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Post by Colonel Kurtz on May 6, 2022 9:11:03 GMT -5
Fantasy Zone II on Master System could easily have been mistaken for a Genesis game. It surely could. The level of graphical creativity on display is awe inspiring.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on May 6, 2022 15:46:29 GMT -5
Right, let's have a good at attempting part 2 of this:
2012 - For my 16th birthday, I got a 3DS. My sister had a DS back when she still lived at the house and I played that a good bit (mainly some of my GBA games and Super Mario 64 DS), so I'd always wanted to have a DS of my own so I could check out that system's library. I didn't have a smartphone so this was my first time playing anything with a touchscreen, and having that on top of the usual controls was goddamn magical. Playing games like Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Elite Beat Agents, Etrian Odyssey, and Broken Sword among many others was a revelation with this thing, and to this day I still consider the DS to be the best sort of gaming device in terms of convenience and control potential.
Also, I got a new PS2 from my school's taxi driver. He offered it to me one day, and I took him up on it as the one I had was starting to not work. So that helped with games which previously had trouble running on that older console, like Kya: Dark Lineage or Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII.
2013 - Mainly got more games for the various consoles we had, though something that did make things interesting was the appearance of CeX (or Computer Exchange). This was a second-hand games shop that had been around for 15 years I believe, but only just showed up in Cork. This made looking for older games a boon, especially on the PS2 since GameStop had stopped stocking the pre-owned copies for a good while. To this day, I like popping in to see what they've got, and make out with a couple of games on the cheap. (Especially the Xbox 360, which is currently in the place the PS2 was back in 2008, where even the most popular games tend to be quite cheap - too old to be worth the price, too young to be considered retro)
2014 - With that in mind, I bought a Nintendo Wii for €40. This was both to try out the games I'd missed, but also so I could play GameCube games again as the GC we had died back in 2011 (which I forgot to mention in my previous post, whoops). A friend at school lent me some of his games like Mario Galaxy and Sonic Colours so I could try them out, and I found some decent bargains with copies of Metroid Prime and Smash Bros Brawl for €15 altogether. Still haven't properly played Prime; I really should get onto that.
I stopped playing my 3DS around this time, as I'd somehow managed to bust the top screen. (I kept it in my school bag in an awful place, and it kept getting pushed up against everything else) Mainly played games from other consoles. XtraVision also shut down around this point, meaning I didn't have any way of renting games that didn't involve websites - which I didn't know how to use, so I never bothered.
2015 - I'd had enough to missing my 3DS, so I went into CeX with a load of games and bought a new 3DS with the trade-in money. I also stopped reviewing games on the regular for YouTube, due to attending my first college course. It was cool, but quite busy so I had to sacrifice that and my other creative hobby of fanfiction so I could focus on the college course and make sure I was okay.
2016 - Spent the first half of the year playing plenty of open world games. Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Shadow of Mordor - all accompanied by the Xbox 360's wonderful feature of playing custom music either from the hard drive or from USBs. A lot of memories of those games are attached to the music of the Uncharted Waters and Nobunaga's Ambition games, along with Metallica's Kill Em All (played that while running around in Shadow of Mordor, for some odd reason).
My brother bought a PlayStation 4, and it was neat being able to play some of the newer games that had been coming out. Destiny was pretty cool, I adored Grow Home, and there were a handful of other games that were a good time and a half.
2017 - I started covering games for Hardcore Gaming 101. This was mainly to give myself something productive to do, as I wasn't doing well at college and my mental health was at a low fucking point. This got me covering some of the games I'd been playing on the PS4, as well as checking out other games I might not have previously looked at.
My brother moved out, and took the PlayStation 4 with him. Since I was the only child left in the house (my other brother had moved out a couple years before), this meant I was the only person buying and playing video games. I decided not to buy a new game console from then on, since there were plenty around as is and so many cool games to still try. I couldn't justify getting one when I would be the only one playing it.
