Woohoo, you have your birthday a few days before mine. Here's to a wonderful day.

1. Fighting with my brother over play time on Bard's Tale on our Franklin Ace 1000.
2. Buying my first game for the Franklin.. Magic Candle
3. The times when Minesweeper and Tetris were all I had/played.
4. Installing and playing multiplayer/LAN game demos in the school computer labs.
5. Buying my first game for a "modern" PC.. Capitalism
6. Doing an all-nighter with Civilization II.
7. Barely able to play a borrowed Fallout on our computer. Never got a chance again until gog freebied it.
8. When Grim Fandago arrived in the mail. So anxious to play after loving the demo.
9. Renting an SNES and playing my 1st game for it... Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest
10. Getting gifted the SNES for my birthday. Rented many games for it.
11. Renting Chrono Trigger, which came with a strategy guide, and looking through the guide in great anticipation at a pizza place. Time travel! Later bought the game and saw all endings, got max stats.
12. Finishing Final Fantasy VI with the fewest members recruited possible.
13. Watching my first PS1 game's intro over and over.. Wild Arms
14. Looking forward to getting Saga Frontier. Wasn't quite what I expected but still somehow loved the randomness of it and future Saga games.
15. Burning down cities in Sim City.
16. Slapping the cow in Black and White.
17. Tormenting Sims.
18. Being called "chicken chaser" in Fable.
19. Many Everquest memories, getting the cleric epic resser would be a highlight.
20. Getting my first achievement in an Xbox 360 game (Viva Pinata). Didn't know what achievements were.
21. Finishing the first Fire Emblem for the GameBoy, despite not really knowing what I was doing through the whole game. Took many tries to beat the final battle.
22. Getting wireless controller for PS2. Yay, no cord!
23. Persona 3 blew me away, especially after intensely disliking Persona 2. I was madly addicted. Persona 4 did not compel in the same way.
24. Playing the 2nd Scribblenauts game for the DS and feeling a bit like a kid again.
25. Playing the original Bards Tale on the ipod touch!

Thank you for this amazing giveaway.

Great idea. I'm in.

1) First video game I ever played: A few minutes of Pong at a friend's house (mid 70's)
2) First handheld video game I ever played: Two-screen Donkey Kong, which the family I was babysitting for had (early 80's)
3) First console I owned: Atari 2600 (early 80's)
4) Last console I owned: PSX (was still playing it in the late 00's)
5) For years I had two PSX consoles connected to my TV, one PAL and one NTSC (through an NTSC-to-PAL converter), because it was cheaper to order an NTSC from the US (including UPS shipping to Israel) than it was to locally have the PAL "modified" to play NTSC
6) First PC game I ever saw anyone play: King's Quest (CGA) on a university lab computer (mid 80's)
7) First PC game I played to completion: Prince Persia (late 80's)
8) Beat Prince of Persia in under 40 minutes (during a lunch break at work)
9) First PC game I bought using my own money: Curse of the Azure Bonds (early 90's)
10) Still have the notebooks I filled with maps of the entire SSI Gold Box series during the 90's
11) First (only) walkthrough I wrote: A challenge walkthrough for Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth (to prove that it was definitely beatable without any need for boring levelling-up)
12) First "used" game I sold (to a friend, without playing it): Eye of the Beholder (bought it expecting another turn-based RPG like the Gold Boxes and was greatly disappointed)
13) Played Vagrant Story for 8 hours straight without getting up from the couch, in order to get as many achievements as I could in one run (including not saving at all, beating the game in under 10 hours, using only one weapon, not using magic, etc.)
14) Recently pulled an all-nighter playing Unepic, not because it was so good (it was not), but because I was abroad and jet-lagged and could not sleep
15) The game that made me return to PC gaming (after a long sojourn in PSX land): Fallout Tactics (late 00's)
16) First game I got my wife to play: Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time (she loved it and went on to play the entire trilogy) (late 00's)
17) Only two point & click adventures I ever managed to complete: Syberia (only the first one) and Richard & Alice (last week)
18) First game I bought on GOG: Jagged Alliance (it cost $9.99 back in April 09)
19) 500th game I bought on GOG: King's Bounty Crossworld's
20) First game I was gifted on GOG: Primordia (by Starmaker)
21) First game I gifted on GOG: Alan Wake's American Nightmare
22) Only giveaway I won on GOG: Total Overdose (by mario.arreola)
23) Only giveaway I did on GOG: A rather lousy one earlier this week
24) The best video game I ever played: Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth
25) Never played a pirated game!

