So... Why don't you tell me about your first time...

[Wolf Kanno]

...playing your favorite video game of all time. What's the story behind you and that game that remains in your number 1 spot?

[NeoCracker]

Persona 4. Played it on Hard the first time since I'd cleared 3 on hard with FES already.

I beat Shadow Yukiko my first try. :love:

[Ayen]

Final Fantasy X. I remember getting absorbed in the game's story and world pretty quickly. Fell in love with Yuna right off the bat and how the summons were treated as major plot points. There was probably a time I could have told you about the world in great detail. I need to play this bloody game again.

[Galuf]

FF9 is my favourite game ever. And it was weird teying to play it. First i buy a US copy which never worked on a eu psx. Then i buy a eu version and it crashes on the "flying through south gate" cutscene. So i get an emu and get to play the US version. But my sister brought the ps2 from her house and we decided to a ff9 race. It was fun. Playing through a game with a story such as this was amazing. Oft the first time i saw quinas scenes were amazing. I won the race barely because my sis got stuck on necron. And i killed him with zidane with 10 hp and quina with 1 hp. Steiner and vivi died. It truly was a battle of ages, consider ing i never knew anything about the abilities system till my 2nd playthrough. The tough bosses amazing story funny characters made rgis game amazing

[Karifean]

If we're talking strictly games, I first played Final Fantasy X when my brother brought it home one time. He was (and still is) a big fan of VII and VIII and I quite liked them as well so we were both psyched to see what this game would be all about. Turned out to be pretty fun. Though it took me years to come to appreciate it the way I do now; but here I am ^^

As for visual novels, I'd just gotten done reading through Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's main 8 episodes when I asked Ultima Shadow what he thought I should read next, and among my considerations were Umineko no Naku Koro ni and a couple others. I was 'subtly' nudged towards Umineko so I started it straight away. I somehow managed to finish it in two weeks with university on the side. And I say 'finish' loosely because in rushing through it like that I managed to miss several facts that are only ever hinted at and not stated outright. And I failed just about every single mystery. So, uh, can't recommend doing it that way. Again, like with FFX, it took me quite a bit of time before I ended up loving it as much as I do now, but it was still an amazing experience.

[Laddy]

Two of the five games that rotate my "favorite ever" list I got on the same day. I was 7(!). My parents would give us Easter baskets and hide them. My older sister's was pink, my twin sister's was purple, mine was blue. Every time it'd be a bunch of candy and toys with a small selection of gifts. I found mine in a cabinet, my twin found hers behind the tv, and my older sister started to cry because hers went unsound for an hour because my parents always played a joke about her taking along time to find hers so my parents would always say "The Easter Bunny must of wanted you to look real hard" so it was a running gag. My basket was awesome. Razzles! Reese's! Spree! Gummi Life Savers! On the bottom, however, was Final
Fantasy IX and Baldur's Gate II.

Now I rented Final Fantasy IX at Blockbuster a year ago and loved it but the disc would fail to read before the first scene of "I Want To Be Your Canary". After that, the game simply froze. But the world and environment simply enchanted me.

My dad played Baldur's Gate a bit and I adored it but didn't really understand it. The game was weird, complex, and a little scary but he lost time because of work. My dad read some PC Gamer and I re-read the article on it time and time again, recognizing the old characters and imagining the world and quests inside. Both games I wanted desperately.

I played Final Fabtasy IX all the way through the Evil Forest while Baldur's Gage II installed. Then I made a (very inept) BGII character and played through the first dungeon but took a break because the game kinda scared me. (I was 7!) Looking back, as far as days that influenced by adult person, that might have been one of the significant days of my life. All because my parents, despite their awful relationship and financial problems, decided to work together and be incredibly awesome.

[Pete for President]

After reading/watching almost every review I could I was still undecided whether Dark Souls was for me. Then christmas came around and my boss at the time gave me a gift card for a videogame store. To Dark Souls it went!

For the first 4-5 hours I was hesitant, to the point where I almost thought I'd have to return it and get something else instead. But then, I think just after the Capra Demon, I got sucked in and enjoyed every single bit of slowly threading through the hazardous world of Lordran. It's tactical but it's got action, it's dark but it has humor, the characters are few but all of them unique and memorable, and every encounter with them was a special occasion. And then I started the PvP... my mind was blown :p

[Pumpkin]

Mkay here's a story for you that I have told before.

I watched the Final Fantasy Spirits Within movie and I LOVED IT. Seriously. So then my mom's ex boyfriend who I was living with was like "You know this is a video game series, right?" I should have because I had actually played a few minutes of one of them before, but I was young and forgot. But I was already super in to video games at this point and I guess I was like 10 or 11 or something.

So I started googling the Final Fantasy video games and came across FFOnline, which had character profiles and stuff from all of the games. It took me a while to understand that the games and movie were not related though and I kept looking for the main character of the movie. I didn't find her, obviously. BUT I did find Yuna who, in my mind, looked close enough. So I looked up more about Yuna and learned about FFX-2

IT HAD ALL GIRLS AND OUTFIT CHANGES WHAAAAAT

But sadly, although it had been announced, it was not yet released. So for Christmas that year, my mom's ex bought me FFVII, VIII, IX, and X, and he said those should keep me occupied until X-2 comes out.

