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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!
:)
Page:
well, it took me a good few hours, but I got there in the end :D
Sibs wrote:
> PS sorrry about quoting the whole thing, but I really can't be
> bothered to read through Cookys whole post again and edit out which
> bits are relevant and which aren't... it took long enough reading it
> once! :P
I feel honoured you actually bothered to read it once! Ta!
:D
> PS sorrry about quoting the whole thing, but I really can't be
> bothered to read through Cookys whole post again and edit out which
> bits are relevant and which aren't... it took long enough reading it
> once! :P
I feel honoured you actually bothered to read it once! Ta!
:D
Cooky wrote:
> I recently turned 20 and I've been pondering over how games have
> changed over the past 20 years.
Hee hee, you're gettin old! ;-)
> 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!!!
FANBOY! :P
> 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!
Yeah, good ol' Nintendo, inventing the Save function eh? :D
> 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.
Yeah, I remember playing a NES with Duck Hunt and Mazza round a friends house. Later got a NES and a variety of games. Mazza 3 had to be the best. I lost count of the number of times I played that!
> 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!
You have FAR too much spare time... ;-)
> 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!
Yeah, Mazza will always remain a classic. "Sorry Mario, but your princess is in another castle". Those damn mushrooms... I felt like kickin them!
> 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
I think the hardest level was the mid-way castle in the last world. Not Bowsers castle, the ones where you had to fight a little mini-boss at the end. Anyway, this castle half-way ish through the last world was KILLER! I could never find the way to the boss room! It was like a labrynth of passages and stuff, whichever route you took seemed to lead you back to another route you'd gone down earlier! I eventually came to the conclusion that there was no exit to the castle :D From that point I always saved this one item (the cloud with the smiley face on it) for this level. The whistle things let you skip whole worlds, but those cloud things let you skip individual levels, so I always skipped that one. I remember Bowsers castle too. That was class. There were two of those scrolling tank levels right before it. They were class too. Mario 3 was awesome... I wanna play it again! *goes off to buy SNES with Mazza all-stars* :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!
I played a DD game on the GameBoy once... you could buy weapons or something...
> 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!
Yeah, SNES was class... Donkey Kong Country series... ah good days... the third one ruled profusely... Also many more games on it were great... 'Secret of Mana' a great RPG, the original F-Zero and Starfox games...
> 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!
I got SUPER Street Fighter 2 :P That was the one with 4 extra characters or somehting... though the 4 extra ones were crap... nevermind eh?
> 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
Traitor! :P Bah, realistic racers suck anyway... give me F-Zero or Mazza Kart any day :D There weren't really any decent beat-em ups on the 64 tho... but they were never a big favourite of mine so I wasn't bothered...
> 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.
Me brother has a PSX... I enjoyed Breath of Fire on it... and Tekken 3 for a while, but then it got boring... couldn't be bothered to learn all these special moves...
> 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!
Maybe you'll win a game for this post :D
> 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!
*Hides* mommy, it's the evil Britney lady again with her irritating songs and strange looking dancing games...
> 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!
Ah, the Megadrive... and GameGear in fact... DC I never played much, just when I was round a mates house for a while, and Saturn the same story really.
> Has gaming improved over the years???
Aspects of it yes... others perhaps not, and I'd say in some respects its got worse...
> 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!
Good ol Mazza... anyway, I think at least some of the 'goodness' of old games we played and that is down to s looking back and seeing them as better or something... or maybe we were more easily pleased as young'uns? Who knows... Anyway, there are plenty of old games I'd still like to play.
> :)
Don't take that tone with me... :P
PS sorrry about quoting the whole thing, but I really can't be bothered to read through Cookys whole post again and edit out which bits are relevant and which aren't... it took long enough reading it once! :P
> I recently turned 20 and I've been pondering over how games have
> changed over the past 20 years.
Hee hee, you're gettin old! ;-)
> 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!!!
FANBOY! :P
> 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!
Yeah, good ol' Nintendo, inventing the Save function eh? :D
> 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.
Yeah, I remember playing a NES with Duck Hunt and Mazza round a friends house. Later got a NES and a variety of games. Mazza 3 had to be the best. I lost count of the number of times I played that!
> 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!
You have FAR too much spare time... ;-)
> 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!
Yeah, Mazza will always remain a classic. "Sorry Mario, but your princess is in another castle". Those damn mushrooms... I felt like kickin them!
> 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
I think the hardest level was the mid-way castle in the last world. Not Bowsers castle, the ones where you had to fight a little mini-boss at the end. Anyway, this castle half-way ish through the last world was KILLER! I could never find the way to the boss room! It was like a labrynth of passages and stuff, whichever route you took seemed to lead you back to another route you'd gone down earlier! I eventually came to the conclusion that there was no exit to the castle :D From that point I always saved this one item (the cloud with the smiley face on it) for this level. The whistle things let you skip whole worlds, but those cloud things let you skip individual levels, so I always skipped that one. I remember Bowsers castle too. That was class. There were two of those scrolling tank levels right before it. They were class too. Mario 3 was awesome... I wanna play it again! *goes off to buy SNES with Mazza all-stars* :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!
I played a DD game on the GameBoy once... you could buy weapons or something...
> 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!
Yeah, SNES was class... Donkey Kong Country series... ah good days... the third one ruled profusely... Also many more games on it were great... 'Secret of Mana' a great RPG, the original F-Zero and Starfox games...
> 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!
I got SUPER Street Fighter 2 :P That was the one with 4 extra characters or somehting... though the 4 extra ones were crap... nevermind eh?
> 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
Traitor! :P Bah, realistic racers suck anyway... give me F-Zero or Mazza Kart any day :D There weren't really any decent beat-em ups on the 64 tho... but they were never a big favourite of mine so I wasn't bothered...
> 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.
Me brother has a PSX... I enjoyed Breath of Fire on it... and Tekken 3 for a while, but then it got boring... couldn't be bothered to learn all these special moves...
> 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!
Maybe you'll win a game for this post :D
> 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!
*Hides* mommy, it's the evil Britney lady again with her irritating songs and strange looking dancing games...
> 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!
Ah, the Megadrive... and GameGear in fact... DC I never played much, just when I was round a mates house for a while, and Saturn the same story really.
> Has gaming improved over the years???
Aspects of it yes... others perhaps not, and I'd say in some respects its got worse...
> 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!
Good ol Mazza... anyway, I think at least some of the 'goodness' of old games we played and that is down to s looking back and seeing them as better or something... or maybe we were more easily pleased as young'uns? Who knows... Anyway, there are plenty of old games I'd still like to play.
> :)
Don't take that tone with me... :P
PS sorrry about quoting the whole thing, but I really can't be bothered to read through Cookys whole post again and edit out which bits are relevant and which aren't... it took long enough reading it once! :P
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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