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[Dustin Smith]

Increpare's Home: I lost my grandmother shortly before and it really resonated with me.

Beating Super Mario World hit me, but in the good, elated way; I beat a game for the first time!

The end of Link's Awakening made me sad. I know it's cliche but that was my first experience with the "it was all a dream" trope, and losing Marin was hard on my five year old self.

[C.A. Sinner]

@Phubans

I don't think they have disapear, they just got blander with sugar cinematics and forced emotion.

The SNES FFs had better writing/dialog too, I think at least in part due to the hardware limitations. They couldn't show a lot of "dramatic" scenes visually with those same-sized 16bit sprites, so they had to rely on text to get stuff across.

Playing something like FF6 is akin to reading a novel (or a wordy comic book I guess), the later games are more like cheesy CGI movies.

[phubans]

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it... I can't relate to the new games at all. I think there's a lot to be said about pixel-based sprites conveying more emotion, too, since they're only representative of a character without giving all of the details. This way, it's easier for someone to slip into their shoes.

[fraxcell]

I loved the endings of Final Fantasy IV and VI. They actually took the time to wrap everything up and reward the player for beating the game. Nowadays, you get a 30 second minute cinematic of the main character jumping off of a helicopter or into some dangerous situation to create a cliffhanger so that you will buy the sequel.

[Andy]

The part in MGS Snake Eater where Snake is getting tortured hit me hard the first time I viewed it.

[jakten]

I think it was world 5 of Demons Souls. When you go to fight Maiden Astraea and Garl and they tell you to leave them in peace because they are good and are trying to help all the zombie people you've been killing. Then you have to fight Garl and I was reluctant to because he didn't want to fight. I killed him and went to talk to Astraea and she basically gave up and I decided I wouldn't kill her and she wound up killing herself in fear of me. Very easy fight and I felt horrible afterwards. I couldn't believe I felt that way just because of a game.

[JHJS4LIFE]

"...the bad news is...where i found the drago fang.."

[Sir Raptor]

The scene in Rhapsody: a Musical Adventure where - actually, several scenes. First, the part where you help the lover of the frog princess defeat the centaur in order to pardon him for execution, only for the frog king to kill him anyway, and then the frog princess kills herself so that they can still be together in death. Second, the part where you go back in time and see how your mother dies in order to save your life, and then seals her soul in the puppet you've been carrying all game, followed by her eventual ascension to heaven after you get married.
...It was a good game. I'm not ashamed of having played it.

[Wizard]

The first time I played Dragon Quest IV on the NES, some 8-10 years ago. Chapter 4 - Aktemto, a mining town ravaged by a poisonous gas that pretty much ended the whole village. Combined with the music for that area, and the story behind it put tears to my eyes.

First time a videogame spawned an emotion that wasn't joy or SEETHING RAGE.
I was somewhat impressed.

And bizarrely enough, the scene in MGS4 where Old Snake is going through the microwave corridor, I found that pretty moving as well(Although that could have been a combination of being overtired and the fact I was close to finishing the game in one session)

[reetva]

The end of Far Cry 2, wherein all of your buddies betray you.

Also, having to euthanize your buddies in that game.  It feels terrible.  Like I could have just not used that one health needle when I didn't need it and my buddy, my friend, would still be here today.

[lopin18]

Amazed noone mentioned Darwinia, you know the green guys from the Uplink devs. that game left some serious tears on me. the ending and the whole concept of Darwinia killed me.

Sooo... --->cant remember really the details, but its all about how u start playing and ur ignorant of the whole Darwinia culture, then in the end u see how the darwinians thought of their dev, how they lived, what they did etc. and then u realize that everything u've seen and how the gameplay worked was mixed with ur new discovery of darwinian culture... its simple amazing, i mean eeeevery lil detail and every meaning behind it all was just amazing, its the only game that has marked such a strong memory on me

i wonder if im alone here, since i havent seen anyone talk about darwinia in any forum with the feeling i do

[adam_smasher]

First of all, let's get the obvious out of the way: Super Metroid.

Someone already mentioned Mother 3, but I'll mention it again. The final boss battle in Mother 2 is pretty chilling too, but for different reasons: Itoi has explained that in an abstract way, he was expressing a childhood attempt to comprehend violent rape.

Whenever you start running in Ico while holding Yorda's hand, and he yanks her arm a bit too hard and it looks like it hurt her. I spent most of the game walking because of that.

When Agro dies in SotC.

Final Fantasy X. Not the obvious, tear-jerky scenes, which are overwrought JRPG nonsense; but rather one particular moment, early on:

After the explosive introduction, Tidus and Wakka are floating along on the waters of Besaid. The sun is hot, the water is cool, kids are out playing in the distance. It's the calm after the storm. Tidus stares up at the sky, attempting to take in the beauty and somehow make sense of his world being ripped apart. The game here displays an empathy and sense of mood that most games simply don't possess. It really impressed me at the time.

Various other places in the game are deeply drenched in gorgeous scenery and atmosphere as well. I think the music has something to do with it. Nothing bothered me more about that game than the lush, ambient soundtrack being broken up every few seconds for the usual bombastic FF battle theme.

Dragon Quest V - watching other people's children grow up, knowing that your own kids are growing up without a father.

Two scenes in Phantasy Star II. Early on, when the father accidentally kills his own daughter, then, realizing his mistake, kills himself. Like something out of a Shakespearean tragedy! It looks cheesy now, but in a 1988 JRPG...!

The ending sort of springs out of nowhere and doesn't provide any sense of closure, but because the overall atmosphere and storytelling style of the game has been so minimalist and bizarre it doesn't feel like cheating. At first slight it's delivering an environment message, but the few short lines of dialogue open the game up to colonialist, ethical, and Freudian readings too. And the force of those final words, portentous but utterly inexplicable, somehow managed to survive the 1980s-era localization.  While the game's storytelling often feels pretty archaic and - frankly - poorly constructed, afterwards you're nevertheless left with the feeling that you've witnessed something important. Cryptic, complex, and chilling.

Jason Rohrer's Gravitation had the impact on me that Passage seemed to have on everyone else.

In Psychonauts, when you find the repressed memories in Milla's head. The contrast between it and the rest of the level stuns you, and it adds weight to Milla's sunny, dippy personality in a way that couldn't be done in any other medium. Very cool.

Terranigma was filled with powerful moments that could quite literally inspire awe in the player, but the ending stands out as particularly moving. As a statement about the beauty of the world and the scale of history and the impact of humanity on our planet and the weight of life and death, it's like the 16-bit JRPG version of Baraka or something.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Pretty much any time Saavedro is on-screen in Myst III. Kudos to Brad Dourif for doing such a great job.

The ending of Syberia was particularily striking. Not gonna spoil that one.

Crow's return as an old bird at the end of The Longest Journey. (He was the one character I really liked. )

Being ordered by both sides of the conflict in Far Cry 2 to give malaria to the other. Which actually made me stop playing the game since I didn't want to do that.

[Rob Lach]

Brtual Legend: Palace Escape

[C.A. Sinner]

I think it was world 5 of Demons Souls. etc

That's an interesting one because I'm not sure how "good" she really is. Fighting hordes of those goblins in 5-1 and 5-2 made me consider the possibility that she was really building up an army under the guise of "charity". Also the merchant woman in 5-2 kinda implies that Astraea was the one who brought the plague to the swamp in the first place, and she's really not doing anything to better the situation, plague babies and all. But as I said, I'm still kind of unsure whether I killed Mother Theresa or Hitler there.