Dave Watching Stuff

It’s a rare feeling when a game pulls the rug from under your feet and drops your jaw in amazement. It usually happens only once per generation, and it could be anything from the graphics to a groundbreakingly real gameplay innovation to something as simple as a surprisingly human expression on a fictional 3D head.

Here’s some of the moments in my gaming past that I will never forget, the ones that gave me that sense of wonder, amazement and immersion that has kept me gaming to this day.

I will never forget the first time I saw Mario double jump his way into the third dimension. It was the launch week of the N64 and i was standing in the now-defunct GAME store on Dublin’s Grafton Street, watching the demo video over and over again. I just couldn’t believe it, it absolutely blew my mind (I was 12). When I finally got my hands on an N64 and sat in my bedroom stretching Mario’s ears and nose on the title screen, I almost shat myself with excitement. The game, as we all know, was and is amazing, but that initial feeling of pure joy at seeing what next-gen graphics were capable of has never since been matched for me. Yes, video game graphics  got exponentially better every gen, but that leap from SNES to N64 really felt like the future had arrived. Continue reading →