I Miss the Old Days

oneshotstop

Novice
Grab a seat in your chair, and turn it towards the window. Make sure you've got a beer with you before you do it, because we're going to talk about the good old days.

I fired up an old game of mine the other day. Raptor: Call of the Shadows. For those who may not know, that game came out back in 1993. If you're up for some math (I try not to be), you'll realize that 1993 was twenty five years ago. This is the part where you look into the sky at a big, white cloud and see a movie-reel of all the games you've played in the past two and a half decades. The Metal Gear Solid series, with its crazy subject matter and wacky (but awesome) gameplay. The Ace Combat series, zipping through the skies in an F-14 Tomcat (Talk to me, Goose!) and splashing ships that defy the laws of gravity. The Halo series, floating through a space in a wrecked cruiser and crashing into a war you were not prepared for with all that epic music and so, so many enemies to kill. Maybe Gears of War, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, or Grand Theft Auto. Each game following a similar formula, but trying to improve and expand upon its predecessor.

Go back further. MDK, a weird game where you had to make a flamethrower from a leafblower to make toast. Hidden and Dangerous, an old school and unforgiving squad shooter that focused on the planning. Rainbow Six, a tactical playground for all of your SWAT fantasies to come true. Sonic Adventure, bringing the blue hedgehog and friends into the 3D world, and floating around at the speed of sound ( got places to go, got to follow my rainbow!.....damn, so catchy!). How about SOCOM, sneaking through the jungle with your team to silently take out some terrorists. Lego games of all flavors. Batman, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and on and on. Rayman games, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Jane's Combat Simulation games, and on and on. There are an unfathomable number of video games out on the market right now. Nearly any kind of game you may want, is available. Be a gangster, or a pilot. Be a racecar driver, or an assassin. An overweight plumber, or his forsaken and green brother.

For me, the game that started it all was Raptor. I had the disk (a floppy, 'member floppy disks?) at my uncle's house, and they had a nice computer that could run it. 486DX2, 8 megabytes of RAM, 8 megabytes free on the hard drive, baby they had it all. What they didn't have, however, was a sound card. I was only 4 at the time, though, so what did I know about a sound card? The MIDI stuff was good enough for me.

Until one morning, my dad woke me up around 0600. He said he had something "sorta neat" to show me. He sat me down in front of the computer and brought up the DoS window. cd games/raptor/raptor.exe.
If I wasn't awake yet then, when that sweet bass line got rocking I sure as hell was. My dad spent the money on a sound card, some speakers, and had gone against that lovingly and masterfully put together rap, "Don't Copy That Floppy" and done just that. Sorry Double Def. He hasn't copied a floppy since. Probably.

I was hooked from that moment on. Twenty five years later, I've built my own PC multiple times, and fixed many more. After being a cop in the Air Force, I trained into Cyber Security. I've got the Security Plus cert, and am going to get the CEH cert soon. Computers are my life, and make me enough money to enjoy it. I'm thankful for my Dad going out of his way to do that for me (it was probably for him, but let me have this). All the games I've played since then until now have been more than worth that early morning wake up.

What got you into gaming?

Cheers, GR.
 
Nice to see you on the forums, onestopshop. I also enjoy your display picture. Judo's harai goshi, correct? Thank you for sharing your story.

What got me into gaming was probably our very first Nintendo Entertainment System. When I was growing up, my family was certainly not "poor" by any means, but we weren't exactly spoiled children either. My two older brothers and I would often receive shared Christmas presents, especially when they were expensive.

The earliest system I remember clearly was when we first got a NES. We got a big bundle pack between the three of us, including the console, two controllers, a Nintendo Zapper gun, a copy of Super Mario Bros. and a copy of Duck Hunt. I would have been about four or five years old at the time, this was truly a great time for us.

It's embarrassing to admit, but you know, I was a little weird kid, one day both my brothers were out at their friends' houses and I was left at home by myself. Not really by myself, but I felt by myself, and I cried and cried, to the point where my Mum actually sat down to play Super Mario Bros. with me. Holy crap was she bad, but it just makes me appreciate her so much more.

Anyway. We honestly never got any new games. Instead, we'd go down to the local video store and hire out Nintendo games. I remember we'd get to have the games for a week and every Friday night, we'd hire a new game. Eventually, we were allowed to hire three games (one game each), because you know what three brothers are like... "I wanna play this one", "No I wanna play this one" etc.

In time, we eventually hired out a Super Nintendo console, and that's when Mum and Dad knew what our next Christmas present was. I would have been about... seven, turning eight years old when we got that one for Christmas. We got a SNES with two controllers and a copy of Super Mario: All Stars. I like to think of the Super Nintendo being the first console to teach me that video games could be a fantastic way to tell stories, in particular, Square's Secret of Mana, one of my all time favourite games.

