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MY LIFE IN 8-BIT

Contents:

Introduction- Born to be a Gamer (pg. 2)

Part I- First Gen (1991 1996) (pg.7)

Part II- Electric Dreams (1996 1999) (pg. 33)

Part III- New Wave (2000 2003) (pg. 61)

Part IV- Levelling Up (2003 2007) (pg.88)

Part V- Player 2 (2007 2010) (pg. 125)

Part VI- Its Dangerous to go Alone (2010 2011) (pg. 156)

Part VII- Next Gen (2012 Present) (pg. 178)

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Introduction- Born to be a Gamer

I was born in 1985, at a time when the gaming industry was picking itself up and dusting

itself off after the infamous video game crash of 1983 (you can blame Atari for that one,

and Ill explain why later in this story).

Things were looking up for the companies plying their trade in the world of joysticks

though, and in my first year of life a few pretty legendary games were released.

In April, Atari released Paperboy into the arcades (arcades were those places you used

to be able to go just to stand and play games, something that is such a rarity

nowadays), which is a game concept that still hasnt quite been matched to this day.

Basically youre, wait for it, a paperboy! Yes, its a method of teaching kids that you

dont need to actually become a real paperboy to experience all the fun involved in this

delightful part-time job. Fun like being chased by the neighbours psychotic dog, swarms

of bees, tornadoes, break dancers and the Grim Reaper.

Yup, all part of a normal day for a paperboy.

Paperboy: And on your left, youll see some Daily Mail subscribers.

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Ghosts n Goblins hit the arcades in September, where you played a knight called Sir

Arthur who has to slice and dice his way through zombies, ogres, demons and a whole

other plethora of other worldly nasties to rescue the fair maiden Princess Prin Prin. Mind

you, after you play the game through once only to be informed that the entirety of it was

a trap devised by Satan and then have to start from the beginning on a difficulty level a

million times harder, you do start to wonder if shes worth the effort.

Ghosts n Goblins: I swear officer, I had my armour on just a second ago. Damn zombies and their house

parties.

A game steeped in rich video game legacy that popped into existence in October was

Gauntlet, a top-down dungeon crawling extravaganza. I dread to think how much money

some hapless gamers poured into that arcade machine just to try and get past one

more level, and how many of them still get flustered when they hear the words, wizard

needs food badly!

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Gauntlet: Reginald, eat your vegetables! Sorry mom, I filled up earlier on bombs and/or keys.

Nintendo were the console bigwigs at the time, and two of their most iconic games hit

the shelves in 85. The first one was Duck Hunt, where you shoot ducks, surprisingly

enough. We all know the retriever was the villain of the piece though.

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Duck Hunt: Id like to see you do better, you little swine.

The second huge Nintendo game that came out that year was one that spawned

countless sequels, remakes and spin-offs. And the main character is still going strong

today. Yup, Super Mario Bros. came out in September 1985.

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Super Mario Bros.: If I was Mario, Id be wondering just what type of mushroom I just ate.

Now, I did have a reason I laid all of that 1985 history down and probably made several

of you have flashbacks. Its to illustrate the point that I was born at a time when video

games were gradually becoming insanely popular, which may go some way to

explaining the next 200 and something pages.

Read on, and be enthralled at my life in 8-bit.

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Part I- First Gen (1991 1996)

I cant really remember my life before video games. There are these little flashes of

memories, like racing caterpillars around in circles around the old bin lid. Does anybody

else remember those big black rubber bin lids? The ones sprinkled with asbestos? Just

me then.

I also remember whacking our damp old broom against the wall in the back yard until

woodlice spiralled out to the floor and scurried away terrified.

Memories, too, of splashing around in the river that ran past the bottom of my street,

catching tadpoles in my hands and watching them wriggle and squirm. And lots of

memories of walking in the countryside around where I lived.

But apart from that, its mostly a haze, because when I was eight I received my first

gaming console. Well, computer to be exact. It was an Amstrad CPC 464, and it began

my life as a gamer, walking hand-in-hand through life with games filling the gaps in

between memories and significant life events.

How it all began.

Markers have been laid down throughout my life since video games became a part of

them, and piecing together certain events is easier when I think about what particular

game I was playing at the time.

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My earliest memories of playing games came at the hands of three different cousins,

before the Amstrad entered my life.

Way back in the mists of time (1991), before going to school on a morning, Id frequent

my aunts house. This was convenient for my mum and dad, since they had to head to

work before school began. Even more convenient was the fact that my aunt worked at

my school and only lived three doors away from it.

None of this convenience mattered a jot to me though, the thing I enjoyed the most

about the whole arrangement was the MS-DOS PC that my uncle owned and used for

his high-flying job (to this day, I still have no idea what he does for a living). For in the

list of menus lay a collection of DOS games. Many mornings would be spent watching

my cousins Helen and Laura play a very primitive pool game (which may or may not

have led to my obsession with homing in pool tables when I go to a pub), a quite

addictive game called Alley Cat and a much more well-known classic, Space Quest II:

Vohauls Revenge. Now, at this time I was only about six or seven so much of the witty

banter was lost on me, but the addictive looking gameplay and pretty (for the time)

graphics really blew me away. Of course, I now own the entire Space Quest collection.

