Best Nintendo Moment

[Ravan]

Mine has to be the first time i saw Super Mario 64 back in 1996. Never had i seen anything like it, simply unbelievable. Then when you started playing the game, remember Little Big World, unforgettable

[Spore]

When I jumped in the little pond in the Kokiri Forest without the need to get flippers first in Ocarina of Time.

[Mr. Cheez]

Watching Mario beat up Kirby for the first time in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

[digiki]

Star Fox 64
Venom
Vs. Star Wolf

...Good times

[Jogurt the Yogurt]

Probably seeing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time in The Wizard, and then finally getting my own copy when it first came out and playing all the way through it with my dad and my sister.

Unwrapping my NES Control Deck in 1986 is another great Nintendo moment in my life, though. Man, I was excited. Everything in that box was like a treasure, including all of the plastic bags and twist ties!

[LinkFanatic]

Mine was a little on the shady side, but I remember stealing checks out of my brother's checkbook and writing them to walmart and getting lots of games before I got caught...ended up with around 250 games in my NES's lifetime.

[Yossarian]

Originally Posted by Mr. Cheez

Watching Mario beat up Kirby for the first time in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Seeing Snake snap Pikachu's neck in SSBB was an eye opening experience.

Going cheerfully mad in the Ghost Houses of Super Mario World before that satisfying "oh so that's how it's done.

The first time you play Mario Galaxy and it's all so new and shiny and wow.

[Ravan]

Nothing beats the first time you take on Bowser in Super Mario 64, anybody know if the connection between Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie has been discovered, my brother and i are still looking for it

[SKTTR]

Back in the N64 days there was some rivalry between my PSOne-owning friend and me. He always came to say the N64 can't do this and that, just being jealous of the great N64 graphics. And piece after piece the N64 showed everything that the PSOne was capable of.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in Spring '98 was a milestone in having 3 completely sung music tracks.

Tetrisphere showed that the N64 is not only capable of MIDI music, it can also handle sampled synthesizer music in cd quality.

Resident Evil 2 in mid-'99 showed that the N64 can fit render-cutscenes of 2 cd's in one cartridge. That made him shut his mouth for a long time.

Conker's Bad Fur Day was just the pinacle of graphics and musics and there was nothing he could do about it. Heheh, I laughed at him when he said it was an Expansion Pak influenced game, when it's not compatible with the Expansion Pak at all.

Other milestones were:

Super Mario 64 - Yes, the first game on the N64 has technically beaten every other 3D-system and PC graphic card on the market.

Lylat Wars - Introducing the Rumble feature while being the best action title that the world has ever seen.

GoldenEye - Was a long time THE fps to own. Graphics and splitscreen multiplayer were optimized with an unbelievable engine.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask flushed all the other adventures down the toilet.

Oh well my personal best moments on the SNES were so many.
These games made a deep impact upon almost everyone who played them at the time:

Super Mario World
Starwing
Secret of Mana
Super Metroid
Zelda: A Link to the Past
Donkey Kong Country
Chrono Trigger
Terranigma
EarthBound

[Shortay]

Definitely when I first played Super Mario 64. That felt very special.

[LinkFanatic]

As far as gaming itself, my fondest moment was the first time I played The Legend of Zelda. A friend of mine down the street got a NES before I even imagined getting one of my own....this was 1985. I watched him play that thing for 4-6 hours every day after school. He let me play it one time and I got hooked. When my parents bought me one, the first game I got was Castlevania, which I thought was boring (still had memories of Zelda on the brain). When I finally got Zelda, there was no turning back for me...so playing Zelda for the first time was definitely my best Nintendo moment

[feloniousm0nk]

I remember distinctly my Nintendo moment: it was Christmas Day, 1997. My brother and I begged our parents for a N64 for Christmas, but they said it was too expensive...but low and behold, what was waiting for us in the morning?

...a Nintendo 64, a controller, and Starfox 64!

I don't think we did anything else that Christmas break except play Starfox for hours each day...countless hours of fun were had over the following months and years thanks to the magical new four player action the N64 brought.

12 years later and I just bought Starfox 64 for the VC. My brother came over to visit the other day and we played Starfox 64 for the first time in years, and all of a sudden, we were little kids discovering Starfox for the first time again. 12 year old me was jumping for joy.

Anyway, I'm sorry that took so long. This is my first post and I'm really glad that I stumbled on this forum, and in doing so, finding this thread-- it was a real joy to read about other people's Nintendo moments. Thank you, you've brought back a lot of great memories.

[gaga64]

Super Mario World - Donut Plains 1 - first learning to fly, after fighting through a crowd in Woolworths to play on the display model. At that instant, I knew I had to get a SNES immediately. Not my first Nintendo experience, but that was the one that set me on course.

4 years later the exact same thing happened when I discovered Nessy in Super Mario 64, playing an imported N64 in the local games shop during the lunch breaks of my first work experience.

