An 80s kid in a 90's world

Hey people!

So six blogs down the line and you finally get to find out just how this little gamer began...the calm before they warped my mind and stole all of my precious little time...

In a galaxy far, far away…

So it's June 22nd 1990: New kids on the block were number one with Step by step (oh yeah!) the Simpsons were released on the Tracy Ullman show, Ghost was the highest grossing movie...and in the small town of Leicester the girl you now know as Amy Gilbert was unleashed upon the world...

Well enough of the third person...During my early years I'd already got my hands on an Amstrad CPC 464 

To give you an idea of what this fossil of the gaming world looked like here's a handy pic ^

So without age (yeah I know it’s hard to believe but I’m only 20) I can remember the classics of Dizzy, Asteroids and Lemmings! You see when I was growing up, with my mum short of funds my cousin Christian would always hand down his old consoles to me and my little brother which explains the title of this blog - I really was a 90’s kid growing up with 80’s consoles -and I loved it. The colour, the music! It really cemented my fascination with the 8 and 16 bit world. Throughout my years I went through the Amstrad, the Atari 2600, the Sega master system and Megadrive and my favourites the NES (which was voted the single greatest video gaming console out of 25 by IGN in 2009) and SNES :D I also remember the first PC of the house – given to us by a guy who used to m.o.t. my dad’s car. That monster of a computer had a massive, brilliant, totally huge (wait for it) 4mb of RAM!!! For that you could play majhong and write notes MSdos style…quite epic eh? Thing is all of these consoles and the 4mb dinosaur (now updated with a new brain of 32mb) I still have in the house. They still all work! The life support of my NES on my grandad’s brilliantly beige tv still bleeps :’)

So let’s get down to business…so what was my favourite game? There’s far too many favourites so I’ll run over a few diamonds and try to keep this blog within 500 words (so not gonna happen :P)

Rash, Pimple and Zitz

This kinda speaks for itself, so I insist before you finish reading my blog just listen to this –

Now how awesome was that? Just listening to the first bars of the music brings me joy. Battletoads Double Dragon: the Ultimate team really was the gaming height for me in the old school times. These are the times when “a battle cruiser the size of a city smashes out of the moon” and T. Bird calls upon the Battletoads and Billy & Jimmy Lee to save the day! Preferably for the 1player (as in 2player you could easily kill your teammate) this game was no easy ride. To cut a long story short, after much A and B bashing, I finally defeated the pixel perfect Dark Queen and the rest is history. Why do I love it? The colour, the music, the brilliance of the pretty much weed induced storyline – I mean 3 toads, led by a chicken (who has a PhD) teamed up with two martial art wielding twins, on a spaceship, getting bosses such as Big Blag and Robo Manus…*sighs*

(I know I’m writing this blog but just now I had to run out and ring the fire brigade as there was a fire at the end of Goldhill! Scary stuff!!! :O only on the Saff I guess….anyways back to gaming)

I’m Blue and Cyan…

Sticking with the NES, I now want to talk about a little blue guy that kicks several kinds of ass. Oh yeah it’s Megaman! Three to be exact, this was another of my loves and here’s the essential visage -

A rock solid game by Capcom (1990 – oh yeah something else cool that happened on my arrival) it boasted levels of bosses such as Hard man, Snake man and Gemini Man; the likes of which are missing from the games of today. I can remember playing the Shadow man level so many times I’m surprised my hands can draw and are not severely crippled. It really was rock solid although the elation at completing a level was like that of getting a process to work in 3Dsmax. Again the brilliance of 8 bit shines through with acid colours and a robot riding on a dog…

Get over here!

As I grew up I started to develop quite the talent at the beat ‘em up genre. Starting with Tekken 2 on the Playstation I still keep up with that series even now. I guess it’s brilliant when you get like 20 perfects in survival mode on your brother’s PS3, his mates in admiration cheering ‘’him’’ on and then he has to type ‘’yeah….that was my sister playing”. What can I say? Just don’t get on the wrong side of me and Nina Williams. I also have a soft spot for the Mortal Kombat series…yeah the soundtrack is on my phone – as soon as I hear “Choose your destiny” I’m gone…

So those were just a few of my favourite games…I guess that’s what I’d love to relive now. I mean the realism is brilliant in games at the moment. I honestly feel like I’m there. You can see every stone and taste and smell the environment just by playing a game like say, Gears of War… Although within the new Scott Pilgrim vs. The World download (the game I’m playing the most now) I truly feel I belong there. It is the most recent game to utilise all the old 8 bit magnificence I knew and still love. You see I feel back then we had the belief within games. Games like Battletoads where the storyline was so imaginative it blew our little minds. I guess I really am still an 80’s gamer in a 90s world (make that 00s).

For you fellow retro gamers…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qsWFFuYZYI – 8 bit Trip by Rymdreglage – a brilliant video that through lego stop motion runs through all the old school to the future. This is the best timeline you’ll find.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig9-wX0aaFU – the most amazing piece of engineering I’ve found…the NINTOASTER! Thing is it actually works. I really want one of them…gotta brush up on my electronics though before I have a go at making one :P

 

So 1100 words later i'm off...

Later,