That’s exactly how I felt, but with Link to the Past.

For me it was playing Dungeon Master on Atari 520st in 1987. Well past midnight, deep inside the dungeon, I step past a corner and stand face to face with a giant scorpion and almost shit my pants.

I know this probably won’t get seen much now, but man that game has a special place in my heart.

Starting with the original Zelda game, my mother and I always beat them together.

We were very poor, but she always did what she had to do to get us the latest Nintendo console. She worked as a dog groomer leading up to the release of the Nintendo 64. She would be gone for 12 hours at a time, working for below minimum wage (under the table) just to get us that console.

She got Ocarina of Time for my brother and I for Christmas. She was just as excited to play it as we were, but there was no way my dad was going to let us open a Christmas present early. We only got one big present to share, and two small presents. Sometimes if my dad had saved a decent amount, we’d get the large present (usually a game), and then we’d get something that we really wanted that we didn’t have to share.

I begged my mom, she begged my dad. He wouldn’t budge. In the weeks leading up to Christmas though, she broke. She came to me with her plan. We were going to open it every day when he went to work and play it until an hour before he got home.

By the time Christmas rolled around, we were in the forest temple. He didn’t play games so he didn’t have a clue.

It was so much fun sneaking that game out with my mom and my brother. It was so much fun. Seeing how big it was for the time, we literally couldn’t believe our eyes.

Is OoT my favorite game of all time? Not anymore. It is my favorite memory of a game though, and by a long shot.

Edit, for fun.

It meant so much to me that the only boxes I still have from my childhood are my Zelda and N64 boxes.

god getting to the light world forest for the first time in link to the past was a dream. the way the shadows hit everything

then going up to the master sword area and seeing all the animals go across while it was eerily quiet <3

I’m not entirely sure what scene I would’ve said had me similar when I could still more surely remember those first years. Possibly a game I’ve forgotten since. Maybe one of the Bionicle Mata Nui Games or some other big online game. Or Imperium Galactica 2.

But a moment that will always stick with me is from the first Homeworld game: when you return from your first hyperspace voyage. That entire game was epic, including the intro sequence, but it’s that sequence that I think can stand forever as a masterpiece.

And OoT still holds up. Gameplay still feels pretty modern even if you play it today unlike most games on the N64 and PSX. Even the single analog stick controls with z-targeting hasn’t really aged much. Also OoT and Majora’s are still my favorite Zelda games, the non-Switch mainline games after the N64 era just feel derivative with gimmicks slapped on top to make it feel new even tough it still the same quests for the same items you gather in the same type of settings with the same kind of dungeons. Wish they just followed Majora’s Mask and completly mixed the gameplay up for every sequel, instead of rehashing LttP and OoT in a different theme. While BotW and TotK are a breath of fresh air and they are great games, they lack that Zelda magic and feel more like sandboxes where you can fuck around rather than an epic adventure in and they lack proper dungeons.

Lucky you. I only had Lee Carvello’s Putting Challenge. I kept hitting the ball in the parking lot.

Is this real?..

Or is it Memorex?

Same, but in Breath of the Wild, circa a few years ago.

Me with Bioshock when you descend for the first time with Andrew Ryan introducing rapture.

But tbf, imo that’s a modern game as in I don’t see much difference between that and the latest AAA single player game.

Me seeing the starting screen “These are the end-times… There was no hope of survival… This is how you died.” For Project Zomboid the first time. The one and only Zombie-Survival-Game that absolutely hit the nail on the head in relation to an atmosphere of despair and gritty survival.

Me, but when I gave the stripper money in Duke Nukem 3D.

Same but the 80’s and you picked up the first Triforce.

I died sooooo many times to the zombies in the castle town.

Meanwhile 8year old me with a ps1 seeing this for the first time and thinking I can never be happy again