26 Great Video Game Victories, As Told By Players

Earlier this week, I asked you guys to share your most memorable video game victories. The only thing more impressive than the wealth of victories you collectively brought is just how many of those victories were landed.

You all shared stories spanning everything from competitive, group and singleplayer play. Here are our favourites.

Bazuden, who wont the first Super Nintendo in New Zealand:

I won the first (non import) super Nintendo in New Zealand.

KCC fm held a comp for northland high schools, and I won at dargaville high school. A few months later I went to play the other winners at Deka (I think?) In Whangarei. We had one minute to get our best score on super Mario world. I basically did a speed run (that term didn’t exist back then) of the first level over and over and won by 7,000 points.

Got street fighter 2 and super Mario world about six months before any one else (the NZ release got delayed) and made lots of ‘friends’ that year.

Warcroft, with the Rapid Fire win:

Playing World of Warcraft many years ago a few of the guild I was in were called upon to help make up numbers to take down some dragon. Some big dragon in the main world, near the Elves forest. (Sorry, this is almost ten years ago now, I cant remember what things were called. I haven’t played for about eight years).
A bunch of guild members from the servers top guild were there, all decked out in full legendary gear, looking impressive.
About 30 level 60’s (the highest level at the time) were waiting around for the last few people to arrive.

In the mean time this top guild, legendary equipped hunter was doing duels with everyone. Smashing people. Flexing his ego.
Then he called for a duel with me and, holy shit, my hands started shaking. . .

A small back story. When I played WoW I only ever played one character, ever. Tauren Hunter. Its the only character and class that appealed to me and its all I was interested in playing.
My gear at the time was almost all purples and blues. A couple of old greens too. Nothing fantastic. Certainly not on par with Mr Legendary Hunter.
But I had fine tuned my Hunter so precisely.

So, then he called for a duel with me and, holy shit, my hands started shaking. . . because Id only dueled a few times before. But, in front of all these server big name players, I knew I could take him.

Without going into how the duel played out my secret was my choice of bow.
Hurricane, level 53. Low for a level 60, but heres the trick. It has a relatively low dps, but a speed of 1.6, by far the fastest bow.
Id put a bunch of stats into agility and crit percentage increases. So even though its low damage, the high speed greatly increases the number of crits.
Then, at the right time I hit Rapid Fire, increasing my shot speed by a further 40%!

My bow was firing like a machine gun, his health was being shredded.
Dont get me wrong, he was hitting me hard and my health was falling fast and it looked like he was going to clean me up, but the instant I hit Rapid Fire I destroyed him.

He kneeled in front of me in defeat.
The in game chat was filled with OMG’s and WTF’s. Id seemingly pulled off the impossible.
From that very moment my status and reputation in the game changed. I instantly went from small time dungeon raid ring in, to lead hunter/puller in 40 man Molten Core raids.

TheRogueX, with the accidental win:

Dragon Warrior, 1993-4ish? Obtaining Erdrick’s Armor at level 13, when the guide said you should wait until like level 17 or something. I had been reduced to 1 HP, 8 MP (I couldn’t cast more, had to be able to use RETURN!), and had used all my herbs.. I had completely given up hope, so I just set my controller down and accidentally bumped the A button, causing my character to attack.

“EXCELLENT MOVE!”

???

“Thou hast done well in defeating the Axe Knight.”

!!!

I almost panicked. Quickly, I searched, got the armor, and hit RETURN to go back to the castle. To this day, I think this was the coolest thing I’ve ever accomplished, and it’s definitely the most memorable.

archronos and friend, temporary Halo ninjas:

Halo 2 Team Slayer on Turf.

My team had 2 people quit so it’s me and some other random guy against a full team of 4. Luckily my teammate is using his mic so we can communicate. We’ve managed to maintain a 10 point lead for most of the match but our lead has been getting smaller as the enemy gets more coordinated.

Me and my teammate decide that we won’t be able to keep our point advantage for much longer so we decide to hide behind the crate in the warehouse section of the map, and agree to go radio silent since proximity chat is on. We spent the last 5 minutes of the match hiding behind some crates while the enemy team looks for us in confusion. The best part was that due to proximity chat we can hear the other team’s frustration growing as they have no idea where we are. It was both comical and exhilaratingly intense, as we could hear them pass right by us several times.

