Personal Games History Part One

So my own personal games history, now a lot of this may not make sense as some of it was a long time ago, and it’s not like I ever kept a ‘gaming diary’, but I’m sure I can rustle up some kind of blog entry.

Atari 800 XL, And The Self Test Screen!

My gaming life all started way back with my dad’s Atari 800XL. It was actually such an amazing machine, and we even still own it, but if you set it up you cant walk across the floor what so ever because any vibrations seem to make it crash, and this is a pain seeing as it took about an hour to load a game, ah and gamers of this day moan about 10 second loading times! I remember the games were all on tapes, and you usually had to turn the tape over halfway through, but it had some amazing games on it like Ghostbusters, you even got to customize your car on that, jimmy whites snooker, probable better than most snooker games around now, there was a submarine game as well I remember being very good, oh and Powerdown, that game you could just play forever, and we had loads of others including one dad programmed on it, actually now thinking about it I want to set it up again and relive the awesomeness that it was (I can see me actually wanting to do this with every old game I talk about now, maybe this is the point of the task?).

Powerdown!

So that was where my life of gaming all started, but after that good old Nintendo came into business and brought out the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). I actually had this set up over the summer and it still is to this day an amazing machine. Obviously we had Mario Bros. 1 and 2 on it, but our Mario Bros. 1 was a 3 in one cartridge with Tetris and world cup football on it, now there’s a good football game, you could knock out the other players on the team and just dribble the ball into the goal! RC Pro-Am was a great game and I remember my dad always playing it trying to get as far as possible, I don’t think my dad, brother or me ever completed it. Actually that’s a thing with most old games, they were really difficult and actually challenged you to get better and better at the game, most games these days aren’t hard enough (Gamers these day’s…). Anyway I realise this is probably boring to read but I’m having fun remember all my old memories of games.

The Original Super Mario Bros.!

Anyway before I list all my games for NES I’ll go onto the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and it really was Super). Again there were tons of great games on this, Mario Karts (possible the best version), I remember playing Super Mario World in the arcade before we had the game, but only ever had enough money for the first level. The main game on the SNES though was Super Mario Bros. 3, possible the greatest Mario game ever made. It just had so much content in it with the entire racoon suit frog suit, and probably some more, and the level design was just outstanding in terms of artwork and layout. This is one thing that I think will make Mario galaxy so damn good, for a start it’s got loads of classic references from old Mario games like the ships out of 3 and the colour blocks from 3 the castle styles and just so much, and it does look amazing graphically from what I seen purely because of the artistic style and the effort the designers have put in to make the game have that Mario ‘essence’. This is one thing that makes a good game, having visuals that create an atmosphere in the game and give it character that draws you into the game, and this doesn’t just mean realistic graphics, I mean Mario Galaxy is hardy realistic and from what I’ve heard it just immerses you into the game, in fact Mario 64 and Zelda Ocarina Of Time don’t have ‘real’ graphics, and there like two of the greatest games ever made. Also the problem with all this realistic malarkey is it’s more obvious in the mistakes because we all know how it probable should look, so if something isn’t right you notice and it spoils the game play, whereas with Zelda ocarina of time the graphics allowed your imagination to run wild and fill the blanks.

Mario 64!

Zelda Ocarina Of Time!

Anyway I kind of went away from gaming history there and ranted about graphics again, it’s starting to sound like I’m a real graphics whoer, but I think it’s just because I was sick of random PS2 owners who don’t really know anything about games and just side with the PS3 because they know no better. Anyway I’m going to stop now this topic always starts arguments.