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I recently turned 20 and I've been pondering over how games have changed over the past 20 years.
I was born into the speccy era with tape based machines. Luckily I was fortunate enough that my dad owned a BBC Micro which had one of those big floppy drives. geezz what size were they again... 5 1/4inch or sommin'. Anyways, luckily due to that I never had to put up with waiting for hours for games to load like people with tapes! mwahahah... and the graphics on the BBC were far SUPREME!!!
Anyways, some of the very first games I ever played were :
Chuckie Egg
Repton 1, 2, 3, Around the world in 80 screens
SaberWulf
Citedel
Knightlore
etc etc
These were FANTASTIC games back then and I use to play em for hours on end. Even playing those games nowadays I still think they're brilliant! They were pure gameplay. Well actually the graphics on em weren't bad either! The only problem some of these early games had was a lack of a save function. So unless you were willing to sit there for literally hours on end, it was quite rare to see the end of a game!
The BBC did me well until I reached the ripe ol' age of around 7!
At that point the Gameboy was released! Wahoo!
The only problem with it thought was that I was a pauper and couldn't afford one! :'( So I had to spend my time scrounging of my rich mates to have ago on theirs! It was also around this time the NES came out, but HA, can't afford one of those either! But I still got to witness and play on the masterpiece by going round mates houses. Oh those were the days... spending hours playing Duck Hunt and original Mario Brothers! Duck Hunt is one of those games which hasn't reeeally stood the test of time. It's great for about 5-10 minutes when you play it nowadays. The same screen over and over and over, and the same ol' ducks over and over and over, soon gets a bit tedious! Specially as it's so easy.
side story : {Yrs l8r when own a NES} To try and make Duck Hunt more taxing once, I hooked up my NES to a TV in my bedroom. Stretched the NES as far out of my room as the wires would let me go, positioned a mirror against a wall in my room so that I could see the TV while outside my room. I then positioned another mirror on the landing so that I could see the other mirror in it. Then I played Duck Hunt from the top of the stairs. Quite a distance away from the TV. That made it a bit harder and was actually quite good fun! Haven't done that in quite a few years though!
Mario on the other hand. That has stood the test of time. It is still fantastic to this day! Classic Mario gaming which will never loose its charm. It's quite surprising when you go back to play it nowadays, and you can still remember where all the little secrets are. More proof of how great the game was/is!
It wasn't until the near release of the SNES that we managed to get a NES. My brother bought one off one of his mates for I dunno how much, which a bunch of games:
Mario Bros. 3
Double Dragon
Shadowgate
gahh, can't remember anymore at the moment. That might have been all.
Mario Brothers 3 though. That was one helluva game! It came on a special cart if I remember correctly. Some extra graphical enhancements or more memory or sommin'. Anyways, this made the game one of the best looking NES games available. The game looked great, and played fantastically. All the extra Mario costumes helped to make the game really big and expansive, and it took you literally HOURS to try and play through the whole game! Luckily there were 3 secret whistles which let you skip to different worlds easily! Otherwise there was noway you were gonna ever see the final world. heh the final world... that reminds me. The "hardest" level in the game was in the final world. Can't remember which number it was, but it was on a ship, and the level scrolled really fast! It took me ages to complete that level, but when I finally did, I was well chuffed! :D
Double Dragon was a brilliant game to. It let you play co-operatively which made it all the more enjoyable. It was always a question though as to whether or not you played with the ability to beat your mate up or not turned on. Because it was almost more fun just scrapping with your mate, rather than play the main quest!
After the NES came the SNES. I was 13 when I got my SNES! And it took me AGES to get one. It's not that I didn't have to money at the time, it was more a question of finding one. There was a national shortage of em and I couldn't find one to buy ANYWHERE! Months and months I spent trying to find one in the shops, but to no avail. In the end I bought one off a mate of mine for £100 with sommin' like 5 games:
Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Super Metroid
Donkey Kong Country
Chaos Engine
and sommin' else...
