Co-op gaming nostalgia

[GPX | 1,374]

This thread is all about the nostalgia. Memories and flashbacks of yesteryear, and more specifically, the ones where you played with someone else. However, there is a twist..

Instead of just thinking about what multiplayer games you’ve played, you need to mention who you played it with. Hopefully, we’d get all sort of mixed answers on this one.

Some suggestions to discuss:

- what was your first arcade co-op experience?

- first computer co-op gaming?

- first console co-op game played?

- last co-op game played?

- biggest co-op number of people involved?

- make your own question and answer it yourself.

[GPX | 1,374]

11 minutes ago, GPX said:

1. what was your first arcade co-op experience?

2. first computer co-op gaming?

3. first console co-op game played?

4. last co-op game played?

5. biggest co-op number of people involved?

1. Likely a vertical shooter (eg. 1942, Vimana) or Final Fight - played it with high school mates, usually after school before catching the bus home.

2. Bubble Bobble on the C64 with a primary school mate. Probably one of the best co-op games of all time! 

3. Something on the Master System, just can’t recall its name for now, with the same primary school mate. We’ve lost touch when sometime in high school, but what a great gaming buddy! 

4. Can’t remember.

5. I think it’d be TMNT on the arcades. I’m sure having at least 3 players at once with the same high school buddies. What a friggin awesome game to play after a long day of boring  school!

 

[DarkTone | 988]

The simpsons arcade game may have been my first. It was with some older boys who thought I was cool enough to game with. Either that or altered beast in a chip shop. On console, it was double dragon 2 on the NES. My neighbour was pretty good at gaming, so it made beating the game easy.

Never played a co op game on a computer.

Last co op game I played was Destiny. It was also with the most people. Either 5 or 6 of us. 

What co op game made you go from disliking to liking it? For me, it was COD: World at war. Zombie mode was still an amazing experience. 

[twiztor | 855]

1. first arcade co-op? playing TMNT at the skating rink when i was a kid. Usually it would be me and my younger brother, with whichever other random kids we could get to play along.  X-Men showed up the next year or something, and a highlight for me was playing 6 people. ON ONE ARCADE CAB! OMG it was magical. 

2. first PC co-op? high school, we had a new kid named Ryan. he lived right across the street from the school. It was at his house that i first played Donkey Kong Country and Nights. But, to answer the question, he had 2 PCs and knew how to hook them up via LAN. He kicked my ass on Warcraft 2 all night. to link it back to co-op, he set up a campaign with 6 or 8 enemy camps (whatever the max was) and we both steamrolled the AI, and THEN he kicked my ass to win.

3. first console co-op? can't be certain, but my brother and i played a metric ton of Battletoads back in the day. we never made it far, mostly due to attacking each other. we made it to the turbo tunnel a couple of times, but usually the descent down the Wookie Hole would eliminate us. that's sort of co-op i guess.

4. last co-op? i picked up Bubble Bobble 4 Friends on the Switch because my wife loves the BB games. That's probably the latest. 

5. biggest co-op group? probably have to be the aforementioned X-Men arcade. i mean, i played Super Mario 35, but that hardly counts as co-op.  i remember having a group of friends over back in the n64 days and playing one of the wrestling games, with the big 40 person battle royal or whatever. There were 6 of us, and each time you got eliminated, you had to pass the controller to one of the non-players. that was intense. again, not really co-op, but man was it fun.

6. disliking to liking? nothing really springs to mind. there's plenty of games that are better with friends, but i can't think of one that i didn't like but played and enjoyed. 

[glazball | 172]

In middle school, a friend (with ubercool parents) had a Nintendo birthday party sleepover.  There were about 8 of us kids, and we each brought our NES, cables, controllers and games.  His parents had set up multiple tv's around his living room and to prevent anyone's things from getting mixed up they tagged each kid's stuff with colored dot stickers (each kid had his own color) upon arrival.

Damn that was one of the best nights of my life.  Haven't thought of it in years.

[BriGuy82 | 792]

I can remember back when arcades used to be rented out for birthday parties, those were the best. I really liked Golden Axe. But I can also remember playing all the usual suspects with complete strangers at the boardwalk (Xmen, Simpson's, Turtles etc). Back when kids used to have to play games in person, with other kids .  Movie theaters, pizzerias, bowling alleys they all had games. The good old days...

[cj_robot | 546]

I used to play co-op Doom with my dad back in the day. Those were good times.

[JeremiahJT | 75]

My first arcade co-op was probably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I had a best friend and a damn-near best friend and one of them (or both) would probably be the first person I played it with. We also played quite a bit of The Simpsons and NBA Jam and a little bit of X-Men.

On the home console it would be 7800 Asteroids. The partner would have been my sister or a cousin most likely. The first person I definitely remember playing it with me is my father.