By being active in the forum. Every day you post something you get 1 point of Rep. If you post something that others find awesome (so that they vote your post up) you can gain up to 5 points from that per high-rated post. Just don't post anything offensive, that may have the opposite effect.

Yay! Thank you and entering.

I hope you count also general computer-related achievements and not only game-related. If not I'll have to change my list.

1.) First night with no sleep was due to a C64 game called Archon
2.) Ultima 7 taught me good (if somewhat quaint) English, because I couldn't get it in German.
3.) First falling in love with a computer generated figure - also Ultima 7 (Nastassia) :-)
4.) First time successfully impressing a girl with a computer game - Monkey Island.
5.) Hardest melody to get out of your head - Tetris
6.) Second place for most memorable melody goes to Monkey Island again
7.) Only time being genuinely scared by a PC game - F.E.A.R.
8.) Wiped out every living being in Ultima 7 (apart from Batlin, who fled, the cowardly bastard)
9.) Shinobi - played through without loosing a single life
10.) Playing a game through without pause: Max Payne 2
11.) Getting forced to be married - Fallout
12.) Saving the world - almost every game
13.) My first computer experience at all: a friends C64
14.) First own computer (paid with my own money) a 486 DX2 66
15.) Oldest computer I ever programmed: IBM32
16.) Quaintest method of programming: machine code on punch-tape. (for the IBM32)
17.) most complex computer I built myself: 8086
18.) Strangest computer related occurrence: deleting a sub-function that did nothing and was never called and then finding out that the entire code didn't work any more. Re-inserting the completely inert function fixed the problem.
19.) Largest single program file ever debugged: 11.000 lines of Fortran code.
20.) Beating Goro in MK1 - boy that took long.
21.) Most played Gameboy game - Gargoyle's Quest (until it was stolen :-(
22.) Played through every Ultima game
23.) Best self-written computer games: "Let's drive the school-secretary crazy." ... Ok. It was viruses we wrote. But the game was funny as hell!
24.) Only case of rage-uninstalling: Divinity II after it's infuriatingly bad ending.
25.) And finally largest side-effect of a computer game: starting my Pen&Paper roleplaying hobby. "It's just like Ultima 7, only without a computer", I was told. And I was hooked.

I wrote my entry :


http://www.gog.com/forum/general/desnos_impending_25th_birthday_25_giveaway/post12

congratulation (a bit early) for your birthday.
mmmh 25 memories....now thats not hard:
1. i played Pong and that was the start of an never ending love for electronic games.
2. my Pong console broke
3. Atari VCS 2600 wow, what an amazing graphic power
4. my turn to see what happens after Space Invaders gets over mmh 1 million points
5. i was sad that after i reached 1 million points at Space Invaders the only change was the 1.000.001 and my cartridge broke...the new one was not in sync with my play
6. A new star was born...even better several stars...Vextrex, Intel with even better games
7. Now that was a Super Nova Coleco hits Germany
8. I was holding my breath because of the Adam System for my Coleco...only to found out that i couldn't buy it here.
9. Nes, Sega Master and C-64....i need more time what with all those games
10. a second try at a playthrough with Gauntlet....hey only 512 levels....but no, they just started over again.
11. Pirates! enough said
12. Atari ST...or Amiga...what a question AMIGA forever
13. My first real PC....sort of an Commodore 128 with CPM yeah
14. over 200 km traveling only because i want to buy The Faery Tale
15. This time a real PC, an 8086 Schneider with double Floppy, 512 KB RAM
16. My Amiga 1000 got his little brother the 500
17. The start of tuning, 512KB for my loved A-500
18. SNES, Mega Drive (a little later with CD) Gameboy, GameGear....FINAL FANTASY
19. PC-Engine and later Turbografx...still the best consoles ever
20. PC gaming started with 386 and later 486 and yeah CD Star Wars
21. Playstation rules....after a modification because all the good games were US only
22. Playstation 2 rules....after a modification because all the good games were US only
23. disappointed over the X-Box....were are the good games
24. Ultima Online, the game i played since 1997 till 2006...
25. After endless gaming during the years i am still sitting here playing, only with a machine that has more
power than all the others together and there is no longer a little monitor or TV but 3 widescreen monitors ;-)

