Best game I ever bought would be Legend of Zelda for the NES. I was around 10 at the time and I remember saving up my allowance for weeks. I did lots of odd jobs around the house and for my parents friends as well. Fisrt game I ever was able to save for and by outright with my own money. Was a big accomplishment at that age.
Still to this day one of the best games ever produced. I still play it from time to time on my Nintendo emulator for the PC. Been trying to finish it for a long time again on the PC but the emulator keeps losing my game progress. They seem to be really finicky with these types of games that require you to push and hold the reset button while you turn it off.
Same thing always happens with Dragon Warrior, which I am still to ever finish.
Final Fantasy 1, on release day. I had to nag the shit out of my parents for it. I spent the better part of a year with my friend trying to figure it out. No internet, nothing but rumours from class mates and the occasional Nintendo Power or EGM.
Dragon warrior 1 was a close second. We didn't beat both until years later.
Nintendo Power was great as a kid. I remember waiting for the new one to hit stores so I could run out and buy it, ended up subscribing to it for years.
I remember calling the Nintendo Hotline a few times as well for certain games growing up.
No internet, nothing but rumours from class mates and the occasional Nintendo Power or EGM.
Off topic, but man, those were the days. I remember the fun trying to solve a level by talking with your friends. No instant google soup like today.
Yeah, we were definitely forced to think as kids to beat the games. I remember being stuck for ages on certain games. Beating games back then without cheats and minimal help sure was a lot more satisfying.
Zelda is in my top 5, I'm probably the same age as you and it was slightly too advanced for me when it came out, again beat it years later with cheating. I remember having pages and pages of hand drawn maps and passwords for different games. Faxanadu was another great one. The games back then had little guidance about what to do, mostly because of lack of storage capacity, but it forced one to spend weeks wandering around stuck.
In dragon warrior 1, we finally found Edricks armour, once we had BBS access when I was about 14-15. That took about 5 years to find.
FF1, Dragon warrior, Faxanadu, Zelda, Megaman 2.
I beat FF1 last year over the holidays in a few hours with a game genie emulator. Going back with an emulator does ruin a lot of my memories. From the perspective of a child and 25 years, they seemed so much more advanced and indepth than they really are.