Also, that PlayStation 2 I got from my taxi driver died suddenly one day, while I was playing Tomb Raider II. For about a year and a half, I really grew to miss playing that thing, and both the PS1 and PS2 games I had. That's why...
2018 - I got a new PS2 on Boxing Day at the local CeX, having spotted it alongside a physical copy of Klonoa 2: Door to Phantomile - a game I'd been trying to find for ten years ever since I first played a demo of it. I'd finally found it in the wild, and I got it as a Christmas present.
I also finally got round to playing Sonic Unleashed for the first time since I traded it in, and I ended up falling in love with it. The game has its issues, but I love the combination of elements - the speedy stages, the slower Werehog levels, all of the hub world stuff, the amazing music, the little sidequests you could do. It's my favourite 3D Sonic and one of my favourite Sonic games in general.
2019 - Nothing much happened here, other than playing more games in general and covering stuff for HG101.
2020 - I finally bit the bullet and hacked my 3DS. I was getting increasingly fed up with Nintendo's anti-piracy, anti-fan nonsense, and their removal of purchasing games on the eShop without one of those pre-paid cards that I could only get at the shop (when the pandemic had fucking kicked off) was what finally convinced me to do it. It was surprisingly easy, and my passion in the DS/3DS library has been kept up to this day by the ability to download and play loads of cool games I'd normally never be able to find or buy. Mind you, I accidentally jammed the headphone port, and the audio only worked in one ear (so long as the actual headphone jack was at the right angle. That was rather annoying.
Somehow ended up really getting into Just Cause 2, which was inexplicably on sale for a couple of bucks on Xbox Live. I played it for 30 hours just fannying around with side stuff and occasionally dipping into the main missions, and then played for 15+ by just driving around and listening to Podtoid. Good times, when I really needed it.
To my surprise, I got a Nintendo Switch as a Christmas present from the whole family. That was such a shock, but having a handheld system that could play console games appealed to me enormously, and the enormous library meant I'd have loads to go on. Too many, actually. What with the Switch and all the other platforms I could either play and emulate, it got a bit too much. I decided I needed to clamp down on the games I'd actually bought and finish them. So...
2021 - I started doing the HG101 Game Finish Challenge, as a way to help me get through my collection. I beat plenty of games, though I eventually started getting stuff and playing anything/everything to help me deal with personal anxieties. In some way, that's made games a bit more disposable as I beat one game and start the next not too long after, but that's my own problem.
For college purposes, I ended up having to get a laptop. We've had the same computer for eleven years and it was a poorly running mess by this point, so having a new way of emulating a bunch of systems and being able to check out new games that computer couldn't run was a heck of a time. This also effectively replaced the PlayStation Classic I'd gotten from my sister and her partner, as it was a much more convenient and workable way of emulating PS1 games I couldn't play via a disc.
I got another 3DS as a Christmas present to myself, as my previous system's headphone port problem was getting worse and more irritating to deal with. However, all they had at CeX was a 3DS XL. I was worried it would be too large (it is noticeably larger than the original), but it actually turned out fine. Happily using it to this day.