Space Quest II: Believe me, this is one of the hardest parts of any game you will ever play. Give it a try

sometime, I dare ya.

Playing these DOS games every morning had a profound effect on me, and of course

computer prowess is now something my generation, and surely all generations to follow,

need to develop in a fast-paced, streamlined and forever technically evolving society.

My second memory is of playing Street Fighter II on the Amiga at my cousin Simons

house. This was back in the days when games came on floppy discs. Back then, Street

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Fighter II was sold in a box with four discs. FOUR! Anyway, I loaded the game up,

picked Blanka and used his electric attack incessantly and beat the game. A tactic I still

use to this day. Anybody who has spent any time at all playing Street Fighter II knows

the drill. Everyone fights over who gets to pick either Chun-Li (because of her special

kick attack that is easy to trigger), E. Honda (because of his special chop attack that is

easy to trigger), Blanka (because of his special electric attack that is easy to trigger) and

Dhalsim (because hes a super stretchy yoga guy and can attack people from way over

in the corner of the screen and his special moves are easy too).

Street Fighter II: Blanka is a serious badass. No wonder I rocked at this game.

Street Fighter II is one of those special games. It achieved such fame that Capcom

didnt know what to do about it. Well, they did actually. They ported it to every console

known to man and then released a million different versions with minor differences. Its

kind of like when a band re-releases an album from ten years ago with an extra disc, but

the extra disc is full of remixes by members of the band. So, cue Street Fighter II:

Champion Edition, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street

Fighter II Turbo and, finally, Hyper Street Fighter II.

When Capcom finally got around to making the third game in the series, they decided it

would be a great idea to ditch all of the original characters except for two (Ryu and Ken,

who have appeared in every incarnation of the Street Fighter series), thus making that

edition pretty forgettable. However, I digress! We must move on, before I start getting

too far ahead of myself.

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My third early gaming memory involved another cousin, Nigel. He was Simons brother,

and the first person I knew who owned a Game Boy. The wonders of playing a game on

a small handheld device never ceased to amaze me, and forever etched into my mind

will be the moment I completed a game for the first time. That game was Super Mario

Land. I could complete that game with my eyes closed since I played it so often. Every

little jump, every extra life and every... everything else was there in my head. I knew it

better than the back of my hand. The only barrier to my completion was the occasional

death of the batteries.

Super Mario Land: The impending doom of a poor, innocent goomba, about to be mercilessly squashed

flat by an overweight Italian plumber. Who said this game was for kids?

Basically, while Nigel was spending his time perfecting the art of firing silly string into

one nostril and out of the other, I was perfecting the art of playing his Game Boy games.

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Another game I spent a lot of time playing on that Game Boy was Double Dragon. This

side-scrolling beat-em-up fascinated me, its just a shame I could never get very far on

the game before the low battery light flickered on.

Now, there was an art to making the batteries last as long as possible in the Game Boy.

The first thing you do is turn the volume all the way down, as a lot of that battery life is

based on the speakers. Then, as the batteries start to give out, the screen starts to fade

more and more. The Game Boy had a remedy for that though. It had contrast control,

which you could adjust just like turning the volume up and down. So you just kept

twisting that contrast lever to get the picture back.

Sometimes keeping the batteries going for as long as you could was more fun than the

game you were playing. And so, thanks to the wonders of an ancient PC, an Amiga and

a Game Boy, I became drawn in to the world of gaming.

Inevitably, the begging to the parents began. I wanted a magic pixel machine and a

game collection to be envied. All my friends wanted bikes, I wanted electronics. And it

didnt take long before my parents relented and bought me my aforementioned

Amstrad.

The Amstrad was as simplistic as they came, a black and green screen monitor and

games on cassette tapes. Sitting waiting about ten minutes for a game to load (or at

least, it always felt like ten minutes). However, this humble machine actually helped to

bring me and my dad closer, as there was one particular game he enjoyed immensely.

Pinball Simulator. My dad always used to tell me how good he used to be at pinball,

although he never demonstrated this anywhere else but on this game. He scored more

than me on a regular basis, and even managed to get to the third level, which always

eluded me and my lack of patience.

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Pinball Simulator: It had wizards and everything!

One day, it must have infuriated me more than usual, and the cassette with Pinball

Simulator on it ended up smashed to pieces. I cant remember exactly what happened

to it, but I do remember that the evidence ended up hidden behind my wardrobe for

many years, gathering dust.