At the very last second we both jump out and kill two guys right as the game ends.

Pyretech wins just for surviving:

SWTOR: My friend and I are finishing up the story for both Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor. The game has a limit that if you are 5 levels under an enemy, you do 0-1 damage per hit. He’s a level 46 Sith Juggernaut, I’m a level 40 Sith Sorcerer. We go through my final boss relatively easily. We start his final boss, and we almost instantly wipe. Instead of going and level up for him, we stay stubborn. I found out I had to run and jump to avoid his attacks because I couldn’t afford to heal myself and my friend.

Final attempt (3-4 hours after first attempt): my friend dies with this boss at like 1% health, but I live. I couldn’t do any damage to him, so I am running in circles quick-healing myself until he could get back in the instance. He spawns about 4 minutes away. I ran into a little cubby that the boss couldn’t hit me with the lightsaber. He was spamming his AoE ground attack, I was jumping in the corner to avoid it, which was total guesswork. My friend finally got to the instance but was loading. I died the exact moment he loaded in, and he was able to win.

We both got our “Lord” titles, we go to the level 40 world to level up and go back through the side quests we missed, I heard people complaining that the final boss was tough for 4 level 50s, I mentioned the story above. Got called a troll.

Jeff Seely forces a weird way to win:

I think one of my strangest victories falls under making things unnecessarily hard on myself. I was playing VVVVVV on my 3DS and I came across the portion highlighted in this video. (Fast-forward to 24:15 if it doesn’t start where I wanted it to start.)

You’re on one of those dreaded escort missions, and one part of the mission has you trying to escort your buddy across three vertically moving platforms. Not understanding what the game’s developers really wanted me to do in this section, I became convinced that I had to get my buddy onto the same platform with me (right-side-up) all the way across. This is indeed possible (with you standing on the right edge of the platform and your buddy standing on the left edge of the platform) if you time it just right. I don’t know how many times I tried to get across this way before it finally worked. On my second playthrough, I figured out what I was really supposed to do in that section.

BestInSlot win win wins:

I entered a Hearthstone tournament last year at Insomnia52. Was through to the semi-finals out of a bracket of dozens of people and playing well. Came up against a kid who can’t have been older than 14 and the 3 decks he’d brought were ; face hunter, zoo warlock, and some aggro mage. Basically everything horrible.

He spammed me with “Sorry” the entire game, every play he made that was even slightly good for him, EVERY SINGLE TIME. At the end of the second game (best out of three) he burst out laughing and started yelling “I win I win I win” over and over again because he’d topdecked the perfect card to take the win.

In his hubris, he misclicked and attacked the wrong target. I won the next turn.

I shouldn’t feel good about disappointing a kid like that but… I WIN I WIN I WIN.

OptimusEvo observes as his party takes over the game:

The greatest victory for me was when I fought Demon Wall in FF7. Two of my party members died which included Cloud and Barret leaving only Vincent to take on this monstrosity by himself. Somehow Vincent was able to withstand one of Demon Walls stronger attacks which in turn activated Vincent’s limit break.

Once Vincent transformed I essentially became a spectator since Vincent’s limit break causes him to go berserk omitting any user input. I nervously watched these two monsters fight it out. However the fight was beginning to turn grim as Vincent’s health began to drop within lethal range. Vincent essentially had one last turn to kill Demon Gate and did so with the most epic Giga Dunk ever! Afterwards It solidified Vincent as my permanent third party member and I never looked back.

Cill Bosby, forced out of sleep:

Left 4 Dead 1. No Mercy on Expert. Me and my 3 friends (Pistol Pete, Chaddaddy and Jarvis) whose names have been altered for privacy reasons had been trying to get this campaign done for weeks and had kept fucking up every time. Finally, on January 11, 2009 we started playing, at 11 AM. Around 3 in the morning, we’d just finished trying and failing doing the 3rd part of the campaign just before the finale for the 22nd time (We were determined teenagers). At that point, I was crying in frustration. Then, my friend Jarvis promised me that I could do it one more time with them and if we failed, I could quit, sleep and never have to play again. But if we made it, I was in till we finished all 4 campaigns. The next time we did it it came down to me running to the safe room as the Tank was chasing me. Made it by a hair and we finished the campaign, at 5 AM. Beating Blood Harvest was another insanely frustrating story.

