What's the greatest joy you have gotten from a video game?

I've probably played an uncomfortable amount of FF7 to most. During covid, I recently became single so I decided to find some like-minded discord communities to pass that time. I met someone who was streaming FF7. I hopped into the stream and kicked it off with explaining how to get a golden chocobo to reach the final red materia. We're married now and have a dog :D
- thats fun

Staying up all night playing GoldenEye.
- I mean.......you just described large portions of 1997 and 1998. On the weekend.
  Some houses had a rule. No oddjob. I had a different rule. You're oddjob. It was no fun if it was an even fight. I needed a handicap to make it harder.
  
  thats one of the most badass statements ive ever read
  
  1v1 where you're expecting Oddjob is a lot different than 4P deathmatch where one guy is Oddjob. That's where it's a real dick move cause he'll catch you by surprise.
  Still, though. Respect.

24 hour Civ 5 marathon with beer and the boys in my college days.
- ..............well. What happened???
  
  It was just amazing to hang out and focus on playing a game deeply for 24 straight hours with my two closest friends. Can’t recall otherwise being so pleased with how I spent my time.

Meeting my wife on Elder Scrolls Online has got to be number one, but we didn't even play the game very long to be honest lol.
- I play games with my wife every now and then and it's great. I wouldn't say regularly but every few months we'll play something like State of Decay 2 or Astroneer and get really in to it for a week.
- I met my wife playing Rock Band. It was definitely a top gaming moment. But I didn't realize at the time what it would lead to eventually.
  
  Oh for sure, us either. We were guild mates for a while, then friends, then partners! The process took years.
- I didn't think anyone did.

I don't know if these are the most joy but some good memories.
When I first saw Mario 64 in Toys R Us I was awestruck. Just unbelievable. Mario in 3D.
When I was playing Ocarina of Time I was hunting Poes in Hyrule field on Epona. I fell asleep because it was late. When I woke up the game was still running. Nothing overheated. Nothing killed me in game. No loud jarring noises. I wasnt late for anything. I just woke up and started hunting Poes again.
A friend and I were staying up late playing one of the early Kings Quest games where you can dial a 900 number to help you if you got stuck. This was back when save points were maybe once every 10 minutes if you're lucky. We had gotten to a really verbose riddle that we were supposed to have found a clue for earlier in the game but missed it. We just figured out the riddle and guessed it on the first try. It was an unbelievable triumph.

Playing Halo co-op with my wife.

KOTOR. just existing in a Star Wars world and becoming a Jedi. really have no idea why we can't have another Jedi RPG, do you not like money Disney?
- Well we've had a couple Jedi RPG-lites in the Fallen Order series.
  But nothing quite like KotOR I'll give you that. They just had incredible atmospheres on each planet. I loved the city planets the most, like Taris, Nar Shaddaa, and Manaan.
  
  idunno, to me the heavy reliance on platforming and metroidvania-style traversal far outweighs any superficial RPG elements in those games. I just get annoyed rather than immersed in the game.

Wandering around in Morrowind before I really knew what I was doing, being happy just to find a few coins in a tree stump or a crappy dagger.
Other games have given more extreme emotions. But no other game has instilled such a joyous sense of wonder.
- Killing Vivec and then getting the message about being doomed was probably my favorite "oh shit" moment of all time.

Not too long after it came out I was good at Siege and I mean good I was ranked in the top 1000 players and I thought that was pretty badass. I got a DM from some guy who was like "Hey I'm from TEAM and we wanted to know if you wanted to try out for our Siege squad?" I said thanks but no thanks, I have a mortgage and a full time and then some job. I dont want to take on the obligation.
I then went and googled the team, I was being courted by serious professional players. I still decided I didnt want that headache but as someone who has always been an underachiever it was like an IRL achievement popup or a level up notification. Like... look what I can achieve when I actually give a fuck and put the work in.

Rock Band 2. Bladder of Steel achievement playing with a full band of 4 (locally).
It's playing the entire setlist of 84 or so songs all the way through in one sitting. Without pausing or failing.
We did it with all instruments on Medium, but we did it! (I could pass anything on Expert, but maybe not all the way through. My friends were borderline Hard players at best, so Medium was the only way we'd ever be able to do it together)
- Wow that does sound incredible

When I finished my first run of Subnautica, something definitely came over me. I ran around in my base cleaning up, I organized all my spare food and water in a cabinet "for the next person stranded here," I released the fish in my alien containment, said farewell to my cuddlefish, parked my Seamoth in the moon pool, turned the lights out in the Cyclops, the whole bit. An amazing adventure was at an end.
- God, I miss Subnautica!