2022 - Still choogling along, beating games for the Game Finish Challenge and checking out cool shit as often as I can. I haven't covered any games for HG101 recently as I've been incredibly busy with college stuff and a big personal upheaval, and with submissions currently closed up, it might be some time before I'll be doing that again. We'll see how the future goes, I suppose. I'm curious and excited to see how it'll all turn out.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on May 12, 2022 13:43:57 GMT -5
I guess I can copy paste a recent gamefaqs post about my first RPGs here: The first might have been Phantasy Star 1 as a small kid, but I didn't understand it at the time as in I couldn't speak english. After that it was FF6 on consoles but again a bad introduction, here against a boss fight in the middle of the game and I didn't grasp the ATB concept at all. On PCs it was Ultima 8, more of an ARPG with an interesting world but poor controls and direction. I also watched someone play Ultima 7 around the same time but found it ugly and didn't play it. For ARPGs, a year or so after U8 I played Secret of Evermore on SNES, which I bought because it looked similar to Secret of Mana (which I had only seen in magazines at the time). Got really into it and beat it, I actually prefer it to SoM. Some time afterwards I saw a trailer of Diablo 1 which I think came with Warcraft 2; pretty vague trailer but it intrigued me and the game didn't disappoint, played through it with a friend handling the potion chugging (when not freaking out, the game scared us at the time). One day we pretty much played through the evening and night until we beat it and the ending was a huge surprise. After that I got into playing it MP online and found other countrymen doing it too, which was awesome at the time despite some lag issues. Back to "proper" RPGs, I remember seeing FF7 hyped in magazines and bought it with high anticipation simply based on the artwork and cutscene stills plus the vague but positive comments. While at first I was disappointed that it played like FF6, which I didn't have a good experience with, it grew on me and became one of my faves (although to be honest, even at the time the constant random battles got tedious). Such an immersive world and unusual aesthetic, with interesting mechanics and over the top things like the ultima weapons, neverending summons and 9999 hit attacks, it properly introduced a lot of what were the tropes of FF and JRPGs to me. A couple of years later I bought Baldur's Gate based purely on the box art and it introduced me to the D&D rules and open world RPGs. I was into the game but also didn't quite understand it at first, it was a struggle early on. Eventually I grew to love the structure and atmosphere of the game and the voice acting really stood out, also tried it out in MP a few times. One cool thing about network MP was that you could play it on your own and it let you make an entirely custom party. Around that time I also played Fallout 2, which I liked even more at the time. The setting and high degree of freedom with multiple endings felt very unique. This is getting long so I'll end it there. Oh and I did also play Faxanadu and Zelda II briefly with relatives, but found both too hard at the time. --- For my owned systems chronology it goes something like this: SMS (played NES and Amiga with friends and relatives) MD/GEN (1990 or 1991 IIRC) - I think at first I kinda liked the SMS more, as most of the earlier games I played were tailored for older kids and felt too hard, even if I found them really cool (Thunder Force 2, Altered Beast and ESWAT for example). I actually did enjoy Alex Kidd itEC on it, though I could never beat it IIRC. Didn't take that long until we got some disney games though, stuff like Quackshot which was great, and of course the Sonic games which I was obsessed with. I also got into some of the NHL games despite not being interested in the sport IRL. The MD got played for years to come and I had a lot of games for it, both good and bad. GB (christmas 1991 or 1992) - With the GB I could finally play the games I'd read about in NP (which we were somehow subscribed to for a while without owning a nintendo system) at home and at my own pace, and not too long after getting it there was that awesome streak of SML2, Link's Awakening and Wario Land which felt very comparable to the SNES equivalents at the time, as well as DK '94 which heavily expanded on the original DK. Besides those I got pretty random games for it at the time like Alien 3, MK2 and Star Trek, but also Bubble Bobble, Metroid 2, TMNT, Battletoads and Blaster Master Jr. PC (shared with family) - At this point we had no sound card for it, but it was a good PC processor and RAM-wise. GG - Actually had the TV tuner for this! On the other hand, not that many games but at some point I got to borrow one of those 100-in-1 pirate carts from a friend. SNES (late 1994 w/ DKC and Mario All-Stars IIRC, if not summer of 1995) - I was really impressed with the SNES at the time and it basically replaced the MD for a couple of years. Didn't have nearly as many games for it but nearly all of them were greats, with the one exception being Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel which was still pretty good for what it