Great Moments in Gaming

[VideoGameCritic]

I'm thinking about starting a new feature page called "Great Moments in Video Gaming" that will cross all the console generations. These are magical moments that really catch you by surprise and stay with you. These are things that make you love gaming.
I need ideas. Here are a few examples to get the juices flowing:

EASTER EGG: The first time I discovered the "Created by Warren Robinette" screen in Adventure (Atari 2600), it was like finding the Holy Grail! So satisfying.

SURPRISE ENDING: When Samus is revealed to be a woman at the end of Metroid for the NES. Shocker.

BLOOD ON THE ICE: In NHL 93 for the Genesis, not only could you knock an opponent flat on his back, but a pool of blood would appeal next to his head! After that "making your opponent's head bleed" became a badge of honor.

PLAYSTATION MAGIC: The pack-in game for the Playstation (One), Ridge Racer, let you play a stage of Galaga while waiting for the game to load! This was awesome and I thought it would be the new norm. The second surprise was taking out the game CD, and sticking in a music CD to change the game soundtrack! Another remarkable feature we would never see again.

MIND BENDER: In Metal Gear Solid (PS1) while facing boss Psycho Mantis, he managed to read my mind! When he said "You like Castlevania" I was floored!! How did he know? Answer: He read the memory card! Very clever.

Your turn!

[Stalvern]

Draining the moat in Super Mario 64 was huge. I'd seen the submerged door, but I had just assumed that I'd end up getting some power to let me through or that maybe some trigger inside the castle would open it. Who would have guessed that the problem would have such a gloriously excessive solution?

That game is full of cool moments in general. Seeing the Boos for the first time, looking up and finding yourself flying around with the Wing Cap, watching the Bowser arena tilt all the way over or crumble apart - it all has such a great sense of simple, visual drama.

[snakeboy]

A couple that come to mind...

The Legend of Zelda: The surprise of finding out that typing in "ZELDA" as your name unlocked an entirely different quest. It was a really clever move by Nintendo since I imagine many kids (such as myself) would do this without knowing about the trick ahead of time and feel like geniuses for cracking some great code.

One-on-One: Dr. J vs Larry Bird: Before this game I don't think I ever played a basketball game where you could dunk the ball, but in this game not only could you dunk, but a really hard slam could actually shatter the backboard! How cool is that?? And to top it off, a janitor came out to clean up the mess. Awesome.

[Sut]

Sonic 2 - Chemical Plant Zone.

When Sonic picked up so much speed he out ran the screen !

[eneuman96]

There's an underrated moment in Green Hill Zone Act 1 of Sonic 1. When you start the game up, it appears to simply be a fun platformer with a couple spins (pardon the pun) on the Mario formula. Halfway through the first level, however, you're sent whizzing through a tunnel which then sends you sailing high up into the air. I'm willing to bet that this was the exact moment many gamers realized back in the day that Sega had officially become a contender.

[velcrozombie]

The opening to the original Silent Hill:

You wake up from a car crash to find your daughter missing. You emerge from your totaled vehicle into a deserted world of snow and fog and glimpse your young daughter in the distance. You continue to follow her until you reach a gate with a "Beware of Dog" sign - as you press on you encounter the bloody, decapitated carcass of the dog and you begin to hear an ominous siren wailing in the background. You work your way down a twisted, narrowing alleyway when suddenly everything is cloaked in darkness. Striking a match for light as you continue the search, your panic and disbelief grows as you encounter abandoned wheelchairs, bloodied hospital beds and ruined bodies hung from barbed wire. As you turn around you are assaulted by pale, faceless children who laugh as they plunge knives deep into your flesh. Defenseless and without an exit, you perish...

...only to awake with a start in an abandoned diner.

[Robotrek]

In year 3 of Grim Fandango, when you grab the anchor of the SS Lamancha and pull it up, seeing Glottis again is really a trip. Especially that badass scream he does.

[eneuman96]

-Getting the Raccoon Leaf in Super Mario Bros. 3. There's a reason the famous cover art is just Mario in Raccoon Leaf form: the fact that Mario is able to fly in this game was enough to blow everyone's mind after being used to the much more restrictive level design of Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2 (both versions).

-Finding out the double-ship trick in Galaga. Yes, it's common knowledge nowadays, but I didn't know about it the first time I played it as a kid (circa 2004...for the record, I'm 20). Discovering that sort of thing by accident like I did and like many others no doubt did in the early 80's is...quite the experience.

-The final stage of Metal Slug 3. Worth noting is that SNK was nearing bankruptcy when they were working on this game, and therefore they expected it to be the last one. The last level of the game is a brilliant attempt at a grand finale, with numerous nostalgic callbacks to the previous games and a seemingly final showdown with the leader of the aliens. Of course, the series wound up continuing not long after MS3's release, but it's still an awesome moment.

-The final stage and boss of Mega Man 2. In contrast to the awesome soundtrack the rest of the game has, this level has no music, and that combined with what looks like blood dripping from the ceiling gives off a very eerie, creepy atmosphere no other game in the series has attempted. Soon, you make it to the final boss, and Wily appears to turn into an alien, and the background turns into the same outer space background you see in the Robot Master intro screens. The actual fight is fairly straightforward once you realize Bubble Lead is the only weapon that works, and you find out afterwards that the alien was just a hologram, but it's interesting how Mega Man 2 attempts to provoke emotions from the player in ways that the other games never did.

-Yet another final boss, this time from Yoshi's Island. After defeating Baby Bowser in a rather anticlimactic fight, Kamek uses his magic to make Baby Bowser grow to the size of Godzilla. The moment you see him in his giant form appear in the background, you know things just got serious. The resulting battle uses impressive graphical scaling effects that clearly pushed the SNES to its limits and the intense music accompanying it is the icing on the cake.

-Some may balk at me mentioning this, knowing how foreign non-console games are to this site, but I can't avoid mentioning a specific part from Undertale. See, in most games, saving and loading save data is an action completely independent of the actual gameplay. In Undertale, however, I accidentally killed the character Toriel while fighting her. Knowing that everyone in the game could be spared, I reloaded my save and finished the fight without attacking her. But afterwards, Flowey popped up and addressed me, the player, that he knew I reloaded my save. Extremely freaky if you were previously under the impression that taking advantage of saves works the same in Undertale as it does in most other games.

I'm almost certainly forgetting a few, but these moments definitely stood out for me.

[Stalvern]

-The final stage of Metal Slug 3. Worth noting is that SNK was nearing bankruptcy when they were working on this game, and therefore they expected it to be the last one. The last level of the game is a brilliant attempt at a grand finale, with numerous nostalgic callbacks to the previous games and a seemingly final showdown with the leader of the aliens. Of course, the series wound up continuing not long after MS3's release, but it's still an awesome moment.

To be honest, it really is the finale. The series "continued" in name only.

[CaptainCruch]

I loved three moments in BioShock 1:
- when you first enter Rapture in the submarine elevator and you first hear Andrew Ryan's voice talking about Rapture ("Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?...")
- the crazy 'piano scene' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHoUFrP3Zls)
- and of course the scene where you kill Andrew Ryan ("A man chooses, a slave obeys!")

- Another of my favorite Gaming Moments is when you have to fight the final boss (Mechanic Hitler) on Wolfenstein 3D (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8L-n-WM2pc)

- Last but not least, I also love the second part of the stage 6 of Streets of Rage 2 (the industrial part) and the second part of stage 7 (the elevator before first fighting the two robots. Especially on hardcore/mania setting this is one of the most intense gaming moments ever).