The Glade 4.0

. . . and experience it for the first time again, what would it be?

For me, the original EverQuest. Despite the somewhat cynical eye through which I view it now, EQ1 hands down held the greatest gaming experiences of my life.

Wow. That's a tough one. It'll take some digesting to narrow it down to just one.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Original Doom. I first played that @ work on a copy someone had loaded up on some crappy old PC (1993?)

That was a rush for my first real computer gaming experience. Before that, I had not played computer games and only dabbled in early consoles.

Xenogears, for sure. Most epic RPG story ever.

I'd be tempted to say EQ1, but only if my amnesia was temporary and lasted only a couple months. I wouldn't want to waste another 4 years playing that thing at the high end before i got off the treadmill.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Hmmm...despite the game being hard as **** the first couple of times I played it, Baldur's Gate. My favorite series of all time.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2651

RoK still isn't out yet...


For me, Knights of the Old Republic, hands down.

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Raell Kromwell

EQ was really a chat room so it doesn't count for me

I'd prolly go with one of the Might and Magics or the Civilization series.

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I'm going to go with FF12. That's probably one of my most favorite stories in a game, ever.

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The Dude abides.

KOTOR/KOTOR2 - loved the reveals...

It wouldn't be enough just to erase the memory of the game, because the game experiences we've had didn't happen in a vaccum - they all had context.

I imagine if I erased my memory of FF7 and then played it nowadays, it'd be mediocre at best. (Well, the storyline was pretty mediocre in the first place, but anyway) Think of the first time you did the last Sephiroth encounter. The music starts up orchestral and it's pretty cool, then suddenly the choral pieces start in, and your head just explodes, because you've never heard any music like that playing out of a video game before.

Same thing with Chrono Trigger, the most awesome game ever in the history of ever. In today's context, a choose-your-own-outcome time travelling game would probably just be in the middle of the pack somewhere, but for its time, it was so far ahead of anything else on any gaming console (music, graphics, atmosphere, theme and story) that it stood out.

EQ1 would be the same way. My wife and I have tried to go back a few times, but other than going and wiping out Unrest or killing some sand giants, the nostalgia factor wears off pretty quickly and the appeal just isn't there. If you wiped out every memory of the one game, but you had played the other MMOs, you'd be like "WTF is this slow crappy thing"?

Moral of the story? You can't go back.

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That said, if you really *could* go back, I'd do EQ again. The people, not the game, are what made for most of the atmosphere there. The online community was just... different. (To be fair, EQ's popularity is what started that ball rolling, and now we have the WoW short bus that holds 11 million people, but I digress...)

Meeting my wife and getting to know her, grouping with the people we used to group with, those are good times and it'd be fun to go back and do it again.

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Most likely Thief: The Dark Project.

Possibly Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Probably Half Life. It was so amazing at the time.

I have to go with this one as well.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Wasteland or Starflight I & II

Concerning the context issue Vladimirr brought up:

True, there probably would have to be some time travel involved, too.

In fact, in order for me to fully appreciate EQ1 again, I would also have to erase EQ2 as well, because I think it really brought many of its predecessor's faults to light.

Diablo.

All blizzard needs to do is re release the game with updated graphics. It would still hold up for me.

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Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Everquest. My MMO cherry was popped a long time ago. It hasn't ever felt the same since.

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QFT

Wing Commander

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

For MMO's EQ. Nothing will ever equal that experience. Even with all the dumbing down of the game, and fast leveling, and defiant gear, I still find myself getting attached to, and into the intricacies of my characters personalities (and I'm really not much of a role player) and their place in their world.

As far as single player games, I would say the orginal Might and Magic. I was completely enthralled by that game at the time. Of course I was playing it on a Commodore 64. By today's standards it wouldn't be anything more than a few minutes of nostalgia, followed by, 'holy cow, what a crap-fest.. how did I ever play this game?'. Which would just ruin my fond memories of the game.

The same thing happened with Everquest. Going back kinda ruined some of the memories that made the game special for me back in the day. I have since gotten past that to a degree, and I think that is because I've come to think of todays Everquest as a comletely different game, even though it's played on the same servers with much of the same content available. It's just so different that it's not hard to separate 'then' from 'now', which is why I don't go back and play my old characters from pre-2005 much.

American Final fantasy 3. Great characters. Long and involved story. Lots to do. And still one of the best endings in gaming.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

As far as single player games, I'd love to go back and play Shenmue again, fresh. It's not exactly a blockbuster hit, but it's a cult classic that would be great to experience again for the first time.

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Well it'd probably be EQ1, but since so many have mentioned that already, and since both Thief and Baldur's Gate have been mentioned too, I'll try to be original and say Planescape: Torment. That game above all others evoked the most emotion in me, mainly because of the superior writing (by the way you're wrong Ebert).