Did you ever get flashbacks from gaming while not playing?

JHefile

JHefile

Necrophilia Makes Me [H]ard
Joined
Jun 22, 2003
Messages
1,180
Hey all.

This is real and bothers me given all the time that has gone by and it still happens.
It's almost always the map Neuville from Call Of Duty 1 on PC. It's not that exact image but it's that map. I played cod for years from release, about 3 years or so. Even yesterday, I'll just be working at work or doing whatever and all of the sudden an image pops up in my head of this map. It's been going on for over a year now. I'd say it happens about a couple times every few months, generally no more maybe less.

http://www.statsgen.co.uk/example/cod1/neuville.jpg
 
flashbacks? no... but i'll be in a dream and everything seems normal.. and then suddenly i have a gun in my hand and i get a triple kill... and then it goes back to normal dreaming again lol.
 
Seek psychiatric help immediately. No kiddin'...
I'd look at cutting the amount of time I spent gaming if I were in your shoes.
 
its called perceptive reality. i started a thread on it a year or so ago i think. (from what ive come up with) after prolonged gaming (whether its a lot of consecutive times or just a few prolonged times) your reflexes and the way your mind works kind of locks into place with the game you play. when NFS Most Wanted came out i played it a LOT just for the police chases. then when id just be driving id see a cop and everything would slow down and turn kind of blueish for a second taking me back into the game. but knowing the difference i obviously didnt do a 180 or floor it towards the cop...

if you search around for a bit youll find a lot of topics and threads online about this type of thing, its pretty common with Modern Warfare as well, people will hear helicopters or something and dive for cover in public because theyre so used to doing it in game
 
Shady240 said:
if you search around for a bit youll find a lot of topics and threads online about this type of thing, its pretty common with Modern Warfare as well, people will hear helicopters or something and dive for cover in public because theyre so used to doing it in game
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Don't you mean press left ctrl?
 
Shady240 said:
if you search around for a bit youll find a lot of topics and threads online about this type of thing, its pretty common with Modern Warfare as well, people will hear helicopters or something and dive for cover in public because theyre so used to doing it in game
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LOL, i kinda have this happen to me, i live in a town where there is a lot of float planes... and when i walk outside and see one up in the sky, and for a split-second i'll think to myself "there is a UAV up!"
 
FUBAR said:
Seek psychiatric help immediately. No kiddin'...
I'd look at cutting the amount of time I spent gaming if I were in your shoes.
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lol a little drastic don't you think? he said he gets flashbacks of a map from a game he no longer plays... he didn't say that every time he sees a guy in a military uniform he automatically thinks to himself KILL HIM! . . . I don't think flashbacks of a map a few times a month are gonna ruin him :p
 
Large, tiled, empty, mall washrooms trigger my memory of public washrooms from the Silent Hill series (but without the suspicious, body-sized pools of blood splatter)

Its been three years since I last played a game. I catch myself grinning and shaking my head when it happens.
 
Yes. My flashback is UBRS and LBRS from WoW... GOTTA GET MY Tier .5 SET PIECES!!

When this starts happening its a good indication that you have played the game too much.
 
i was walking my dog the other day and saw a bottlecap on the ground and my first instinct was to pick it up.. damn fallout :D
 
Yeah, I occasionally get them, especially in foreign situations. Portal levels in hospitals, for some reason...

It's not usually complete levels, just elements... I briefly mistook a green toolbox next to a reddish shed for a TF2 health kit once...
 
I get them every now and then. I remember a map I enjoyed and try to remember which game it is. My gaming history goes back to when Doom 2 was new so it gets confusing...
 
kpedge said:
I get them every now and then. I remember a map I enjoyed and try to remember which game it is. My gaming history goes back to when Doom 2 was new so it gets confusing...
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I think the same thing happens to me too. Every now and then, some image of a game just flashes across my mind, sometimes I cant immediately recall what game is that, just know that I've played that before.

Never really give much thought about it though. I've lways assumed is normal. Hope we won't need any psychiatric:eek:
 
I was driving home the other day and I saw a helicopter hovering in the sky. I pointed to it and said "ENEMY UAV!" Too much BC2 for me.
 
It's the other way for me. There's a TV running in the other room just within sight of my door. And the scenes gets locked into whatever i'm playing.

So i every time i get into a certain part of a game, i would suddenly have a scene from Hause running in my head.
 
This just started recently for me even though I have been gaming since the early 80s. My brother and I have put in alot of online hours into Bad Company 2. Like the guy above, I get the whole "UAV is up" thought alot or the sound of a big diesel truck makes me think tanks are on the way to the flag and I have to take cover. I find it quite hilarious in all actuality. :D
 
I don't get flashbacks, but I get...notions. Such as, I'll be walking along looking at the horizon not because it's interesting, but because I'm looking for sniper perches as if I'm in an BC2 or something.
 
I still now somtimes walk down a street and suddenly think the words 'rec recall'. It is the command to recite a 'recall scroll' in a DIKU MUD - I used to play Arctic mud a lot and it allows one to recall to a old location. :)

Also I get odd feelings late at night in underground subways (Silent Hill 3 has a very disturbing subway sequence which will stay with you!).

