When my father died my family kept asking me for months if I had cried yet, which I hadn‘t. Not for like macho reasons I just don’t generally get to the point of tears over anything, so when he passed away I thought nothing of me not crying over it. That is until one night I was playing Ristar like I'm prone to do and I usually stop right around the ice planet, but this particular night I pushed onward and finished the game. I watched the recaps, sat through the credits, and got the ending screen.
>!
The aforementioned scene.
It was then I realized I had tears running down my face, not necessarily because of Ristar, per se. I just missed my dad.
I try to play it all the way through at least once a year now.
@“Toph”#p149611 yeah. This is what emotion in games is all about to me. Not that their content is so sophisticated that they can make you cry necessarily but they open you up to emotion by relaxing you until something small like this can be the key to unlock a situation you were already going through. Thank you for sharing!
Playing NiGHTS on original hardware again for the first time in 25 years made me quite emotional and then some. I hadn‘t even played the game but just seeing it and remember how magical it was the first time I saw it, I got to experience it a second time and that made it something even more. That’s not a feeling you get often!
Hmm…just the memory of the Saturn, which I had for a while. I played a few games on it like Guardian Heroes (is that correct?) and Nights…Panzer Dragoon was one of those moments I never forgot about.
I did not play so many games on the Saturn. I don’t even remember what happened to it. I had the PS1 for a very long time.
when the screen goes dark and I suddenly glimpse my own weathered reflection, and feel the weight of all these years now gone and all the pain and anguish that etched these rough and unfamiliar lines in my face rushes back, yet even then I would give anything to have those years back if only for another chance to make something else of this life
Earthbound was the first game that made me cry, and at that point the longest game I had ever played. I grew so attached to the characters and the world was so vibrant and funny. Stuff like moonside and the mani mani statue was a little unsettling, but where I really got tingling that something important was happening was the Mu training in Dalaam. It was kind of scary to agree to the enigmatic being‘s terms but it rewards your bravery. I think this is part of a setup for the final act, where Ness and party >!have to sacrifice themselves by turning into Robots, a Point of no Return. In order to defeat Giygas they have to leave everything behind. There’s a scene with all the wacky characters you met from your adventure seeing you off. As a 10 year old, I was not prepared for the story to tell me essentially “you're an adult now and this is your responsibility to carry this out” and then transport me from the cozy familiar world to a grotesque and punishing final area where you couldn't just backtrack to a familiar town, you had to push forward.!< Of course, getting to Giygas and everything that happens in the final battle was the payoff but I think it all hit far more closely to home because of the way it taught me about taking responsibility for a world outside of the self.
The Deltarune demo also made me cry. Anyone else cry thanks to a demo?
I‘ve shed tears at several games, but there’s only a very select few that I would say made me cry. One is Umineko, specifically chapter 4 and the Rosa/Maria stuff. If you had a rough childhood, that stuff will tear your heart out of your chest. Or at least it did when I was around 20.
@“Toph”#p149673 I don't want to speak out of turn but I suspect those were tears (positive about depth of human experience) rather than tears (feel bad)
@“Toph”#p149673 @“exodus”#p149675 it's true! I found your post very touching. Also I had no idea of Ristar's emotional breadth.
@"exodus"#p149618 what you said here about being lulled into a state that leaves you open to an emotional catharsis resonates with me. I felt this with a certain scene in *Nioh* of all games (the >!White Tiger!< boss). This isn't even necessarily video game-specific; any piece of media that gets me invested in the wellbeing of its characters can pull this off, or which on its surface doesn't appear to be interested in exploring difficult emotions will leave me off guard. It can feel manipulative if done clumsily but it doesn't have to be.
@“yeso”#p149646 I have a few things in my life I would change if I could. Playing videogames is not one of them. As I've heard elsewhere - “videogames forever”.
I absolutely sobbed cathartic tears of joy at the end of Okami. I don't even like that game much. I think I was ready to cry for a lot of life reasons, and the ending sequence gave me a kind of permission.
https://y.yarn.co/0e8663ae-5578-4fa8-932c-5f83cfe9367e_text.gif