% reign over it since I left. He was the king on his throne, and he was allowed to do whatever he willed...
Today, I choose to play Final Fantasy XII, and no one can stop me. Not even my older brother...Come around March/April, Final Fantasy XII had just come out for the PS2, and it's the biggest RPG game of the year. You can bet your ass my brother was on that booty. He would constantly instant message me about the new things that were happening in the game, and how much he was in love with this new game with the new battle system. He was putting in mad hours into this game every weekend and whenever he found time to play after his studies. I could tell how much he was enjoying this game because of the intense storyline filled with political intrigue and MMO-esque battle system. I decided to tell my best friend, who had come to the same college as me, about the game because he also had a PS2. So he goes and buys it and starts playing... he's also addicted.
About 3 weeks go by and I'm going home (Tampa) for the weekend, and my best friend is giving me a ride home because I didn't have a car then and he also lives in Tampa. We get to my house, and my friend comes in to greet my parents and brother. Guess what happens... yeah... my brother and my friend are nerding out about FFXII.
My friend throws in his memory card into slot 2 and loads up his game so he can show my brother where he's at, and they're all spazzing out in excitement... it was pretty cringeworthy even for a fellow nerd like me... Anyhow, they're playing my friend's loaded game for a good 30 minutes while oo-ing and ah-ing at every little thing before my friend has to leave to go home. So naturally, my friend saves his game real fast but then... IT HAPPENS... So, if any of you have played RPG games on the Playstation 1 or 2... when you save a game... you need this thing called a memory card... these memory cards go into these things called a memory slot... and when one saves their game onto their memory cards, the console by default will access the first memory slot to save to it. It will then ask the player if they want to ...( I SWEAR TO GOD, my hands are shaking right now as I type this... ).. . overwrite their previous save file with the current one, which a person will naturally press "YES". If you have played before, you know you just spam the crap out of "X" on your controller to get this tedious process over with as fast as possible... except... my friend's memory card was in slot 2... and my brother's memory card was in slot 1... so my friend overwrote his save file on my brother's save file...
Murphy's law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong... and unfortunately, in this case, it was true because my brother only had one save file of the game on his memory card... his 70 something hour save file on a story driven RPG game where every character is fully customized with unique skill trees and item sets...
There is this deafening silence for a good 10 seconds, followed by the frantic actions of my brother taking over the controller and rechecking the memory cards, restarting of game, booting up the save screen, booting up the memory card slot to check the saves... only to realize... it's actually gone. He tried to act cool about it. He was such a champ about it... but even he couldn't hide his sadness and hurt from the situation and eventually just got up and walked to his room... he didn't cry... but we could tell he wanted to... my friend's face on the other hand... you could see how sorry he was but was helpless to do anything... the whole situation was so wrong... so painful... because no one was really at fault, there was no ill-intent in the whole situation... so my brother couldn't get angry at him, and my friend was just so sorry...
Eventually, my friend left... with his memory card, and I tried to get my brother's mind off the whole thing for the rest of the night, while trying to look up a different game for him... time went by, and my brother got over it, and he even attempted to play it again on two difference occasions. The second time he tried playing it, it was like half a year later and he played one sitting but stopped. The third time, he got about half way through, but then stopped again... a champion, I tell you.
What have I learned from this experience? Too much. Too much, I tell you. Ever since then, I've become a game save hoarder and a data/media hoarder. I. BACK. UP. EVERYTHING. Ever since that moment, I have gotten into a habit of saving and backing up every possible game save file, and I also back up too much media files on my PC also on multiple hard drives... because I fear that pain. The pain of losing the memories and joys. It has benefitted me~ I saved my PS3 game save files on a thumb drive (at least the ones that allow it), and my PS3 died on me twice, so it gave me relief... I saved my PS2 RPG games on multiple memory cards, and even found a way to save them on my PC... I even went and backed up my Playstation 1 RPG save files on my PC... how? It's complicated but I found a way... Most of the time, these actions are useless and wasted time... but if I remember back to that day... the pain... the indescribable heartbreak on my brother's face... I just do it... to be safe... to be able to sleep peacefully at night.
SORRY~ I DIDN'T PROOF READ
HAD NO TIME!!!