This console was absolutely amazing! Anyone that's ever played on one will tell you that. I had sooo many years of happiness from playing on this console. It catered for ALL your gaming needs. Be it platform games {Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country}, beat-em-ups {Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct}, driving games {Mario Kart, Stunt Race FX}, RPG's {Zelda, Chrono Trigger}. On this console there was something for everybody. It also sported a great controller. I've got loads of games for this console, and they're still really good to play today!
lol! People complain about game prices today. A mate of mine and his brother bought the original Streetfighter2 when it first came out, and it cost em £30 EACH! I use to go round and play it, and we all thought it was amazing. Well, at the time it was. It's just if you play that version, and then play StreetFighter 2 Turbo, you realise how SLOOOOW the original one was!
I've still got my SNES out to this day. Sitting on my shelf along with multiple other consoles. It was/is a gem and shall never be forgotten!
The next console which I managed to get my hands on was the superb N64!!! (15yrs old)
Bought sommin' like a month after the initial release after the first price drop. This was my first purchase from SR! A N64, Mario Kart, and an extra official Green controller. Well that's what I ordered. I got an N64, Mario64, and a yellow controller. But I wasn't bothered, Mario was an absolutely AMAZING game! This was 3D platforming at it's greatest! I sat there for about 3 days solid until I had completed it. Well completed with the 70 odd stars you needed. Took me a couple weeks to get every star. Mainly cos in that time I bought Mario Kart, and that took up a lot of my time!
Lots of people didn't like the N64. I can see why to a certain extent. It arrived after the Playstation and the Saturn, and there was hardly and releases on it. But.... I luved it! There may not have been that many releases too often, but for me that was good. I could never afford that many games at the time, so when a game was released I was able to buy it. And most of the games that were released were BRILLIANT!
Mario 64
Mario Kart
Goldeneye
Zelda
Forsaken
1080
etc etc
There was one downside to my N64 gaming. There was a severe lack of beat-em-up action. On the SNES I had loads of beat-em-ups, but on the N64, all the ones that looked promising never actually got released in the UK! grrr! Also, realistic racing games were lacking from N64 release lists. Due to these two facts, it made me............. buy a Playstation! :D
The ol' Playstation! Though I preferred the N64 to the Playstation, I'm glad I had one. It had all the beat-em-ups I needed to keep me happy, and had loads of racing games. Unfortunately it never really had any decent platformers, but I had my N64 to take care of that!
All in all, I think you had to have an N64 and a PS to get the most out of gaming. They both supplied different types of games, and if you had both, you were never starving.
I played on these two consoles for many a year, playing some classic games like, Mario 64, Zelda OOT, and FF7. But now this year I've refreshed my console cabinet.
May, brought about the release of the Gamecube and I got mine on the day of release from SR. The release price of the console was a pleasant surprise, as I'd expected it to be released at £200. But coming out at a mere £130 I was more than happy! Unfortunately I'd had my Gamecube delivered home while I was at uni, trying to finish my years work. So I had to wait a few weeks before I could get home to play on my own sweet Cube! It's a great console, but at the moment there isn't enough games on it I want. This is all about to change though. Between now and the end of the year I've got a list the length of..... sommin' really long, of games I want to get for the console. The only problem I'm gonna have, is that my bank isn't going to allow me to buy em all!!! Perhaps when I'm back in 'boro where theft is ripe, I'll be able to find all the games I want at a reduced cost!
Other than the GC, I added a PS2 to my collection of consoles this year. Found in some 2nd hand shop {in worryingly MINT condition}, for a mere £150 I couldn't resist. As with the N64 and PS, I thought that any true gamer must own both the GC and a PS2 if they want to get the most of out gaming. And so I slapped down my card and walked away with a new PS2! The great thing about the PS2 is that it's been out for quite a while now, and so you can find most of the games you want for around 10-20. Well if you go to uni in Middlesbourgh it also helps! lol! I still haven't managed to get the game I got my PS2 for tho! I'm sure Sib'll tell you what that is tho!
So I'm siting here writing this ever growing post contemplating all the gaming I've witnessed over the years. The above is quite long and yet I missed out my GameGear, Dreamcast, MegaDrive and Saturn! oh and GBA!
Has gaming improved over the years???