was. Better PC w/ a 3D graphics card eventually. I got really into RTS games in the mid-late 90s (the first I played was Warcraft 2 on the older PC, so without sound lol), as well as the PC RPGs I mentioned earlier, but also the more online focused FPS games like UT, Tribes, CS and HL1. PS1 (1998 IIRC though I had rented it before that). Being in my early teens I think I rejected the N64 mainly on the games feeling kiddy and like more of the same, even though they were pretty different being in 3D. I remember thinking N64 games looked smudgy in screenshots. Also skipped Crash based on it being another mascot platformer, well that and I didn't perceive it as real 3D when playing the demo. What I saw in mags about PS1 games just appealed to me more at the time: Tekken, FF7, Tomb Raider, RE, Ace Combat, GT, etc. I did still play N64 with friends and enjoyed Star Fox 64 and GE for example. Saturn I don't remember playing at all, all I can remember was X-Men or Marvel Super Heroes being on display and seeming like more of the same after Super SF2 and MK2-3. I think I also saw Sonic 3D Blast, but it may have been the MD version - either way it didn't seem that appealing. Maybe if a friend or two had a Saturn, but I think I would've skipped it based on there being no proper Sonic, Streets of Rage or Toejam & Earl on it anyway. GBA (near the EU launch) PS2 Around here I started emulating a bunch of games I'd missed on the above systems as well as PCE/TG16 and N64 and PC became my main gaming system. PS3 DS Wii 3DS
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Post by windfisch on May 12, 2022 16:00:19 GMT -5
I got a Game Boy at launch. ... Decades later I'm still playing mostly Game Boy games (via PSP, though). That's about it
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on May 13, 2022 2:15:05 GMT -5
lol I love that
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Post by dsparil on May 15, 2022 6:50:51 GMT -5
I didn’t really have any knowledge of consoles until 1993. I didn’t know anyone that had one before then, but in that year I moved, and a neighbor had an NES with a few games. A lot of the neighborhood kids would hang out there, and we’d overflow onto the little patch of grass that was their sort of front yard since it was a first floor apartment. That was where I first played the first SMB trilogy and Zelda II. For some reason they didn’t have the first one. I absolutely cannot remember anything else, and they really might just have had the four games.
In the summer of 1994, I moved again and this time had a neighbor with an SNES, Mark, and another, Craig, with a Genesis and all the attachments as it had been won in a raffle. Mark basically just had SMW and a few sports games. We played through all of SMW that summer, and it made quite an impression on me. He did rent some things here and there, but mostly we played outside.
Craig actually did have a fairly decent collection of games across the base Genesis, 32X and CD. We’d play Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter a lot and Sonic obviously. He didn’t have Sonic 2 though just the first one, the third and then S&K when it came out. The corner store had massive quantities of the special Sonic 3 Life Savers, and we’d buy so many of them for the tips. It felt like they had stock of those things for years. Sometimes we’d play Sewer Shark or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs in the 2 player mode. The other big one was the first Golden Axe and we could not manage to ever finish it even 2 player. It felt like an endless game at the time, and only later did I realize that we did at least make it to the last level.
I also had two school friends both with an NES. One, Matt, was mostly into Macs and Star Wars so we’d mainly play X-Wing and sometimes Lemmings, but we’d also play Kirby’s Adventure. I’d go to his house a lot since he lived fairly close by. As a side note, he refused to get TIE Fighter for a very long time despite me constantly praising it because he didn’t want to play as an Imperial. The other, John, lived further away so we didn’t see each other outside of school all that often. He was mostly into PC RPGs especially Ultima, but we also worked through the first Final Fantasy.
At some point my mom starting working at a department store which had a Saturn and an N64 set up. She’d take me with her sometimes with the understanding that I wouldn’t hog them. I don’t remember if there were ever special kiosk demo set ups like there are now, but they used regular full games. I vaguely remember the Saturn games getting cycled, but the N64 had Mario 64 for at least a year. At one point they had Bug! or maybe the sequel next to Mario 64 and you couldn’t even compare the two. I did end up playing a lot of Saturn games and even picked up some of the PC ports, but 64 was such a game changer. I’d have to give up the N64 fairly often, but playing it that way was a sort of communal experience.
For whatever reason, they never had a PlayStation there, but a whole lot of people I knew ended up with one. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, so much Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider, but the son of one of my mom’s friends got the official magazine so the demo disk showed me little snippets of so many games.