My dad thankfully forgot about his favourite game however, because he was too busy

feeling proud of himself when he realised that Amstrad games could be copied onto

regular blank cassettes. Cue borrowing lots of games from other people (which baffles

me nowadays, because it hints at the fact that someone else actually owned one of

these machines) and squeezing seven or eight games onto one tape. Of course, we

had to make a note of the times when a different game started on the tape, but luckily

my dads record player and the Amstrad keyboard deck provided handy timers to make

this easier.

This was an era when simpler games were the norm, and I wasted many hours during the summer and winter holidays mashing the keyboard playing some absolute Amstrad classics like Oh Mummy!, Daley Thompsons Decathlon, The Incredible Dizzy, Jet Set Willy, Beach Head, Captain Blood and countless others. All of these games were vastly different, but they all had one specific thing in common. They all came packaged with a little bit of frustration-inducing venom. And they sometimes led me to lose my temper. This led to unimaginable rage at that impossible level, that unachievable target, that

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undefeatable boss. However, as I grew older, patience became something learned and earned through determination, and gaming was a big part of helping me to control my emotions outside of the pixelated world.

Clockwise from top left- Daley Thompsons Decathlon; Beach Head; Jet Set Willy; Incredible Dizzy. This was my life as a kid. This was the height of technological achievement in my eyes. Just try to

imagine it without the colour though as I only had a green screen monitor.

My second gaming console was my first foray into handhelds since mastering Super

Mario Land on that Game Boy. One of my distant relatives gave me an Atari Lynx one

Christmas. I was elated; it was truly a thing of beauty. It had a sleek black design,

slightly reminiscent of Segas handheld behemoth the Game Gear. And while the power

pack to connect it directly to the mains worked, everything went swimmingly. It was also

an unusual boost to my communication with my parents. After a year or so of being

glued to my Amstrad in my bedroom, I could now sit downstairs with my Lynx and watch

television and chat at the same time as playing. There was the occasional row about

electricity usage, but this is completely normal and healthy for any parent / child

relationship, even more so nowadays when technology is rife. Id like to think that when

my little girl grows up that I will be more forgiving of the electricity usage, after the

amount I burned off whilst growing up.

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Anyway, the crux of the story is that my power pack turned out to be more flimsy than

expected, and after only about six months of usage, it ceased to work. And, as any

other Lynx owners will well know, these little machines have a habit of eating batteries

in approximately half an hour. And they require six double-As. My parents habit of

purchasing cheap batteries did not help my cause. Especially since one of the games I

had on the Lynx was Checkered Flag. The name should give away the fact that this was

an F1 game (of sorts), and some of the levels actually required a full thirty-odd laps.

Which six meagre batteries could not handle.

So in the end, I grudgingly accepted that Checkered Flag was out of my battery range,

and stuck with other Lynx classics including Scrapyard Dog, a game which infuriated

me both through becoming increasingly impossible and because of poor spelling as in a

sign in the eponymous scrapyard that read No Trespasin. Seriously, even if youre

only a scrapyard owner, you must need basic spelling skills. Yes, I was that anal at such

a young age. And yes, unfortunately I still am.

Scrapyard Dog: Now I look back at it, this game could have been made on Microsoft Paint.

The only other game I owned for the Lynx was Roadblasters, which is a curious game

involving picking up green dots to keep your fuel gauge up enough to reach each

checkpoint. While this is innocent enough, you could also earn fuel in red globes by

blowing up enemy cars. All this takes place on seemingly normal roads (albeit in a post-

apocalyptic landscape). So this begs the question, is this a futuristic warzone? And if so,

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why are the roads still in such good condition? And where are all of these cars driving

to, since every place on the horizon appears to be on fire or ruined? Or am I just being

pedantic again?

Well it all makes no difference in the end. One day, whilst giving Checkered Flag

another chance with a set of slightly more expensive and durable batteries, I got the

dreaded low battery light about thirty-six laps in. Unbelievable! In a fury, I raced

upstairs, hurled open my window and out went the Lynx, shattering in the alleyway

below.

Checkered Flag: You can blame this game for the death of my Lynx.

Regret overtook me at once. That was a gift, bought by a relative who knew I adored

games. Plus I was coming last in the race anyway, so had no chance of achieving

anything once Id finished. I ran outside and gathered up as many pieces of the console

as I could and hurriedly hid them in nearby bushes. My first handheld was no more,

although I did pop into the bushes more than a year later and discovered evidence of

my crime still lying there, now home to earwigs, slugs and nettles.

This remains the one and only time I ever destroyed something in a rage in that way

(erm, apart from Pinball Simulator, as mentioned earlier). The good news is, my love for

everything videogame continued despite that moment of anger.

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I suddenly realise that I have neglected to actually talk about my life outside gaming too

much. There is a reason for this though. My younger years were not exactly full of

lollipops and rainbows. My parents fought like cat and dog, and the din could sometimes

only be drowned out by becoming immersed in a good game. The alternate reality

provided a method of escape from the madness happening around me. I sometimes

think that in some way my parents realised this. Which is why they kept supplying me

with physical electronic solace to make up for the lack of emotional support.