the ending of outer wilds, figuring out that the treasure really was the friends we made along the way, will always stand out to me as the most magnificent, joy-filled moment in my 25+ year gaming experience.
that, or getting the cool sunglasses in fez.
- It's been years, and I still haven't recovered from the ending of Outer Wilds. I don't think I ever want to either, haha
- Outer Wilds is the correct answer. I wish I could unlearn that memory and play it again from scratch.
- Meeting [redacted] on the [redacted] was such an unexpected and powerful moment for me as well. I don't even usually get into lore that much in games, but Outer Wilds is so well done I nearly cried in that moment.

Once when I was 8, a friend brought over his PS1 and Metal Gear Solid. We played pranks on the guards in the zone that has a bathroom using claymores and Nikita missiles and called snake the Toilet Stalker. Peak 8 year old humor, I couldn't breathe from laughing.
Another in High school, visited my older sister in the dorms and the boy floors were having a massive halo Lan party since all the rooms were connected. I had never played a console shooter before but the guys were really welcoming and wanted me to join anyways. One match came down to a 1v1 with me and one of the good players, I almost got him with the sniper but lost. I wasn't too bummed but afterwards everyone on the floor cheered me up. I stomped the same guy later that night in warcraft 3 and that one felt good.

Getting to the top of the mountain in Celeste. It may not be the hardest challenge in the game (screw you Farewell), but just arriving there with the soundtrack swelling felt so good.
Completing the golden path in Tunic.
Any number of silly things in FFXI that at the time probably felt immensely important.
- Unlocking the golden door was one of the greatest experiences I've had in video games.

Mass Effect, almost certainly with plenty of honourable mentions to other games.
Peak is the Dramatic Scene at the end of ME1 after the final boss. Really really moved by events on Tuchunka and Rannoch.
Favourite moment outside Mass Effect, JC Denton saying "You're gonna burn, alright"

I don't track or rank joy like that, but discovering the dark world in The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past is definitely up there. Just realising the world had this whole extra dimension to it.
I still love dimensionality / hidden depth in games.
I mean, who doesn't?
- See also: Symphony of the Night

Portal and Portal 2 are some of my all-time favorite games. They’re about the only games I enjoy watching other people play, primarily when they’re playing for the first time—it kind of lets me relive that wonder of the first play through. Going through those with my stepdaughter (only 10 at the time) not long after I married her mom was a highlight of my life and really helped us form our own bond. As we progressed through I realized that chamber 17 was going to be rather traumatic for her because she was going to absolutely love the weighted companion cube, so we stopped playing for a few days while I ordered a stuffed weighted companion cube and gave it to her right after the level. As we neared the end of the game I explained to my wife about the Cake. She owned a bakery at the time and we presented kiddo with a cake like the one seen at the end of the game when she won. We did Portal 2 as well, me watching as she played the solo campaign and then we did the co-op together. I’d highly recommend it for any parent who likes gaming to share these with your kids.
- Portal 2 spoilers The final fight where the ceiling crumbles and you see the moon and realize what you need to do is definitely a top 5 moment for me. Those games are so fantastic.

In 2005 I was playing Final Fantasy XI Online and met a group of 5 Japanese players in an expansion area. We wound up partying together for 8 hours straight. They all spoke English in chat for my sake, and we had an incredible rhythm together. We discussed new anime and a few English cartoons that had recently made it to Japan. We took a selfie together at the end of the 8 hours. It was the best gaming experience of my life. I'll never forget it.
- That entire game was just forever chasing the high you got from that one time you had a really good party. I'm already finding myself glossing over the fact that 99% of them were awful and you only settled for them because you didn't want to wait around another 30 minutes for chance of a better one.

Dialing in to a local BBS to play 4-player deathmatch DooM 2, circa 1995.

Red Dead Redemption, when crossing into Mexico for the first time and the sun starts setting and Far Away by Jose Gonzalez starts playing. That shit blew my mind.
- I still get goosebumps from that song for this reason! Nick Drake's Three Hours gives me a similar feeling.

Far cry 2 team Deathmatch first team to 100 kills win on clearcut.
I got 55 of the required kills and was banned from using the 50cal sniper on all future games.
- That's bad ass
- Far Cry 2 brought me joy experiencing the open world format. I fell in love with the desert at night there and now I try to visit real life arid regions at night.