It was games like Secret of Mana that almost got me into drawing, always drawing on paper, my own "birds eye view" style RPGs, or what I thought would be cool for an RPG. Not gonna lie, but as an eight year old weird kid, I thought a magical sword being guarded by a sumo wrestler who would only move when fed a special spaghetti (my favourite food) was a pretty sweet idea at the time.

I will admit that the Game Cube was probably my favourite console of all time, but there was something so special about the SNES and the NES before it. I don't know if they still work, but we still have ours... but at the very least, I do own both a mini NES and SNES. The latter I bought myself and the former... well, I thought I missed out, but it turns out my mates ended up buying me one for my 30th birthday. Hot damn.
 
I don't really have a cool story about what got me into gaming. My grandmother was overprotective and afraid that something would happen to me because her eldest son died right outside in the street because of a hit-and-run when he was 17. Due to certain circumstances, I grew up with her and her solution to her own paranoia was to introduce me to something that would keep me inside...so video games. No animosity to her and certain no distaste for gaming as a result, for sure.

I honestly don't know what my first game I played was because the earliest pictures of me are around three years of age with a Colecovision -- I can remember the console, but the only game I remember for it was Mouse Trap. I spent a lot of time with a lot of consoles or miscellany in that house -- the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Nintendo, GameBoy, Genesis (with a Sega Master Converter!), Super Nintendo (with the Game Boy Player!)...there was a lot of fun to be had in the gaming realm for me.

I do remember that my first RPG was Dragon Warrior and in that same vein, I remember getting Final Fantasy the day it came out and getting second place in one of the three Nintendo Power contests for it -- I got one of these really sassy-pink fanny-packs that had the Final Fantasy logo emblazoned on it in black and the pack had some random assortment of sealed chocolate candies inside (now that I think about this, it's weird to imagine a game magazine company sending you candies, but hey...that's the late 80's / early 90's for you).

I also have a lot of nostalgia for older games because of a lot of "right" experiences I had with them when there was so much wrong going on in my life. One of my favorite memories was sitting at home after school when I was 7 (almost 8) around 5:15 PM or so and playing Kid Icarus. I had made it to Skyworld and I just remember thinking, "I really like this game and this is where I want to be and something I really want to do." My grandmother made me do a lot of things I didn't like, but gaming was her one definitive success and I'm grateful for that, all things considered.

I got a lot of peripherals and did a lot of stupid stuff growing up with games -- tried playing Dragon Warrior with the Power Glove (not a great experience), tried playing Bionic Commando with the Roll n' Rocker (seriously, look up how bad this thing is), and successfully won a match of NBA Jam on the Genesis in Juice mode using my feet to play the game. I think my crowning achievement was the one that was just obsession and not really any attempt at prowess -- I used to record my Final Fantasy 4 runs on VHS tapes set to the six-hour recording mode. I would play the game and read through prompts slowly enough to make sure I had time to read them later, then would watch those videos while eating dinner. FF4 was and still is my favorite game of all-time.

And...I'm going to stop there because that's a lot of random tidbits about gaming and me in the early years.
 
Those are cool stories, NegFactor. I wouldn't be embarrassed or weirded out by any of them. I wish I got to play with a Power Glove, despite how bad it sounds.

One of the weirdest things I used to do when playing games, was to create my own stories. Basically, oh God, now this is embarrassing to admit, when I played games (particularly on the N64, so I would have been... nine to twelve years old), I would quietly talk to myself, giving characters lines, trying to give them voices etc. Of course, I would always do it in private, I would never of done this in front of friends or family, but in all honesty, doing this made some of my games more fun and increased the longevity of them.
 
I'm sure I did the voices thing at least once with FF4 or a few other JRPGs (probably the first Lufia). Even though I loved the music for it, I often turned the volume off when playing Super Mario Kart and played Pennywise or other punk music because I always felt like I could drive faster if the music was faster. :p
 
The Amiga was my hook.
Games like James Pond, Fire & Ice, Rainbow Islands etc, they got me into the platforming world of games. And from there it was the NES, SNES with the Marios with my next door neighbour, who was also my best friend!

Then along came the Playstation, and Rayman. FUCK I loved Rayman, the first was legendary. Worms followed, and I would often get my arse kicked by my brothers (who were 6,7 years older than me), but was fun as hell. And of course, the Crash Bandicoot, Spyros, Crocs etc! (100%-ing those levels in Spyro were my jam)

All the consoles I've owned have little nuggets of joyous memories, I cant define one specific moment -
- Playing Halo 3 with GR crew on the 360 back in my uni days.
- Playing Ocarina of Time on a borrowed N64 that belonged to my friend, and calling him everytime I got stuck (Water Temple racked up a hefty phone bill!)
- Doing 20 minute shifts in FF7 within an epic 4 day sleepover with my chums!

and many more!
 

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