To this end, my youth was mostly spent plugging away at various games on various

consoles, but following the untimely death of my Lynx and the sudden selling of my

Amstrad by my dad, things briefly went quiet in the world of gaming for me.

Then, when I was ten, one measly week before the summer holidays started, tragedy

struck. I was struck by a car whilst playing down my street. The impact shattered my

right femur and left me hospitalised for the entirety of the holidays.

So, after not being an active gamer for quite a while, I found myself in traction in the

childrens ward at my local hospital. Boredom was a daily occurrence shattered only by

horrific pain when tubes and needles were stuck into me now and again. I still blame

this stint in hospital as the reason I am petrified of needles to this very day.

However, the hospital had one major saving grace. There was a computer on the ward.

An Amiga to be exact. And one particular game would soon be luring me back into the

world of gaming.

That game was Syndicate. Produced by Bullfrog (the same studio that created the

infamous Dungeon Keeper and its sequel along with Theme Park and Theme Hospital),

it was a top-down mission based game where you could basically do whatever the heck

you wanted in a futuristic city. Steal cars, blow stuff up, shoot things, pretty much

anything. Yes, I do think this set the precedent for Grand Theft Auto. It was unlike any

game I had ever played before, but I must admit the intricacies of it elude me now after

so many years. I never played this game other than the time I spent in hospital, along

with another game that helped me while away the hours, Brutal Sports Football. It was

an irreverent, violent, hideously addictive game that mixed sport with violence. So

basically, it was ice hockey on a football pitch.

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Syndicate: Yeah, just casually blowing cars up. Also note random civilians. Take Two Interactive owe this

game a lot!

Thanks to that Amiga, and my best friend Steven bringing his Game Boy in for me to

play on whenever another poor injured child wanted the computer, my time in hospital

went by a little quicker. It was still a very unpleasant experience for a youngster though.

At least most of the other kids could get out of bed and run around whereas I was stuck

with my leg in the air, unable to move for a good month at least. It didnt help that they

kept feeding me awful medicines, the food was terrible (made worse when I was forcing

some chili down my throat and my cousin Nigel decided to tell me that if kidney beans

arent cooked properly they make your kidneys explode) and the doctors and nurses

were pretty horrible.

When the day finally came that the doctors plastered me up to go home, even that

wasnt easy. The plaster covered all of my broken right leg, ran up to go around my

waist and then went half way down my left leg. This didnt leave me much room to twist

or move at all, so I was once again resigned to remaining mostly stationary.

Luckily for me, I still had Stevens Game Boy to keep me occupied as my parents

hoisted my bed downstairs for me to stay in while my bone fully healed. It was a long

healing process, but I cannot remember the exact timescales. When youre young, you

tend to exaggerate time quite a lot. It felt like months, but could surely have not been

that long. Needless to say, it felt like an eternity for a youngster itching to run around

and enjoy his summer holidays.

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Once the plaster was taken off though, the long road to recovery seemed closer than

ever (despite the fact that my damaged leg now resembled a rather poorly looking,

undercooked French fry). Anyway, to celebrate my progress I was awarded with another

new gaming console to encourage me. It was an Atari ST 1200. There was a catch

though. My dad set it up at the other end of my bed to where my head was. To play it Id

have to get my butt up and walking again. Of course I got round this by sitting up shakily

and shuffling to the other end. This was, at least, a kind of progress.

While my medical progress was lumbering along, my gaming prowess was excelling

thanks to some of the wondrous delights on my new console. Rainbow Islands was one

of the games I remember playing the most. Mind you, to this day I still have not

managed to get past level four, which features an infuriatingly difficult boss character (a

giant vampire who shoots vampire bats at you, and if youve played this game Im sure

you feel my pain).

One game that I was insanely good at was Robotron: 2084. I can say with confidence

that this is a game that requires infinite patience to excel at. Fortunately, since I wasnt

really moving around much, I had that infinite patience in abundance. The game

basically featured levels of screens full of enemies, indestructible items and people.

Walk into the people to save them, ignore the indestructible things and shoot everything

else. I tried to play this game again recently and gave up after approximately two

minutes. Yes, being a child with nothing better to do and no adult responsibilities

definitely made playing games like that a lot easier.

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Robotron: 2084: Any idea whats going on? Yeah, me neither. Now imagine trying to play it!

I had plenty of other classics to play on my Atari, like Marble Madness, the revamped

version of Crystal Castles, one of the many ports of Pac-Man, Arkanoid II and Ghouls n

Ghosts.

I also had a copy of Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. This was one of the first games to

court controversy with the anti-violence crowd. Mind you, the box cover didnt do it any

favours either, featuring a scantily clad model with a bulky guy in a leotard stood holding

a sword (an actual sword, no clever wordplay here) behind her. Actually, that probably

boosted sales more than anything else.