One day a couple of months after World of Warcraft Burning Crusade came out I was woken up by my friends playing the game. I had left on either Teamspeak or Ventrilo the night before and about 3-4 friends jumped on the following morning. I signed on soon after that and played for hours.
I think that's the last time I've been woken up by people whom I like and immediately began the day with a group activity that involved joy.

Finishing Mass Effect 3. Multiple times :)
Smashing and being smashed with my mates at worms with couch-coop
Multiplayer halo 2 across the LAN in my house
LAN party instagib ctf 1 hour 0-0 and winning it in overtime
Rocking a battlefield 2/3/4 server online with a squad of mates all using voice comms, and nobody playing a sniper
I love gaming

Growing up:
playing Perfect Dark either story coop or battle simulator with my best friend or brother
getting totally immersed in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask
Silent Hill 2 and 3 with best friend
playing Star Craft online until way too late, also with best friend
not only joy maybe, but FFX was very memorable for me
organising Xbox lan parties at our house playing 16 player death matches in Halo
Adult:
Getting a Switch totally re-ignited my gaming passion. Having a full time work and family it is hard to find the time to sit down and focus on a game, the Switch with its quick sleep/on/off and tv/mobile feature changed that. I felt like a teenager again when I lost track of time (usually late at night) while playing Breath of the Wild and the Xenoblade series
FFXIV and getting immersed once again in a game world

I once stole 20 billion Isk from a guy in Eve Online. I was hard for days.
- It's unfortunate the Viagra and Cialis didn't do the trick, but we do have an alternate treatment we can try.

The Second Dream quest from Warframe
- Staying up till 3am playing Terraria w/ friends
- Played 200 hours just to get to the character creation screen
  
  "Congratulations, you've made it past the tutorial!"

Hard to say what’s the absolute best one, but some highlights:
Finale of Ace Attorney Justice for All; when you finally have the change in circumstances needed to pin the real killer and send them into a genuine panic.
Pizza Tower, final boss third phase: When Peppino sees that Pizza Face is sending him a Boss Rush, and flips his shit, annihilating each boss at lightning speed.
Ghost Trick, Phantom Detective: The final “4 minutes before death”, and multiple last revelations
Most of these are memories of story-driven moments nailed in by very solid soundtracks, which has very much convinced me how important music is to these games.
- Ah, a gellow Ghost Trick enjoyer!

Life is Strange, with the final decision of Bae vs Bay. It made me quit the game for two days before I came back and decided (Bae forever). I love a good, story-impactful decision. That might be weird in this context, but it was so great, and that enjoyment came entirely from the game.

Top 3, no order (can't pick):
Anytime a SoulsBorne game clicks, especially Sekiro
Winning a really tight match of Rocket League against people at a similar or higher skill level
Playing split screen Freedom Fighters with my buddy back in the day. It got so competitive we started taping cardboard on the screen to prevent screen-peeking

Kerbal Space Program: progression from being unable to get a rocket into orbit, to collecting a surface sample from all 5 of Jool's moons in a single launch

Red dead redemption 2 really made me feel thankful for experiencing the story. It was a different kind of joy but it was very sad too.

I was in the military and we had this big conference table that could fit a good 12 people at. About once a month our boss would give us the key for the weekend and we'd play Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, and Red Alert 2 for 12-18 hours straight while pounding back Mountain Dew Code Red.

Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don't think I got hit once.

Playing Solasta. Our D&D group had fallen apart, and we just didn't seem to be able to get a new game together. Solasta scratched that D&D itch like no game before it has. My wife got really into it, too, so we ended up adventuring for hundreds of hours together.

I think my purest moment of gaming bliss was experiencing completely blind the last handful of worlds in Super Mario Odyssey while buzzed with a few whiskeys. God, my soul was in orbit with that experience. Pure, unfettered joy and whimsy through and through and cinematically epic when it wanted to be. I wouldn't call it the best game ever or even my favorite game ever, but god damn it, it struck me just right way at just the right time. It was something truly special.
More games I will cherish will certainly follow, and have followed. But for that specific set of vibes and circumstances, I don't know if I'll ever top that peak from playing a video game ever again.

Most recent one I can rememver was beating Tears of The Kingdom. I was SO invested in the final boss battle and I got really emotional. I was so immersed I was basically vocally taunting the boss for everything they had done. Only other time that happened was with Cyberpunk 2077 and only because of Edgerunners.
Then in the past (jesus has it really been more than 17 years??) the first time my buddy and I beat Halo 1 on Legendary after an all-nighter of gaming. That was awesome. Horrible smell in that room tho lmao.

