What are some of your favorite video game memories?
For me it's some early NES games. I grew up in a loving family as the youngest of four and now that I'm a parent myself I understand how tough it must have been and I have the utmost respect for my parents. We didn't have a lot of money, but my parents worked very hard and I never felt that we were missing something.
So one Sinterklaas (like Christmas, but 3 weeks earlier) eve we got a NES and we were all very excited. The games we got with it were Super Mario Bros 2 (one of the more funky ones), Adventure in the Magic Kingdom and some I don't remember. We had a blast! I also have fond memories of going to the video store, renting some NES games and trying to beat them in a week. Games in those days could be pretty unforgiving. Maybe it was the arcade attitude where higher difficulty meant more quarters or something.
Some absolute highlights for me were: Super Spike V-Ball, World Cup, Mega Man 2, Snake Rattle 'n Roll, Double Dragon, Rescue Rangers, Zelda, Castlevania, Duck Tales and many, many others.
What I find pretty amazing is that in those days I didn't understand English quite as well as I do today, but still somehow managed to get pretty far in a lot of language heavy games. It was mostly trial and error and walking to the edge of the screen, but still... And a lot of games were utterly confusing. I remember playing The Goonies, having no clue what to do and going back and forth through the same areas over and over.
As a testament to my old gaming days, I still remember a cheat code for International Superstar Soccer Deluxe for the SNES: R, Up, Down, L, X, B, Left, A, Right, Y would unlock the AllStar teams. That was locked in muscle memory.