I remember this being the first really violent game I played. Sure, Syndicate had a few

explosions and people dying, but in Barbarian you were pitted one-on-one against

another warrior and youd hack at each other with swords. I was so proud of myself

when I perfected the art of the instant kill, where my character would spin around and

lop his opponents head off in one deft movement. Cue a goblin, who would walk on

screen and kick the head off screen whilst dragging my slain enemys carcass off

behind him. Hilarity ensued. Until I got to the final enemy anyway, who was like some

weird spirit or ghost or something. I couldnt even land a hit on him! Decapitation was

out of the question, seemingly. I never did win that woman in the bikini.

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One of my favourite things about my Atari apart from being able to chop peoples head

off had to be the loading times. On the Amstrad, you stuck a cassette into the deck,

waited for the squeaky reels to turn and churn while the loading screen told you to be

patient and then you had to enter a password (usually involving finding a specific word

in a specific paragraph on a specific page in the instruction manual, which made things

difficult when you had a bootleg copy of the game). With the Atari, all I had to do was

pop in the floppy disc and wait for the title screen to boot up. It was so quick it was

almost revolutionary.

My mum was pretty clueless about the whole concept though, and one day she came

home and told me shed bought me this great game that she thought I would love. Well,

the game was Lemmings, and its a bit of a classic.

Lemmings: If you failed this level you really are beyond hope.

The premise is simple enough. Theres a trapdoor, and it opens and out drop cute

lemmings, one by one. Your mission on each level is to utilise the different skills

lemmings can use to get them (or as many of them as possible, at least) to the end

safely. It was great fun.

I was excited by the prospect of owning this game, so when my mum handed me the

box I couldnt wait to give it a whirl. As I looked closer though, I noticed there was a

slight problem. This was the Amiga version of the game. When I tried to explain this, my

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mum was fairly certain it should still work, since the disc looked the same as the Atari

discs. Despite my assurances that it wouldnt work, I was still made to try. Of course, it

didnt work. And so that box gathered dust lying around in my room.

Another useless disc I distinctly remember showed examples of viruses that had been

concocted for seemingly no reason, as Ataris couldnt be hacked into by vengeful

cyber-terrorists. Besides, this was 1995, the only thing cyber-terrorists were terrorising

back then was their nappies. Anyway, some of the viruses included one that flipped the

screen upside down (which can now be achieved on certain versions of Windows with a

simple combination of keys, much to the infuriation of my co-workers), one that ate

away the white screen leaving it all black and one that inverted the mouse controls. It

has to be one of the most pointless discs ever invented, and I still have no idea whether

it was purchased, came with the Atari or was slipped into a pile of games by some

sneaky so-and-so who had made it themselves.

Random discs aside, my Atari days were happy ones and I grew quite attached to the

machine. It was also the first console I owned that connected directly into my television.

Of course, thanks to the angry destruction of my Lynx I now once again retreated into

my room frequently to play games and did not spend much time downstairs with my

parents. My Atari did, however, fall to the wayside in the summer of 1996 when the lure

of the nice weather and spending more time with friends seemed more tempting that

playing the games Id played so many times before.

During this period of the Atari being abandoned, a little bit of Nintendo came into my life.

We acquired a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but I only remember playing

Super Mario Bros. on it. Nintendo were going to have me one way or another though,

and I dived back into the world of handheld gaming with the addition of a Game Boy to

the household.

I was overjoyed to finally have one of these delicious grey lumps of plastic to call my

own, and my game collection quickly grew. I started out with Tetris, of course, a game

so infamous its had various news stories written about how it may actually be beneficial

for young minds due to the puzzle-solving aspect and the bigwigs at Hollywood have

even decided it has enough plot to turn into a sci-fi epic. Count me off the VIP list for

that one, guys. No offense.

Tetris was special though, as it was only the second game I ever got my dad playing.

There was a two-player mode, where you took turns to get scores and tried to beat each

other. I used to beat him quite frequently, but he stuck with it. My main childhood

memories of my dad include playing the aforementioned Pinball Simulator, playing

Tetris and watching Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood films. And playing darts with him.

And he let me watch Evil Dead when I was nine. What an awesome dad. No, seriously.

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Tetris: What are you doing man? How did you let it get this bad? Level 0? You suck. This game has given

you 155 points out of pity.

Moving on from my Tetris-inspiring bonding sessions, however, I also added my old

favourite Super Mario Land to the collection, along with a few choice others, including

Muhammad Ali Boxing, which was a pretty fun little boxing simulator where you start at

the bottom of the world rankings and then slug your way to the top of the pile, increasing

your stats with training between each fight. The only downside was you played *as* Ali,

so you never got the chance to fight him. I also had Cliffhanger, a platform game based

on the movie and an utterly terrible game. Just like the majority of movie tie-in games,

this one suffered from rapid release syndrome, a curious ailment that occurs when

developers rush to get a product on the shelves whilst the movie in question is still in

the public eye.