Beating Link’s Awakening as a kid. No internet no hints or help just hours of exploring when I was stuck on a puzzle. It’s so hard for me to get lost in a video game like that now and not just reach for an answer or check the internet to see what I’m doing wrong. It’s a shame now, I know links awakening now like the back of my hand and I’ll never get to explore a first play through of that game ever again.
- Same, me and a friend struggled with that game for a while, but still remains an extremely satisfying game to have beaten when you couldn't just look things up.

Okami. That game was an absolute joy to play and the visuals and music were beautiful. My wife even mentioned that I seemed calmer and relaxed while playing it.

I was probably 10 when my best friend (at the time) and I would play Super Contra on the NES for hours. We loved everything about it. We'd get as far as we could. We'd give each other lives. We could sing the soundtrack. When it was game over, we just restarted it.
Those days were simple and beautiful. I don't think another game could give me anything like that experience, since it wasn't really entirely about the game.

Probably local multiplayer with friends at school, like the DS and PSP, used to love playing Mario Kart and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite with others

Actually learning to fight effectively in kingdom come deliverance.
Or maybe beating those swarm motherfuckers in the first homeworld... First 2 examples that come to mind.

In college, quake 3 arena came out about a month into school. My roommate and I stayed up all night playing together. That was when we moved from roommates to friends.

Passing the controller around the room playing God of War 3 on Wednesday nights.

Getting to the final boss of persona 3 as my first SMT game, feeling actually scared irl, fighting it for over an hour and then getting wiped out when it had zero pixels of hp bar left. The party AI was sabotaging me and I was coming up with new strategies in real time to counteract it, it was great
The final dungeon of FFIV-2 (yes I agree most of the game is shit). I had to finish it in one night because it was the end of spring break and I was driving back to college the next day. My real world scheduling was good but I didn't plan for it to be the longest final dungeon in FF history. Luckily this was the best part of the game and I played for 12 hours until sunrise, delirious while taking down the final boss and getting to see the credits roll.
- I just finished P3R's main story right before the new year and I haven't recovered yet. I want to play the DLC but I'm too spooked

I think nfsu2, we got it for christmas and played it for 2 full days in a row.
But tbh i still remember my playlist (flyleaf - i'm so sick/ fully alive, hinder - wings of an angel, Marilyn Manson - the beautiful people, a perfect circle, Korn and a couple others) i used while playing wow for the first time when you could get to lvl30 within a certain trial period. Definitely been hooked for some time but never made it to lvl cap nor did i get sny good gear.
Skyrim gobbled up the most hours of any game.
But i think wow really offered the best escape of real life back then for me, which is my main drive for playing games.
Being able to do the right thing and actually getting rewarded for it is a thing that keeps me coming back to videk games.
Real life isn't really like that most of the time. It will drain you completely, eat all your good intentions and shit you out the other end completely drained and empty handed.

Breath of the Wild: stepping out of the cave in the begining, seeing that vast world in front of Link waiting to be explored
The Switch was the first console I had since the PS2, and the PC "gaming" I did in the meantime was mostly retro games on emulators or a bit of Stardew Valley, so the contrast to that was HUGE.
Another one was re-playing Ragnarok Online months after quitting (and giving away all equipment and deleting all characters) with a friend. We were barely second job class (he was Hunter, I was Priest) and rudimentarily equipped enough to beat Abyss Knights, so we went leveling in the area where those sometimes spawn. AND ONE OF THEM DROPPED A CARD! Cards are extremely rare (allegedly 0.01% drop chance) and monster-specific, and the Abyss Knight card is extremely valuable. So from one second to the next, we practically went from piss poor to rich AF.
Another extremely lucky moment was in Diablo 2: a regular cow in the Cow Level dropped a (perfect!) Windforce, at the time one of the best unique items in the game. I don't remember exactly but IIRC from some online calculator the chances for this drop were under one in a million (I wasn't even wearing anything with lots of MF%)

At least in recent memory, it was Dragon's Dogma 2 teaching me that I could pick up and carry downed party members by having one of my party members pick up another one and bring them over to me. There's so much that's possible in DD2 that just isn't in a typical videogame, that throughout the entire experience I was mostly learning niche interactions from my other party members instead of my own experimentation. It was a really cool experience, and felt way more impactful then a text prompt just lecturing me about all the mechanics the game has.

