Us writers at the site were chatting about video games that had an impact on us. Great video game moments that impact us emotionally.
I almost feel bad I can’t seem to recall many great video game moments. I love gaming, but at times I can move on and forget them after the experience is over. Some stuff may carry over like the emotional music or the twist I realized just in time, but I guess I’m simple. If I’m hard pressed, I could think of a game in recent memory that really touched me.
I felt as if I was a real gamer
One memory that I feel deserves special mention is how I managed to beat Sonic 3 for the Sega Genesis, through the help of Knuckles anyway. I loved gaming, but I grew up in a generation where the games were made very hard, or at least didn’t have access to a game guide for free online. I like to read game guides to get every collectible in RPGs but I digress.
Sonic 3 was hard because I could never get past Act 2 in Carnival Night Zone. As Sonic and/or Tails, I’d always get stuck in what felt like a small corridor with spinning tops that I guess I had to keep bouncing off to reach a higher ledge. Maybe it was my young age (early teens?) that I couldn’t quite figure out how to figure this out.
But then I played through the game as Knuckles, whose climbing ability helped to bypass annoying walks too high to jump or fly over. I still don’t know how exactly I was able to reach the end with Knuckles, but I was able to get to the end of the game and face Mecha Sonic.
It was around that moment I felt like I was finally becoming a real gamer, able to finish and complete a game on my own merit. Maybe I had beaten other games before that (I really loved Final Fantasy Tactics at the time and beat that about three times in a row at one time), but beating the game enough to get the best ending (all the Chaos Emeralds and Angel Island ascending to space) stuck out to me as a sense of accomplishment.