Ready for a videogame history lesson? Tough, youre getting one anyway. The biggest

sufferer of the chronic rapid release syndrome was E.T. back in 1982. Atari mass-

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produced copies of this game for the Atari 2600 (which was a tad before my time),

expecting it to sell millions because of its tie-in with the ultra-popular movie. Sadly, the

game was terrible, and frequently pops up in lists of the worst video games ever made.

The plot of the game was pretty much devoid of anything from the movie, and it was

cobbled together in just five and a half weeks to be rushed out for Christmas.

The fallout from critics and the excessive amount of money lost by Atari (somewhere in

the region of $100million) nearly called time on the video game industry as a whole.

Luckily for us (well, those of us who love video games), the industry bounced back and

is roaring along nicely at the moment, with lots of independent developers constantly

entering the arena thanks to mediums such as Steam and PlayStation Network. Hurrah!

The E.T. incident also gave us some fantastic news stories, with rumours floating

around for years that Atari had dumped thousands unsold copies of the game into a

landfill somewhere in New Mexico. Those rumours turned out to be true, after the buried

games were discovered in 2014. Expect a movie about this to be released sometime

soon.

Erm, where was I? Oh yes, my Game Boy. Another game I had was Speedball 2, which

was an ultra-violent futuristic sports game where you get points for scoring goals or

hideously injuring your opponents. I also had a game called Humans, which was like a

clone of Lemmings where you have to guide cavemen to the end of each level. I get a

feeling the developers of that one were poking fun at us in some way, making us direct

a bunch of dummies to safety.

I spent so much time on the Game Boy, in fact, that my dad decided to sell the NES to a

colleague. Strangely enough, as he was cycling to work with the NES in his backpack

he got sideswiped by a lorry and had to spend some time recovering at home. Luckily

for me, my dad survived the ordeal, but I have no idea if the NES did. Either way, I

didnt really miss it. It remains one of the only consoles I never spent much time playing

along with the SNES. Not that I dont like Nintendo, I was just too invested in what was

to come into my life next. Namely a spiky blue mammal with red trainers who could run

quite briskly.

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You guessed it

During a trip to the local supermarket one day, I was hypnotised by a game I

recognised, but had only played briefly before. There was a mini-tournament taking

place involving Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, depending

where in the world you live). Yes, this game had already been out four years by this

point, and its successor had already been out for two years, but this supermarket was

showcasing it anyway. I think the Mega Drive had been repackaged and was for sale at

a cheaper price due to the increasing pressure coming from Sonys first foray into the

videogame world, the PlayStation.

I begged my mother to let me stand in the queue and have a go, and she relented, if

only to get some peace and walk around the store on her own to get her shopping done

without me picking various things up and asking for them. The level was Chemical Plant

Zone, and I excelled, I mesmerised, I rocked! And I was hooked. The Mega Drive was

now number one on my Christmas wish list. Its only now, when I look back at this

period of my childhood I realise I was always one step behind. While I yearned for

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Segas machine, the PS was making shockwaves with its slew of next-gen titles like

Wipeout!, Rayman, Tomb Raider and plenty of others.

Unfortunately, my parents were not so keen on spending the money on a Mega Drive.

They were keener on me going out to play more, spending more time in the perpetually

drizzly English countryside. Well, Ill be honest, I used to really enjoy being out and

about and playing in the long grass down by the riverside, and mooching around the

swing set at the top of my street with a couple of other friends discussing teachers and

football and music. I was never a completely anti-social child, but thoughts of computer

games were always hovering in my mind.

The begging for a Mega Drive continued unabated, and I circled one in the shopping

catalogue as a hint. I think the months of harassment paid off, because I got my Mega

Drive for Christmas after all. I remember the joy when I realised what I was unwrapping,

and the ultimate jubilation when I realised that Id been bought a copy of Sonic the

Hedgehog 2 as well. My parents may have been dysfunctional, but they knew how to

listen.

I was plugged into that Mega Drive for months. I remember the nerves of steel required

to beat the final level in Sonic 2, the aptly named Death Egg Zone. You have no rings

(the only protection you have from one-hit kills, if you happen to have never played a

Sonic game before), and you have to beat two bosses in a row, both of whom have

choreographed moves that need to be memorised. Defeating them was an exercise in

repetition as I would hit the jump instead of the duck button for the millionth time and

Silver Sonic knocked me for six for the millionth time. Deep breath, still plenty of lives

left. Silver Sonic defeated, you move on to face Dr. Robotnik (this was before the days

of the hilariously badly named Dr. Eggman). So, he basically leaps into a humongous

robotic version of himself and fires missiles and his own arms at you. And he was big. I

mean, nearly as tall as the screen big. I remember staring in awe at this gigantic boss

and wondering just how you were meant to beat him. I think it took me about six

attempts to start hitting him in the right place. Then another six to actually kill him. The

sweet taste of success was especially succulent after such a hard-fought battle.

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Worst moments of my life. Im sitting here squirming just looking at these pictures.

