My gaming history began in around about 1994 when I had the Sega Master System; I only had two games for it, being Sonic the Hedgehog (that was preloaded on the console) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as a separate game. I remember trying to beat the levels as best I could and it took awhile to get far in the game and even my mum could find all the crystals you were suppose to collect in the game and get to the last stage, but it wasn’t till years later I worked out how to beat the final boss. A bright colourful bit game that’ll live long in my memory although I do forget this was the first actually game I played quite a lot.
Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (1991) & 2 (1992)
In 1996 the PlayStation was the biggest thing on the market and everyone wanted it. After seeing one of my aunts boyfriend play and own one I could only want one myself, however I was always a bit scared to play in case I would lose, but eventually you realise losing just makes you human. The first game I played was Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation; it was such a good game and one of the best of its time, the bright beautiful colours of game are something I’ll never forget and even still play the game today (downloaded on my PSP). Another game was Destruction Derby, it came with the console and was the second game I played on the console, basically it’s just a bunch of cars in a circle and you have to crash into each other to gain points... weird I know. I remember spending hours trying to beat the levels in Crash, it’s definitely my most memorable game and still to this day I regard it as one of the best. It’s kind of addictive, you basically just got to smash boxes, collect apples, beat bonuses, unlock a couple of secrets and beat bosses to, very simple just like all the great games of the past were. I can always remember seeing it when I got it for Christmas the first time, the start of the very first level and music that plays with it is one thing that will always stick in my head.
Crash Bandicoot (1996) & Destruction Derby (1995)
After a few years around 1997/98 more games started to release such as Spyro, which was similar to Crash although it is by the same developers, and again you would in this game collect treasure, beat bonuses and bosses and rescue dragon, simple as! Other games at the time were very addictive to, I remember each week I would beg my mum or grandparents to buy me the new PlayStation magazine, I didn’t care about the magazine to be honest it was all about the demo discs that came with them. They would be a few new games on them to play before the release of each one and I would literally spend hours just playing the demo games, games like Tekken 2, Worms, Medievil, Pac-Man etc would be so fun to play and I would try over and over again to get as far in the game as possible before the time was up and the demo ended. At that time I was well into playing the fighting game Tekken 2, (never played the first one) but the demo was so good it kind of sucks you in to eventually nagging for your parents to buy you the full game, being a violent fighting game however I couldn’t buy it so I had to wait for my birthday, and with the full game there’s so much more you can do making it even better, a game I still play today.
The games Worms and Medievil on the PlayStation were British games, something you don’t really see too much now-a-days, Medievil was a game were you would go around collecting weapons and items, unlocking paths, beating bosses and slicing off a few zombie heads, a bit extreme for the age I was playing it at but again addictive and fun and one I still play today! Worm was more of a war type of game, but not as violent as it had a cartoonish style to it, basically you would try to fire guns, grenades and bazookas at each other trying to kill one another in a 2D style battle field, I don’t play this anymore (not available for download) but other variations of the game have been released still in 2D to this day although there was one 3D variation on the Xbox but I didn’t like it much.
In 1997 Crash Bandicoot 2 was released, in my opinion this was the best of the Crash games, I can’t enough of this game and again I still do play it A LOT. Basically a better more updated version of the first game, some cool music, great game play and an enjoyable experience trying to unlock more things making it more challenging. Just a year later the PlayStation 2 was released, now I never nagged anyone to buy me it, at first I thought it was too expensive and that no one would buy me it anyway. I wasn’t bothered by it and I was mostly enjoying the games on the PlayStation like Rayman and Medievil 2. Rayman is again another classic I still play today and has a very nice clean and bold cartoon style to it, it’s a very brightly coloured game and again it’s amazing how the all the best and classic games we love are always simple, this one you’d rescue creatures and beat a levels and bosses, there was really nothing more to it than that, a good side scrolling 2D game. There was another good side scrolling game I played called Pandemonium, it was in 3D however but addictive you’d basically try to reach the end of each of the 15 levels and beat ONLY 3 bosses in the entire game. There was a second game but it was really just the same thing, like Medievil 2 same as the first. One thing about Rayman 2 I liked was how it went from 2D to 3D in the second game, a bit different but they captured just right and it’s still a great franchise even today.
Crash Bandicoot 2 (1998) & Rayman (1995)
There were other 3D games I liked, like Gex , Croc and Pac-Man World but in the sequel games they would just repeat what they had done in the previous game or games with just a few updates. Kind of like what did with Crash 3, just an updated version of Crash 2 or Tekken 3 just another update from Tekken 2. You can really say that any game (which is just about every game) were you collect things is just an updated version of Pac-Man in thousands of various formats and ways of playing. After Crash 3 they made a Crash racing game, which is quite addictive to left the story line as it was sorting ending the series. When I finally got a PlayStation 2 I couldn’t wait to play the new Crash game for it however I didn’t find it as good as the rest with its new graphics and things but still okay. I couldn’t wait to play Spyro either but it wasn’t good at all, there was just something about all these new and ‘improved’ that was unfulfilling.
