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.

“Rock 'N Stone!”

My most recent was playing Saints Row 4 horrible pc port. The Enter the Dominatrix dlc was awfully hilarious. Seeing that they didn’t have enough money to do everything they wanted and seeing actual story boards in my game was great. Also the character commentary was fun. The thing that the said was too crazy for Saints Row was definitely true and did not expect.

I got Kim to dance with me in the church in Disco Elysium

I like the fart button in Grand Theft Auto 1&2, have no idea if it’s still in the newer games

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%)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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