Video Games are my favourite thing. Win, Lose or Tie, I'm a gamer til I die! :) So, here goes a brief(ish) history of my 33+ years of Computer Video Gaming. This maaay get quite lengthy and i don't want to bore anyone to death so I'll write it in 2 or 3 parts, so look out for Part 2 next week!
In 1990 i was about 6/7 years old. My first handheld gaming device was an original Nintendo Gameboy, with the pixelly green screen, or Dot Matrix to call it by it's proper name. I used to take it with me everywhere i went, with 4 spare AA batteries too! It was like carrying a very entertaining brick around..
It came with Tetris and Super Mario Land. That was the first Mario game i ever played and i have loved that lil fat Italian plumber ever since. I also often still get the Tetris theme tune stuck in my head for no reason.. doo, doodoo, dododo, doodoo dododo, doo dodo doo, doo, doo, doooo! ..like a musical screensaver in my brain..
I had the Home Alone game and the WWF Superstars wrestling game too. Home Alone was great fun, you had to search through all the rooms in the house and try to gather all the loot before the "Sticky Bandits" got it, then get it locked away safely in the big vault. You had to booby-trap the baddies whilst avoiding rats and spiders that became huge bosses at the end of some of the levels. I could quite happily play all those old Gameboy games again today and be just as entertained as i was 25+ years ago.. They're easily still good for kids these days too, i think there's really no need to be buying children iPads and smartphones when an old SNES or Gameboy from a car-boot sale still works like new!
WWF Superstars above and Home Alone below.
In the early 90's i briefly owned an Atari Lynx and a Sega MegaDrive, but both were stolen from my Dads house one day when we'd gone out to watch the mighty, mighty Ipswich Town play football..
how did THAT get in here?!
I was gutted when i got back to find my Megadrive gone - no more Sonic the Hedgehog! And the Lynx - no more California Games either!! yeah but no but yeah but no but BMX and half pipe and hackeysack and surfiiiing noooo! That still pains me now.. It turns out that you can play those old games online these days, i just had a go on California Games BMX and well let's just say i'm not as good as i used to be! - http://game-oldies.com/play-online/california-games-atari-lynx#
Around 1992/3 I got my first proper console - a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, aka the SNES. I got it from my cousins as they were moving to Canada and couldn't take it with them. Sweet deal!! Enter Super Mario World , the first fully colourful Mario game i ever played..
It was bloody marvelous! It took me aaaaages to finish that game and I don't think i ever even mastered flying properly with the cape on.. I'll never forget the day when i came home to fnd my younger brother, Benny, had accidentally erased my saved game! Arghh thanks a bunch!!! Now i have to play it alllll again!!!
Luckily Donkey Kong Country came out soon after that and instantly became my new favourite! DK 1-3 on the SNES, were all amazing games, but Donkey Kong 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest was the best. Me and my old mate Jack finished all 3 with 101%, 102% and 103%. We finished everything it was possible to do in those games and we loved every second of it! Those were the days!
SNES Mario Kart was awesome for it's time too
It was the first (of many) multiplayer racing game i ever played, featuring a horizontally split screen me and 3 friends could all play AT THE SAME TIME!! Absolute madness!
I also had a PGA Tour Golf SNES game which used to be great fun and the Jurassic Park game which was insanely difficult as i remember, i don't think i ever finished that game and i even had a handwritten walkthrough guide that my uncle gave me! Clearly it didn't help much! This was before we could just pop online and look on youtube for the answers to the ingame puzzles and seemingly impossible areas, the struggle was real back then!
By the mid 1990's i had a Nintendo 64, with Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye 007 amoung others.
Super Mario 64 was mind-blowing! Everything was in 3D! This was the future and i couldn't get enough! hah! yah! wahooo!! Kill Bowser, Save the Princess! Easy! mmm well not THAT easy but i got there in the end! All 150 stars later, time for a new game...
I remember the day i got Goldeneye. Curtains drawn, beanbag pulled right up to the telly, snacks to hand, i spent as long as i possibly could exploring and trying to kill everyone on every level..
I thought i was quite good at it, until one summer, when Jacks German Exchange-Student friend rocked up and showed us how he does "Facility" on the hardest setting as a warm up :/ Daaaaaymn son! That was impressive! One of the cool things about that game was the multiplayer feature, one time we managed to hook up 2 N64s and 2 TVs to play 8 player Goldeneye! That was AWESOME!!
I had loads of great games on the N64, including Banjo Kazooie 1 and 2, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart 64, F-Zero X, 1080 Snowboarding, Donkey Kong 64 and Perfect Dark but my favourite game on there was the Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time.
I played that game for ages, questing, riding around on my horse called Epona, finding golden Skulltulas and fishing while trying to defeat the evil boss Ganondorf!
I was stuck in the dungeon levels for weeks on end! Especially the Water Temple!
Look at it! Insanity! How I ever found my way through all that without a walkthrough guide, i'll never know! It's still one of the best and hardest games I've ever played. I have it on an emulator on my phone now and I gave up halfway through after getting stuck again.. though I have got quite a few other games to play instead these days to be fair.. I could finish it if i could be arsed!
From the middle to the end of the 1990's we had a house PC which I started gaming on as soon as I realized I could, I'd be playing minesweeper or solitaire, and a cannon shooting game where 2 players each had a cannon on a hill and you had to aim and fire at the right trajectory and speed to destroy the other players cannon, but i can't remember what it was called. I also used to play a game called Flashback, which i found out recently has been completely remade, i downloaded a free demo of it on steam, it's very well done, just like it used to be but better! check it out here - http://store.steampowered.com/app/245730/Flashback/
this is the main level that i remember from the original Flashback, i don't think i got very far past that at the time..
As PC games started getting better, i started wanting my own PC to play on in my bedroom and at LAN parties with my friends, so i started doing a paper round and saving up my pennies..
...To Be Continued...
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mmm do I have to say where all the pics I used came from? not sure if I do or what, it seems like a huge ballache to me, but I just used https://www.ecosia.org to search for the pics I wanted then took a screenshot if that helps.. Use Ecosia instead of google, they use the money they make to plant trees around the world! 23 million trees planted so far!
Learn more here - https://info.ecosia.org/what