Hi, congratulations and +1 for the giveaway.

Well, 25 sounds like a lot, but I think I have a lot more gaming memories than that (especially after reading some of the posters and being related to some of those).

Here I go:

1. Played my first computer game (it was a portable computer and the game was an artillery type game).
2. Played my first Atari 2600 console game (Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark).
3. Played my first Colecovision game (Centipede)
4. Played my first Atari 5200 game (Pacman)
5. Played my first console RPG (Atari 2600 Dragonstomper using a cassette similar to the audio cassettes of the time)
6. Played my first Atari 130XE game (Space Shuttle).
**From this point on anything listed is regarding the ATARI 130XE
7. Finished Star Raider I.
8. Finished Star Raider II.
9. Finished Eidolon.
10. Got scared for the first time by a video game (playing Behind the Jaggilines when the alien appears in front of the cockpit window).
11. Discovered my first bug/cheat/easter egg playing Boulderdash (if you finish with a time of 0, you gain a 999 bonus time, but was fixed in Boulderdash 2).
12. Created my first map based on a game (Asylum).
13. Created my first program in Basic.
14. Connected to a BBS using a 300 baud modem.
15. Printed my first program using a dot matrix printer (which BTW did a lot of noise).
16. Touched my first floppy disk (5 1/4).
17. Learned that to play games in the disk drive you had to start the ATARI 130XE pressing the Option Key.
**End of the ATARI 130XE
18. Played my first graphic adventure game (King's Quest I in an IBM PS/2).
19. Finished my first graphic adventure game (King's Quest I)
20. Installed my first Operating System (MS-DOS 5.0)
21. Installed my first word-processing software (Word Perfect 5.1).
22. Created my first boot menu to fulfill gaming requirments (XMS, EMS, Load CD driver, etc. to be able to play Ultima VII, Wing Commander, and other games without having to use a boot disk each time).
23. Cracked my first game (using Copy2PC).
24. Listen to my first song using a sound card instead of PC Speaker (Sound Card was Adlib, game was Monkey Island).
25. Finished Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar for the first time.
Since 20 and 21 are not gaming related, I'll add:
26. Build my first PC, a 386 SX of 25MHz (with the help of my dad during Xmas).
27. Mastered Mortal Kombat I for PC (able to finish in the hardest difficulty with any player and even killing Reptile).

Happy 25th birthday and awesome giveway, desnos! I'll be updating my post with more memories, but here's what I have so far. They aren't chronological but I will try to sort them if I get a chance.