Pandaman races against the biggest villain of all, the battery:

The remake of Kirby’s Dreamland on the GBA had a mode where once you beat the game, you could play as Metaknight. The only caveat was that there was no lives. Once you died, the game was over. Not only that, but you had half as much of a life bar as you normally did with Kirby.

I started playing the Metaknight mode for fun…but just a couple levels in, I realized that my GBA light had turned to red. I remember thinking, “oh no…if I don’t die first, then my battery will!” I rushed through the stages as I instinctively just tried to get as far as I could before the batteries went out. Level after level, world after world, that red light just kept staring at me as I slashed through every little waddle-dee and dodged every cannon ball.

Finally, the final boss.Nightmare. Just like all the final bosses, half the battle is awaiting the patterns, and time I didn’t have. I had to do a perfect run, and still my battery might give out. I did a perfect run. Nightmare exploded and I saved dreamland as Metaknight.

The credits rolled, and the screen turned off.

jesterspawn gets a bit competitive:

This story will betray my age, so I’ll get that out of the way first: I was in high school and Goldeneye 007 was the game everyone was playing, myself included. Also, I should mention that, when it comes to multiplayer gaming, I can often be… competitive.

The girl I was dating at the time was just as into games as I was, and on this particular day she’d brought one of her older brothers over to my house for some 3-player Goldeneye action. In his defense, I don’t think he’d has as much experience with the game, so what’s coming next shouldn’t be too much of an indictment against him.

Anyway, so we’ve played a few rounds and I’m just destroying them. (Which is basically what you do when you’re still a teenager and you haven’t yet learned that sometimes it is okay to pull your punches juuuuust a bit, because it isn’t cool to make people look bad and nobody likes a show-off.)

So, her brother says something along the lines of, “Geez, he’s good enough he could probably beat us with his feet.”

Did I mention I have a competitive streak?

Before the next round, I quickly rigged myself a setup in which I could manipulate the thumbstick and face buttons with my toes, and could use my feet to push the entire controller forward to fire. (This would cause the Z-trigger underneath the controller to be depressed by a broomstick I had laid on the floor.)

Despite having never practiced foot-gaming, I destroyed them all the same like the classless ass-hat that I was, and my girlfriend’s brother never gamed with us again.

tyi557 barely makes it out alive:

I’m sure I could dig up a ton of these but one from last year immediately leaps out at me because it’s permanently burned into my brain as one of my biggest holy shit moments in any game ever. The set up: Dayz patch .45 or .46 not sure, the akm had just come out and I was looting Balota air base (when it still had barracks for high end loot). I had just finished looting the base I had a mosin w/lrs and a FNX .45 pistol, along with a high cap and ballistic helm for some bullet protection (I had no idea how important these two items would be in about ten minutes). Just as I was leaving to head north the server crashed. “I’ll rejoin what’s the worst that can happen it was only a 20 pop right?”

WRONG, rejoined and the server rubber banded me right back to the front door of the middle barracks. This was my worst fear ever, fresh server start, high military zone, probably the most visited as well back during that patch. As I spawned in and switched to my FNX I saw an almost exact mirror of myself crouched at the barracks to my left, fully geared, clutching a fully modded AKM with drum. I quickly hit rmb and put two 45 rounds in his head, he dropped immediately dead on the spot. I slowly approached him, glanced at his gear and began moving around the side of that barracks to make sure he was alone. Before I even got there I figured out he was not. mid turn I took an sks round to the hip from behind. I quickly spun my camera to see a dark figure around where I started out from firing on me. I tried desperately to run to the back side of the barracks. I counted each shot as he fired into my back, 2, 3, 4, My screen was out of color, shaking in shock from each round, each one more racking on my brain than the last. 5, 6, 7. I was behind the barracks, but at a terrible cost (the fact I was even alive at this point is hilarious in retrospect) bleeding bad, can barely see 5 feet in front of me. I looped around the middle barracks knowing he was chasing me full sprint behind me to finish me off. When I got around to the back again, I tried one last hurrah, I turned around behind the barracks and instead of continuing to the next I stood there, facing the gap where surely my end would come from. As the bastard turned the corner I crouched, and let off all 15 .45 rounds from my FNX into his midsection. He stood motionless for a second while i was still strafing and then dropped dead. I bandaged up, pulled my mosin and put 5 more rounds into his skull. I had lived, miraculously, broken arm, leg in pain, everything on me ruined but my gun and gloves. I went over to the first guy I dropped, swapped everything I was wearing with his pristine gear and left. I probably bandaged a second from bleeding out. I will never forget that encounter, and it’s the reason to this day why I still love Dayz SA.