So you would think I would have started with X, but I saw Vivi on the cover of IX and decided I just had to play that one first. And so I did and I fell in love with it. It was my first experience with that style of RPG as the other games I played were fighting games or platform games or things like OoT and Dark Cloud. So I hadn't really played a multi-disc, turn-based, extremely story heavy game before. But I loved it. It was like playing a book. It had a wonderful story and world and characters. It allowed me an escape from some of the home life issues I was having (and would have in the future) and it was just an amazing experience like no other. It's the reason I love RPG's so much!

[Del Murder]

We rented Final Fantasy VI (III) from the local video store. I never returned it. I logged over 99 hours in that game and got everyone to level 99 and learned all the spells. I searched every book store I came across to find any new strategy guide that would show me more secrets (for example, Shadow's dreams). I went on a quest to find one of each item in the game. I hacked the hell out of that game with Game Genie to give me Leo as a party member and allow me to keep the items I wager at the Colosseum. It was the best gaming experience I've had.

[Zeldy]

LOZ: Ocarina of Time will always hold a special place in my heart as I have fond childhood memories of watching my brother play the entire game (before I took the controller).

Same for FFVII as I got that game from a discount bin for a couple of pound. :jess:

[Rocket Edge]

I went on holidays when I was 11 and made great friends with a guy who lived far away from me. We became pen pals and met each other a few times. On Xmas 99 I think it was I bought him a present which was Final Fantasy VII, however the guy in the store made a mistake and put in the discs of Final Fantasy VIII. VII was platinum at the time and I can only guess the guy never noticed. Anyway, Xmas went by, and I can't remember why I never gave it to him in the end funnily enough but I played FF8 for the first time at home with a few friends. I have never played an RPG before in my life. I remember going out into the open world and fought bite bugs - I had no idea what to. I played the entirety of the game using only GF's and didn't learn the junction system until my second playthrough.

I loved it so much. The moments, the story, the music, the gameplay.

[Pike]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a jumble of memories in my mind; I remember that it took me a little while to kind of sort out the mechanics and the (admittedly confusing) UI. But then one day it all clicked and before I knew it I was launching Planet Busters and at war with both every other faction as well as the planet itself. The fact that the planet was interacting with me as well as the other factions just blew my mind and it cemented itself as my favorite right about then and there.

Now Morrowind. Morrowind is another game that took a couple of tries to get into. But the more I played, the more I fell in love with the world and lore, and by the time I beat the main quest I was pretty much sold on it already.

BUT! But then I turned around and started a new game pretty much immediately. The first time around I felt like I had little idea what I was doing, but this time I'd be better prepared. That second playthrough was a better experience and it was truly something special. I remember as I was playing through it I knew that there'd never be a playthrough like this one again, so I savored it. I buried myself in the lore and the world; I played bits of Skyrim simultaneously to keep myself immersed in Tamriel even when I wasn't playing Morrowind.

I wish I could pin down exactly what made that second playthrough so magical. I think it was the fact that I was familiar with the world and I appreciated it but it was still new. After I finished the main quest I did Tribunal and then Bloodmoon and finally retired that character, loaded down with a ton of amazing enchanted gear and basically anything good that you can scoop up in a playthrough. I have gone back to Morrowind many times but I've yet to experience it the way I did that one time, and I don't think I ever will again. The game will always be special to me though.

[Fynn]

August 2011. The summer is scorching hot. I was resting after a very hard year at university, as that was the year when I was trying to handle two degrees - English and Japanese. I had to take my Japanese exam in September because the summer session was too stuffed with English exams. So instead of taking in all the kanji for September, I was playing Xenoblade Chronicles. And even though I dropped out of Japanese and accidentally deleted my save file very late into the game (it shouldn't be as easy as pressing ZR), I still think it was worth it. It was for the best that I focused only on one degree, and I got introduced to the best game ever.

[Bubba]

Really enjoying reading everyone's experiences on here!

Mine was FFVII which I got for Christmas back in 1997. I was pulled in so much by the trailers and was desperate to play it. One Sunday in December, I actually went through my Mum's cupboard and found it while she was out for the afternoon. She never knew, but I'd actually reached Aeris' House before I was officially given the present at Christmas!

It was my first RPG experience and my teenaged self was obsessed with the story. I was extremely quiet and introverted at that age so I'd spend all my time in my room playing this game. It's obviously heavily laden with nostalgia for me now but whenever I play this game it takes me right back to sitting in my little room playing this on a 14' box tv. It's the first game I cried at too.

I still cry at this game today whenever there is dialogue involving Cait Sith.

[black orb]

>>> It was pure bliss, I was amazed, the game had everything I liked and more! I just could not stop playing it, unlocked all the secrets and endings. I made all sort of crazy gameplays , I uploaded videos on youtube, etc..

My fav videogame is Valkyrie Profile BTW..:luca:

[FFNut]

I still remember getting Chrono Trigger for Christmas one year. It was all I ever wanted to play, read everything Nintendo Power had put out about it. Sat down and beat it before I had to go back to school from Christmas break. Since then I have gone through everything I could in that game and still enjoy plugging it in to play if I have time.

[krissy]

i got ff7 for xmas one year cause the guy at the store told my parents it was more like a story and less like typical level based video game gameplay


i was pretty sad cause i really wanted star wars dark forces

and for a few hours of playing it i was like 'ugh its not dark forces'

and then i got out into midgar and my world changed forever i guess