1. My parents getting a Super Nintendo and Street Fighter II for Christmas one year. I had been anticipating it for so long, and I can't count the number of hours I spent playing that game with my brothers and friends.
2. Playing some of the early Sierra Quest games. King's Quest 1, 5, and 6; Police Quest 1 and 3; Space Quest IV. Those games got me interested in adventures.
3. Playing Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. That game opened my eyes to a whole different way stories could be told in computer games. It was so amazing - dark, mature, and gothic. So memorable especially with an wonderful, moody soundtrack. I felt like I was in New Orleans myself.
4. Beating the last level of Goldeneye on N64 under the bonus goal (I think the goal was 2 min 15 seconds). I tried so many times and finally got it in something like 1 min 55 seconds. It was a huge relief!
5. When I was young I also tried writing my own games in BASIC. Simple text adventures based on things like Star Wars. I shared these with a few friends and they seemed to enjoy the games.
6. Beating Star Wars: Rebel Assault II in one sitting at a friend's house. It wasn't too difficult of a game. I loved the cinematics, though. Really impressive for the time.
7. A friend of mine got Phantasmagoria the week it came out. The following weekend I went to his house to sleep over. We stayed up all night playing that game. There's a part in the end of the game where you're in a deathly situation. We were so tired and couldn't figure it out, but then I had an epiphany and solved the puzzle. Sadly my mom arrived to pick me up before we could finish the game together, but when I arrived home I immediately called him to ask if he had beaten the game yet.
8. One summer after high school a bunch of friends and I decided to have a league/tournament for NHL '95 on Sega Genesis. It was a fun blast from the past to play that game again, since it had been some years. I made it to the finals at the end of the summer but my friend destroyed me. Another friend acted as the league commissioner, keeping stats of all our players throughout the season. Just an all around great time to spend with friends.
9. A general memory was playing game demos from the discs that came with PC Gamer magazine. I loved trying out all the new games (at least the ones our computer could handle). One of my favorite demos was The Curse of Monkey Island. I must have replayed it 20 times. I never had the game, so hopefully it will one day land on GOG.
10. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3D I was blown away. Same with Doom. The FPS was the coolest thing I had seen up to that point.
11. I loved FMV cinematics. One of my favorite sequences was the opera in Gabriel Knight 2. It was a moment where you could just sit back and relax for 10 minutes as the game rewarded you for making it that far.
12. Beating Legend of Zelda. It was so epic. When I defeated Ganon I felt like I had actually saved the world. I spent a long time playing that game with my brothers, so there was a big investment and payoff.
13. The final stages of Super Castlevania on SNES. The entire game is great, but the last few levels are really awesome. The music track "Bloody Tears" in Stage A is unforgettable. And I love when the main theme kicks in during the fight with Dracula.
14. One day playing Tecmo Bowl on NES at my friend's house, I managed to kick a 70 yard field goal. The record was 65 yards by my friend's brother, and he was a little mad when I beat it. All I did was press a button and the game did the rest. :P
15. My family got a new computer around the time CD-ROM became popular in the mid-90s. We didn't really have a good computer before that, so just being able to try out some games was awesome. Our neighbor had The 7th Guest so he brought it over for us to try out. Seeing that technology on a computer was really eye-opening.
16. When my older brother came home from college he had a bunch of games I never heard of. One of them was Grand Theft Auto. During my gameplay I accidentally deleted my brother's save file. He was in the final city, so in order to not upset him I had to make up for the lost progress in just a couple days before he would find out. He did find out but didn't mind too much, especially since I recovered about 75% of his save.
17. We visited my out of state relatives one summer, and my cousin had the SW: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. I hadn't played a PC game with a joystick before (e.g. when I played Wing Commander 3 I just used the keyboard). But when I tried the joystick it was so much cooler. I never owned a joystick but I remember in that moment feeling a game like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter was a true space combat simulation.
18. I also loved arcade games. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, and SImpsons ones were probably my favorites. One afternoon at the arcade I managed to get to the last level in X-Men playing with a couple kids I didn't know. It was pretty cool, just playing games and having fun with strangers who had the same interests.
19. My first multiplayer experience was with Warcraft II. A friend really wanted to play it so he lent me a CD. It took forever to get the connection working on that slow dial-up. I sucked at the game, but it was a great feeling just to play online against someone head to head over the internet.
20. One Friday I rented Super Return of the Jedi and played it all night, beating it by the morning. I don't think I moved at all, other than possibly going to the bathroom.
21. Beating Riven. That game is HARD, but it is really a beautiful piece of art. I needed a little help from walkthroughs to finish the game, but I still felt like I had accomplished enough on my own to warrant feeling satisfied.
22. Mario Kart 64! I loved Super Mario Kart as well, but the N64 version was even more fun. I played that game so much with friends. I remember one time in battle mode where I only had one shell left for the longest time yet still managed to eliminate three other people and win. For some reason that stands out to me because I remember my friend being upset and throwing the controller at the ground when I got him with a carefully placed banana peel to win the match.
23. Tekken Tag on PS2. I wasn't great at this game and mostly button mashed, but like other memories it's something I spent a lot of time playing at someone's house. Really fun game.
24. The ending of Braid. I never saw it coming, but when it happened I almost expected it. That game had a really deep emotional core, something that I appreciated for the developer to want to connect with the players on such a level. But I still was a little depressed for some time after finishing Braid. It made me think a little bit.
25. The first time playing Donkey Kong Country. That game seemed like it set a new bar for video games. The graphics were awesome and the gameplay was fantastic. The way Rare did the 3D characters was quite impressive, and that game sort of reinvigorated my interest in games since at that time I had gotten a little bored.