Ovy is both unlucky and lucky:

My favorite memory is from a bit of an obscure title: the mod Action Half-Life (obviously, for the first Half-Life). It’s a first-person shooter modeled after John Woo action flicks, so you can wield akimbo pistols, dive through windows, get wounded and limp away, leaving a blood trail until you bandage (at the cost of making yourself vulnerable for a few seconds). Things can get very tense very fast, much more so than in other shooters. However AHL has a few eccentricities: you play Team Deathmatch like a normal round of CS — which is to say, when you die, your out of play until the next round. But unlike CS, there’s a countdown at the beginning of the round where you’re allowed to move freely but can’t shoot yet. You’re also invulnerable, so if you spawn on a high ledge, you can dive off it to the distant ground without taking any damage — a way to rapidly reposition so you can flank the enemy team.

So there was one round on a particularly small map called ahl_loungesky, where I dove off a balcony into a foyer and found myself in the unusual circumstance of happening upon the enemy team’s spawn (the spawns are random in each round, so I had no idea what I was diving into). It was still the first few seconds of the round, so we couldn’t shoot each other. Having just dove into the situation, I lay on the ground prone, two pistols in hand, staring up at three opponents in white suits and shades, looking down on me. The opening seconds felt more like minutes, as I shouted to my monitor “oh shit!” At this point they should be moving around the map to catch my teammates, but they were all greedy for the free kill I had presented and so taunted me with their mouse-gesturing virtual glares. The countodwn thundered a little lower in these moments: “lights….camera….ACTION!” I started to roll around my belly and firing as fervently as possible, praying for head shots and the hope that one of them would pass right along with me, or at least be so mortally wounded as to become easy pickings for my less foolish teammates. Through some skill and an overwhelming amount of luck, I managed to fell all three and promptly end the round after a mere 5 seconds of play. There were “wtfs!” and “bullshits” to be spewed by the now deceased enemy team, and the memory has been etched into my brain ever since. Never have I been in a place of such certain doom in a game, only to emerge the incredibly improbable victor.

PoweredByHentai executes a beautiful play:

Battlefield 2142 – Titan mode (64-player map)

Things were looking REALLY bad for my team. We had zero control over any missile silo, the enemy Titan was at 75% shields and 100% hull whereas our Titan had just lost its shields, thus forcing us to shift over to onboard defense, all while our Titan was still being pelted by the missile silos.

Since we did not have any effective overall commander, I decided to take command by telling my team to get everyone on board our Titan first.

My second command to the team was to have everyone concentrate on defending one console on the Titan.

Titans have 4 control consoles and for the sake of brevity, I will refer to them as A1, A2, B1, and B2 where letters designate either the port or starboard corridor and numbers indicate which floor the console is on. A2 and B2 can only be accessed if their respective lower level console have been destroyed. Destroying all 4 consoles unlocks the Titan’s reactor core to enemies for destruction and once your reactor core is destroyed, you lose.

In this case, I told everyone to defend to the death console A1. My gamble was to concentrate all our strength on defending the one console so that we don’t get steamrolled by having our forces spread out too thin.

The gamble worked.

The enemy team was surprised by our ferocious defense of A1 such that they also moved their ENTIRE TEAM onto our Titan.

Because I was also keeping tabs on my portable radar, I noticed that the entire enemy team was on our Titan.

I issued my next directive: Half the team will go to ground and retake command of all the missile silos. At this time, our Titan’s hull was holding at 75-80%.