Honestly I'm not too sure. The games on the BBC I've got fond memories of I think are still good today. There's just something about the way they play that just grabs me. But quite a lot of the games released today just don't have that kind of pull. They don't make you want to play them over and over. They don't call you back and stop you turning them off for just one more go. This is something I think developers need to put back into games. The only recent games which I've played which have had that "must keep playing..... must get impossible high score..... waaaaaa it's 5 hours later 8-O " have been Tony Hawk 3 and Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarding. They have that, must play till my eyes bleed, catch to them. This is what more games need.
Also, pick up and play needs to come back in. In the SNES days, I could look at my collection of games and easily just pick up a game and have a quick blast. There's not that many games nowadays which call you to just have a quick go! This also needs to come back if gaming is to stay alive and kicking!
All this I think will improve soon. At the moment we're going through a bit of a games drought. But come September time, with great releases like Resident Evil, Turok Evolution, Doshin the Giant, I'm sure I'll become happy once more. But looking at those games, I can see they might be good while they last, but will they have that replayability? Only time will tell!
There is one game I'm really looking forward to though. A game starring a character which has NEVER let me down! Mario Sunshine! Mario games always ooze class and replayability. So come October there should be at least 1 game calling out to me!
:)
I was born into the speccy era with tape based machines. Luckily I was fortunate enough that my dad owned a BBC Micro which had one of those big floppy drives. geezz what size were they again... 5 1/4inch or sommin'. Anyways, luckily due to that I never had to put up with waiting for hours for games to load like people with tapes! mwahahah... and the graphics on the BBC were far SUPREME!!!
Anyways, some of the very first games I ever played were :
Chuckie Egg
Repton 1, 2, 3, Around the world in 80 screens
SaberWulf
Citedel
Knightlore
etc etc
These were FANTASTIC games back then and I use to play em for hours on end. Even playing those games nowadays I still think they're brilliant! They were pure gameplay. Well actually the graphics on em weren't bad either! The only problem some of these early games had was a lack of a save function. So unless you were willing to sit there for literally hours on end, it was quite rare to see the end of a game!
The BBC did me well until I reached the ripe ol' age of around 7!
At that point the Gameboy was released! Wahoo!
The only problem with it thought was that I was a pauper and couldn't afford one! :'( So I had to spend my time scrounging of my rich mates to have ago on theirs! It was also around this time the NES came out, but HA, can't afford one of those either! But I still got to witness and play on the masterpiece by going round mates houses. Oh those were the days... spending hours playing Duck Hunt and original Mario Brothers! Duck Hunt is one of those games which hasn't reeeally stood the test of time. It's great for about 5-10 minutes when you play it nowadays. The same screen over and over and over, and the same ol' ducks over and over and over, soon gets a bit tedious! Specially as it's so easy.
side story : {Yrs l8r when own a NES} To try and make Duck Hunt more taxing once, I hooked up my NES to a TV in my bedroom. Stretched the NES as far out of my room as the wires would let me go, positioned a mirror against a wall in my room so that I could see the TV while outside my room. I then positioned another mirror on the landing so that I could see the other mirror in it. Then I played Duck Hunt from the top of the stairs. Quite a distance away from the TV. That made it a bit harder and was actually quite good fun! Haven't done that in quite a few years though!
Mario on the other hand. That has stood the test of time. It is still fantastic to this day! Classic Mario gaming which will never loose its charm. It's quite surprising when you go back to play it nowadays, and you can still remember where all the little secrets are. More proof of how great the game was/is!
It wasn't until the near release of the SNES that we managed to get a NES. My brother bought one off one of his mates for I dunno how much, which a bunch of games:
Mario Bros. 3
Double Dragon
Shadowgate
gahh, can't remember anymore at the moment. That might have been all.
Mario Brothers 3 though. That was one helluva game! It came on a special cart if I remember correctly. Some extra graphical enhancements or more memory or sommin'. Anyways, this made the game one of the best looking NES games available. The game looked great, and played fantastically. All the extra Mario costumes helped to make the game really big and expansive, and it took you literally HOURS to try and play through the whole game! Luckily there were 3 secret whistles which let you skip to different worlds easily! Otherwise there was noway you were gonna ever see the final world. heh the final world... that reminds me. The "hardest" level in the game was in the final world. Can't remember which number it was, but it was on a ship, and the level scrolled really fast! It took me ages to complete that level, but when I finally did, I was well chuffed! :D
Double Dragon was a brilliant game to. It let you play co-operatively which made it all the more enjoyable. It was always a question though as to whether or not you played with the ability to beat your mate up or not turned on. Because it was almost more fun just scrapping with your mate, rather than play the main quest!
