100th Post! “100 Gaming Memories”

 “Play the fanfare! Da da da dunnn dala da da daaa dan dan dan dannnnn da dala dann!!!”

The time has come, NPCs!

Today we present both our 100^th post and 5000 hits! To celebrate, here are 100 gaming memories. You can find some people with similar interests here and links are provided. A big thank you to everyone who contributed and participated in collecting memories for our verbal collage. Below are the snapshots of gaming life as provided by fellow gamers and bloggers all around the world.

Thank you for your continued support and enjoy!

1. “We started The Well-Red Mage as a spin-off of the Facebook group AVID gamers, and our goal has been to provide quality, in-depth reviews from all corners of the gaming industry, to restore to public consciousness the games that have been lost to obscurity or those that could use some more time in the limelight, to renew trust in journalistic integrity.” –The Well-Red Mage

2. “I’ll never forget going to a Nintendo-hosted Pokemon convention at my local mall. It was my first time every doing something like that, and I even won badges at a Game Boy tournament!” –Mr. Panda

3. “Being in a static party in Final Fantasy XI with my wife (then girlfriend), brother, Zman, Valascaziel, and Bubrub is something I’ll always remember. We laughed together, fought together, and (most importantly) stayed together through it all. I also remember searching the world for a perfect spot by a lake where I would propose in-game to my wife (no, that wasn’t my actual proposal, that came later which coincidentally also took place by a lake). There are so many great memories that came out of that game like pulling off our first skill chain, watching my brother get murdered by a bunch of anthropomorphic birdmen (while he took screenshots of it all for kicks), and keeping aggro off of a Ranger and White Mage 2 houring as a tank but there’s no way I can list them all here.” -The Timely Mage

4. “Spending 3 hours playing Dr. Mario with a friend to help her get good enough to beat her husband. She beat him.” –The Green Screen Mage

5. “Playing Super Mario 64 for the first time opened my eyes to what games could truly do in the world of 3D. I felt truly immersed in the colorful world and could not put it down. SM64 and the N64 are still some of my favorite birthday gifts!” –Mr. Panda

6. “Revisiting Mega Man Legends recently as an adult and realizing that 3D gameplay and controls have come a loooooong way.” –The Well-Red Mage

7. “Definitely the first time I played my NES 26 years ago and I put on the cartridge of Super Mario Bros. Better than waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.” –benez256

8. “The first time I ever wanted a new console for just a single game was when I played Guardian Heroes for the Sega Saturn at a friend’s house. I was never a Sega kid, but man that game was pretty.” –The Well-Red Mage

9. “When I bought my first gaming platform using my own money – the PSP! Had to save money for a long, long time as a kid. Control my urges as friends bought RC cars and in game money for a MMORPG, but I did it. The hours I used to spend on that thing. Pretty sad day when it died. Used to download a lot of pirated games to play on it.” –Jamie @ Watch Game Read

10. “Playing Final Fantasy II and not knowing what the heck I was doing. Might as well have been a kid trying to read the jargon of a lawsuit.” –The Well-Red Mage

11. “Driving towards the giant Wizpig faced mountain on Diddy Kong Racing for the N64, the very first 3D game I ever played. I was stunned by the beautiful colourful island.” –lightningnightnova

12. “Breath of Fire II was one of the earliest RPGs I remember completing all on my own-some.” –The Well-Red Mage

13. “When my uncle borrowed his ZX Spectrum and after 296 attempts I finally played Daley Thompson’s Decathlon (and then to PSST! a great memory!!!)” –benez256

14. “Shadow of the Colossus just blew me away with its towering bosses, serene environments, and minimalist narrative. I can’t say enough about that game and how it influenced my appreciation for the level of artistic design that a game can accomplish but it’s an experience I’ll never forget.” -The Timely Mage

15. “When I fell in love with Simcity 2000. Still love between us after more than 20 years…” –benez256

16. “Two brains are better than one! We proved it when my wife and I co-completed The Adventures of Lolo.” –The Well-Red Mage

17. “Playing Robotron 2084 with my family. One of the first “pass the joystick” games I remember. We were all so young and so terrible at the game, but it was always fun to watch my parents and siblings try.” –cary

18. “Banging out the too-small song list on the hilariously Japanese Taiko Drumaster.” –The Well-Red Mage

