That's exactly how I felt, but with Link to the Past.

I know this probably won’t get seen much now, but man that game has a special place in my heart.

Starting with the original Zelda game, my mother and I always beat them together.

We were very poor, but she always did what she had to do to get us the latest Nintendo console. She worked as a dog groomer leading up to the release of the Nintendo 64. She would be gone for 12 hours at a time, working for below minimum wage (under the table) just to get us that console.

She got Ocarina of Time for my brother and I for Christmas. She was just as excited to play it as we were, but there was no way my dad was going to let us open a Christmas present early. We only got one big present to share, and two small presents. Sometimes if my dad had saved a decent amount, we’d get the large present (usually a game), and then we’d get something that we really wanted that we didn’t have to share.

I begged my mom, she begged my dad. He wouldn’t budge. In the weeks leading up to Christmas though, she broke. She came to me with her plan. We were going to open it every day when he went to work and play it until an hour before he got home.

By the time Christmas rolled around, we were in the forest temple. He didn’t play games so he didn’t have a clue.

It was so much fun sneaking that game out with my mom and my brother. It was so much fun. Seeing how big it was for the time, we literally couldn’t believe our eyes.

Is OoT my favorite game of all time? Not anymore. It is my favorite memory of a game though, and by a long shot.

Edit, for fun.

It meant so much to me that the only boxes I still have from my childhood are my Zelda and N64 boxes.

For me it was playing Dungeon Master on Atari 520st in 1987. Well past midnight, deep inside the dungeon, I step past a corner and stand face to face with a giant scorpion and almost shit my pants.

And OoT still holds up. Gameplay still feels pretty modern even if you play it today unlike most games on the N64 and PSX. Even the single analog stick controls with z-targeting hasn't really aged much. Also OoT and Majora's are still my favorite Zelda games, the non-Switch mainline games after the N64 era just feel derivative with gimmicks slapped on top to make it feel new even tough it still the same quests for the same items you gather in the same type of settings with the same kind of dungeons. Wish they just followed Majora's Mask and completly mixed the gameplay up for every sequel, instead of rehashing LttP and OoT in a different theme. While BotW and TotK are a breath of fresh air and they are great games, they lack that Zelda magic and feel more like sandboxes where you can fuck around rather than an epic adventure in and they lack proper dungeons.

Meanwhile 8year old me with a ps1 seeing this for the first time and thinking I can never be happy again

Lucky you. I only had Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge. I kept hitting the ball in the parking lot.

god getting to the light world forest for the first time in link to the past was a dream. the way the shadows hit everything

then going up to the master sword area and seeing all the animals go across while it was eerily quiet <3

Me, but when I gave the stripper money in Duke Nukem 3D.

Me having my first 'open world' experience with TES Oblivion and not enjoying it until my inner monologue suddenly switches from "I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do" to "I can go anywhere. I CAN DO ANYTHING!" and then I am slaughtered by the guard for trying to kill the nearest random peasant.

-Sometime in 2007

First time playing oblivion, still in the tutorial/intro. Grab the first bow and arrow laying a few meter from a well. Of course the only targety looking thing is the well's bucket. Hit the bucket, it swing, cool. The bucket stop swinging and behold! It is now tilting on the side where the arrow is stuck in. Coming from Morrowind I had lots of gripes with oblivion, but that first arrow in the bucket feeling has been in my mind forever.

I got the master sword in TotK around release and wasn't spoiled on the context of it. It was really cool.

See, to me it was more like the first level of Panzer Dragoon in 95, because yeah, I was that guy.

By 1998 it took a lot to blow my hair back, though. I'm not saying it was a better game, but FFVII had been out for a year, and Quake 2, Half-Life and MGS had come out already. Things had changed.

But hey, the good news is by the time I did get around to OOT, later and through emulation, I still thought it held up alright, even if I'm not on the same "best game ever" boat as a lot of people.

Same but the 80’s and you picked up the first Triforce.

I wonder if there's a timeline where Link is wearing flood pants when he first meets Rauru on that weird fountain platform in the Chamber of Sages

hey i just did this for the first time last week!

The coolest thing ever HAD just happened

Same, but in Breath of the Wild, circa a few years ago.

And then you got outside, there’s a fiery volcano and zombies that make Link shit himself.

Is this real?..

Or is it Memorex?

I remember a friend of mine got an N64 with Super Mario near release date and I hadn't seen anything like it at the time. First time playing that and jumping through paintings and just playing a game in 3D