Fond early gaming memories

WatchTower · 6 May 2007 at 02:39

As far back as I remember I’ve had something for video games I must have been about Six I used to go to Wales to a little place called Pensarn near Rhyl. Those two places have really become run down now it’s sad as I have childhood memories of being there. Anyway the game that stands out the most from my youngest days is Star Wars a 3D shootem up where you where in the cockpit. (To me back then that game rocked)

Between the ages of about eight and nine were the Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 years. They were bought by my farther. I remember he horrible nose they made when the games were loading and I loved a game called Joe Blade. That cool Star Wars arcade game also made to the Commodore 64. Amazing I knew back then nothing was more fun than playing video games.

When I was about eleven or twelve I saved up for a Sega Master System. I’d seen the console at a friend of mine and it had Hang on and some other games built into it and I just loved playing Double Dragon on it. I saved money from Trick or treat and penny for the guy and pocket money to get it. I remember the day I bought it I was so excited I even remember that I was a little short of cash but a kind lady that served me at Woolworths helped me out and the console was mine my very own Sega Master system. Unlike my friends Sega Master System mine had a much better game built in Alex Kid: In Miracle World.

Games that stand out in my mind for the Master System was Alex Kid: In Miracle World, Sonic The Hedgehog, a Wonder boy game, Golden Axe and Mortal combat. Fond memories of Sega no wonder I have my sweet spot for the company and get angry when people run them down. Sega is a part of my inner child soul.

I could go on for ever about my Snes, Atari Jaguar and my Amgia CD32 days and on but I'll let you guys talk about you interesting fond gaming memories.

mattpj · 6 May 2007 at 03:44

I am from stoke on trent... too many similar things from my childhood too! Thanks for helping me remember them, I used to love Rhyl so much just for the Arcades.

I got a master system at 7 I think.. wow that was so amazing playing things like Shinobi and Altered beast at home

Joebob · 6 May 2007 at 08:16

The master system did have a built in game but it was a bit like Snake as I recall, I do remember having Hang-on although I'm failry certain it came with it on the credit card sized game cartridges which slotted in the front!

My earliest memories are of Binatone Sports (or something similar - very vague memories!), but then the first actual console we owned was the Atari 2600. My Dad bought it for himself, but soon got bored and it kind of just ended up in my brothers room where it lived happily ever after

. I have fond memories of Space Invaders, Frogger, Pac-Man & a Tank battle game, but my favourite game was sky-diving as I was still quite young so I just used to like the sound when the little men splatted on the ground.

A few years later we got a C64. My brother, being 2 years older, knew more about what was good than me and it's a good job too as I remember the guy in the store trying to convince my Dad to buy an Amstrad but my Bro insisted it had to be a C64. Anyway, we got it home, fired it up before and loaded the free game we got which was Daley Thompsons Decathalon. I can still recall the intense anticipation as I watched the load page slowley drawing one row at a time down the page, and I thought wow look at that picture of DT it's amazing

. The C64 gave me some of my best gaming memories for sure. Waiting 5 or 10 minutes for a game to load only for it to sometimes crash just before booting - this is why load times on modern consoles don't bother me I guess.

Anyway, several years after that we sold the C64 and bought a Master System (inc' Duck Hunt and Light Phaser) - then a Mega Drive and a SNES. From that point on is where we started buying our own consoles n stuff, so it was an Acorn Electron for me followed by an Amiga 500 which I bought purely for Elite Plus. Others have included Atari Lynx, Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PSP and Nintendo Wii, as well as the countless incarnations of gaming PC's I have bought or built over the years - started way back with a 386 (DX66).

Oh happy times

lordrobs · 6 May 2007 at 09:39

Not my earliest memories of gaming but ones that stood out for me at a young ish age.

Atari 2600- Major cramp from playing Enduro Racer simply due to the amount of pressure you had to put on the button. Worlds wort joystick ever! Also playing Ghostbusters and simply thinking WTF

ZX Spectrum- 15 minutes to load up a game of Chase HQ, half the time it would just hang and I'd have to rewind the tape and start again

Was a demon on Bullseye with the light gun!

Mastersystem II- Alex kid built in. Many happy days playing Sonic, Chuck Rock, etc. Only console my mum ever enjoyed playing.

