Feature: My Life and Games...Part 2

I look at the Saturn, the PS1 and the N64

Read previous parts:

• Part 1

In the last part, I focused on my time warped early years, but now we move on a era to the beginning of the end of Sega and the arrival of Sony as a force to be reckoned with.

Personally, I only knew 2 families that owned a Sega Saturn. As one of the first consoles that actually had CD-ROM capabilities built into it, and being made by Sega, it originally looked quite promising. The problems with the Saturn during development, as it was originally meant to be a cartridge based, 2D system, but was hastily changed, hence the poor quality of some of the games.

From what I remember, the Saturn pad was a juiced up Megadrive one, with more buttons and shoulder buttons. I remember being massively impressed with the Saturn years ago, after seeing Tomb Raider 1 for the first time, a crazy pseudo 3D isometric game called Bug!, and a random, albeit strangely fun game called 'Clockwork Knight', although it looks much easier now than I remember it.

The main issues I found with the Saturn, or remember was that there was not that many brilliant games for it, or at least, no ones which my friends owned. I'm no expert on the Saturn (contemplating picking one up soon though...) but I do remember enjoying it for the time it had.

Then it all changed. It was at this point I made probably my first personal choice towards what console I would own. My cousin's family sold the Saturn, for a sweet pea or something, and bought a PS1. From somebody who thought a Saturn looked great, the PS1 blew me away. My auntie was really into Tomb Raider at the time, and watching TR 2 and 3 was incredible, it all seemed so vibrant. We played loads of different games for this, from Final Fantasy VII (I remember we named all our characters after Pokemon characters, ah good old times) to MGS 1. But, when I had a opportunity to have a new console, I switched to Nintendo.

Whereas the PS1 used CD-ROMS and had modern sounding soundtracks and FMV's, the N64 uses backward cartridges, had a blocky exterior and a weird control. But I still had one, and didn't regret it. My uncle attempted to tell me 'You could have loads of games for the Playstation, etc etc', but my argument was that the graphics on N64 had much more colour, vibrancy and overall looked better, different, but in my opinion (at the time, I've seen some dirty looking 64 games and some colourful PS games) the graphics were better.

The first games I had for it was Banjo-Kazooie, a classic I replay to this day, and Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire (I was a bit of a Star Wars geek, so naturally I had this).

I played Banjo much more, and became a bit of a expert amongst friends on the game, often being asked to help them out through certain parts. Although my N64 collection was small, it was certainly well played, and most importantly because I wanted to play it. Although I had many more games for Megadrive, and then later for PS2, I spent so many hours on the Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64 and various others. My cousin probably only complete about a quarter of his PS collection, not due to lack of skill, but to simply having some good, and some very poor games. I completed all but one, and that was due to lack of skill!

Coming tomorrow: The disappearance of Sega, and the arrival of the Playstation 2, Xbox and Gamecube...