For my own consoles up to this point, my dad very strictly disallowed it. It basically came down to already having a computer and enough games got PC ports that he felt like it was a waste of money. Because of this, I really dived into emulation once it started to really get usable around ’97 with Genecyst, Nesticle and ZSNES. Since the SNES had so many enhancement chips, it was always exciting when a new version of ZSNES would come out with support for more of them. Kids today don’t know the struggle of having to play games on a system with no transparency support and having to disable background layers in order to play certain parts 🙃.
That was when I first played Japanese games and started to see all the stuff that never got localized. There was such a flurry of fan translations in the early days of sometimes questionable quality, but they felt like such big events. Some games like Star Ocean are still best in English in their fan translated form not so much for the quality of the translation, but because later localized ports are worse in some way. The less said about the short lived mobile Tales of Phantasia the better. Then there’d be the really late period SNES release like Rockman and Forte and people would just go absolutely nuts over being able to play an actual new game.
By the time the Dreamcast was being discontinued, my dad started to soften on his no console stance because the price had gotten so low, and he really wanted to play Shenmue. We couldn’t find a new one so we ended up getting one used. I never had that much for it since most of what I would have wanted was multi-platform. I think we only got Shenmue, Sonic Adventure and Marvel vs. Capcom 2. We later picked up Sonic Adventure 2, but I think that was my entire collection.
I have an abstract fondness for it because I think of it as my first console, but I’m also not sure if it is. At some point I acquired a PlayStation, and I have absolutely no memory of ever getting it! My only guess is that I had bought it for Final Fantasy IX because it didn’t get a PC port unlike VII and VIII. I had an after school job so it isn’t unfeasible. Once PSX emulation got good enough around 2001, I didn’t have much reason to keep the system out. I also emulated a few N64 games, but you had to really be determined since the emulation was always a little finicky.
Not much to say until 2006 with the release of the Wii. I really wanted one for Twilight Princess, but I got too clever and went to a store that sold consoles but had decided for whatever reason to not stock it. Unsurprisingly, that place was out of business not long after. If I had just gone to my original choice, the local Target, I definitely would have had one on launch day since they had enough stock for everyone that was there when the store opened. Because of this, I ended up getting a used GameCube for TP. I got a few other games for it, but I ended up getting a Wii around a year later when I was at Target buying towels or something and they had some in stock.
I got a PS2 from a roommate in lieu of utilities since he had gotten a PS3 and that was the last non-Nintendo system I ever received. I did play a whole lot of PS2 games especially once video stores were starting to go out of business because of Netflix, and used games were super cheap. You could pick them up by the armload and still spend less than a new game.
Not much to say after this point. I got a DS Lite on a whim one day to replace my GBA which is another system I don’t remember getting. I probably bought it off someone when the DS originally came out since it was an original model and the trade in value would have been low. I really regret trading it in for DSi in hindsight just for the sentimental attachment I had for it. All the subsequent Nintendo systems including the DSi I bought at launch. I finally bought an HDTV for the Wii U. The 3DS really blew me away when it was announced and I eagerly awaited it and instantly loved it. I traded that in for the New model when it came out, but I don’t miss the original system. The Switch of course I use a whole lot to the point that I’ve had to stop using it portable after going through so many JoyCons.