Amiga- Entire gorgeous summer days spent staring at a screen playing Syndicate for 10 hours at a time with a mate of mine. My mum dedicatedly supplying us with Pizza, home made sausage rolls and all sorts of goodies.

PS- Sneaking in to the living room at 6am the day after I bought it to get a game on Destruction Derby before school.

Amusement arcade in Hastings- First time I played Daytona USA. It was the full on moving cockpit one :cool:

Was actually quite good at it too for a kid. Sideways all the way around turn 3, who cares that it wasn't the quickest way, you looked the dogs danglies doing it

optimus · 6 May 2007 at 09:52

I had an acorn electron...with Chucky Egg, and Arcadians.

ah.....memorys.

quackers · 6 May 2007 at 10:05

i got a spectrum for christmas, think i was around 7ish. Fantastic computer at the time, i can rememeber the speccy v amstrad v commodoe 64 arguments with your mates

Playing Golden axe, the original outrun and new zealand story on the arcades in southport

And i'm collecting retro consoles now

msmalls74 · 6 May 2007 at 10:39

My first and fondest gaming memories is playing Caveman and AstroWars on those Grandstand (i think) Tabletop games. Then a little later i got a ZX81 With Avenger, i used to love that game, used to like the big mushroom cloud explosions when you blew up a power station or something like that. When i got my first ZX spectrum played jetpac and thought how awesome it looked, i used to love ultimate games, think most of my time on the speccy was playing knightlore, head over heels, sabrewulf oh and of course Elite. My other fondest memory was when i got a speccy 128 playing starglider and showing me mates how it compared with 48k version. In those days it seemed to have more of a WOW factor, eg Speech in ghostbusters, then in starglider, no colour clashing in shadow warriors, etc dont seem to have that wow factor anymore in games

Loved my ST and Amiga and all the other computers and consoles ive owned, but im sure when i look back it was when gaming was in its infancy i enjoyed it the most

Needles · 6 May 2007 at 10:42

first machine I had was a c64, it was excellent, all the old ocean and system 3 games. I also remember playing street fighter 1 in the arcades.

NorthstaNder · 6 May 2007 at 10:49

12 years old, being presented with a Spectrum 48k by my Dad and promptly getting so excited I threw up :eek:

First game I played on it was Football Manager by Kevin Toms and it gave me many many happy years of gaming. Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, Atic Atac, Football Director, Match Day 1 & 2, The Sentinal. Blimey...I could go on!

n3crius · 6 May 2007 at 11:06

Dad bringing home the Amstrad CPC 464.

Always remember him just coming back from town and suprising me with it.

He would often buy cassettes, but only the ones that scored really well in the Amstrad mags of the time (reviews being an alien concept to me as a kid, but he always explained why he'd made the purchase y'see). In contrast I just wanted to try and test every game I spotted in town, on the newsagent budget rack, or from a friends collection.

Some of my favourites had to be:
Batman (the isometric 'Head over Heels' clone from Ocean),
Technician Ted,
Wriggler,
Special Operations,
Turrican,
SuperPipelineII,
Codename Matt,
Tau Ceti,
Get Dexter,
Jewels of Darkness (Level 9 computing).

My dad spent an age working out a text adventure called Heroes of Karn. He solved it with a mate who he worked with, I think they would piece clues together during the day or something. All I know is he actually mapped out the rooms on our kitchen wall. Always thought that was cool.

I have a load of memories from that machine. Back before the Amiga, and the consoles I'd own, the PC's, there was this one machine that always wins my heart.