We successfully recaptured all the missile silos and when the last silo was captured, it knocked out the enemy Titan’s shields. (Every time a missile silo is taken, every other silo fires a missile as part of a volley and resets their cooldown timer.)

I immediately issued my next directive: all squads on the ground are to immediately invade the enemy Titan and breach the reactor core. Our Titan’s hull was at 66% while the enemy Titan’s hull was at 100%. It is now a race against time.

Two squads reached the enemy Titan, my squad and my favorite demolitions squad. We immediately destroyed A1 and B1. The enemy had not noticed our presence on board their Titan, but they had noticed the missile silos being under our control. Our Titan was taking a beating again. 50% vs 80%. We had also lost console A1 on our Titan; I had my hands full with sabotaging the enemy’s Titan so I prayed that my defense team focused entirely on A2.

My attack team destroys the enemy’s A2 and B2 consoles. The enemy’s reactor core opens up and we have lost control of all the missile silos again. 33% to 66%. One of my attack squads had apparently played a valiant delaying action on the ground.

The enemy team finally realizes my attack team’s presence on their ship and sends 1 soldier against us. I pity that soldier. He died in vain; slaughtered by the combined might of 10 angry warriors. My team immediately resumed our desperate attack on the enemy reactor core and we destroyed it just as our own reactor core was revealed to the enemy. 16% vs 50%.

Our mission accomplished, my attack team immediately bailed out of the exploding enemy Titan, parachuting out of harms’ way like the goddamn heroes we were while listening to the defense team’s triumphant cheers.

God I love Battlefield 2142.

Use Your Words! is…actually not so victorious maybe?:

Metal Gear Solid 4, getting the Big Boss ranking. But that’s not why it’s the most memorable.

No one I know plays video games. My dad used to, but he stopped caring a long time ago. And my friends don’t understand them, and don’t care to understand them. I don’t care to talk about them ever, either.

But on this particular day, after hours of stealth action, moving swiftly yet carefully to my goal of being the Biggest Boss of all, I finally reached my goal. The ranking popped up. I leapt from my seat on the couch with my arms in the air. It was the proudest moment of a life filled with many proud moments. In retrospect, I may have over-valued it. But what came after was… the worst feeling.

There was no one I could share this achievement with. I tried to phone my father and tell him of my achievement. His response, “is that good?” YES DAD, IT’S GOOD. IT’S REAL GOOD.

I called my best friend, and told her that what I was about to say would make absolutely no sense but I just needed her to be happy for me. To celebrate with me.

Her voice returned with, “Yippee, congratulations on your promotion!”

NO. NO NO NO NONONONONONO I DIDN’T BEAT SOMEONE OUT FOR A DIFFICULT POSITION AND NOW I’M THE BOSS. I’M THE MOTHERFUCKING BIG BOSS. I’M THE BIGGEST BOSS AND MY NAME IS SNAKE.

And then I fell to my couch. Defeated. I finally fully understood Old Snake’s pain in the microwave. A pain that only he and I would ever know…

And that is my great achievement. Becoming Old Snake.

Sadowolf goes up against a pro:

Here is my overly long, overly dramatic story.

My moment came in my local arcade in early ’97 during a match of Street Fighter III: New Generation. The game was pretty new to arcades (my arcade usually got some machines from Japan before they released in the US), and a lot of the guys in the arcade had put in a decent amount of time since it got there, while I had only played the game briefly against the CPU up to that point. As usual there was a rather large crowd around the machine, SFIII being the “it” game of the time, and I went in to play my first versus match.

To ease into my first match I made the comfortable choice in Ryu; Shin Shoryuken as the Super Art because c’mon…it’s bad ass. Had no clue strategically how to use it, but what the hell. The first match was against someone not too experienced, so I won without issue, being pretty well-versed in Street Fighter. But then, the next guy up happened to be arguably the top player at the arcade, so I know I’m outta there after this fight. He chooses Ken, because of course my luck is that shitty and an already awesome player would choose a character so overpowered that sometimes we banned him from being selected during friendly matches.