19. “Shadow of the Colossus: (Not really a favourite moment but it sure did hit the feels) You alone stand against several colossal beings. You must take them down using only your sword and bow. Your only companion is your faithful steed Argo and she never leaves your side. Before the final colossus, Wander must cross a collapsing bridge that he cannot cross fast enough on his own. He runs across with Agro, but even she falls short just before the end. Agro bucks Wander to safety and falls into the chasm below, while Wander watches helplessly. It brought tears to my eyes….” –Devon Gamers Shack

20. “Finding the floppy disk for Maniac Mansion in a random supermarket as a kid and being way more excited then I should have been to buy a game I couldn’t even play. I didn’t own a computer at the time.” –The Well-Red Mage

21. “Discovering this random game called Rogue: The Adventure Game — an old dungeon-crawler that used ASCII to form the dungeons. Both fun and completely maddening. Was one of the first games that introduced me to gaming on a PC.” –cary

22. “My brother was never a gamer, really, but he beat Final Fantasy IV while I looked on in quasi-awe and horror. It’s the only Final Fantasy game I never completed entirely on my own.” –The Well-Red Mage

23. “Waiting in line for the Halo 4 midnight release and getting to talk the books and extended universe with the other fans in line while watching a multiplayer tournament.” –The Green Screen Mage

24. “Playing, and hating, T & C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage on my uncle’s NES in his humid apartment in Waikiki and wondering why I couldn’t just go to the real beach instead.” –The Well-Red Mage

25. “Playing Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II with my brother. Something about the games just clicked between us. If it hadn’t been for him and those two games, I doubt I’d have ever gotten into playing fighting games regularly.” –cary

26. “ The first Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted games introduced me to the potential for excellent narrative in the action-adventure genre from Western developers which, to me, was only associated for JRPG’s at the time (with a few exceptions). The twist at the end of Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 really took me by surprise and caused me to ponder well after the credits rolled.” -The Timely Mage

27. “Playing demos of Spyro 1 & 2 and Crash Team Racing on PlayStation demo discs. I actually didn’t get around to playing the games in their entirety until I managed to get my hands on a PS1 emulator, but the demos left such of a lasting impression on me that they always had me coming back to them in between all those years, regardless of how short they were.” –retr0pia

28. “The death of Aeris (Aerith) in Final Fantasy VII was one of the earliest emotional connections I had with a video game. Now it’s famous, but back then it was so unexpected and the stillness of the moment and the theme that plays afterward is seared into my memory.” –The Well-Red Mage

29. “The Game Boy Advance is a handheld system that I hold near and dear to my heart even to this day with its’ vast and diverse library of games, and like the aforementioned demos, still has me coming back to it to this day, my absolute favorite games of it being Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland, and Sonic Advance.” –retr0pia

30. “Hearing that sound clip play the first time the PlayStation logo came up on the tv after unwrapping a very special Christmas gift.” –The Well-Red Mage

31. “Watching my dad play FFVII with my siblings when I was 7 and getting so wrapped up into it that we would make up our own stories with the characters in our treehouse.” –The Green Screen Mage

32. “Getting a tweet back from @thatgamecompany saying ‘Thanks for being a fan’, which validated my getting a Twitter at all.” –The Well-Red Mage

33. “I remember back when Jakks-Pacific made a series of games called “Plug N’ Play”, where you plug a controller based off of whatever the game was based on, whether it be Disney, SpongeBob, etc. While I don’t think these games have exactly aged well by any means, they do still hold a good amount of nostalgic factor for me.” –retr0pia

34. “One of those exceptions I was referring to was the original Metal Gear Solid. The game was amazing on so many levels and still inspires me today whenever I think of the iconic boss fights, amazing voice-acting, and mature narrative, not to mention a hero I can finally get behind instead of the egotistical dudebros that you would typically find yourself playing in that genre.” -The Timely Mage

35. “Finding every hidden character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham and soaking up all that DC comics goodness.” –The Well-Red Mage

36. “Camping out in front of Best Buy for my PS2. Well I didn’t get to actually sleep there overnight because my mom wouldn’t let me but I stayed with my dad in line as long as I could the evening before and morning after. I was so excited to finally have that box in my hands!” –The Timely Mage

37. “Getting all the way to Kefka and the last save point in Final Fantasy VI after completing nearly everything in the game, then getting up for a drink and tripping over my controller cord, which pulled the whole system out of the entertainment center. When I booted up my SNES again, the entire save was gone. The same thing happened to me a second time when I tried to just blow threw the game to reach the last boss. I would never beat FFVI again until a decade later after getting married and finally defeating Kefka with my wife beside me! True love waits.” –The Well-Red Mage

