RetroGaming

25226 readers

218 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

Be kind.
No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
No racism or other bigotry allowed.
Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Xylinna@lemmy.world

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

gts@lemmy.world

234

What's your greatest "gaming high" you've been chasing ever since? Please take care not to spoil anything, if you are going to be story-specific. (infosec.pub)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by eru777@lemmy.world to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world

162 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For 90s kids, there's no need for explanation. For others, well, pokemon was a phenomenon. It was everywhere, on TV, in magazines, toys, stickers. You could trade pokemon at the school excursion on the bus.

You felt alive in this world, pokemon gen 1-2 were the pinnacle of pokemon for me. And in gen2, finishing the game, and lo and behold, there's a whole other region (kanto) waiting for you to explore it. The night cycle in the game blew my mind in ways that I have been chasing ever since.

I know it will never be reached again, but the memory will remain as powerful as it was that evening of the early 00s. What is your greatest gaming high, that you know will never be topped again, and that you have been chasing ever since?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

I still maintain that Chrono Trigger was the masterpiece of the SNES. Not of its genre, not just the best RPG on the platform, not just a standout for being ahead of its time.

What got me about Chrono Trigger is the crux of the 1000 AD cast's main quest, wherein the three kids from the present become accidental time travelers and complete what amounts to an entire young adult novel's narrative arc where they manage to rescue Princess Nadia/Marle from the past and marginally improve history, and in any other story that is where the Happily Ever After would go and the end credits would roll. But via extended highjinks they ultimately wind up gaining some future foreknowledge of the Day of Lavos after witnessing its aftereffects first hand.

These three are not heroes or warriors (Crono possibly notwithstanding, since he's already suspiciously good with a katana) and were not called upon by the gods. None of them are any kind of chosen one. There is no ancient prophecy. They are not the scions of a past fellowship of heroes who saved the world from an ancient evil generations ago. No villain has burned down their village in the first act. They aren't facing much real adversity or hardship in their lives, none of them really have a secret and tragic past, and they all have homes they could go back to pretty much at any time and forget about all of this.

They're just three kids. Lavos isn't their problem, or even the next generation's problem, or the generation after that. It won't rise to destroy the world anywhere near their lifetimes, and they're certainly not powerful enough in that moment to do anything about it anyway.

But it's Marle who decides right then and there, no. Fuck that shit. Without hesitation. No one else can time travel and change the past, at least as far as the three of them know. As Marle says, this can't be the way the world ends. They have to try.

There are so few RPG stories of that time where the decision to embark on the quest to save the world is left to the player characters' own agency, and so neatly aligns with what the player would probably want to do themselves.