Moving on from Segas talisman, there were other brilliant and unsung Mega Drive

heroes in my collection. One of my favourite slices of insanity was called General

Chaos, bought on a whim whilst on a rare foray away from Bishop (a little place called

Bishop Auckland, once famous for having an awesome amateur football team, now

famous for being a pit of misery). The gameplay was, to be honest, limited at best. You

played the game as the eponymous General, who is fighting a war against Major

someone. Catastrophe or something else puntastic like that. You pick a team of five

soldiers to fight each battle. You could have five grunts, who were evenly balanced all

round, or a group of stealthy soldiers like snipers and bomb experts, or a group of

demolition experts. You get the picture. It was utter chaos, totally living up to the name

of the game. It was also quite fun too, although I dont think I ever managed to win the

war. All those lives lost, for nothing.

Another Mega Drive stalwart that I could regularly be found playing was Golden Axe. Of

course, this game predated the Mega Drive by quite a bit, but it was on this console that

I played it again. And again. And again. I can now safely say that I could probably beat

Golden Axe without losing a single bar of health. As long as I get to play as the dwarf.

The premise was simple enough, a side-scrolling hack n slash game where the bigger

the enemy was, the harder they fell. Mix in some dragons and magic and youve got a

classic fantasy game. It was super fun, if a bit repetitive, and I still find myself going

back to it now and again when nostalgia grabs hold of me.

There was also James Pond II, the sequel to a game Id never played before. This

game was very bright and colourful though, and I played it so much I learned every little

nook and cranny. Eventually I figured out how to get to the final boss instantly and

complete the game in less than five minutes, so it became kind of pointless to play it

any more. This is living proof that you can actually play a game too much.

I also remember renting a game called Bubsy as well. Its kind of like a Sonic clone,

where you play a bobcat (called Bubsy, funnily enough) and travel through various

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levels collecting balls of yarn. It passed the time, although I enjoyed it a lot more as a

kid than when I tried to play it again recently.

One of my favourite childhood TV shows also had a game on the Mega Drive.

Animaniacs was irreverent, insane and had plenty of jokes in it that I probably didnt

understand when I was a kid. In other words, it was just like the show.

There was one particular curio I owned called Powermonger, which was released by

Bullfrog (those guys again) and designed by the legendary Peter Molyneux (OBE).

Peter has made some of the most memorable strategy and God games of all time. Its

an impressive list which includes Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper,

Black & White (and its sequel) and the Fable series. Hes one of gamings best known

names.

Powermonger was an army strategy game where you control what starts out as a small

army, and direct them around landscapes overthrowing towns, villages and cities and

battling other armies until you own the majority of the map. Then you move on to a

slightly larger map with more enemies and less resources and do it again. It was quite a

delightful little development, and sometimes I found myself watching the villagers in the

neutral towns living out their lives, making boats and raising sheep for slaughter.

Occasionally being invaded by marauding armies. At that point Id realise that was what

I was meant to be doing and had missed a great opportunity. The overall game was

pretty vast, and I never came anywhere close to really taking it to its peak. I do have the

game lying around though, just begging my now more (supposedly) mature and

(questionably) strategic mind to take it on.

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Powermonger: Lookit all dem angels. Its a massacre! The sheep dont seem too bothered.

Bullfrog dug their claws into me yet again on my Mega Drive too. When I had exhausted

my interest in the games I owned already, I used to insist upon a trip to Ritz. Which was

basically a budget version of Blockbuster (who, unsurprisingly, bought Ritz out before

practically going bust themselves swings and roundabouts). There were no DVDs

back in these days, the racks were filled with video tapes (Google it). I would always

request the same game, and my dad would begrudgingly rent it time and time again.

Theme Park. Oh, how that fairground music drove him insane! How he tried to get me to

rent something different. Anything. Anything but that game again. Sorry, dad.

Theme Park was something of an obsession for me. The premise was as simple as you

wanted it to be. Build rides and attractions, ramp up the ticket price as necessary and

watch the cold, hard cash come rolling in. I could just build up a park, start turning over

a sizeable profit and then just sit back and watch people bankrupt themselves to enjoy

the Ghost Ride and Super Spinner, and then spend the last of their pennies losing at

the Arcades or the Gun Shoot. Seriously, I would play one level for hours just to get my

bankroll up to something ludicrous. But as soon as the levels hit medium or hard

difficulty, I struggled to make any impact upon the poor denizens. They just didnt have

the cash I needed. And so, the game lost its lustre fairly quickly. Which is why I only

ever liked to rent it.

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There was another classic that I used to harass my dad into renting for me on a regular

basis too, a war-themed strategy shoot-em-up called Cannon Fodder. I first heard about

it thanks to Steven (as my tale wears on, youll see he introduced me to a lot of the

games that nudged me into the category of video game enthusiast), and it was he who

told me about the theme tune actually having lyrics. He knew this because hed played

the original Amiga version.