Other than that - hmm, nah.
 
In the days before mp3s, I used to play tapes or CDs while gaming. During serious gaming sessions, I'd often just repeatedly play the album in the machine, rather than constantly switching out. Now, when I hear certain songs, it tends to evoke memories of the game I was playing while listening to that song.
 
That happens to me all the time - I call it 'imprinting', when certain songs tie to games forever for various reasons. I have the oddest combination of songs to games trust me. I have a song that reminds me of Deus Ex (Breathless by an Irish group called the Corrs), in particular the Denton fight in the hotel lobby when both brothers square off against UNATCO. :) I think I used to listen to it around that time...
 
My friends father was in vietnam, and after watching BF:1942 being played by his son, he had a flashback......

But as for me, having flashbacks of CoD games? No....

I did have a DDR flashback where I saw arrow buttons all over the place.
 
The other night I had a dream I was controlling a predator missile and killed all six enemy soldiers at once. It was even black and white like in MW2.

I've had other dreams where it'll be like MW or MW2 and I'll be in the middle of combat. Pretty fucking rad if you ask me.
 
balthan said:
In the days before mp3s, I used to play tapes or CDs while gaming. During serious gaming sessions, I'd often just repeatedly play the album in the machine, rather than constantly switching out. Now, when I hear certain songs, it tends to evoke memories of the game I was playing while listening to that song.
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Wow, I totally relate to you. When I first started playing online games I was hitting the original Quake LiveTeam Fortress sauce real hard. I'd ALWAYS have a Metallica CD playing in my cdrom drive. Now the old school Metallica (everything before Load) reminds me of Team Fortress.
 
I have Tetris flashbacks when I'm driving near trucks on the interstate.

Finally a line! Too fast! Too fast!
 
After a few years of hardcore raiding in WoW. If I talk on the phone while at a keyboard I hit left ctrl when I talk out of habit. (push to talk key bind) Does that count?
 
Commander FAT said:
Wow, I totally relate to you. When I first started playing online games I was hitting the original Quake LiveTeam Fortress sauce real hard. I'd ALWAYS have a Metallica CD playing in my cdrom drive. Now the old school Metallica (everything before Load) reminds me of Team Fortress.
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This, definitely. I used to listen to a lot of Andrew W.K. while playing Rocket Arena 3, and I had a bunch of DJ Doboy Trancequility albums that I would listen to on loop while playing Everquest. Trancequility #3 reminds me of fighting Treants in the Karanas.
 
Techx said:
i was walking my dog the other day and saw a bottlecap on the ground and my first instinct was to pick it up.. damn fallout :D
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Hehe - yeah, Fallout3 did some weird stuff to me as well. You need bobby pins to pick locks in the game, and at one point I needed one really bad but couldn't find any - spent like hours in-game trying to find more bobby pins. Then a couple days later I was hanging out w/ friends IRL, and one chick had a bunch in her hair! I asked her if I could have a few, then quickly had to catch myself and explain that: never mind, they wouldn’t actually help. :p

To the OP's point, I think the only times I've ever had anything resembling what you're describing was when I first started playing semi-realistic FPS games like GoldenEye, and Quake2; you'd have those moments after hours of playing where you'd walk outside, see a person, and think: oh, wait, I no longer have to kill everything that moves. :p Haven't had that sensation in several years.

Also, I've had several instances lately of playing a casual game like World of Goo or Defense Grid, and having weird related dreams afterwards; but I don't think that counts as a flashback of any kind.

synapsis said:
I have Tetris flashbacks when I'm driving near trucks on the interstate.

Finally a line! Too fast! Too fast!
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haha - this too! I have probably played thousands of hours of Tetris on my phone - I see Tetris blocks everywhere.
 
Techx said:
i was walking my dog the other day and saw a bottlecap on the ground and my first instinct was to pick it up.. damn fallout :D
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LOL, I think fallout made the lot of us pick up quite a number of random stuff on the ground, but bottlecaps most especially! I remember Sprite would have that promo where you try to get codes or win free drinks or other prizes from the bottlecaps.

Hmm... whenever I see a plumber in a blue jumper with brown boots... I think super mario brothers...
 
Not really flashbacks but certain areas of wow used to remind me of different times in my life.

Also everytime I hear Deep Purple - Hush I think of Battlefield: Vietnam :p
 
I walk by a creek nearby my house on my way to work everyday, and everytime I look at the water an image of the water effects in half-life 2 come to mind. Almost like I'm in the game.
 
It's normal, I'll have little images of de_dust2 pop into my head sometimes for no reason.

Unless you're like reliving moments frame-by-frame from games you've played in the past, nothing to worry about. ;)
 
I get "flashbacks" all the time. I've been playing games since I was four or so, and lots of things in real-life trigger a synapse from the past to activate. I usually remember what game and where in the game it took place. I have a photographic memory and it is kind of annoying sometimes to randomly remember details of a game played 10+ years ago.

A lot of games are inspired from real life objects/events. So when these events happen in our life our brain associates them with something similar we've already experienced, something familiar. The synapse of the old grows stronger and attaches the new memory in the same cluster, this is only a guess though.
 
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