What makes you just feel happy about gaming?

[Gunstar Green]

Beating a difficult boss with one bar of health remaining always makes me feel good.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Beating a difficult boss with one bar of health remaining always makes me feel good.

This, and the "sweaty hands" feeling you get when you really go all out on a difficult game. I also enjoy having a large collection of games and researching the history and trivia related to each one ("Did you know that there is a black-label, jewel case versions of In the Hunt, Loaded, and Mortal Kombat 3?...Incredible!") I guess that I am just a nerd like that.

[Thierry Henry]

What gets me "giddy" about gaming?
For me, strangely enough not so much the in-game play itself, but more exploring the hardware side of things.

For example, I always get a kick out of the almost myriad of options a system like the PC Engine gives you to play it's library of games.

Or just the ridiculous size of Neo Geo AES/MVS carts.

Or just the crazy look of the Jaguar CD system attached to the Jag console.

Or the CD-i pretending to be a gaming system.

Or the daisy-chaining of 3DO controllers.

Or Sega with it's sometimes strange add-ons and other peripherals.

Etc, etc.......

You know just weird and wonderful shit that makes you love it and shake your head at the same time.

[Nemoide]

I just played through Castlevania: Lament of Innocence and I think the Castlevania atmosphere makes me happier than most other game-related things. I love the music, I love the character/monster designs, I love the over-the-top horror vibe. Lament of Innocence wasn't even that great a game at its core, but I still became absolutely obsessed during my time playing.

I also love anime-style graphics in pre-2000 games. I love the combination of the anime aesthetics with limited graphic capabilities. It's just really interesting to look at.

[Blu]

Loved hearing some similar stories.

For one, hearing many tunes from the Shenmue Soundtrack makes me happy. Particularly the fights before the 70 man battle, and Shen Hua.
Every memory from Phantasy Star Online, the grinding, the weapons, the sound effects, the MUSIC!
Animal Crossing for Gamecube, particularly the rainy day music. Something that gives me fond memories.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Hearing the opening sequences on a stereo system is something I'll always remember.
Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time!

[BoneSnapDeez]

The beautiful sound of plastic-hitting-plastic and "crunching" you hear whenever you insert a NES/SMS/SNES/Gen/N64 game into its respective console.

[Frerix]

The beautiful sound of plastic-hitting-plastic and "crunching" you hear whenever you insert a NES/SMS/SNES/Gen/N64 game into its respective console.

Yup, people who only use emulators will never understand this. /sad face

And for me gaming is about having a good time and immersing yourself in a game, forgetting about everyday problems. And accomplish little things in gaming like beating all 8 dragons in FFVI for example.

[zilack_kid]

Personally nothing gets me more giddy then popping in my copy of FF VII, even if it's just to listen to the opening credits. I replay that game at least once every year.

[AppliCotton]

When I'm working and otherwise can't play video games, I close my eyes and imagine Cave shooters and fighting games like BlazBlue with all sorts of bright coloured shit flying across the screen. Just thinking about it makes me happy.

[dogman91]

I just love thinking about the flashy bright colors and arcade feeling from 2D games on their respective consoles and those low-res graphics with scanlines... mmm. And the awesome chip music, thinking about jumping from platform to platform and beating hard bosses and enemies and etc. It just goes on.

Also, can't forget parallax scrolling.