Thanks, ricksummon. I knew I wasn’t being completely accurate. Back when I still had my 8088 kicking around in a closet I took out King’s Quest and played it again, and I couldn’t get the guy’s name. I knew it was some perversion of rumplestiltskin, but couldn’t remember what exactly, and the funny ink in the hint book I had gotten from Sierra many moons before had faded so it was illegible.
Ok everybody, into the wayback machine. Do you remember Curse of the Azure Bonds by SSI? Pre-mouse game played on my roommate’s brand new 386!! In any case, you moved around using the arrow keys and if you wanted to enter a room you simply pushed in that direction and the game would ask you:
Enter room? Yes or No
And you would press “Y” or “N”.
Well in one of the dungeons (I don’t remember which, this was the fall of '89) my roommate and I along with our band of mighty warriors came to a door into which we wished to enter. Used the arrow button and the “Enter room” question came up. We answered “yes.” Then, another question popped up:
Enter room? Throw caution to the wind or Run away
Huh? Of course we answered “Throw caution to the wind” as we had breezed through the game to this point. Inside were about 10 beholders and 25 Drow lords. Run away, Run away! Having saved once inside the room, it took us hours to get out without most of the party dead.
My roommate and I have used “Throw caution to the wind” as a catch-phrase ever since.
Ha! Azure Bonds was the first RPG of that type that I ever played.
Another “great moment” from Space Quest II. There’s one bit where you’re crawling around this cave in the dark (with some small light, I don’t remember what you use, and you had to (I think… my memory’s failing me… it’s been a long time) get through without getting eaten by a grue 
or some such cave monster. I remember that was the first time in a computer game I ever got nervous/scared.
A multiplayer moment: I was playing Hexen, with some other guys in the same room (school LANs are great:)). Well, in Hexen, there’s a special item that you throw at enemies which turns them into pigs. Well, one of the other players managed to Porkalate me at point blank range, and started gloating about it. Apparently he didn’t realize that pigs aren’t quite helpless: While he was gloating, I proceeded to snout him to death.
In the laberynth of 7th guest, each time you get to a dead end, the voice says "feeling, lonely. Damn voice!! it’s incredible how you get to hate a character in a game.
Actually, ricksummon and Eonwe, you’re both right. In the original version of the game, the name was Rumplestiltskin encoded with a reversed alphabet. In the upgraded reissed version, it was simply Rumplestiltskin spelled backwards.
I didn’t write a letter to figure it out … but thank goodness for the free (at-the-time) Sierra hintline, or poor Sir Graham would still be wandering around without those magic beans. 
This is a totally geeky thing … but in those early days of adventure games, I was always glad to discover a new ability in my character – “What, he has SWIM animation?”
I was so into King’s Quest – I had read an article about how it was a complete breakthrough for videogame technology. And it was.
'Course, before that, we as a family had played Sierra Online’s “Adventures in Serenia” (also known as “The Wizard and the Princess”. It spurred a family in-joke that still gets used to this day. “I’m sorry, you can’t do that here.” If that game said it once, it said it a MILLION TIMES.
I’d love to have a version of that on my computer – just to bring back the memories.
Kahless would be proud, I’m sure.
He had a glowing gem in his mouth. And if he doesn’t do that, he gets eaten by a cave squid.
There is a great scene in one of the Monkey Island games in which Guybrush has a rock tied to his leg and he is dropped into the water. All around him are typical adventure game props that you would use to cut a rope – axes, swords, saws, knives – and they’re all out of reach.
Hehe, don’t tell how, but what I loved was how you were finally able to escape from the water.
Back around 1985 a buddy and me were playing an Apple adventure game: Crypt of Medea, a fairly standard text-driven puzzle with primitive graphics. The final escape involved assembling a primitive bomb out of a barrel of gunpowder and length of fuse.
So we get to the next-to-last room…
BUILD BOMB (okay)
LIGHT FUSE (okay)
GO EAST, GO EAST, GO EAST (trying to get away from the bomb)
…and kaboom, we were killed. Annoying; we obviously weren’t running away fast enough. We restored a save game and tried it again, and again, and again, getting killed each time. This missing step finally occured to us:
BUILD BOMB
LIGHT FUSE
DROP BOMB
GO EAST, GO EAST, GO EAST
[SUB]duh[/sub]
In DN3D, you walked into a strib club and if you walked up to the dancers you could give them a buck by pressing space. Her reacton? Pops out her boobs and gives em’ a shake. Not exactly the greatest gaming moment, but funny as hell.
In MS Flight Simulator 2002 I went to take off from an airport in a Cessna 182. During the takeoff roll the plane started veering off to the left. I pulled back to gain altitude, but couldn’t straighten out the flight path.
I frantically scanned the instrument panel, pulled up flaps, kicked the rudder, but nothing worked. The plane crashed into trees at the end of the runway.
Turns out the auto pilot was on and wouldn’t let me take control of the plane. Good lesson for the sim and real life flying.
Half-Life also creeped me out when I saw how good the AI was. A computer controlled adversary who was smart enough to RUN AWAY was very dubious.
Fun way to waste an afternoon: Play successive round of Unreal Tournament 2003, turning up the speed everytime you win. After playing at 150% speed for a while, drop it back to 80% or so. It’s bullet time, baby.