Some extras:
- Being so frustrated with dying in Contra then one day learning that there was a code to get 30 lives.
- My friend bringing Mortal Kombat over to play on Sega, and entering the blood code when my parents weren't around.
- Beating The Last Express. One of the true gems of PC gaming. A brilliant piece of historical fiction. I hope they make a movie one day (Jordan Mechner has a script ready and Paul Verhoeven is set to direct).
- Once when visiting friends of the family, I saw they had an SNES with Mario Paint. I turned it on and the first screen I was was that someone crudely animated two people having sex on a beach. I think those peoples' older son (who was about 17 at the time) did it. LOL.

Happy birthday my friend. Thank you for celebrating this way. My list was a challenge.
1. I got Doom free with my first pc. (Whoa, that rhymes.)
2. In the old Castle Wolfenstein I succeeded enough to be promoted to Field Marshall. Then I died enough to be demoted to Private. :p
3. I tried Master of Magic and learned to love the tbs genre.
4. When I had trouble in Warcraft 2 I asked a friend. That maniac advised me how to beat any level from memory.
5. In my first mmo (Ultima) I got player killed and the evil mofo bragged about it on his website with pics.
6. Also in UO when they implemented player housing I stayed up all night to place the one I wanted in my chosen spot. Good thing I got it!
7. Also in UO I had a treasure hunting character that was good at digging up chests but couldn't disarm traps. On a hunt once a friend close by suggested I cast a spell to set off the trap from a safe distance. I didn't feel like it so I asked him "do what?" and set off the trap, blowing myself to bits and needing a res. The whole party were like lol lol.
8. I played RBI Baseball at a coin op machine and got pretty good. At a friend's apt his gf invited me to play it on their console and I acted like it was new to me. I proceeded to beat her badly and the gf threw her controller on the floor and got mad.
9. Also in RBI my friend played the team that had Joe Adcock. I thought I got him out when he hit a shallow fly ball to my second baseman. I kept backing up because the ball hung up and kept flying, and much to my surprise and my friend's amusement it went over the fence for a home run.
10. Dark Messiah of Might n Magic: I tried to play all the way thru without dying once and almost made it. I was so mad when I got killed right before the end due to distraction n loss of focus.
11. Forgot to mention Pong. When I was a kid I got a quarter from my dad and tried it. After that I knew I had found a forever friend - gaming.
12. Stronghold. It took me a long freekin time to beat a scenario. The game narrator voice randomly said, "You have been playing a long time, sire." I actually cussed at my pc.
13. In Mario Golf it totally made my day when I got a hole in one.
14. Loved the d&d gold box games. But in one of them I was so stuck I paid a fee to call the hint line. Then the hunt didn't work. At the time it was big deal. :p
15. My friend G and I dominated in Cyberball. Loved it, esp the day I returned six interceptions for touchdown in one game.
16. I was accepted into the beta of Lord of the Rings Online. Might be the happiest day of that decade.
17. Also LOTRO I was at some friend's house telling them how I was running around in Bree one day. His wife didn't know about LOTRO and was like "WHAT? YOU WERE WHERE?" :)
18. The first time any of my guild in LOTRO met Frodo. I asked if he got Frodo's autograph.
19. Playing browser games at work n trying not to get caught.
20. Beat the final tough as hell opponent in Mike Tyson's Punch Out.
21. Beat the final boss in Double Dragon. Ran out of quarters doing it.
22. EQ...just started the game and had to spend an hour running from Freeport to Qeynos.
23. Later in EQ I had to retrieve my corpse. Went into a zone naked and saw a giant way far off. I avoided him carefully, got my stuff, turned to the zone, and after one step the giant came after me and WHAM. One hit and I died again.
24. Also EQ...finished my cleric's epic quest and got the Water Sprinkler of Nem Ankh.
25. Back to Stronghold... after much time, much failing and revising strategy, I finally defeated the Wolf and finished the campaign. That felt awesome.