The first round is underway, and I felt like he took it a bit easy on me; I got in more offense than I expected and he wasn’t throwing out everything in his bag of tricks, so I got that one. He turns it on in the second round, and while I put up a decent fight, he takes me out like I expected him to, and gives this smirk that to me said “you know I let you have that first one, right?” Shit.

Third round, and he’s beating the crap out of me with everyone cheering the beating he’s putting on me. My bar is almost depleted, his almost full, and this is when I go into clutch mode. All of a sudden, I’m beating him to the punch and parrying several of his attacks. My life is pretty much at zero now, where you can’t even see the bar anymore, and his is roughly half full. He goes for a Shinryuken, and I’m thinking I’m screwed, but I decide to try and jump away from it (since it goes straight up). I do this, and the one part of him that grazes me, I somehow, some way, manage to parry it and land safely on the ground while he’s sailing up 20 feet above me. A full super bar (that took forever to load) in tow, I dash up to his falling body, and Shin Shoryuken him right as he lands.

Turns out he had just enough health left not to be KO’d by it, which wrecked me inside, because I knew he was going to get up and destroy me after he rose, plus he had another Shinryuken in the tank because this was before Capcom realized how ridiculous it was to give him two. This left us both at zero life, I just hit the final uppercut of the Shin Shoryuken, and he’s sailing through the air. Just as I land, as if by instinct, I decide to throw a medium Hadouken. Maybe I can chip him or something? No need for that, as his body falls from the uppercut, directly onto the fireball for the KO. The arcade erupts, and my opponent leaps into the air, as if his excitement over what I just did overrode his disappointment for losing the match. Keep in mind, that at this time it wasn’t widely known that you could follow up the Shin Shoryuken with another attack, so what I did looked like some sort of magical treachery to the crowd. Brothers and Sisters, I was a hero that day in the arcade; and tales of my victory rang throughout it for years.

GiantBoyDetective grabs an unlikely Pokémon victory:

So there I was, age 10, playing through Pokemon Red for the first time. The hype was real and I was super invested in being the best there ever was.

I was at the Saffron gym and I had finally made it to the gym leader Sabrina. Not only that, but I had KO’d her first three Pokemon. Leaving only here level 43 Alakazam. All I had left was my Blastoise, who was on the verge of fainting, and a Bellsprout I had caught before entering. It was still low on HP.

Down goes Blastoise. Enter level 14 Bellsprout, with maybe half its life left. I was boned, but I wasn’t gonna go down without a fight. Luckily Alakazam had taken some damage, though not much.

Bellsprout came out swinging with Wrap and some how, some how Alakazam never got another hit in. My little Bellsprout-that-could managed to defeat that spoon-toting fox monster, despite being nearly 20 levels below him.

I couldn’t believe it. He gained hella levels, and he deserved every single one.

ATBro gets a most graceful kill:

I was playing my friends copy of Final Fantasy VI (III back in the day) at his house. I had made it to the last boss. I didn’t do the last bout of grinding to get some of my weaker guys up to where I felt comfortable with, but I wanted to give Kefka a go just to see where I was at. I front loaded my weaker guys with a few stronger characters but left most of my heavy hitters for the end. On the last form of Kefka, my people were holding their own, but I could tell that we just weren’t doing well enough to win. Knowing that it isn’t a terribly strong move he had, I was avoiding having Locke use his dragoon boots, but as it was clear that we were taking too much damage and running out of healing options. We just couldn’t keep up. Miraculously Locke seemed to avoid most damage when ever he was on the ground but he was below 1000 hp and didn’t have much of a chance. He jumped and Kefka cast a spell that wiped my entire team. Locke comes down bounces on Kefka five or six times and kills the shit out of him.

Realityflaw is caught in a loop of murder:

I’ve had some unlikely victories in my day, beating Metal Gear Solid without figuring out the between the legs trick, and defeating the asylum demon in Dark Souls on the first encounter, but by far the most memorable to me was my attempt to save Sarah Kerrigan.

See in the original Starcraft there’s a significant betrayal which sets in motion the whole Queen of Blades storyline, I played the level through the first time with my Zerg allies at my back and ‘won’ the level by defeating the Protoss enemies. At that point the insectoid ‘allies’ who practically shared my base betrayed and overwhelmed my lightly defended backside and Mengsk that traitorous bastard forced an evacuation of the planet before I could even mount a defense, leaving my favorite hero unit, Sarah Kerrigan behind to be consumed by the swarm.

