I’m in my 30s now and I still love playing video games. I have been thinking about this; until my generation there were no video games. I was around when the first consoles were released and I was apart of the games revolution. Whereas my parents fill their spare time with soap operas and copious amounts of tea, there are a lot of my generation who will relax playing video games. It’s just something that is normal to us. (I of course do drink tea from time to time as well.)
In my thirty odd years of playing console and PC games, I have amassed a collection of favourites.
The first console I had as a kid was the Atari 2600. Frogger, Pong and many other very basic games were on offer, but none of them were really very good. In fact, Pong is one of the most irritating games ever made!
After that, I wanted a Commodore 64 but instead got its cheaper brother the Commodore 16 Plus/4. It didn’t really bother me as they were very similar and had the same game releases. To play a game, first you had to play a cassette tape to load the game on to the computer. The loading times ranged from five to ten minutes. Often the tape would fail and need to be rewound and played again – and you think load times are bad now! Commodore released a lot of games at a relatively inexpensive price, so we amassed quite a collection, but my favourite by far was Treasure Island. I found this video of someone completing the game, something I never managed to do. It probably looks terrible to anyone born after the 80s, but it was cutting edge technology back then.
The 16 Plus/4 also had a cartaridge slot. The only cart we had for this was a text based game called Pirate Adventure. It was a lot more fun than appears in the video… Honest!
And here is the actual game.
We even had handheld games in the 80s. Nothing like what we have now, and nowhere near as compact – but still. I had Tomy’s Caveman game; a basic – but colour – game where a caveman has to collect eggs from a dinosaur’s nest, however historically incorrect that may be!
And then in 1986 – the world of gaming was changed forever with the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System. (NES).
Our family couldn’t afford one when they were first released, but plenty of my friends had a NES and we’d spend hours playing on games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros and Metroid. Going home to my Commodore games was now not an option. Sega brought out the Master System a year later and Sonic was introduced to the world, along with Out Run, Spy vs Spy and many others.
That Christmas my parents bought me the Sega Master System and my brother the NES. The major advantage to these consoles except for the far superior games was the load time. Tapes were out and cartridges were in with no load time.
The Sega MegaDrive was released a few years later but it was a console we skipped in our house. The cost was too high and my brother and I were still satisfied with the consoles we already owned.
Throughout our childhood we also got a Master System II and Super Nintendo. The MSII also came with a built in game: Alex Kid in Miracle World. I remember the whole family sitting in front of the television amazed by the graphics. Sure they look terrible now, but this was the best the world had seen up until that point.
Even though I enjoyed Alex Kid, that was the point I switched allegiances. Sega had always brought out the better games until this point, but the SNES had a multitude of Mario games, a re-envisioned Donkey Kong in his own country and the king of driving games: Mario Kart. (Evil Rainbow Road!) The SNES took me through my early teens until I got my first PC.
My PC was bought mainly as a word processor but as with everything now with a screen, games were available. Sierra were making some amazing games at the time. I spent countless house playing city building games like Caesar III and Pharaoh.
Along with horror games like Shivers and The 11th hour that would scare the pants off me but have such compelling stories they kept me coming back for more. I’m uploading the video to Shivers here and the hairs have all stood up on the back of my neck. I can’t even watch it as I know how much it scared me as a kid!
And not forgetting Phantasmagoria – the game with so much blood and gore.
One day when I was sixteen years old, my brother called me into his room to show me a game demo he’d got free with a magazine. It was for Broken Sword The Shadow of the Templars; a point and click adventure with a brilliant story, excellent actors and incredible gameplay. We were hooked and it is still to this day my favourite game ever.
There are now five games in the Broken Sword series with the latest one being released at the end of this month. I have already completed part one of this game and it still stands up against others out there.
Broken Sword took elements of Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight (another epic Seirra series) and other point and click adventures and improved on them. A lot of “hardcore” gamers may scoff at P+Cs, but with a well written story, it can be like being a part in a film or novel. Sure they are slow-paced compared to your average platform or shoot-em-up, but you really can get lost in the narrative.
The Secret of Monkey Island has had many sequels and even a re-boot, but here is the original 1986 classic.
And from the three Gabriel Knight adventures, GK3 is bar far the best. Tim Curry also reprised his role as the main protagonist which just made it all that bit sweeter.