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Post by Mr_Horizon on May 31, 2022 6:05:42 GMT -5
I can imagine many people have similar stories here, but I'm happy to add my own. My family had a PONG console, so "Tennis" is the earliest kind of game I played. Friends had some sort of home computer where I played what I later identified as "Alley Cat". Then my family got its own home computer, an Atari 800 XL. Also my cousin had a C64. So plenty of 80s home computer classics were played: Commando, 1942, R-Type, Turrican Spy Hunter, Aztec Challenge, Super Off Road, Great Giana Sisters That covers the 1980s, here is a picture of me at the family computer: linkAround 1990/91 I got my first own computer, an Amiga 500. I also bought a Game Boy from my cousin around 1992. The same cousin had a Sega Mega Drive, and school friends of mine had an SNES or Dads with PCs that could run games. There was plenty of Defender of the Crown, Cadaver, Loom, Turrican 2, Hybris, Battle Squadron, Rick Dangerous, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Super Cars 2, Alien Breed Tower Assault. At friends places there was Doom, Ecstatica or Super Metroid. That covers the first half of the 90s, and this is me getting (and being) a Game Boy: linkMy friends got their own, beefier PCs or got Playstations and N64s, while I upgraded to an Amiga 1200 with various hardware enhancements. Big moment when I could finally run Doom at a nice framerate, and later Quake at a barely playable level (bought it to prove a point -_-). Virocop, Ruff'n'Tumble, All Terrain Racing, Worms Directors Cut, Doom, Alien Breed 3D, Nemac IV, Napalm, Colonial Conquest 2 and choppy Quake at my own place. G-Police, Tunnel B1, Final Fantasy 7, Waverace, Zelda, Mario64, Golden Eye, Turok, Soul Edge, proper Quake, Half-Life via friends. My own entry in the console world was a Sega Dreamcast with Resident Evil Code Veronica and later Shen Mue or Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia, also big fan of Kururin Squash, Ikaruga or Bangai-Oh. Wait, just remembered: I was an exchange student in france, that family had an Atari Jaguar and I got to play that version of Doom, Iron Soldier and Tempest 2000. Aaaand that's the 90s! In the 2000s I started earning money and lived by myself, meaning I got myself a PC, a gamecube and a ps2. Weird US or japanese stuff like Typing of the Dead with two Dreamcast keyboards, or Alien Front Online with its Dreamcast microphone... they sold very well on ebay ten years later. The Gamecube turned out to be my favourite console, with Rogue Squadron 2 and 3, Defender, Resident Evil 4, Soul Calibur 2 and many other titles. I enjoyed the Wii as well with its many multiplayer titles and also had a GBA SP and a Nintendo DS with some fun games (Ace Attourney or Advance Wars). EDIT: I forgot to add, I also had an NGage QD! Played Asphalt Urban GT and Ashen, but remember it mostly for being the best texting phone other than Blackberry thanks to digipad cursor control. That's the end of the 00s... I gave up everything in the 2010s when I moved to a different country. There I inherited a ps3 but played very little other than GTA4. Later I got an Ouya (what is it with me and underdogs?!) and enjoyed the few good titles the system had to offer, like Towerfall, no brakes valet, Neon Shadow or hidden in plain sight. This is the last I ever saw of it (2017), I wonder if it ever sold: link2017 I got to sell everything... for a Nintendo Switch, which is my only console for the foreseeable future (along with a little bit of Steam on my Macbook). Does anybody read all this? Not convinced.
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Post by excelsior on May 31, 2022 8:14:05 GMT -5
Does anybody read all this? Not convinced. I think you'd be surprised here. Most of the regulars read every post. For this thread it's a great way to get to know each other a bit better - and your post was a rare insight into the mind of our quiz master.
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Post by windfisch on May 31, 2022 14:55:15 GMT -5
Mr_HorizonWhat a nice surprise to see you joining other topics! And yes, I've read every one of your words, thanks for sharing. "Quake at home" as opposed to "proper Quake" threw me off at first, but then I got it. It's that "we've got xxxx at home" meme, right? I too played my first Quake demo on a 486. Not only did it run, it even ran in bullet-time!