I sat for a few minutes in stunned silence and decided that such treachery could not be allowed to stand. I decided to make it my quest to defy Mengsk, defeat the treacherous Zerg army and save Kerrigan, it took me three tries. On the first I determined that I’d have to use a cheat to allow me to continue the battle after the ‘victory’ conditions were met and the zerg turned hostile, on the second attempt I decided to starve the Zerg armies by monopolizing all the resources on the map, but realized that they had a never ending supply of units to throw at my base.

On the third and final try I went completely mental with defenses in my starting position. I jammed dozens of barracks, scores of siege tanks, and missile turrets into every spare pixel of my main base, and fought them to a stand still. With all their structures razed, and their infinite units dying within milliseconds of arrival they had no chance of overrunning my outpost, but alas the ‘Staying Alive’ cheat was enabled, there was no going back, and the battle could never come to a close.

I probably still have the .jpg of the aftermath somewhere in my backup disks. Kerrigan, a few siege tanks, and a dozen marines standing on that terrible purple high ground killing endless waves of zerg reinforcements…

FXHReaper is all alone:

We’re going to have to go back quite a few years for this one. I was in high school and I was totally loving this awesome game known as Socom 2, well during a clan war where we were ahead the other team by one round my mom called me to help bring in the groceries. I let them know and my clan leader said no problem most of them were already dead on the other team so they could handle it. When I came back I found out that we had lost the previous round and I was the last one left, it was me against the entire other team.

To make matters worse my clan loved playing on the teams that were at a disadvantage, we were playing Sujo as the seal team so I had no choice but to plant the bomb if we were going to win. I spent a good chunk of my two and a half minutes left in the round sneaking past all their mines and killing two of them, I sat still in the objective room waiting and listening for anyone to come in. I finally decided to make my move with thirty seconds left, I planted the bomb and got into a corner to wait. I heard two of them coming up as fast as they could, it was a good thing that I left all their mines alone because they ended up team killing three of their own leaving me with only three to deal with.

Just as the bomb was reaching its last few seconds I started to feel safe and then the last three rushed me, with all three of us strafing back and forth in this tiny room I knew I was going to die; so I quick switched to my frags and bounced it off the wall just as I died. Got a triple grenade kill just before the bomb went off. I felt awesome for holding them off and we won the clan war with both maps won by us.

lumiere has a very…rewarding experience:

Back in the earlier days of FFXI, there were open-world bosses only a few Japanese guilds across all servers had been able to take down. One of them, Tiamat, was rumored to be the easiest of the lot. Our first attempt ended in failure, especially after a member accidentally used the “call for help” option, which disabled loot drops.

Some time later (since Tiamat had random spawn times), a couple guild members found Tiamat alive. Those of us who were online sortied as fast as we could. At the same time, a Japanese guildleader who had taken Tiamat down at least once before started gathering his guild. As more of his guild started arriving, we had little choice but to attempt a pull, despite having a lot of missing members.

We engaged Tiamat, but we were mostly trying to survive while hoping for members to return home from work or school. Luckly, they did, and we had a main alliance for Tiamat, and a second alliance for the adds.

The battle dragged on, and most of us didn’t dare to ruin the hours of work by leaving for a bathroom break. Finally, after many close calls and near-wipes, Tiamat fell after about six straight hours.

It dropped a worthless dragon heart and a fire crystal.

Sir Hammerpants kills his real-life boss:

I worked at a major retailer for a few years and gaming with my coworkers was nearly a daily occurrence for most of that time. Shooters were the standard fare, mostly a mix of Halo and CoD. Our management would play sometimes, but after getting smoked too many times against the hourlies in CoD they tried to avoid that particular game with us. The managers were, however, pretty decent Gears of War players and would readily engage the hourlies in some battles.