A few years ago, a website launched called GOG (Good Old Games) and a lot of the Sierra games and Point and Click adventures are available to download. Many of the game discs from the 90s and early 2000s simply don’t run on modern computers, so it’s great that I can now download these classic (and still epic) games for a few dollars. They even have Roller-Coaster Tycoon 3 – the best theme park game of all time. (Still waiting for the sequel!)
For me, the greatest games console there has ever been is the Nintendo 64. 3D worlds, responsive controllers and a huge range of games made this console stand out above the rest. By far, the best two games released were Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 (my favourite course being Moo Moo Farm). Released in 1997, this was Nintendo’s last cartridge based machine and brought together all the characters we had grown to love over the past decade. This is the only console I still wish I owned but would probably be disappointed by the 64-bit graphics.
Microsoft and Sony joined the battle of the consoles in the 90s with the first XBox being released in 1991 and the PlayStation One in 1994. Both consoles brought with them improved graphics, but with five or more years of catch-up to play, they simply didn’t have the back catalogue of games to make them any threat. It wasn’t until the Sony PlayStation 2 came out did it peak my interest.
The PS2 was a games console with massively improved graphics, accessories and by now, six years of games. It was also a DVD and CD player.
I was addicted to dance games at the time and so bout the PS2 with a dance matt. Hours of drunken nights were spent jumping around on that matt!
As much as I loved my PS2, I still needed my Nintendo fix – or more so Mario Kart. I have bought every console that Mario Kart has been released on, including Nintendo’s sixth generation machine, the Game Cube.
Mario Kart Double Dash was one of the only games I purchased for the Cube as the so-called PS2 competition was nothing of the sort. Half sized disks meant that this console couldn’t play DVDs or CDs and the games just weren’t that good. I think I traded it in after only six months and just kept playing on the N64 instead. The only half decent level in Double Dash was Daisy Cruiser.
Nintendo were now in trouble. Xbox and Sony were winning the war hands down. And as for Sega, no matter how many releases of the spiky-hair ring collector – their console days were over. The Dreamcast was a huge hit in America and Europe and introduced the first modem into a console, but the Japanese launch was a fiasco, hefty price tags meant rapid drops in sales and they just didn’t have the games people wanted to play anymore. In 2001, the doomed console was discontinued.
Nintendo had to do something to stay in the race or face the same fate as Sega. Nintendo had huge success with their handheld device the GameBoy and had quashed competition from Atari, NeoGeo and Sega but they had to up their game, more than just a colour version of Tetris.
And they did in 2004 with the Nintendo DS. This was a vast improvement on the Gameboy, with split screen, awesome graphics and a lower touch screen. Again, Mario Kart was my first purchase but I gradually built up quite a collection of titles. My favourite game – and one I still play – is Yoshi Touch and Go.
When Nintendo released the 3DS in 2010, I was first in line to buy one. What makes this handheld console so great is the backwards compatibility. All the games I had bought for the DS were still playable along with the 3D ones all on one device. Unfortunately the 3D isn’t great and I find myself hardly ever using it.
Nintendo have now become masters of backward compatibility. The Nintendo Wii was released in 2006 and gave gamers the ability to download previous Nintendo titles. (I spent a lot of money on this feature.) It was also the first console to really place the gamer in the centre of the action with a motion-tracking controller. There are so many amazing games for the Wii, but Wii Sports got the most play in our house.
When the time came for me to upgrade consoles (again) it was between the XBox and The Playstation 3. I gave it a lot of thought and came to the realisation that there really is only one choice. Why would anyone buy an XBox over a Playstation? On top of being a high-end games console, the PS3 also came with a Blu-Ray player and access to all internet services for free. The XBox 360 backed the wrong horse with HD-DVD and even that wasn’t integrated. You also have to buy membership to access different services with Bronze, Silver and Gold packages. So, the XBox ends up costing more for less. The games selection is almost identical on both machines with only a few exclusives to each console. So I bought the PS3. I still use it – every day – for the past five years. I have around fifty games now and have a lot of favorites, but the one I have played the most and the only one I have unlocked 100% of the achievements for is Assassin’s Creed II. For me, it is the perfect game. A great story, great dialogue, action sequences, fight scenes and a lot of replayability. I have the whole series of these games, but II is the best.
One of the Playstation exclusive games was Heavy Rain. This brought together everything I loved about being a gamer; a compelling story, great graphics and awesome gameplay. The outcome is also always different in Heavy Rain as every choice you make leads you somewhere new. I have “completed” the game three times and still haven’t unlocked all the achievements.
