Personal Gaming History

My first memories of computer games were those of watching the son of some friends of the family playing Duck Hunt, Street Fighter and a game like (if it wasn’t) Cannon Fodder.

The first games I actually played were school ones that I played on the school computers in years one and two. I can’t really remember the names of any of the games (aside from Pod in which you told what looked like a tomato with a face what to do and if it was a valid command it would perform a relevant action) but I remember in my favorite game you went round a platformed dungeon as a wizard and could turn into a rabbit or a monkey.

When my parents got divorced and my Dad moved away (I was six at the time) he bought a Sega Mega Drive with Sonic 2 and Lemmings. As time went on he bought a number of other games including Cool Spot, James Pond 3 (my favorite Mega Drive game), James Pond: Aquatic Games, Corporation (horrible game), Cool Spot Goes to Hollywood and Mega Bomberman.

I moved house when I turned seven (two days after my birthday so that I could have a party when I actually had friends to invite) and made friends with my next door neighbor who had the largest collection of games I’ve ever seen (or at least he did last I saw him) and I would regularly go over and play computer games with him.

I was eight when my Mum remarried and I was presented with my first console, a Nintendo Gameboy with Kirby’s Dreamland. In 1995 we got a brand new PC on which my first game was Oddballz (brought to you by the makers of the Catz and Dogz series) in which you played with a pet……..critter. Not long after (can’t remember exactly but I don’t think I was any older than nine) I bought a Sega Master System with a number of games from my next-door neighbor.

When I was eleven I managed to get my hands on copies of Pokemon Red and Blue (bought a year before they were due for release over here from Game which had a single copy of each) which definitely rank quite highly in my favorite games of all time.

After about a year of playing other peoples I bought a N64 off my Dad’s friend and fell in love with Mario 64, Mario Kart and Golden Eye, later on I would also fall in love with Perfect Dark and Super Smash Bros.. Not long after getting my N64 my step brother gave me and my sister his SNES with Rock And Roll Racing, Super Mario All-stars and some football game that I never played, I also managed to buy Kirby’s Fun Pack.

After going to a friend’s leaving party (he was moving back to Hungary) and trying out Soul Caliber on his Dreamcast I decided to buy myself one (I really don’t understand why they did so badly) and my favorite games for it were Phantasy Star Online, Soul Caliber and Head Hunter.

I got a Gameboy Advance for my fourteenth birthday on which my favorite game was Zone Of The Enders: Fist Of Mars, a fairly easy game with an excellent storyline and some nice mech (Orbital Frame) ideas (picture below is of Testament which was the Orbital frame that belonged to the main character).

I bought a Gamecube shortly after it was released and I adored Super Smash Bros. which was one of the first games I got for it (as well as Burnout and Rogue Leader).

Two or three years later I bought an Xbox (I wanted a DVD player and I thought I may as well pay and extra £30-40 and get a DVD player that can play games) which I use primarily for DVD purposes but I have developed a small collection of Xbox games including the always popular Halo and Halo 2.

These days the game I play the most is Final Fantasy XI in which I play as Dragoon and dislike play most other jobs now due to me missing my little pet dragon (also shown below).

I have way too many computer games, 5 SNES games, 12 or so for the Master System, around 16 for the Mega Drive, 20ish for the Dreamcast, 30 odd for the N64, about 40 spread across various levels of Gameboy, at least 26 for the Xbox and over 60 for the Gamecube (I have no idea how many PC games I have) and also at one point I had a Playstation and about 9 games. I think that just about covers my gaming history, feel free to correct me if I got a year wrong or something.