here are some moments that I feel should have made that list, plus are just a few good memories of mine.

First:
totally forgot Big Red One. Half-way through the very last level, good ol' Brooklyn (who everybody had grown to love by then) has to plant a charge on a barbed wire fence. He goes down the hill, ironically saying 'I think ill actually make it home from this lousy war.' five seconds later, nerd-dude screams 'Brooklyn!!!!' and mortar fire coming out of nowhere suddenly blasts your fellow soldier 20 feet into the air. Just like that, your favorite BIA is lying five feet away from you, unmoving, and nobody mentions him for the rest of the game. A very heart-wrenching moment ='( that was apparently overlooked.

Second:
Jak III; Jak and Dax are makin fun of monk dude, prompting him to say 'this isnt a game!!" prompting THEM to look at each other and then stare at your screen like what the crap's he talkin about. lol a very subtle break in the forth wall, but still pretty darn funny xD

Third:
Rock Band II: the thrill of hooking up that smoke machine & strobe light for the first time just before playing 'Let There Be Rock' and then being completely enguled in smoke as soon as the song starts. If you were lucky enough to have all four people playing when you did (as I was) there's really nothing better. =D

Fourth:
Bad Company; immidiately after you crash 5 minutes into the game:
Sweetwater: "new guys dead...already? darn. I was just about to learn his name."
Haggard: "think his name was, ah...Joe! usually is."
rofl xD for those who havent played the game, pretty much all of it is gut-busting hilarious.

Fifth (SPOILER):
another Bad Company moment, when Sarge gets the call that the Army has left you to die deep inside enemy lines after just pulling off a mission for them. If there ever was a feeling where the crap hits the fan, you can pretty much shower in it here.

Sixth:
Rock Band (first one); when that piece-of-crap foot pedal finally goes out just about the same time the red pad does. A very memorable moment, though not nessicarily a good one.

Seventh:
Catching your first Pokemon. 'nuf said. =)
Im awe-struck this one did not make the list.

Eight (SPOILER):
Making that impossible jump in Johnson's Warthog to the Pelican at the climax of Halo 3, with the entire new Halo going up in flames right behind you and your best friend and/or lil bro sayin 'DUDE, there's no way you'll make that!' . Amazing ending to an amazing game.

Ninth:
Walking out of the Imperial Sewers for the first time in Oblivion (one of the greatest RPG's ever made, period), and realizing that you are indeed a very small part of a very big world.

Tenth:
Falling through that darned trap door in Mario 64.
Yep, that one where your running to the picture of Peach, which slowly changes to Bowser the closer you get to it. JUST when it starts to hit you that there's no way you could have finished the game in less than an hour and that that is NOT the picture you were running at 10 seconds ago, you are swallowed up by a nice hole in the floor to Bowser's own little slice of hell. (or at least, one of many slices of hell)

and last (SPOILER):
Both of the Kingdom Hearts endings, where in I and II where Sora is seperated and then rejoined with Kairi, respectively, with the beautiful themes playing in the background. even though this really isn't that much of a spoiler, and even though pretty much the entire games are touching, unless you are completely heartless they WILL make you burst into tears.

please do not hesitate to reply.

-snappyT-

Super Mario: Realizing that the ability to break out the bricks and walk up by the score, breaking the fourth wall effectively, wasn't an accident when you get to the
secret pipes room. Amazing. Totally changed my perception of what games could be.

Guantlet: The first time you hear, "Elf needs food badly" and feeling very invested, not just from a scoring standpoint, to keep him alive.

The Darth Revan moment in KOTOR is probably the most impressive moment in games for me. The movie series that practically created the "twist" as we know it, with the Luke and Darth Vader idea, has done it again in games to perhaps the same level of importance and shock.

And there's no forgetting the strippers in Duke Nukem 3D.

Resident Evil has loads of "Oh My God" moments throughout the series. I remember being gobsmacked by William Birkin's growth and mutation, so terrifying in the final stage of Resident Evil 2. The snake in the attic moment always makes me approach my attic with caution every time. Being trapped in the house in the first village of Resident Evil 4 only to see a chainsaw wielding lunatic approach from across the square and the villagers prop up ladders to the upper windows was the moment when I realised that RE4 would change my perception of games forever.

But the 2 most amazing RE moments are both in RE2. First is when Mr. X smashed through the wall and cornered you despite you truly believing you were safe because surely no enemy can come through the walls! Second is Mr. X again, when you see him on the security camera that's looking at the way you entered that tiny little control room!

Another great one is in Morrowind, approaching the Silt Strider with EXTREME caution, wondering how to tackle an enemy so big so early in the game, then realising that it's the local public transport made me laugh hysterically for feeling so silly!

There are countless others but the one I'll close on is in Shining Force 3 on the Sega Saturn, when Galm appeared from nowhere and "kills" Julian. This was a real shock, reminiscent of CoD4's moment when a main character dies, picked in this feature, but ten years before and probably enducing a moment of realisation of how weak the player really is equal to that strike in Infinity Ward's classic.

