What was your golden age of gaming?

I was just thinking about this watching a development video of Halo 2. My golden age of gaming was the PS2/Xbox era. With the realy start of console online gaming, SOCOM 1 and 2, Halo 1 and 2, Xbox Live, PS2 Online, RTCW, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, etc etc.

2000-2007 was about the golden age of gaming for me, I was still in grade school and didn't have to worry about real life BS. It was all about coming home after school and jumping on with the homies. These were the times in gaming that i honestly had the most fun.

I went through 2 of these I would say. I started on the Coleco and Intellivision, and worked my way through the SNES. After that i took a tiny break until the PS1 came out. I was pretty hardcore from PS1 through the 360's first few years. Then life happened, and while I still game, it's not nearly as frequent.

During S1-CA's heyday, I was nonstop on that...

I still game today, not anywhere near as often but I don't get the same feeling I used to back in my golden age of gaming.

This one is a strange question for me because on the one hand any Socomer would view PS 2 and Socom as kind of the golden era of gaming because it redefined what a truly addictive game is like some secret we had stumbled upon that taught us what we used to think was a great game had all been a sham lol, but in some strange way I feel like Socom might have actually ruined gaming for me. I still enjoy games but I don't seem to enjoy single player games the way I used to before the Socom era.

Now if I was to go back before I knew what online gaming was, when I still viewed offline games as what defined great video games, I would say the N64 was my golden era of gaming. What I liked about the N64 is that they took franchises like Mario and Zelda and for the first time put them in a 3D world and not only that, they actually managed to make this drastic change without losing the feel of the older games.

The N64 had a very limited library compared to the NES and SNES before it but I mean Super Mario 64, Zelda Orcania of Time, 007 Goldeneye, The first Madden 64 game, 4 player split screen with buds on Mario Kart 64, Turok, and you can't forget WCW World Tour and WCW Revenge which created awesome 4 player gaming with friends as well as decent single player gaming. Even though I'm more more of a sim fan when it comes to sports I had a blast playing some Mario Golf as well. N64 had only a small handful of gems but those games really changed gaming for me (most notably the move to 3D environments for the first time). I still remember the first time I turned on Zelda Orcania of Time and being in awe of the opening and hearing the Zelda music start to play and thinking how amazing the music sounded compared to the 8 and 16 bit versions.

My first console was the Atari 2600 and I have been addicted to gaming since then. Everything from Space Invaders, Pac Man through the years of Street Fighter to when Arcades became extinct.. I still run across an Arcade here in there, I was pissed when they closed down the one in my local Mall a few years back.

I can say I think I have owned just about every popular console made or at least played it.. I went thru my Nintendo addiction with Mario, Xbox, Sega, Playstation, you name it I have owned it more than likely.

Every time some one brings this up I just wanna punch babies because if I would have kept all my games and consoles instead of being a Gamestop whore I would no doubt have a collection that would be worth a lot of money.

I still remember my pattern on Pac Man to this day....

The only correct answer is 1997-2004.

It was ushered in with FF7 and ended with GTA San Andreas.

In between it probably peaked in 2002 when you had MGS2, GTA3, Socom, Gran Turismo 3, and GTA Vice City all in heavy rotation.

i agree with mack, especially 1998

resident evil 2, metal gear solid, ocarina of time, half life,