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Post by Mr_Horizon on Jun 1, 2022 6:51:50 GMT -5
Mr_Horizon What a nice surprise to see you joining other topics! And yes, I've read every one of your words, thanks for sharing. "Quake at home" as opposed to "proper Quake" threw me off at first, but then I got it. It's that "we've got xxxx at home" meme, right? I too played my first Quake demo on a 486. Not only did it run, it even ran in bullet-time! Yes, I ocassionally venture outside of the quiz threads! Sometimes when I finish a game I crosspost my impressions over several forums, but admittedly usually in german. But you got the "Quake" story right - it was possible to play it, but in busy areas it took a bit of strategic thinking as in "I see him here, but by the time the game reacts to me turning he's gonna plop over there, so I best shoot... now!" Framerate was really okay in corridors with no monsters though, I'd say up to 20fps!. I finished the first episode (where you have to electro zap the lava monster), but then decided my point was proven (Quake playable on Amiga) and called it a day. I now went back to my post three times now to add in more hardware (just recalled I had an NGage QD). You honor me too much, thank you
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Post by Snake on Jun 1, 2022 11:56:52 GMT -5
That covers the 1980s, here is a picture of me at the family computer: linkAround 1990/91 I got my first own computer, an Amiga 500. I also bought a Game Boy from my cousin around 1992. The same cousin had a Sega Mega Drive, and school friends of mine had an SNES or Dads with PCs that could run games. There was plenty of Defender of the Crown, Cadaver, Loom, Turrican 2, Hybris, Battle Squadron, Rick Dangerous, Lotus Turbo Challenge, Super Cars 2, Alien Breed Tower Assault. At friends places there was Doom, Ecstatica or Super Metroid. That covers the first half of the 90s, and this is me getting (and being) a Game Boy: linkLoving the photos! Seeing you talk about Gameboy, Amiga, and Mega Drive... it doesn't feel that long ago, but the photos tell another story. The whole aesthetic with the wood paneling, the furniture, etc. It captures such a nostalgic, historically significant era. Spending time in France with, playing up Tempest 2000 sounds like a really good time. I'm gonna have to put that on my bucketlist, all the while snacking on quality pain, quality butter, and quality wine.
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Post by dsparil on Jun 1, 2022 12:57:30 GMT -5
It a shame Amiga didn't end up as part of a better run company than Commodore. That was basically a disaster right from the start. I've had a passing interest in them for a long time, but the "official" revival attempts always seemed to cater to the most hardcore enthusiasts that still had original hardware with PPC cards, and I gave away my old PowerMac G4 before ever trying MorphOS which would work on G4 and G5 Macs. Not G3s for some strange reason though.
I'm actually surprised Quake will work on 1200. The specs even list an 68020 as the minimum processor as long as there's also a math coprocessor / FPU.
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Post by Mr_Horizon on Jun 2, 2022 6:29:14 GMT -5
I'm actually surprised Quake will work on 1200. The specs even list an 68020 as the minimum processor as long as there's also a math coprocessor / FPU. Well, it wasn't your average Amiga 1200. I had a Blizzard 1260, a Cybervision64 3D as well as a HD and a fast CD drive... that means a 68060 Processor with 50Mhz, 18 MB Ram and some graphics acceleration. I remember someone did a PC comparison for me, and my computer was roughly as strong as a fast 486 or a slow Pentium. That's enough to run Quake on 320x200 at "up to 25 fps".
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Post by Snake on Jun 4, 2022 14:17:59 GMT -5
Part 2:
Around SNES area, arcade games were still a thing. My era was the similar era to the Hi Score Girl anime. Just being a punk kid, that would get dropped off at the local arcade. While some kids go to church on Sundays, my dad would take me and my brother to dim sum. So after lots of shu mai, har gow, chicken feet, and char siu bao, we would spend the afternoon at Super Arcade, across from a nearby community college. The goal was to stretch $2 - $3 worth of quarters over the course of a few hours. Easier to at the time when Street Fighter 2 was the hot game, and you'd have to line up your quarters for your turn to play. Super Arcade has long since jumped the shark for over a decade, but it lasted a while until a bit after my college years. It was the era when fighting games were hot - Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, Saturday Night Slam Masters, Killer Instinct, Dark Stalkers, with Ridge Racer and Time Crisis to mix it up. It'd be a frequent stop with high school friends, once we got our driver's license. The arcade did well with all the Konami Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Wangan Midnight and Initial D cabinets keeping a steady flow of people.