I then moved onto the Game Boy Colour, games like Mario, Wario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon were probably the most awesome games I’ve ever played. I still collect all these types of Nintendo games today; I find that these games are just something that has stuck with me. When you look at the Nintendo section in any game store you feel like a kid in a candy store, with its bright bold colours on the shelves, it’s just attractive to you, but the Japanese found this as a good marketing scheme for the likes of Pokemon, were they would sell to kids by making games and cards and other merchandise, enticing them to own them all. Nintendo would go on to make a Game Boy Advance with better graphics and eventually releasing all of the older games for the Nintendo Entertainment System released in the eighties on these smaller consoles, this is one thing I like about Nintendo is how they go back to the good old days of gaming and still continue to build on the older games but keeping the same classic aspects and concepts of them that made them so great, like beating everyone level in the original Mario game from 1985 or collecting Pokemon still the same way from 1996. It’s just the addictiveness I think is what they try to bring out more and more finding new ways to do so and as if evolving these games to be bigger and better each time. Even now you can download the old games of the Nintendo 64 (which I never owned) right to your Wii console via internet, of course you have to pay but it’s not even 1/4th of the price you would have when the original games were brought out back in the day, but it’s the fact that when re-playing all these old games after so many years, it gives that nice nostalgic feeling of playing and being there back in the day of 1985 or 1996 or whenever. Nintendo felt they had to release an updated version of the Game Boy Advance twice, just like there Nintendo DS console, they released one and updated it 3 times and are about to released a 3D one in the near future. I have all these consoles and again the games that have been produced for them have that same nostalgic feeling to them as they are more or less updates of the versions bought out on the previous handheld consoles.
The Childhood Dream Of The 90's. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (1996/1998)
In 2003 I got a Nintendo GameCube. The console had a lot of great titles, and a lot of re-makes such as Mario Party and Super Smash Brothers again very addictive but much more complicated than the classic games obviously, but they have that same style of play as the originals that makes you want to come back to it again and again like Super Mario 64 was remade for the Nintendo DS and then other games such as Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii are very similar in terms of gameplay and visual style. I eventually got an Xbox in 2004, but I didn’t find the games too fun to play, just like the PS2, by 2006 I more or less found my Xbox and PS2 gathering dust and I only used them to play football games, which now a days I only have ever used my Xbox 360 for football games since 2007 (when I got it). The graphics are good on the Xbox but I’m put off by all these different various titles they have and that everyone buys, I don’t want to try any of them simply because if I buy and play one I’ll want to buy and play them all and I’d rather save the things I do like... Nintendo. In 2005 I got the Sony PlayStation Portable, the new handheld PlayStation was very good at its time but I found that it didn’t really last that long and a few years later down the line people are not playing this console as much. I remember getting it an playing Medievil Resurrection, basically just a remake of the first game for the PlayStation but with its fancy new graphics and such... GOOD but not as good as the original. It’s hard to remake an already fantastic game, you have to get it just right I guess.
Super Smash Brothers Melee (2002) & Super Mario Galaxy (2007)
By 2006 I got the Nintendo Wii which revolutionised gaming with its new way of controlling what’s happening on screen, a way of getting gamers more active so not everyone is sat playing games while eating and gaining weight. The dream of playing your old favourite games came true along with it, when Nintendo released older versions of games for the new controller introducing a whole new way to play your old games! (It can sound confusing). Making newer games with different things to do in them I guess can be hard because there’s only so much you can really do, until it reaches the point where you might as well say: “F*ck it, let’s just make an entirely new game”, in some cases I think they deliberately don’t add things into new games just to make them better for the next game they release in a few years time so they can say: “Here’s the new improvement” when they could have just put the improvement into the last game but it’s all a marketing strategy to gain more profit? Well that’s what I think anyway. I play a lot of football games now a days like FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer and Football Manager, what I think attracts me to them it that it’s all basically the same thing over and over again (11 v 11 men on a field) and you get sucked into it, they have very tight deadlines as the only have a year to update these games and released them worldwide and they so realistic. I remember playing my first football video game, it was pretty good but I guess some games like this you have to follow the sport in reality to fully enjoy it.
What I would like to see in the future is to see more of the old games, because there’s really not much more we can do at the moment, the 10th generation of video games is going to be here for a long time to come until they figure out a new way to play and improve video games. With Xbox Kinect just being released it sort of opens up a whole world of possibilities within the gaming industry, there’s so much that can be done now! I mean you physically don’t need a controller anymore to play a game, and that’s the absolute limit! I mean how can you possibly get better then not need a controller anymore?! I think we’ve reached a point the gaming timeline were we can’t possibly get any more better then we have so we’re just waiting for computer power to get better until we are capable of producing something that’s more complex but able to do what we can do now but even better and more awesome than ever before. ‘Cause that’s what it’s more or less about, I think the expectations of gaming are getting higher and higher but maybe now too high? So high that we can’t possibly think of anything else more to do, it’s just a matter of waiting now. What I would love to see in the meantime, is to take the technology we have now such as not needing a controller and sue that to play the old games we use to love and remake them for the new technology. Keep the old way of how the games work, play and update them slightly but revive them into the new technological world we now live in compared to 10, 15, 20, 25 or even 30 years ago! Giving those old games the chance to live up to their full potential buy seeing how they would play in the new age, imagine playing Super Mario from 1985 without a controller, it would be crazy but it’s now possible for us to achieve that. Imagine playing Call of Duty or Assassins Creed 25 years ago, it would be sh*t! It’d be in 2D and just not playable because it just simply needs to be in 3D and free roaming to live up to the game designers potential and the technology now a day’s allows it to do that, the best you could of got 25 years ago was indeed the likes of Mario and Pac-Man etc because it was so limited, complicated and all in 8bit.
Super Mario World (1985) & Xbox Kinect (2010)
It is nice how on the PlayStation Network (PSN) has a lot of the older generation games to download to your PS3 console and PSP but I find that I hardly ever use my PlayStation 3 for new games, it's mainly all the older games I use it for to play on. With High Definition Graphics and Blue-Ray it's gonna be a long time I'll have to wait till I can Buy a PS4 cause this simply can't get any better in the near future... or can they?
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