After the NES came the SNES. I was 13 when I got my SNES! And it took me AGES to get one. It's not that I didn't have to money at the time, it was more a question of finding one. There was a national shortage of em and I couldn't find one to buy ANYWHERE! Months and months I spent trying to find one in the shops, but to no avail. In the end I bought one off a mate of mine for £100 with sommin' like 5 games:
Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Super Metroid
Donkey Kong Country
Chaos Engine
and sommin' else...
This console was absolutely amazing! Anyone that's ever played on one will tell you that. I had sooo many years of happiness from playing on this console. It catered for ALL your gaming needs. Be it platform games {Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country}, beat-em-ups {Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct}, driving games {Mario Kart, Stunt Race FX}, RPG's {Zelda, Chrono Trigger}. On this console there was something for everybody. It also sported a great controller. I've got loads of games for this console, and they're still really good to play today!
lol! People complain about game prices today. A mate of mine and his brother bought the original Streetfighter2 when it first came out, and it cost em £30 EACH! I use to go round and play it, and we all thought it was amazing. Well, at the time it was. It's just if you play that version, and then play StreetFighter 2 Turbo, you realise how SLOOOOW the original one was!
I've still got my SNES out to this day. Sitting on my shelf along with multiple other consoles. It was/is a gem and shall never be forgotten!
The next console which I managed to get my hands on was the superb N64!!! (15yrs old)
Bought sommin' like a month after the initial release after the first price drop. This was my first purchase from SR! A N64, Mario Kart, and an extra official Green controller. Well that's what I ordered. I got an N64, Mario64, and a yellow controller. But I wasn't bothered, Mario was an absolutely AMAZING game! This was 3D platforming at it's greatest! I sat there for about 3 days solid until I had completed it. Well completed with the 70 odd stars you needed. Took me a couple weeks to get every star. Mainly cos in that time I bought Mario Kart, and that took up a lot of my time!
Lots of people didn't like the N64. I can see why to a certain extent. It arrived after the Playstation and the Saturn, and there was hardly and releases on it. But.... I luved it! There may not have been that many releases too often, but for me that was good. I could never afford that many games at the time, so when a game was released I was able to buy it. And most of the games that were released were BRILLIANT!
Mario 64
Mario Kart
Goldeneye
Zelda
Forsaken
1080
etc etc
There was one downside to my N64 gaming. There was a severe lack of beat-em-up action. On the SNES I had loads of beat-em-ups, but on the N64, all the ones that looked promising never actually got released in the UK! grrr! Also, realistic racing games were lacking from N64 release lists. Due to these two facts, it made me............. buy a Playstation! :D
The ol' Playstation! Though I preferred the N64 to the Playstation, I'm glad I had one. It had all the beat-em-ups I needed to keep me happy, and had loads of racing games. Unfortunately it never really had any decent platformers, but I had my N64 to take care of that!
All in all, I think you had to have an N64 and a PS to get the most out of gaming. They both supplied different types of games, and if you had both, you were never starving.
I played on these two consoles for many a year, playing some classic games like, Mario 64, Zelda OOT, and FF7. But now this year I've refreshed my console cabinet.
May, brought about the release of the Gamecube and I got mine on the day of release from SR. The release price of the console was a pleasant surprise, as I'd expected it to be released at £200. But coming out at a mere £130 I was more than happy! Unfortunately I'd had my Gamecube delivered home while I was at uni, trying to finish my years work. So I had to wait a few weeks before I could get home to play on my own sweet Cube! It's a great console, but at the moment there isn't enough games on it I want. This is all about to change though. Between now and the end of the year I've got a list the length of..... sommin' really long, of games I want to get for the console. The only problem I'm gonna have, is that my bank isn't going to allow me to buy em all!!! Perhaps when I'm back in 'boro where theft is ripe, I'll be able to find all the games I want at a reduced cost!