Thank you for doing this.

I will update as I have time to reminisce....

01) Winning the GOG Blood Bowl league! my first time playing this game online & I never expected to do very well....
02) Getting a Spectrum 48k for Christmas when I was 14. Spent hours typing in a game program line by line, then playing for maybe 10 mins!
03) Getting a Commodore Vic 20 a year later. Yay, tapes!!!
04) NES system. Plug in & play - No load time :)
05) Sega Master system - Alex Kidd built in. Didn't even need cartridge.
06) Discovering Civ 1 on PC. Almost didn't leave my room for a month...
07) Watching my mum playing Mario on NES. Her leg shot out every time he jumped... :D
08) Watching her play Micro Machines. She couldn't get the controls sober, but was quite good when drunk. Vowed never to get in her car ever again :D
09) Dawn of War 2 Retribution - The Last Stand. My first enjoyable multiplayer experience.
10) Discovering GOG!!!!!!
11) Building my first PC. I could finally afford reasonalbe stats. Never would have been able to at standard retail system prices....
12) Those old Tomytronic 3D handheld games that you wore like glasses. The biplane fight was amazing...
13) A summer in south Wales, playing Gauntlet in the arcade....
14) Breaking the GOG forums with a stupid stunt giveaway...
15) My son talking me into installing Angry Birds on my phone. The number of calls I've missed because he was playing....
16) Spilt beer in my laptop. Got it covered by insurance but desite promising to, they never returned to Civ 2 Test of Time CD that was stuck inside. Spent almost a year hunting before I found it on sale again....
17) Finding Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain for 99p in a bargain bin. As soon as I realised how great this game was, I burned 5 spare CD copies, just in case...
18) Learning to mod in Dawn Of War 2. Hated the fact that there were 6 different pre-order deals & each got different wargear sets. DAMMIT! I want them all... Of course, not log after I finished my mod, they released all the wargear into the general loot drops :( But it taught me that modding isn't some arcane magic that is out of reach & modders aren't gods. I can do it too!!!!
19) Red Baron, my first flight sim. The flying was easy, the dog fights were fun, but it took me forever to learm to land without crashing!
20) Discovering Tie-Fighter & then being surprised at how much harder X-wing was. I was expecting more of the same just fighting for the other side...
21) Teaching my daughter to play King's Bounty.
22) Playing Dawn of War Dark Crusade against my 9 year old son & getting beaten by him!
23)Discovering Puzzle Quest - Challenge of the Warlords. Every time I play, I get this mental image of the 2 combatants sat snarling at each other over the gameboard....
24) Taking part in Wpegg's first "nasty giveaway"
25) GOG secret Santa....