38. “Playing Knights of the Old Republic II and getting stuck on a boss. All of my characters were dead except one, Atton Rand. Any hit knocked my health down significantly. I finally had to hand it over to my brother, who, after running around and nearly dying multiple times, found a weakness. Corners. He managed to run around a large pool in the center of the room and catch the boss on the corners. He was able to get far enough away to chuck a grenade and then repeat the corner process for a good 5 minutes until the boss went down. We refer to it as ‘Atton Style’ to this day.” –The Green Screen Mage

39. “That ineffable anti-climax of collecting all those seashells in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and getting a lousy bit of a heart…” –The Well-Red Mage

40. “Anticipating Final Fantasy VIII. I was so enthralled by the thought of this game that I would clip out every screenshot I could find in magazines and write the title over and over again on the notebook I would keep them in while I was bored at school.” –The Timely Mage

41. “Dodging 200 lightning bolts in Final Fantasy X’s Thunder Plains. Never again!” –The Well-Red Mage

42. “Playing games with my brother. Throughout all of the ups and downs in life as a child it was the one anchor that kept me grounded and sharing those experiences with my brother and others made our bonds stronger because of it.” –The Timely Mage

43. “My jaw-dropping to the floor as the credits rolled at the end of Arkham City, after the death of a certain super-criminal.” –The Well-Red Mage

44. “Piracy is pretty common where I’m from, but I’m proud to say that I no longer pirate. Fewer games to play, but it makes my soul feel better. Haha. I guess that’s another memory, the first game legit game I bought. Arkham City for PS3. (Not counting the GT5 bundled with the PS3). Spent a huge amount of my savings on it but it was worth every penny.” –Jamie @ Watch Game Read

45. “Destroying everyone at school on Super Smash Bros. for the N64 as blue Kirby. He had to be blue. Couldn’t win otherwise.” –The Well-Red Mage

46. “Watching Link deliver the final blow to Ganon’s head at the end of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, my all-time favourite game.” –lightningnightnova

47. “For me, getting together with three friends on a Friday afternoon after classes and playing Golden Eye on N64. The competition was so intense that, while we all entered the room as friends, eventually two would leave unwilling to even speak to the other two. Until next Friday, or 2 hours, when we were all back at it again. 20 years later, those feelings are still palpable.” –jimtimmons

48. “ Playing Duck Hunt with my family and my siblings and I putting the gun to the screen to win. My dad kept telling us we were cheating. Didn’t mean a lot to a 5 year old.” -The Green Screen Mage

49. “That one time… oh yeah, when I got married and my then-fiance let me design our invitations like this…” –The Well-Red Mage

50. “Finally downing Braska’s Final Aeon in Final Fantasy X. This was my first Final Fantasy game and it took younger me forever to figure this fight out.” –lightningnightnova

51. “Saving up to buy Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring and pretending to like it.” –The Well-Red Mage

52. “Playing Halo 1-3 with my dad and brother in preparation for Halo 4, and then playing it for 8 hours the day it came out and bawling my eyes out for 20 minutes straight at the ending.” –The Green Screen Mage

53. “The unspeakable sense of loss I felt when I agreed to swap games with a schoolmate. I lent him two cartridges: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Mega Man X2, and I borrowed some spaceship game for the PlayStation under his pretense that the PSX game was better because it was newer… He never came back to school, the day after or ever again. I never knew what happened to him and never saw my classics again.” –The Well-Red Mage

54. “Playing the ‘Whodunit?’ quest in Elder Scrolls Oblivion over and over again to see how many different ways I could kill all of the house guests without getting caught, and then getting caught just to slaughter them all.” –The Green Screen Mage

55. “Figuring out how to abuse the coding system in the SNES Game Genie to unleash hacked codes for games like Zombies Ate My Neighbors.” –The Well-Red Mage

56. “The first game I remember beating as a child was Super Mario World. Once I hit Bowser for the final time, I felt like a real achiever! This experience and my love for the game has cemented it as one of my favorite games of all time!” –Mr. Panda

57. “Spending an entire summer vacation from high school holed up in my room with blankets over the windows in humid 90 degree Hawaii weather and playing nothing but Chrono Trigger, finding every secret, getting every item, Rainbow Shell equipment, and ending. It’s still the game I know better than any other and my favorite of all time.” –The Well-Red Mage