Now the XBox One and the Playstation 4 have been released (again, no contest in my eyes) and I plan to get the PS4 later this year. Just look at the graphics!
Of course, Sony are not the perfect company. Their handhelds are nothing to shout about and they now charge for Playstation Plus – but unlike the XBox, this is not an essential feature.
The Nintendo Wii’s upgrade came in the form of the Wii U. Same cast of characters in an HD machine with a handheld device as the controller and second screen. But it hasn’t worked as well as they had hoped. Why is unclear. Perhaps the graphics just couldn’t stand up against the XBox and Playstation anymore or maybe there is only so much Mario we can play in one lifetime. I do hope they don’t throw in the towel though. Nintendo has so much history, some incredible games and some innovative ideas. If they could build a top spec console with all the features we now expect, they would be in with a chance. If they also remastered the old classics and integrated these into the machine, they could win back the title as industry leader.
While consoles were battling it out between themselves, PC games were coming on in leaps and bounds. With the introduction of the internet in the late 90s, this opened up a whole new avenue for games to go down – multiplayer online.
Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) are now big business, but the undefeated champion of them all is World of Warcraft.
I joined WoW in 2008 after two years of my brother begging me to join the online sensation. But as you can see from my gaming history, I’m not a big fight or shoot-em-up gamer. But at just £10 for the original and Burning Crusade expansion, I thought why not.
I chose a mage Draenei as my first character and because I wasn’t a fighter I called him Maulite (because he mauls lightly!). After the first twenty levels I was hooked – hooked to the point of obsession. I would sometimes play for eighteen hours a day. Being able to chat, interact and play instantly with people online was a new and fascinating experience for me.
I have played WoW in bursts over the years and now never stay on for more than a few hours at a time. I am looking forward to the next expansion though and am hoping Warlords of Draenor lives up to the hype.
I actually find myself playing Hearthstone more than WoW at the moment, but I’m sure that will change in December!
I have since played a lot of MMOs including Star Trek Online and Guild Wars 2. But the most disappointing of them all was Star Wars the Old Republic. A beautifully crafted, slick game with Jedis, Siths, Lightsabers and spaceships… what could go wrong? Unfortunately it became far too repetitive. Each land felt the same as the last and quickly became boring and ultimately unplayable. I really stuck it out though and I was only three levels from end game when I gave up. I just couldn’t waste any more of my time on it. It’s such a shame as this had all the makings of being one of the best games ever made, but sadly it failed.
Elder Scrolls Online is the next MMO to hit the world. I played the beta last month but this is one game I won’t be buying. I didn’t like the gameplay, controls or the lack of mini-map, so I’m out. It’s a shame as it does look beautiful.
Now of course, games are everywhere. Gone are the days when Snake was the only game on your mobile phone…
Now every smartphone has thousands of games to choose from, the most successful being Angry Birds. I’m not as addictive to this as I once was, but I do still play it from time to time – I especially like the Star Wars versions. (Oh why did The Old Republic not work?!?)
What I don’t like are all the Facebook games that ask for money to advance you through them. They take up a lot of time with little reward and end up costing more than console games. My mother scoffs at my love of video games but is constantly playing the mind-numbing Candy Crush Saga and Monster World.
Video games have advanced a lot in the past thirty years and I’m proud to say I’ve been apart of it. Being a bit of a tech buff I’m always keeping my eye on what’s coming next. It seems that Sony have finally made a working and practical Virtual Reality unit to work with the PS4. VR has been talked about for years but we now have the technology to back it up. I hope we see a massive influx of VR in the next few years. It seems the work of Nintendo’s Wii controller, Playstation Move and XBox Kinect is finally moving forward towards the ultimate goal of getting the gamer right inside the game.
What’s next for me? Well, while I wait for Warlords of Draenor and my PS4, I’ll be playing Broken Sword 5: The Serpents Curse, dipping in and out of WoW and downloading a vast quantity of games from GOG. Sometimes you just need to go retro! I’ve also seen this new city builder game that was recently released and it does look quite good. Banished will be tomorrow’s purchase.
You know, until I wrote this blog I had no idea how much time I’ve invested in gaming. I don’t regret any of it as it’s given and continues to give me immense pleasure and hours of fun. I’m actually a writer, so only play games now when I need down time or to rest my brain.
What about you? How much time do you allow for gaming? What’s your favourite game?
Leave your comments below, share with your friends and enjoy the games!
#TerryGee