1. Playing Wing Commander Privateer on a computer without a working hard drive using the DOS v6.22 RAMDrive driver, and a 3.5" disc for backing up saves.
2. Doing the same with Quest For Glory 3: Wages of War
3. Trying and failing to do the same with Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
4. Buying my first GOGs (Privateer and Unreal Tournament 2004)
5. Getting a Sega Genesis for Christmas in 1989.
6. Playing NES at my grandma and uncles' place in the 90s.
7. Taking my Genesis, SNES, N64, and PSX all over the place to various friends and relatives homes.
8. Getting a Commodore 64 from one of my teachers in the mid-90s.
9. Using the monitor from that Commodore 64 for my Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
10. Disassembling the casing for the 5.25" disc drive I got with that Commodore 64 and using the halves of that case as bases/game cases for my Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
11. Making it about halfway through the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy 3 (US) with a friend during the summer of 1999...then returning it to the friend we borrowed it from, whereupon his mother threw it out because it had magic in it.
12. Playing tons of of Secret of Mana at day-care during the summer of 1995.
13. My first playthrough of Super Metroid. Such an immersive, atmospheric game.
14. My first playthrough of Mass Effect. I have never gotten so immersed in a game before, except maybe the aforementioned Super Metroid.
15. Getting into Yu-GI-Oh! as a card game via the Eternal Duelist Soul GBA game.
16. Borrowing a Dreamcast from a friend of my father during 2001.
17. Screwing around with Debug Mode in Mortal Kombat II for Genesis, mostly involving "AI always does fatalities" and Soak Test (AI vs. AI.)
18. The first game I bought DLC for (Mass Effect 2)
19. An old friend setting up FreeMCBoot on a PS2 memory card for me.
20. Playing emulators on my PS2 using the aforementioned FreeMCBoot memory card.
21. Successfully finding all 117 exits in the Super Mario World fan game SMW: The Second Reality Project Reloaded.
22. Successfully first-looping Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
23. Getting Master of Orion from a friend multiple times.
24. Finally getting my own copy of Master of Orion.
25. Helping out with a fan expansion to the fan remake of Privateer.

I decided to do my own set of memories in the interest of fairness, after all of the effort I've seen the entrants put into their posts.

1. Age 4, I played my first ever video game one day after returning from the ice cream shop down the street, the game that would begin my passion for gaming was "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out"

2. That same year I was also introduced to a collection of some amazing titles that I still play to this day, Super Mario Bros 3, Ninja Gaiden, Bucky o' Hare, Final Fantasy.

3. That same year I spent one particular saturday morning reading Nintendo Power, I had been invited to play with some other neighborhood kids, but instead I stayed inside and continued to play, and later that day, beat "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out"

4. X-Mas eve of that same year, I received as gifts the first couple of games that I could call my own, Joe and Mac, and Ultimate Stuntman. I also received a Batman Returns tiger LCD handheld game.

5. Age 5, tragedy, the NES did not survive what would be my family's last move for 15 years, and all but bought the farm.

6. X-Mas morning, the first present I opened with my younger brother with roaring anticipation was a SEGA Genesis bundled with Streets of Rage 2. Also received Sonic 2.

7. Spread out over a number of years I was able to sample a number of great games, on genesis, and when I was invited to an old friends house, SNES, such games include Super Mario RPG, Gunstar Heroes, Ecco, etc.

8. Fast forward years later, I don't quite remember how old I was (Probably 9 going on 10 given that FF7 was new), but a friend down the road had a new system, and offered to let me try it, it was the Sony Playstation, and the game I was allowed to try was Resident Evil, I was also able to try games like Tekken 2, and Tobal No. 1, and was able to observe people playing a new game called Final Fantasy 7.

9. After what I can only assume was a full year or two of asking for my own, I finally received my very own Playstation system one X-mas morning, my first Ps1 game was WCW vs The World, the game blew. Also received 2 Demo discs. Was able to sample such demos as the new Pitfall, Parappa The Rapper, Tomba, Gex 2, Jet Moto, Spyro, etc.

