Well this is actually a super cool topic that I say popping by earlier in the week. Just a trip down memory lane on what kind of game you always liked to play. Although I haven't been as gamey as so many others now in the world (talking about people who are hardly going outside anymore because they are glued to their computers), but I surely had my share of screen time, which was cool. So here we go!
The Atari
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The first computer I had ever used in my life for a game was a Atari. Honestly I had no idea that the machine itself looked like this, but I surely remember the controller with the red button in the left corner. So many good times I had on this machine in combination with really giving all my best on this controller.
Atariage.com
Donkey King Junior was the first game I played remember playing on this. The most memorable this about this one? The tune... It would stick in your head forever, and was more than catchy. Honestly...I don't know if I ever finished getting the big gorilla, but it surely took away several hours of my time back in the days.
The CDI player
For most people this will not ring a bell at all, but in our house this was a heavily used machine. It never really toook off, I think because the CD-rom player took over in the end.
Tetris was really the game that got everyone in our house going. The controller of the CDI player was very sensitive so more than often I dumped my blocks way faster that I had actually wanted.
What the cool thing is from this CDI version was the backgrounds from all of these national parks in the US. At the moment I was growing up in the US and I had seen so many of these places. Also the background tunes from the game, I notice sometimes I a still whisteling these tunes, especially the one from level 7. Odd that 30 years later this is still stuck in your brain right?
Zelda: The Wand of the Gamelon and Link: Faces of Evil
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This was my first introduction to Zelda and Link and this was really a game changer and the hardest game to play in my memory. You had three hearts health and I remember you were able to increase these but it was a tough game. Another kid from my street also had a CDI player and this kid was also trying to make the best out of it. It was just a really tough game. But Zelda and Link...they always stayed!
The 7th Guest and escape from Cyber city were the next games I always tried playing. But honestly I think I was bit tooo young for both to really understand what it was. In the 7th guest there was a haunted house and there were always ghosty things floating though the house, which was scary to me.
Escape from cyber city had a sort of manga graphics in there, which I had no idea it had that name, but was always always too hard for me. It's tough being a kid man!
The Nintendo Game boy
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Then came the first portable device. The game boy. My best friend on vacations, in the garden and on any other random spot. The game boy was good, easy to work with and cool.
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Super Mario: 6 golden coins was my first game and the first encounter with Wario as well and with the goal to save the princess from him. I loved this game, and years later a got a game boy advanced and also played this game again with it.
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Then Zelda: Links Awakening was the next game I got. This game was difficult man! Becaus it was a bit of tactics, a bit of searching and sometimes also puzzles in there.
I remember years later when the interwebz came out that you could play this game on an emulator as well (which I did naturally) but also that there were walk throughs to guide you through the levels. Yes, the cheat mode indeed.
Finally I got a chance to get further in the game, because I was stuck sometimes for years. Again..the music from the game still sometimes dangles around in my mind. And from others as well. A friend of mine recently released a techno album where one of the bonus track is like an hommage to Zelda. Talk about dedication ;)
So those were the games over the years. After that I have tried some Nintendo 64 with mario collecting stars, but damn...that was difficult already. I never got into all of these world of warcraft things. For me the thats all new and way too fancy to relax with.
I stick to the easy games now now I have to be more devoted with my time ;)