58. “The sense of relief in the moment when the ‘Safe-Room’ music faded in after limping through a door that first weekend I spent in Raccoon City.” –hundstrasse

59. “Spending hours trying to 100% The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on the GameCube with my brother. He was Link and I would connect my Game Boy and play Tingle. I would drop bombs on him when he was being annoying. Or just to be funny.” -The Green Screen Mage

60. “Playing Undertale while watching the Game Grumps playthrough and feeling a connection with the characters and the game that I hadn’t felt in a good couple of years, with the end also leaving me a mess of tears. Getting to experience the game and then watch the exact moment others caught on or reacted to something I had was like showing a friend a movie and watching them as they watch it, though technically they showed it to me first.” –The Green Screen Mage

61. “The White Out Mage may have used this one. Playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn while drinking cocoa on a snowy day with a sick friend and stopping to just listen to the music while watching the snow fall.” –The Green Screen Mage

62. “Picking out Mega Man IV for my birthday from Toys R Us in Pearl City, HI. Still one of my best life decisions.” –The Well-Red Mage

63. “Yes! Kirby’s Epic Yarn with Good Ol’ Greenie is still a fav memory of mine.” –The White Out Mage

64. “The inspirational and indescribable feeling from the ending of Journey.” –The Well-Red Mage

65. “I would add beating FFVII Crisis Core and knowing how it ends for Zack and crying anyway, but I think I have enough crying moments on my list.” –The Green Screen Mage

66. “Trying to learn to play the opening songs from Chrono Cross with a friend as a piano/violin duet.” –The Well-Red Mage

67. “Beating Twinrova in Ocarina of Time for the first time when I was 3 years old. I learned how to do it by watching my dad.” –Mike Gonthier

68. “Tapping the buttons as fast as possible to make Jim say ‘Gr-gr-gr-gr-groo-gr-groo-groo-groovy!’ in Earthworm Jim. Never gets old.” –The Well-Red Mage

69. “My parents did love playing [Super Mario World] for the SNES back in the day, but sadly I was a bit too young to really get into it. I wish I had just been 1-2 years older, I definitely would have insisted that we keep the older consoles. As a result, the GC/GBA era is the oldest systems that I still own.” –dreager1

70. “Mass effect 2: When Commander Shepard gives his crew on the SR2 Normandy a final moral boosting speech before the epic final confrontation named ‘suicide mission’ “The Collectors attacked our ship. They took our crew, our friends. They think we’re helpless. They’re wrong. They started a war, but we’re not here to finish it. We’re here to make them regret — to show them and everyone else what happens when you go too far. No more running, no more waiting. Let’s hit them where they live’.” –Devon Gamers Shack

71. “Once, when I was ten years old, I was watching my uncle play the last boss battle in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and wondering why it was so emotional. When I played seven years later, it impacted me, and I realized why it was so emotional even though I didn’t understand it back then.” -The Black Humor Mage

72. “Using the Fierce Deity’s Mask for the first time in Majora’s Mask.” –Mike Gonthier

73. “And of course my favorite memories involve the Well-Red Mage himself. We’ve enjoyed many a digital adventure together, but I loved Chrono Trigger and all the Final Fantasy games we played together. Especially the one that made me cry… (I don’t know what number it is… Some gamer I am! lol)” –The White Out Mage

74. “The feels when Sora and Kairi’s fingers part at the end of Kingdom Hearts, the chasm widening between them. ‘When you walk away, you don’t hear me say: pleeeeeeeease, ohh baaaybyyyyy, don’t go!’” –The Well-Red Mage

75. “100%ing my favorite Castlevania game, the infamous Castlevania 64.” –Mike Gonthier

76. “Browsing through Blockbuster’s selection of games for my weekend playthrough as a kid. Still the worst thing about losing Blockbsuter.” –The Well-Red Mage

77. “And we mustn’t forget Epic Mickey (1 & 2)… I just have one word to say about those “Careful!” –Oswald” –The White Out Mage

78. “Watching the opening cutscene for Final Fantasy X and listening to the piano piece ‘To Zanarkand’ through the glass at GameStop and thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and heard. The song was the first I ever learned to play on piano and it was the reason I taught myself to play the instrument.” –The Well-Red Mage