My best friend and I played quite a bit of co-op games on the home consoles. Favorites include Wizard of Wor and Double Dragon on the 2600, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game on NES, and Raiden and DOOM (via Jaglink!) on the Jaguar.

The last time would have been with my brother-in-law (the aforementioned best friend) and his two sons a couple of years back. We played TMNT 1989 and X-Men on Xbox 360. There is a chance the last time was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure with two comlynxed Lynxes with my wife.

[Tanooki | 4,952]

I'm not nor have I ever been in love with co-op gaming, but that said, I had one long run experience that will never be repeated.

Guild Wars

I started my current job 15 years ago, not too far into the job (within a year) had made a friend in the department who saw I liked games and stuff, he did too, long story short we ended up best friends at work.  We somehow got into Guild Wars, I think he had it, got me to buy a copy at the store.  Every night we played it without stop, a minimum of an hour, maybe 3-4 at most.  After a year we moved into another department over the last, and another 1-2 after that I had to leave town for 3 years back to Cali to help my parents who were being drained by a dying grandma.  Despite the 3hr time difference, we kept it up, chatting playing, kept things fun and close despite being far.  When I moved back we got to play for a bit over a year, even moved into the sequel for a time but not long.  My 2nd Christmas back there, the day before, early evening, him and his toddler son had shower time to get the kid cleaned up.  Toddler leaves to go to his room, he sits on the bed, doesn't move, doesn't sleep, doesn't topple over...widow maker died on the spot.  No one knew until his wife came looking as he was there looking like he was just resting.

I didn't touch the game for a year (GW2), tried to play it again off and on, couldn't, even my nephew getting into it got me on for a bit, but the fun was gone, I helped for a time but had him go off on his own.  I still have both games installed, still have the guilds registered though booting everyone out as to not waste their time.  They are their own little digital tombstone of sorts.  Shame really, they both are great, first was excellent though.  So many adventures and deep diving into the farthest corners of those lands, or going into the co-op battle areas and so on.

 

I never got into 4p squatting around the NES->Gamecube stuff or the rest, never bothered a lot with FPS etc online, too many losers, trolls, and get a life lifer types for my taste.  That was my thing, and now it's not.

[G-type | 2,533]

my first co-op game might have been Gauntlet in 1985 at Mr. Gatti's pizza.

My most recent would be Overcooked for the switch. Which I am just terrible at. My son tries to get me to play it with him, but we never get more than 1 or 2 stars.. not enough to unlock the next level. 

Edited September 10, 2021 by G-type

[GPX | 1,374]

13 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I'm not nor have I ever been in love with co-op gaming, but that said, I had one long run experience that will never be repeated.

Guild Wars

I started my current job 15 years ago, not too far into the job (within a year) had made a friend in the department who saw I liked games and stuff, he did too, long story short we ended up best friends at work.  We somehow got into Guild Wars, I think he had it, got me to buy a copy at the store.  Every night we played it without stop, a minimum of an hour, maybe 3-4 at most.  After a year we moved into another department over the last, and another 1-2 after that I had to leave town for 3 years back to Cali to help my parents who were being drained by a dying grandma.  Despite the 3hr time difference, we kept it up, chatting playing, kept things fun and close despite being far.  When I moved back we got to play for a bit over a year, even moved into the sequel for a time but not long.  My 2nd Christmas back there, the day before, early evening, him and his toddler son had shower time to get the kid cleaned up.  Toddler leaves to go to his room, he sits on the bed, doesn't move, doesn't sleep, doesn't topple over...widow maker died on the spot.  No one knew until his wife came looking as he was there looking like he was just resting.

I didn't touch the game for a year (GW2), tried to play it again off and on, couldn't, even my nephew getting into it got me on for a bit, but the fun was gone, I helped for a time but had him go off on his own.  I still have both games installed, still have the guilds registered though booting everyone out as to not waste their time.  They are their own little digital tombstone of sorts.  Shame really, they both are great, first was excellent though.  So many adventures and deep diving into the farthest corners of those lands, or going into the co-op battle areas and so on.

 

I never got into 4p squatting around the NES->Gamecube stuff or the rest, never bothered a lot with FPS etc online, too many losers, trolls, and get a life lifer types for my taste.  That was my thing, and now it's not.

That is one interesting nostalgic trip you don’t read too often. Thanks for sharing! 

It’s interesting to see how games can help us to escape the reality, but also reality can help change our views on games also.

[Tanooki | 4,952]

4 hours ago, GPX said:

That is one interesting nostalgic trip you don’t read too often. Thanks for sharing! 

It’s interesting to see how games can help us to escape the reality, but also reality can help change our views on games also.