Other than the GC, I added a PS2 to my collection of consoles this year. Found in some 2nd hand shop {in worryingly MINT condition}, for a mere £150 I couldn't resist. As with the N64 and PS, I thought that any true gamer must own both the GC and a PS2 if they want to get the most of out gaming. And so I slapped down my card and walked away with a new PS2! The great thing about the PS2 is that it's been out for quite a while now, and so you can find most of the games you want for around 10-20. Well if you go to uni in Middlesbourgh it also helps! lol! I still haven't managed to get the game I got my PS2 for tho! I'm sure Sib'll tell you what that is tho!
So I'm siting here writing this ever growing post contemplating all the gaming I've witnessed over the years. The above is quite long and yet I missed out my GameGear, Dreamcast, MegaDrive and Saturn! oh and GBA!
Has gaming improved over the years???
Honestly I'm not too sure. The games on the BBC I've got fond memories of I think are still good today. There's just something about the way they play that just grabs me. But quite a lot of the games released today just don't have that kind of pull. They don't make you want to play them over and over. They don't call you back and stop you turning them off for just one more go. This is something I think developers need to put back into games. The only recent games which I've played which have had that "must keep playing..... must get impossible high score..... waaaaaa it's 5 hours later 8-O " have been Tony Hawk 3 and Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarding. They have that, must play till my eyes bleed, catch to them. This is what more games need.
Also, pick up and play needs to come back in. In the SNES days, I could look at my collection of games and easily just pick up a game and have a quick blast. There's not that many games nowadays which call you to just have a quick go! This also needs to come back if gaming is to stay alive and kicking!
All this I think will improve soon. At the moment we're going through a bit of a games drought. But come September time, with great releases like Resident Evil, Turok Evolution, Doshin the Giant, I'm sure I'll become happy once more. But looking at those games, I can see they might be good while they last, but will they have that replayability? Only time will tell!
There is one game I'm really looking forward to though. A game starring a character which has NEVER let me down! Mario Sunshine! Mario games always ooze class and replayability. So come October there should be at least 1 game calling out to me!
:)
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Sibs wrote:
> At least he didn't spend it on Britney merchandise... ;-)
Didn't I???......
;)
> At least he didn't spend it on Britney merchandise... ;-)
Didn't I???......
;)
At least he didn't spend it on Britney merchandise... ;-)
Joe Dark wrote:
> I read all of that, no really I did.
>
> Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
I dread to think how much I've spent over the years.
But it was money well spent!
:D
> I read all of that, no really I did.
>
> Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
I dread to think how much I've spent over the years.
But it was money well spent!
:D
Joe Dark wrote:
> I read all of that, no really I did.
>
> Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
Probably roughly the same amount as I did thoughout my 15 years of gaming. (being aged 17 now)
> I read all of that, no really I did.
>
> Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
Probably roughly the same amount as I did thoughout my 15 years of gaming. (being aged 17 now)
I read all of that, no really I did.
Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
Just think how much cash you've spent on games over the years.
Bah, Halo is the best FPS i have played since Goldeneye.
gamezfreak wrote:
> You've put me in the mood for playing multiplayer Halo......
Noooooo! What have I done! Don't play THAT!!!
Play a decent game! lol! Outlaws on PC is MINT! Go play that!
:)
> You've put me in the mood for playing multiplayer Halo......
Noooooo! What have I done! Don't play THAT!!!
Play a decent game! lol! Outlaws on PC is MINT! Go play that!
:)
Halo's crap. The true mark of a next gen FPS is if you can stub your toe in it! ;-)
You've put me in the mood for playing multiplayer Halo......
Sibs wrote:
> Player4- And I was about to kill you when I stubbed my damn toe on the
> door, and then tripped over the bloody corpse in the doorway!
Well that'd be his own dum fault for not watching where he was going!
As for the other comments. All the other players should have ganged up on player 1. And you should have turned the armour off!
:)
> Player4- And I was about to kill you when I stubbed my damn toe on the
> door, and then tripped over the bloody corpse in the doorway!
Well that'd be his own dum fault for not watching where he was going!
As for the other comments. All the other players should have ganged up on player 1. And you should have turned the armour off!
:)
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