Cannon Fodder was something of a curio at the time, combining shooting things with

strategy. It was a top-down set-up, and you clicked where on the screen you wanted

your soldiers to head to next, all the while having to be wary for hidden enemies and

booby traps and quicksand.

One fun little aspect of the game is that every time you completed a mission, your

troops would be given an increase of rank. That also made it all the more heart-

wrenchingly tragic when one of your little heroes gets killed. All of the soldiers always

come out in the same order, and you start with Jools, named after the lead programmer,

and Jops, who was named for the guy who did level design and helped with the music. I

remember I used to always be able to get those original two soldiers you complete the

first mission with all the way up to Major on a regular basis.

The game caused outrage in some media outlets, with one particular rag calling it an

insult to veterans, and a couple of MPs even waded in on the argument. They all

missed the point, of course. Cannon Fodder is blatantly anti-war. Theres nothing in

here glorifying death, especially not when one of your own soldiers or an enemy soldier

is lying bleeding to death and screaming in pain. That doesnt really say to me, were

saying war is just a game, isnt this fun?

Yes, there are some dark humoured moments, but that just goes to underline the main

point. When you lose one of your soldiers, the screen cuts to the countryside, where

there is a long, long line of soliders waiting to go to war. As the line grows smaller when

you lose soldiers, gravestones also appear on the hillsides. A constant reminder that

yes, those soldiers did die. And now they lie for all of their descendants and

contemporaries to see.

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Cannon Fodder: I always found this quite harrowing. Despite the black comedy of the Home and Away

scores.

As I progressed through the game, the missions started to become of a difficulty that

was beyond my skills at the time, and since there was more pressing matters to attend

to, like gearing up to moving from primary (grade) school to secondary (high) school.

That didnt mean I was going to be slowing down my gaming, though. It meant I was

going to have to get my primary school friends involved more before we all potentially

moved to different schools.

I was missing something important though. Some top notch two player games. Luckily,

the Mega Drive catered for that. I remember one night Steven was staying over, and we

had a trip out to pick a game to rent. Aside from me picking up Cannon Fodder for us

both to take turns on, we also spied up a game called Two Crude Dudes. Its probably

not one youve heard of, but it really did take co-op gaming to the next level. Its a side-

scrolling beat-em-up where you play as two burly (incredibly burly) dudes remarkably

similar to Duke Nukem, beating up bad guys including evil versions of Santa (called

Atnas) using your fists or whatever comes to hand. Including fire hydrants, cars, other

enemies or even the guy youre playing with. I never played that game much after that

one night, even when I bought the game years later. It remains one of those wonderful,

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one-off things where me and my friend spent the night laughing like morons at this

game and how absolutely ludicrous it was. Ludicrous and fun.

Two Crude Dudes: Man, you need to lay off the steroids.

There were other options in my non-rented, actually owned collection too. I had WWF

RAW, a quite excellent wrestling game where you could choose from twelve whole

wrestlers! Count em, twelve! The game could handle four characters on screen at a

time, which made for some fun encounters when you played a tag-team match. The

best thing me and Steven discovered was that you could knock the referee out and then

do whatever the hell you wanted. And there were weapons hidden under the ring.

Chairs and buckets (buckets?) were two of the weapons available for you to go and

beat the snot out of your opponent with. However, as with pretty much all games with

fighting, we had more fun beating each other up than actually playing the game

properly. One misdirected punch in Stevens characters direction would result in us

slapping each other silly while our computer opponents seemingly looked on bemused,

trying to intervene.

Another fighting game I had has gone on to achieve some kind of infamy amongst some

old work colleagues of mine. It was called Pit Fighter, and the name kind of says it all.

You choose one of three characters and then dive into the seedy underworld of street

fighting. Pit Fighter was unique at the time, since it used digitized live actors, a

technique which was later made much more famous by the initial games in the Mortal

Kombat series.

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Of course, side-scrolling beat-em-ups were the best for two player action on the older

consoles. Golden Axe, which I mentioned earlier, is a pretty good co-op experience. I

still think, however, that the ultimate buddy game series on the Mega Drive (and

possibly on any console) is the Streets of Rage collection. All three games are fast, fun,

and looked really sleek for the time. The plots are incredibly flimsy, yet still manage to

outshine 90% of Hollywoods past and current action movie output. The bosses were

insane, the henchmen came thick and fast and the special moves were epic. The main

bad guy presiding over all of the events in the series is one of the best in gaming as

well. The mysterious Mr. X, who you beat the hell out of in the first game, throw out of a

window in the second game and then beat up a robot version of in the third game. Hey,

I told you the plots were flimsy! But I bet if youve never played them before you want to

now.

Streets of Rage 2: If you owned a Mega Drive and didnt play this, you didnt really own a Mega Drive.

On that note, I do believe it is time for this opening chapter of my life to come to a close.

Prepare yourselves for Part II, where therell be drama, excitement, intrigue and the

Sony invasion!