Feature: My life and games...Part 1

I look the earliest generation I can remember.

Gaming started quite early for me. Although my parents were never massivly keen gamers apart from arcades in pubs they always tell me, but they always seemed to own consoles. Although i was too young to remember, we have owned a NES, which suffered from a broken cartridge thing, then a SNES, but they sold that before I was really old enough to play it. God damn that was annoying, learning that I would have to wait till about 1999 before my first proper encounter on my own with a LoZ game. Anyway, my first experience with video games would be at my cousins,who owned the older style Sega Megadrive, the larger less sleek looking one (still working apparently). My uncle was the one who played the games, we often watched as he failed miserably at Shinobi and attempted to complete Sonic 1.

So, my first real time I can remember holding a pad was quite an interesting one as we didn't actually play the game. I remember me and my cousin sitting and pretending we were playing Sonic, where in fact it was just the rolling demo at the start, don't know why we never pressed start, well, it seemed we were winning all the time! Anyway, eventually we worked out what the pads were for and so began games.

After pestering my parents for some time, we ended up getting one of our first megadrives, the 2nd version, so was smaller and sleeker but seemed to have a fair few more problems regarding connections but thats another story (one that will probably appear later). We had most of the games which were actually suitable for my age back then, such as Sonic, Micro Machines and various others. But also I had more extreme games (for my age) such as Jurassic Park and Ecco the Dolphin (quite a dark game for those who have played it to the end). Though, being quite young and being one of the more interesting 2 player co-op experiences was Mickey Mouse- World of Illusion.

I feel I need to donate quite a bit of time to this game. It was the first to introduce to games where you had to work with the other person to finish the game. Mickey and Donald traveled through the world, not really any particular aim other than to get home. Each playthrough, depending on whether you played as Mickey or Donald or with co-op took you through alternative levels or simply different ones. This may sound primitive now, but at the time for me, it was very immersive.

I was initially heartbroken when my Megadrive lost all sound, but we suddenly ended up with a new one, that came with even more games. These included a few games which i really wasn't ready to play at the time such as 'Alien'. Not a great game, but scared me back then. I also realised not all games were good, after playing Batman: Returns, with the most hobbled control scheme ever, one of which I spent many a afternoon trying to work out.

It was also strange not having any save games back then (minus for a few RPG's, the Megadrive had very few games which saved, annoyingly), you played the beginning of games over and over again. Another thing was that annoying was that the control pads were very strange, with only 3 buttons and start (with a d-pad obviously), limiting control methods.

Back then, I was not really into reading magazines and the internet was a no go, so I really only knew about games from going round family and friends, this often meant that everyone ended up with very similar games.

At this moment in time, the Megadrive is packed away, with a problem with the audio connection...again....(blame RF connections), but it will be down at some point. But, if you own the games, it is legal to download and emulate them, but if you don't own them, and have the downloaded files for more than 24 hours, you're being naughty!
Tomorrow, Saturn, PS1 and N64....