10. That same year I finally had my own copy of Final Fantasy 7, and Resident Evil : Directors Cut Edition, also receive Apocalypse, (was strange to see Bruce Willis in a video game) both games change what I know about games and gaming for years to come

11. After a very long time of drooling over the trailer of Metal Gear Solid on a demo disc, I awake another X-Mas morning to find it wrapped up just for me, along with Final Fantasy 8, and an N64. First N64 game : Duke Nukem : Zero Hour.

12. That same year (1999 I believe) I finally got my hands on Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time for my birthday.

13. Fast forward a year or two later, a new PS1 game stopped really being a big deal, and the new big deal was the Ps2, and I was the first of my small group of friends to have my own, we celebrated this by staying up all night watching the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie on DVD, and playing videogames.

14.Fast forward, Age 15, life has been rich with new Ps2 game, after Ps2 game, an XBOX was also thrown into the mix, I spend an entire night at the house of my oldest and closest friend playing Dynasty Warriors 4 and House of the Dead 3 nonstop. I return home the next day to find out that my father had passed away at the age of 36. The next year or so is spent feeling numb and playing videogames.

15. A year later, I suffer a nervous breakdown of Holden Caulfield proportions and am hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital, with no privleges, which means no videogames for at least 3 days, when I do finally gain the privlege to do so, I have my gaming palette broadened with some SEGA dreamcast games, such as Heavy Metal: Geomatrix, and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing 2, and Street Fighter 3. Gaming could very well have saved me from being a lost cause.

16. Some time later, perhaps around age 18 or so, I gain what is to be the first of about 3 different XBOX 360 systems, (2 stolen, 1 red ringed.)

17. Fast forward to age 20, I am sitting down in the hospital, and I have beaten Metroid Zero Mission for the first time on Hard Mode, an hour later, I am a father, my son is born.

18. Fast forward 6 months later, I have become a single parent, but not before the mother of my child destroys my Ps2, my gamecube, 4 DVD's, 5 Ps2 games, one Nintendo DS, and 2 DS games.

20. Age 21, my financial situation is stable, my son is fully within my sole legal and physical custody, and I gain my first Ps3, and I have also gotten my own gaming ready PC, my palette can only further be expanded from here, I think.

21. Some time later I join Gog because I see that a game I never had the opportunity to try is available for sale, "Giants: Citizen Kabuto"

22. My first Ninja Giveaway win, System Shock 2, and it is just as amazing as I had been lead to believe after years waiting for a GOG release many were never sure would happen.

23. I am finally able to give Blade of Darkness a try, and perhaps I've just been hardened by at this point 21+ years of gaming experience, I simply do not find it to be that difficult, my confidence in myself rises. And I begin a spree of completing games on their hardest difficulties, a feat I never had enough faith within myself to attempt. Gaining lots of Achievements and Platinum trophies, even.

24. March, I join a small percentage of folks to complete the Wind Fortress in under 4 minutes in Cave Story +

25. My first giveaway for what quickly became my favorite forum community.

The memories go on, but after 25 years, I can easily say gaming has saved me from being a shell of my former self for many years.

Thank you to all of those who have entered so far, and for the birthday wishes.

Let the giveaway continue! Would anyone object to some trivia to perhaps win yourself an extra chance to be drawn?

Impending BUMP!
I dunno. I'm a laaaazy guy. :D

First to reply to this post with the answers to the following questions gets their name entered into the drawing twice. (Must be an entrant, please.) The answers can be found with a bit of googling, checking game guide sites, and a bit of effort.

1.) In Super Mario RPG, What is the password to enter the room to fight the squid boss on the sunken ship?

2.) In Blade of Darkness, how old is Sargon?

3.) In Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, what is the true identity of Tenkai Nankobo?

1. pearls
2. 40
3. Akechi Samanosuke Hidemitsu