Thanks, and for a fun follow up.  His wife was super chill about it, even had an amusing comment after the fact.  The following Christmas we had kept in contact in the department, invited her to the annual christmas lunch and she accepted.  I had met her in passing a couple times before so she knew who I was.

At one point we got to talking, she remembered who I was and despite how she felt with the upcoming lonely christmas for the first time she was joking about it.  Ahh yes I remember you now, and now I can put a face to the guy one who kept my husband up late at night for a few years having fun on his computer with that game.  She didn't mind it at all, liked he had something to do outside with and their kids who would be in bed before that time.

[GPX | 1,374]

On 9/10/2021 at 11:51 AM, JeremiahJT said:

On the home console it would be 7800 Asteroids. The partner would have been my sister or a cousin most likely. The first person I definitely remember playing it with me is my father.

Just want to highlight your mention of a parent playing with you. Personally, I rarely played games with my parents. My mum was never into gaming, and my dad was usually out with his mates. On the rare occasion, I did recall him play some games with me in short spurts. I definitely recall playing River Raid with him on the C64, and we took turns. A co-op game may have been Wizard of Wor, but I honestly can’t recall now whether it was played with him.

I’m not sure about this, but I think there has been a generational change. The culture is shifting to a more socially acceptable hobby, regardless of age. Kids in the 80s and early 90s were much less likely to play with their parents than the kids of today. Co-op games were much less back then, and it was regarded as more for “the kids”.

[AstralSoul | 503]

I've gotten to play so few co-op games in my life with people that I can name them all right now.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on GameCube. My friends and I more or less just wanted to try it out,I played this mostly by myself, but it was fun during the few sessions we played. 

Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures I played with those same friends except we beat almost the whole game together and it was ridiculously fun. I ended up finishing it on my own and replaying it on my own afterwards.

Diablo 3 I played with my best friend 5 or 6 years ago, both of us for the first time and it was so much fun.

I have played Time Crisis 2 and 3 with a friend in the arcade once or twice back in the day, and I know played Simpsons and TMNT arcade games in the arcade years ago with a friend but that's literally it. I always wished I had more time to play with a friend or someone who wants to play co-op but I've always ended up playing alone. 

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

1. Had to have been Simpsons arcade at the local skating rink. Think a few of us spent more time on the game then skating

2. N/A Ive always avoided playing games on a computer, still do

3. Either Super Mario Kart or Donkey Kong Country 1/2. We had Mario Kart and DKC 2 and a friend had DKC 1. We played alot together so it would have been one of them

4. Last one played was Turtles in Time with the Girlfriend, she is not big on video games because she gets frustrated easily but she loves beatem ups for some reason 

5. Definitely 4 playing Goldeneye back in the day

 

[WhyNotZoidberg | 586]

- what was your first arcade co-op experience? I believe it is the X-Men Arcade at La Ronde (amusement park just outside Montreal) or The Simpsons Arcade at a local arcade. I def remember the X-Men machine was set just outside the door of the arcades hut at La Ronde and we could get free credit by striking the coin slots so we spent an afternoon just beating the machine and the game. Special shout-out to Lucky & Wild, an obscure driving/shooting game that I vivdly remember playing with my brother at Les Halles D'Anjou. The first player drives and shoots and the second player just shoots. Non-stop action, real good stuff.

- first computer co-op gaming? Co-op? Nah son, VS.. Gorillas!

- first console co-op game played? Easy answer here: it's Contra. We had multiplayer games like the Mario games and what not but the first two-players-on-screen game was Contra. The waterfall level always felt like a VS. level tho  

- last co-op game played? Is it sad that I actually don't remember? Outside of some MMOs I might have been on, I guess one that comes to mind is Rock Band.

- biggest co-op number of people involved? 4. It's always 4. Multitap? 4 people. N64? 4 people. Arcade cabinets? 4 people.

- make your own question and answer it yourself.  No.

Edited September 16, 2021 by WhyNotZoidberg

[LostLevel83 | 86]

First arcade co-op experience:

Hard to say. Most memorable was TMNT and Final Fight at the local bowling alley with my brother and friends.

First computer co-op experience:

Maybe Battle Chess with classmates at school. If that counts.

First console co-op experience:

Super C on the NES. Played with my brother a ton. Didn’t actually play the original Contra until many years later.

Last co-op game played:

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus on the Switch with my wife. Such a fun and crazy game. Even when you do poorly it’s a blast.

Biggest co-op number involved:

Four. Many hours spent playing Mario Kart with friends and family over the last several console releases.

[NEW] Favorite co-op genre:

16-bit beat ‘em ups. Love all the SNES and Genesis series. Best memories of the arcade days are mostly from trying to conquer games with family or friends and celebrating when we took down a boss. Even games today, like Streets of Rage 4, that have the spirit of those classic games. Lots and lots of fun!