Me and my cousin played FFXI starting in the beta. I got the game for free at official launch and we played for a long time. But the greatest moment of gaming excitement is when we got the peacock charm drop from a super rare NM. I'm pretty sure it was the rarest, most valuable item in the game at the time. The NM was deep in a maze, and had a huge spawn window. I think it was something like an IRL week or something, and even if you managed to tag it from the countless other players camping it, you still had a very low chance of the drop.
I spent the night at my cousins one weekend and we went to bed one night after camping it for hours and left our characters logged in at the spawn point so we could check the combat logs to see if anyone got it while we were asleep. When I woke up, it had not spawned, but my cousin had already got up and left the cave. I was surprisingly alone in that room for the first time ever. No other players. After about 30 minutes, it spawns. I'm alone, and not strong enough to kill it by myself. My cousin somehow managed to make it from Jueno to the maze (like at least a 10 minute run) before anyone else showed up, and we got the kill and the drop.
We were literally screaming and high fiving so hard that his step mom thought we had won the lottery or something.
We both put it on at least once just to say we had, and sold it for more money than we'd ever imagined. We then bought the best gear for our characters and felt like gods.
Never even made it to max level, but holy crap nothing has ever come close to that level of excitement in or out of a game.
- I still play ffxi to this day and I fully remember moments like that. Good nostalgia but I'm also glad they don't make games like that anymore. FFXI itself has been modernized to remove this kind of grind and is still getting new content updates. You should check it out again.
  
  Me and that same cousin got together and played it again 3 or 4 years back and got to 99. The grind at max level is just too strong to keep my interest. He, however, got into the ffxi horizon fan server that's pretty much exactly like original XI, but with some QOL additions and an added hardcore mode. He got summoner to level 75 in hardcore mode and died like 2 days later. You don't lose your character, but there are some cool items you get from hitting certain level milestones that you do lose. One of which was a ring with a teleport spell on it that had unlimited charges and only like a 20 minute cool down that you get st 75. It also does a server wide announcement when a hardcore character that high dies, so everyone was messaging him. He got super bummed and quit.

Vermintide 2 dlc where Saltzpyre gets a piglet as a hat. Best goddamn $5 I've ever spent on dlc. His little legs and his butt wiggle around when you move and ofc the purity seals are on point.
Also way back in DCUO when fire tank was busted AF I kept summoning fireballs that I would then Chuck into my buddy trying his best to actually complete whatever task we were doing.
Also Also max difficulty helldivers 2 against the robots on Mavelon Creek. It was a struggle to survive more than 10 seconds out of the drop pod and it was some of the funniest shit I've ever played.

A few years back, testing out new zombie infection game mode in indie VR FPS, 12 of us on the server including the dev. I'm last man standing, everyone else is infected, making scary zombie noises as I pick them off with my trusty bow and arrow. I eventually succumb to the inevitable and get piled on, they're all too distracted making brain eating noises to notice the martyrdom grenade fall to the floor...
That was peak gaming for me.

Clearing Star Fox 64 with the good/true ending for the first time ever was an indescribable feeling.

Killing Malenia. Finally.

There are too many. Completing Lode Runner on my C64. Playing the Oregon Trail as a kid and making silly names 'Tit face has died of dysentery'. The first time I played Sonic on my megadrive on Christmas day 1991. Playing Wonder Boy on my game gear for hours with my little bro. Crash Team Racing or FIFA tournaments (any FIFA after 16 is rubbish) on PS1 with my mates. Playing Echochrome on the PS3 on LSD. When the nuke exploded in Modern Warfare 2. Playing through Inside in one go in the dark by myself. Winning a PS5 in a raffle the day after my xbox1 died.
- 32-bit FIFA 98, best FIFA.
  I never did beat Lode Runner on my Atari 800. What an absolute banger of a game though. Speaking of which, I remember playing Encounter on the Atari 800 and Mercenary III on the Atari ST, and realising "this is the direction of video games". Incredible stuff.

As a millennial, I'm probably not alone when I write Red Alert, Atlantis, Diablo and Fallout 2 on a computer without internet connection. Also endless demos from PC Gamer CDs.
The more unusual game I want to add is Warlords 3. Got it as a Christmas gift from my cousins boyfriend (he was maybe 20 years older than me). Probably because he wanted someone he could play shared screen PvP with. Spent a lot of time with that game. The same guy also gave me a pirate copy of Diablo. I should probably give him a call today and thank him.
Also playing Tibia on a 33k dial up connection was special. A very laggy and expensive experience. Always afraid that mom would just turn off the connection because she had to make a phone call. And the true horror I felt when I encountered another player or a new monster deep within an unexplored dungeon. I didn't like WoW when it came out. Probably because of emotional bluntedness that free PvP in combination with gear + xp loss causes.
And I'm still chasing the dragon.