Amstrad CPC

Mr Men · 6 May 2007 at 11:08

Yeah Spectrum 48k was my first machine, games I most remember are Football Manager, Attic Attac, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Stop the Express (grrrr) Sabre Wulf, Enduro Racer, Match Point, Match Day II, Emlyn Hughes Soccer, also remember having a friend who was one of the few who had a double cassette player so he would churn out C90 tapes filled with games, great fun trying to find the start of each game

Wrathamon · 6 May 2007 at 11:13

n3crius said:
Batman (the isometric 'Head over Heels' clone from Ocean)

Batman wasn't a 'clone' of HoH - Batman was the first isometric game programmed by Jon Ritman, with graphics by Bernie Drummond. Head over Heels was their second

I started off in 1983, with a ZX Spectrum 48K, and first game Hungrey Horace! Great machine, and got a ZX Spectrum +2 in 1987 or so. Then my first Sam Coupé in 1993. 8 bit's still rule

msmalls74 · 6 May 2007 at 11:14

Wrathamon said:
Batman wasn't a 'clone' of HoH - Batman was the first isometric game programmed by Jon Ritman, with graphics by Bernie Drummond. Head over Heels was their second

I started off in 1983, with a ZX Spectrum 48K, and first game Hungrey Horace! Great machine, and got a ZX Spectrum +2 in 1987 or so. Then my first Sam Coupé in 1993. 8 bit's still rule

Sam coupe

Wow always wanted one of them!!

Wrathamon · 6 May 2007 at 11:17

msmalls74 said:
Sam coupe Wow always wanted one of them!!

I still develop for it

I'll pop a photo in the Retro Consoles And Games thread in a few mins!

wannabedamned · 6 May 2007 at 11:18

Joebob said:
The master system did have a built in game but it was a bit like Snake as I recall, I do remember having Hang-on although I'm failry certain it came with it on the credit card sized game cartridges which slotted in the front!

The credit card slot, I used to have teddy boy to go in there, It was a good game considering

Also, There was a maze puzzle hidden in the master system, If you turned on the console and held down some buttons, the screen would side step and a maze game with a snail appeared

Built into my particular system, I had 2 games, Hangon and duck Hunt where you used the gun to shoot ducks, and a dog would collect your kills. Great fun!

--

My earliest gaming memories were probably from either my Atari, Solaris was a fantastic game.

Or from playing Rastan at my friends house on his Spectrum +2.

--

My earliest PC gaming experience was on a 386 computer, It had on it windows 3.1. But I could play a fantastic game on it Called MAX, Which stood for Mechanized Assault and eXploration, It was a turn based overhead strategy game.

Theres a link to the game on gamespot.
http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/max/index.html

No game ever beat Civilization though, The original one. Even the sequels didnt live up to it. Fantastic game, I spent many times up until 2 in the morning trying to beat the mongols

n3crius · 6 May 2007 at 11:21

Wrathamon said:
Batman wasn't a 'clone' of HoH - Batman was the first isometric game programmed by Jon Ritman, with graphics by Bernie Drummond. Head over Heels was their second

I started off in 1983, with a ZX Spectrum 48K, and first game Hungrey Horace! Great machine, and got a ZX Spectrum +2 in 1987 or so. Then my first Sam Coupé in 1993. 8 bit's still rule

Well I didn't know that, that's good to know. I always thought the Batman game was excellent. But so hard.

~Stevief~ · 6 May 2007 at 11:24

Out of all the consoles ect i've had the Amiga 500 was the best, I remember going to school when swapping games with 15 or so disks per game

I also remember being addicted to a game on the C64 called Midnight Resistance, damm I played that game for weeks.

Looking back the funniest memory is playing TMNT on the spectrum, I was prob about 10 at the time and got so angry at dying all the time I started to hit the keys with my hands, then up popped "cheat mode enabled" I never did find the correct cheat code but mashing the keys always worked

Mr Latte · 6 May 2007 at 11:41

Have to agree with a lot of the stories already posted. Beginning to look like a 30's+ club this...

Our Generation
Remember we are of a generation that seen the birth and growth of the whole video games / computer industry something the youngsters or teenagers of today wont ever experience. We are also the addicts of such devices having spent the best part of our lives using them.

My story covers some of the things already said above with fond memories of:

Atari
Night Driver / Breakout / Space Invaders / Combat / River Raid

ZX Spectrum
Chuckie Egg / Alchemist / Jet Pack / Sabre Wolf / Knight Lore / Attic Attack / 3D Deatchcshase / Manic Miner / Jet Set Willy and so many many more.

C64 Audio
I remember the C64 blowing me away mostly for its superior looking games but mainly with its midi sound capabilities which really made it stand out. Ocean Loading theme/ Rambo, Last Ninja, damn so many C64 had inspiring musicians...