When i played the demo of Vampire Rain

Oh god that game was bad

When the aliens frozen the island in Crysis, TESIV: entering into Shivering Isles, the ending of the main and the shivering isles story and the last theives guild quest, story of Max Payne 2, and when you get Normandy in Mass Effect

one of the best for me was walking out of the sewers for the first time and seeing the amazing graphics and land of tamrial in ES Oblivion

Ehm...

I am missing Jaggie smashing through the front window of my viper in Rescue on Fractalus...esp. playing at night... "bum bum bum....bum bum bum.... YEEEEEEEK!"

Taking it back to Call of Duty 4... I started the game, and I was puzzled... absolutely puzzled. Like "That dude just hit me in the head and jammed me into a car, wtf" and my first thoughts were that someone is going to rescue me or something. Then you're driving through the city, which seems alive, there was a kid spray painting the wall and just jet when he saw us coming. Once get to our destination, they take you out of the car, again, knockin you right out. And all this time, you've had the freedom to actually look around. Then when you're finally strapped to that pole. You're looking around, still absolutely clueless. One thing you feel, is that you're completely helpless, you seriously feel like youre strapped to that pole. He hands him the golden Desert Eagle and the guy just walks up to you without any remorse... and kills you.... I was like "............??????". And that's when the game picks up. Also, I've found the end of the game to be absolutely amazing as well, on that bridge. And at that point, Price's death was relevant for about 1 second... he's dead, ok, but Holy Sh*t this dude's gonna do me next, and he just wakes up, tosses you that gun, and I remember for me, it was 2 perfectly placed headshots in split seconds..... goose bumps on my skin even when I type this.

I'll add a couple too.
Unreal, when you're at the end of a long hallway and you see the lights go out one by one, towards you, then when it's all dark you hear sounds of monsters in front of you, on your only way back.

Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines, the first visit to the haunted house is stuck in my mind.
It starts to build the haunted atmosphere already when you reach the entrance and the light explodes and never lets go. (very well executed sequence all the way, very scary)

The Special Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog - couldn't work out what the Hell was happening.
Learning what James Sutherland did to his wife in Silent Hill 2.
The gory deaths in The Immortal.
The blue screen of death in Eternal Darkness.
The face stabbing of Manhunt.
The reverse scrolling of Steel Empire.
When the level flips upside down in World of Illusion.
Realising it was myself I could see in Portal.
The first crash of Burnout.
Being lambasted and punched out in Night Trap (yeah, I know).
Getting ribbed by a talking, human-head-having fish in Seaman.
Crazy Taxi.
Finding out I had to press 'reset' to continue the game in X-Men.
Daccat's Island in Eternal Arcadia.
Getting Thunder Force IV to run on my PAL Mega Drive.
Bioshock's opening water texture.
Working out how the Hell Lords of Thunder was running on an 8-BIT system.
Seeing SEGA Rally start to move on the Saturn.
Or Donkey Kong Country on the SNES.
Plus all the MGS, Halo and Mario tricks everyone else's mentioned.

Definately going to have to agree with multiplayer GoldenEye. Still by far the best multiplayer gaming experience I've had.

To this list I would add the Cradle from Thief 3.

The whole first half of that level had no enemies in it at all -- and yet I CRAWLED through it, expecting to be bludgeoned from behind at every corner. Masterpiece.

Super Metroid's ending when the final boss whoops your ass and the baby metroid from the beginning swoops in and sucks the life out of your adversary. Then transfer the life it took from the boss into you when you're used to the only thing metroids do to you when they're on your head is kill you, to see one saving you was very memorable, but it didn't end there. What you thought to be a dead boss was just a near-dead one. The boss stands up and starts blasting the metroid that's on your body, but the metroid doesn't let go, it stays there continuing to transfer health to you while getting blasted to eventually die while protecting you and its remains spill over you like dust. Then you stand up like a super bad ass and just destroy the boss. The feeling of sadness from the metroid's sacrifice and your feeling of redemption after defeating the boss has stayed with me and has not been duplicated by any game since and I don't know if it ever will.

A couple of memorable moments: Having to climb down the hole in the underground prison in SIlent Hill 2, I still feel like a part of me is stuck there. Abe's Exoddus, discovering exploding farts is one thing, but being able to possess them and fly them around? Wow. Also in Oddworld, one third of the way through Stranger's Wrath where the game simply explodes and you find out who you really are. It's quite bizarre and sad when you realise that some of your best memories are virtual....

I'm glad Ocarina of Time was in there, but the most jaw-dropping moment in that game had to be leaving Kokiri forest for the first time and after the annoying conversation with the owl you truly appreciate the magnitude of the game and the sprawling landscape of Hyrule Field it was enormous and you could wander round for ages, simply mind -blowing!

I'm surprised that System Shock isnt in this list.

That game has permanently set my heart rate to an average of 80bpm. Shodan is still, to this day, the best video game villain! the way she evolved through the course of the game and grows to taunt you all the way to the end.

once you installed the game and did a sound test to check that all is working well the instalation plays an audio file from the game that says:
"look at you hacker.. a pathetic creature of meat and bones panting and sweating as you run through my corridors, how can you challenge a perfect immortal machine"
I had soiled myself before I even started the game.