Another 5 years, when the first screenshots of Super Smash Bros Melee came out, and it was graphically so far ahead of the 64 game (which we were playing to death at my uni) it made my eyes hurt. Instant pre-order (my first).

By the end of the GameCube's life I was starting to tire of games - I'd bought, played, and sold a lot of games and was tired of essentially replaying the same experience over and over with better graphics. Then Nintendo explained the controls for Wii Twilight Princess involved waving the Wiimote to swing your sword, and the nunchuck for your shield, and yet again I was hooked. OK, so the reality didn't quite pan out the way I'd invisioned it, but it's good enough that I don't feel cheated.

[RetroNL]

As in basic: The first time I and my sister got a console namely the NES 8 bit PAL for a December presentday called 'sinterklaas' early 90' s.

As in game: The first time I entered the church in Zelda Ocarina of Time with as best final pulling out the first 3d Master Sword.

[Betagam7]

3rd place: Playing Super Mario Bros on NES at Boots the chemist when I was a kid. I was a C64 owner and never owned an 8 bit console but this made me want one so badly (even though Boots NES was programmed to randomly reset the game every 2 minutes!). Mario Bros on the C64 wasn't the game I was expecting!

2nd place: Finally getting a SNES for Xmas with Super Mario World. My First console. I had drooled over it as the kids at school played WWF:Wrestlemania and SF2 on it and found it hidden in my house a month before Xmas!
I almost died of anticipation waiting to be officially given it. Super Mario World dominated my life for a good few months after that in the my pre-internet days.

1st Place: Seeing footage of the N64 being debuted at a trade show on the UK videogame show Bad Influence. The controller looked (and was) so unique and Super Mario 64 looked like (and was at the time) gaming Nirvana. I've never been so excited to get a new system since.

[kawaiipikachu]

Originally Posted by LinkFanatic

Mine was a little on the shady side, but I remember stealing checks out of my brother's checkbook and writing them to walmart and getting lots of games before I got caught...ended up with around 250 games in my NES's lifetime.

What happened to you stolen NES games after you got caught .

[LinkFanatic]

Originally Posted by kawaiipikachu

What happened to you stolen NES games after you got caught .

My brother worked in a printing company and I had to work the amount off in my spare time. Got to keep everything I bought though.

[Jay]

Probably when I beat Super Mario World for the first time. I was about 11 or 12 at the time.

[theUndead_feature]

Playing Super Mario Bros. at my dad's work the first time. His boss was awesome, ended up giving me the console and all the games he had for it. I must've been 3 or 4 and I rocked at it then.

Never did get the SNES from him though, probably why I don't play RPGs now.

[darthmix]

I'll go with the first time I played The Legend of Zelda. I'd bought it with my allowance money because it seemd Nintendo was making a really big deal of it, what with their fun club newsletter and TV ad campaign, so I figured there had to be something to it. As soon as I opened up the box I had the sense that this was something special: the gold cartridge, the fragment of a Hyrule map, all of that extra presentation just built my excitement.

It's stupid, but I even remember the way the package smelled, the plastic packaging, the ink of the instruction manual, and so on. I also remember that the story page of the manual begins with the phrase "It is a time of chaos," or something like that, but I didn't know the word "chaos", and when I read it in my head I heard "chaw-ose."

Then I started it up and the game asked for my name, and I realized there was a save feature - all of these were new experiences to me at the time. And then I discovered the non-linear, exploratory nature of the world map. It was a huge world I was going to get to explore and find my way through.

That was pretty cool.

[evildevil97]

Watching my cousin play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! for hours on end during Thanksgiving.

[kawaiipikachu]

Originally Posted by LinkFanatic

My brother worked in a printing company and I had to work the amount off in my spare time. Got to keep everything I bought though.

Well fair enough. It's hard to imagine returning all the games back to the store, plus I can imagine your brother being a bit more protective of his checkbook from then onwards. Still, 250 games must be a bit of an effort on your behalf & amazing even though it was wrong.

[Betagam7]

Originally Posted by darthmix

I'll go with the first time I played The Legend of Zelda. I'd bought it with my allowance money because it seemd Nintendo was making a really big deal of it, what with their fun club newsletter and TV ad campaign, so I figured there had to be something to it. As soon as I opened up the box I had the sense that this was something special: the gold cartridge, the fragment of a Hyrule map, all of that extra presentation just built my excitement.

It's stupid, but I even remember the way the package smelled, the plastic packaging, the ink of the instruction manual, and so on. I also remember that the story page of the manual begins with the phrase "It is a time of chaos," or something like that, but I didn't know the word "chaos", and when I read it in my head I heard "chaw-ose."

Then I started it up and the game asked for my name, and I realized there was a save feature - all of these were new experiences to me at the time. And then I discovered the non-linear, exploratory nature of the world map. It was a huge world I was going to get to explore and find my way through.

That was pretty cool.

It's a pity that this type of caught in the era-moment probably won't happen when future generations play these games for the first time.

[shippelton]

mine would have to be
Playing Mario All Stars+Mario World for the first time