79. “I dunno, a recent amazing moment was where I lost a game 8-0 on Rocket League and beat the same team 8-1 in the next game, as it was a coincidental rematch.” –SpeedySailor

80. “I remember my brother won a game on Smash Bros. Brawl only doing the side B attack as Peach.” –SpeedySailor

81. “Beating much older (and cooler) kids in the arcade as Rikuo on Darkstalkers: the Night Warriors.” –The Well-Red Mage

82. “I also played a 5 hour stint of Beijing 2000 Olympics with my brothers a couple of times and the “Personal best!” line is the best. My palms were in a lot of pain by the end of it.” –SpeedySailor

83. “Buying Call of Duty 3 for the Wii and returning it to GameStop less than 2 hours later. Shortest period of time I’ve ever owned a game. Shaky Wii motion controls coupled with trying to get in headshots? No thank you.” –The Well-Red Mage

84. “Also playing Gotcha Force obsessively with my cousin and playing as various ridiculous teams like the “def force (which is the rubbish basic enemies all in one terrible, massive team)” or the “sonic team (which is a compilation of a few crap blue Gotcha Borgs)”. I would come back from a daytrip and run into the house and shout about Gotcha Force at my cousin, then we’d play it for 4 hours with not full, but very loud sound on.” –SpeedySailor

85. “Sundering a SNES controller in twain after losing my last life to Jafar on Aladdin.” -The Rage Mage

86. “Super Mario World for the Game Boy is my first video game memory. It may not have literally been the first game that I played, but it’s the first one that I remember completing from start to finish which was awesome!” –dreager1

87. “The opening cinematic for Final Fantasy VIII was the most amazing thing to me. Often times I would find myself hitting New Game over and over again just to watch the wonderfully orchestrated collage of romance, action, and passion. Instantly all of the anticipation I had built up for the game was met with confident affirmation that my fantasy was about to become a reality (pun definitely intended).” -The Timely Mage

88. “Then there was the amazing Horse Mode on Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and the mission where you had to ride by an elephant’s tail; that was good.” –SpeedySailor

89. “Casting Knights of the Round in Final Fantasy VII for the first time and wondering when it was going to end!” –The Well-Red Mage

90. “There was also the years of the Mega Drive (or Genesis), when my brothers told me I was playing as the ring on Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Why did it keep disappearing!?” –SpeedySailor

91. “My aunt used to watch me after school when I was in the 7th and 8th grade. It was great because it meant not doing homework and laying video games with my cousin instead. I didn’t have a PlayStation 2 at the time, but my cousin did. When he moved on to playing something on his PSP, he let me play Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. It was an awesome time playing through those games, and it became the first series I legitimately played through. Now if they could just come out with Kingdom Hearts 3.” -The Black Humor Mage

92. “Ah, the famous “LET’S GET READY TO RUUMMMBLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEE!” on Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Dreamcast) was a classic, and the triangle buns and mad celebrating about a ‘personal best’ of three centimetres on the Sega Saturn’s best game which is, of course, Athlete Kings.” –SpeedySailor

93. “Suddenly realizing as an adult in his early twenties that arcades had become an anachronism.” –The Well-Red Mage

94. “One of my favorite memories is definitely playing Super Smash Bros Brawl for the first time. The cinematic story was just so incredible and it was great seeing all of my favorite characters on the big screen at once.” –dreager1

95. “Dedicating myself to getting the Platinum trophy for Bioshock Infinite. The moment when I finally reached it was awesome. I felt a sense of accomplishment as got my first platinum trophy.” -The Black Humor Mage

96. “I’ll also always remember ‘Live and Learn’ playing over and over again on Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (Gamecube) and having some pretty rubbish chaos in my chaos garden.” –SpeedySailor

97. “Another memory with my non-gaming brother, when I woke up at 4am to get a drink of water and found him pulling an all-nighter in the living room for a marathon of Armored Core: Nexus. The shock was existential.” –The Well-Red Mage

98. “Playing Mario 3D World with my friend’s kids, age 4, 7, and 9. There was quite a bit of dying and me making sure we actually passed levels. It was great how excited one of them would get when they would make it to the flag first.” –The Green Screen Mage

99. “I can remember an extremely old computer game where you played as a white ampersand on a blue screen. All of the environment and walls and objects and enemies were just white letters from a keyboard. I don’t know what this game was called. Anyone help me out?” –The Well-Red Mage

AND….

100. “Putting together this collage of 100 memories!” –The Well-Red Mage

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