Game Launches to Remember, or to Try and Forget

If you have a vivid memory of a game's launch day, chances are something went very right or very wrong. Maybe you booked a day off work to play through Diablo 3 the day it came out. Maybe you spent an entire night in a friend's basement, passing a controller back and forth as you played through Grand Theft Auto IV and convinced each other that this was gaming's Godfather.

A lot of us are still feeling pretty fried from Destiny 2 unlocking last night, which seemed to go pretty smoothly after an initial stumble from the game's servers as every fireteam on the planet tried to log in simultaneously. While it was definitely frustrating if you'd stayed up late hoping to start playing immediately, by the time I went to bed it seemed like most people were finally able to get in.

But it got me thinking about the launch experiences that have stuck with me years later. I guess I have two really fond memories of game launches, for two very different reasons.

The first is Left 4 Dead, and I think what I remember most was just how new and exciting it all felt. I ended up playing through No Mercy with a group of strangers on the highest difficulty, because as demo veterans we thought we had that game on lock. We didn't know how that campaign even worked, or what we were supposed to do, but we kept trying to figured it out while getting owned by infected from every direction.

That feeling would never really happen again with that game, and indeed it couldn't. Within a week we'd all seen each campaign, we all had a rough idea of how they worked and what the big set pieces were. But that night, my group and I must have spent thirty minutes standing on a darkened street, occasionally picked-off zombies, while we argued about the "right" way to handle that giant exploding gas station at the end of the block and that scissor-lift ride from hell. It was like being in a zombie movie, not just playing a co-op shooter themed around one.

My other favorite launch was StarCraft 2. I wasn't even sure I cared—it had been so long after all—and then at 9:45 at night it was like a switch had flipped in my brain. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was getting hold of StarCraft as soon as humanly possible and returning to the fight against the Zerg.

I threw on my sneakers and practically ran through the streets to the Best Buy near my apartment. It was a balmy night and I was pretty ragged by the time I got to the store for the midnight launch. And there, completely unexpectedly, were almost a half dozen friends I'd met at PAX East earlier that year. Everyone was slightly sheepish, a gathering of StarCraft prodigal sons and daughters before an altar made of boxed Collector's Editions and NOS, which they were handing out to each person who bought at midnight.

By the time I played the game I was pretty exhausted from waiting in line for two hours, but I what remember was those two hours in line with my new friends in my new city, brought together by love, nostalgia, and poor impulse control.

What are you favorite game launch memories? Let me know in today's open thread!