Back on the console timeline, my dad actually got me one of the attachable back-up drives for the SNES. They were quite popular around Asia. Basically you could "back-up" game roms onto a 3.5" floppy disc. Of course, bigger games like Final Fantasy 6 would need 3 discs to back up. And what horror if one of the discs were corrupted or misread, and you'd have to restart the reload process. Some games, that required the FX chip, like Star Fox, couldn't be copied. On trips back to Thailand, we'd pick up a stack of more commercial copied discs, with cool cover art. Rock Man X was one... and for whatever reason, the game wouldn't allow X's parts upgrades to carryover to each level. That meant... I had to play the whole game without even the dash upgrade! No gun, no helmet, no armor!!!!! Talk about a handicap, so actually getting to and beating Sigma took a lot of effort and all full E-tanks. The really killer game that took a while to load was Tales of Phantasia at 48 megs of POWER, and needed like 6 floppies to load up. Bootlegging rented games aside, I still saved up earned money for physical new games like Ninja Gaiden Trilogy and Chrono Trigger. And foolishly, I would take out those fold-out folders and tack nails through the poster onto my wall. Chrono Trigger really consumed me. I spent a 2 straight days from start to finish, while really only taking a break to eat chicken strips and curly fries from Jack-in-the-Box. And then.... new game +!!!! All the RPGs, FF IV, FFV, FFVI, Breath of Fire 1 and 2, and so forth always gave me a sense of melancholy when I finally finished. It felt sad to know that the experience ends.
Around this time, I met my best friend/sworn brother in middle school. I brought in a Dragon Ball comic to pass the time in pre-Algebra class, and we hit it off. We'd take the bus home, and talk video games. So somehow, it got to him inviting me over to his house so I can beat Super Shinobi II (Shinobi 3) on his Mega Drive. He became my lifelong gaming buddy. I'd walk up the hill a good 15 minutes to get to his house. He was Taiwanese, and his dad was rather wealthy, retiring comfortably at an early age. Besides having shelves of manga, he had a pretty decent Mega Drive library. When Seiken Densetsu 3 was out, we basically co-op played the game to death on multiple playthroughs.
Playstation 1 and Sega Saturn soon came into the fold. On weekends, after the usual temple and Thai school, we'd meet up with Mark and Gunn. Gunn was the oldest, and driving with his Honda Civic. In the early days of Playstation 1, would pitch money in to rent the PS1 from Blockbuster Video, along with Tekken, Ridge Racer... and Street Fighter ALPHA!!!!! We'd get rotisserie chicken from the local Juan Pollo, and basically play till 2 or 3 in the morning. I got really sold on Playstation 1 after another friend got one chipped, to play the Japanese Dragon Ball Z game, and Bio-Hazard/Resident Evil. Again, Asia is notorious for bootlegs. So on the next trip to Thailand, we'd come back with a huge stack of games. And finally got our own PS1. I remember being so hyped for Final Fantasy 7... and being a bit disappointed with demo. I feel like it was missing something that made me love FF VI so much. But still... I actually splurged $110 on the import disc of FF 7. And played it straight for a week to finish. How shocking to replay the game on the US release..... and to find they added the Diamond Weapon fight and extra CG scenes!!! I overpaid for an unfinished game! Then they re-released the extra content back in Japan with a bonus disc as "International Edition."
PS1 in Japan really loved to milk with special editions. Well, notable for me, Dracula X:Nocturne in the Moonlight/Symphony of the Night, was beautifully packaged with a soundtrack collection and a manga booklet. Metal Gear Solid had it's Premium Package. Mature content in gaming wasn't just for PCs. From Survival Horror, to fantasy sci-fi stuff like Xenogears, it really gave a kid a lot to think about. But man, seeing arcade ports of Strider 2, Tekken 3, Street Fighter Alpha 3... all really with more content. I could feel the impending shift for arcades. I really started visiting less, because why squander $5 here and there when I could buy the game and play unlimited at home?
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