Amiga Changes Everything
The Amiga for taking things to a new level "Defender Of The Crown" just blew all my class mates away seeing it in an Electric Store. Probably the biggest technology jump weve seen since from one platform to another.

Arcades Come Home / Cute Characters Are Born
Then the consoles which definately brought the arcades or cetainly better looking conversions of the arcades to the home and the birth of Mario/Sonic and many other franchises.

Gaming Ability Becomes Technology Agility
PC gaming for the money pit that it is. Yet with so many good things about it and still yet so many wrong things with it.

Big Boys Deuce It Out
All to todays systems that are always a debate and yet with more technological games many of them are over too soon with limited replay appeal or suffer from the seen it all before, nothing new here syndrome.
Graphics/Visuals has never been so critical in determining if a game is good or bad yet because weve as a generation have always looked to bigger/beter but its the exact opposite to how it all started when gameplay was essiential and games couldnt rely on graphics or audio as support for entertainment...

I suppose the next generation will have the same feelings for games of today but when they look back at them and then try them our judgment of how they then are and what our memories of how good they were seem to differ.

The reason is being a kid and how you like a game is different to being an adult and remembering how you liked it yet now judge it differently. This is why so many remembered stories will say things like "Dad bought it but soon got fed up with it" Perhaps also why the Wii is loved by kids but many adults quickly bore of it...

As adults we want the big visuals the cinamatic expereience new ideas or features, we still yearn for new excitment from games yet still in childrens eyes what matters is the gameplay and "fun" a game or system can give.
Perhaps with age we get more judgementle...

V1N · 6 May 2007 at 12:13

Oh wow, this thread brings back some memories.

I used to play on mates ZX81, until finally, in 1982, I got a brand spanking new 48k Spectrum.

There were almost no games out at the time (early adopter even then, so I can cut the PS3 some slack)

I had the Horizons tape, which had some breakout clone on there, written in basic... and I had Hungry Horace! For Christmas that year, I got "Penatrator" (lol @ the name now) which was a Scramble clone.

That old Speccy did me proud. I had a Currah Microspeech Cart after a while, which gave games like Buck Rogers a voice.

After that I upgraded to the C64, and got a disk drive, a 1541-II, and a disk turbo system.... so games loaded in seconds rather than minutes
The C64 was GREAT.

After that came the Amiga 500. Got mine with Workbench 1.3, and 512k ram (I nearly typed MB there)
Cost me £75 at the time for an extra 512k trapdoor expansion.
I remember upgrading the... was it a fatter agnus? Gave me all 1mb as chip ram, fitting a kickstart switcher, with Kickstart 2.... by the end, my Amiga had an A5000 board, with a full (not EC) 68020 and 6881 FPU, 4mb 32bit ram, and 3mb 16bit ram... three scsi HDDs hanging out the side... and and and... fantastic. A proper enthusiasts machine.

Then I got a CD32, and an SX-1 expansion, so it could be used like an A1200, with keyboard/mouse/IDE HDD/floppy etc... and enjoy those fancy AGA games.... playing Gloom, and squinting to try and make it look as good as the PC Doom on a mates 386. Had the CD32/SX1 "networked" with a parallel cable.. PARNET

so I could access the CD32 CD drive on my A500, and access the bigger HDDs of my A500 on the CD32.

What else... bought a Playstation 1/2, keep upgrading PCs, which started life as a PII300 with an ATi Xpert@play card.... soon replaced with Voodoo2, and the rest is history.

Sorry, this was meant to be about early gaming memories, not early machines... but reading this thread brought out some nostalgia... I think I may have to dig my C64 out later, and hook up that massive disk drive, and see if I can remember how it works

Hmmm, I could plug the C64 into the Bravia 40"... and start a "show us your C64 setup" thread

Anyway, after reading this, it's nice to know I'm not the oldest visitor to these forums!

V1N.

JaFFa · 6 May 2007 at 13:59

yer a show us yer 80's game machine setup would be sweet.

It was all about the 128k. Thats a lot of K.

Kempston for the win.

I love how back then I would whince if I had to play a game with a keyboard now everyone yearns for the day we can use them again on consoles.