So back in Gears 2, we’re all on one night. It’s the standard setup, managers vs. hourlies. Hourlies aren’t doing so hot, as most of us are several beers into our evening and the managers have just come off shift. We start off, and lose the first 3 matches in very close fashion. All 3 matches, we end up down to a 1v1, and the last hourly gets picked off by my direct boss who is a decent sniper. They’re talking all kinds of shit at us, so I go into action. We’re on avalanche. Match starts, I rush to watch the sniper rifle, revolver in hand. My boss goes for it and I pop his head off. As this is happening, my other 3 teammates are slain. I back myself into a defensive position, planting a grenade to hold one door while I watch the other. I pin one of my managers with sustained revolver fire. One tries to come in the back door, eats the grenade. I go over to stomp him and the guy I had pinned rushes the door. I swing around with the shotgun and blow him away. I realize the last guy, my general manager, is trying to flank me, so I roadie run around the outside of the building, run in behind him with the lancer, and chainsaw the bejesus out of him. A chorus of distressed profanity assaults me as the match ends, while I chug the rest of my beer and belligerently extol the virtues of not fucking with us.

Tartauris saves the team:

World of Warcraft. I played an Arms warrior named Tartauris on Burning Blade.

Back when our guild was first doing Blackwing Lair it took us a while to make any progression. I was a pretty quiet dude. Didn’t talk much in guild chat or vent, stuck around because my friends were in the guild and basically was in the guild for a DPS spot and free loot.

The very first time we killed Vaelstrasz, our off tank was dead, the main tank had just dropped and the boss was low. For anyone that doesn’t know, Vaelstrasz was basically a damage race because you have 3 minutes to kill him while a buff is active that makes everyone superbeast. Without even thinking I switch to a sword and shield and hop into defensive stance as everyone is all “Shit, tanks dead, wipe wipe wipe.” Only Vaelstrasz isn’t going to town on our healers. I taunted and sundered armor for dear life. It took a while for the heals to start coming in and suddenly everyone on vent is screaming “HEAL TART, HEAL TART.”

What follows were the most tense seconds of my life. I’m not even sure how long it took. The three minute mark hits and the buff is gone but he’s down to single digit health percentage, we can do this. I pop shield wall, shield block, last stand, EVERY survivability and damage reduction buff I can find on my hotbar for 10 seconds of glory.

In the end we beat Vaelstrasz and I was the hero that saved our guild from a horrible Vael wipe that one time.

Shigmiya64 is victorious…I guess?:

Playing FTL: Faster Than Light and I’m on the last stage of the flagship. I’ve got it on the ropes, and it has virtually no chance of beating me, so I decide to get cocky and have my entire crew beam on board to take its systems out manually. Unfortunately, because I neglected to upgrade my cockpit, without a pilot my chance of evading shots has dropped to 0%, and with every shot guaranteed to hit the flagship is now quite capable of destroying me. To make matters worse, the volley of shots that makes me realize this completely disables my crew teleporter and weapons system, so I can’t recall my crew to undo my mistake and make repairs or fire back. So now it’s a race against time. I set my crew to work destroying the flagship’s systems, and they succeed at destroying the the flagship right as it fires the fatal shot at my ship. Both ships explode, my crew goes down with the flagship, and I’m treating to a victory screen with no one listed as my ship’s victorious crew.

JonathanPonikvar’s knife comes in handy:

Resident Evil: Code Veronica on the Dreamcast. The final boss fight. I go in there with a WEALTH of weapons and ammunition, along with a handful of health sprays. I am ready to take this freak down.

The fight is intense and I unload EVERYTHING in my inventory. Every bullet and explosive I somehow carried in my pockets is now gone, and I just used my last health spray. In one final, desperate move, I pull out my knife, run up to the enemy, and poke it once. It dies.

I missed the ending cinema because I was laughing so damn hard.

Shigmiya64’s hands come in handy:

One time I was playing Dark Souls, hanging out in a high-level area and trying out different equipment loadouts to see how they look when suddenly I get invaded. This is a problem, because I have none of my good stuff equipped and the invader has spawned right in front of me. I’m forced to open and scroll through the menus as fast as I can during miniscule openings in the fight in order to stand a chance. At the very apex of the encounter, I managed to parry my opponent’s attack with my bare hands to give myself enough time to finish equipping myself. But ultimately, yes, I did manage to win. Longest duel of my life.