My Gaming Journey

My Gaming Journey – Part 3 – 32/64bit Era

This era of gaming is where things started to get a little more varied. This would essentially be the Playstation/Saturn/N64 era of gaming. Though I am not sure I have ever even seen a Saturn, much less played one. Playstation definitely dominated this era of games, but for my part, I stuck with Nintendo. I also started really pushing into PC gaming as well, but I covered all my PC history last year.

The Nintendo 64 was the first console I bought with my own money. I was working by this time, and had plenty of free flowing cash. I forget exactly which store I bought it from, but I can say I got a branded carry bad for free when I bought it. The first game I got for it was Cruisin’ USA. I had been playing a lot of Cruisin’ USA at the arcade and wanted to be able to play it at home too, which I did, a lot.

I imagine the system also included Mario 64. Some of the notable titles I remember really enjoying for the N64 included

Cruisin’ USA
Mario 64
Mario Kart 64
Mischief Makers
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Goldeneye

Man, Goldeneye was such a great classic game. It looks pretty janky these days with its blocky polygons, but it was so fun both single player and multi player.

But more notable maybe is Mischief Makers. I played the original, and it’s probably my favorite game on the system, but later I picked up a Japanese copy for fairly cheap while off at college along with a Japanese Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix. These are notable if only because they were the first time I actually “modded” a console in any way. Granted, it’s an easy mod. Nintendo games are region free, but the carts are shaped differently. The US consoles have these notches inside to prevent inserting Japanese carts. I could modify the carts, or modify the system, since I had two cartridges, it made sense to just chop the tabs out of the slot in the system.

I also wrote a GameFAQs FAQ for that Disney Mix game, it may still be the only FAQ for that game.

I don’t remember owning a PS1 until later, I want to say I did most of my Playstation 1 gaming on the PS2, which I will get to next post. My friend had a Playstation though, so we played it some there. Most notably, there was a weekend where I borrowed it though, he was out of town, my parents and brother were out of town, I had the whole place to myself, because I had to work. But when I wasn’t at work, I played through a very large chunk of Final Fantasy VII.

I didn’t have time to finish it sadly, not on the Playstation. Eventually I got a copy for the PC, and played through it there. In case you are unaware, Final Fantasy VII is highly regulated by gamers as one of the greatest games ever made. And it definitely had me hooked.

I am sure I played a lot of other PS1 titles, but I can’t really remember many besides Metal Gear Solid and Mega Man Legends. I kind of just skipped the PS1 Generation in a way, though I did play catch up a bit later.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, this would be the last console I would own from them for a while. I got way more into PC gaming and went with the PS2 and Dreamcast during the follow up generation, but that’s for next week’s post.

My Gaming Journey – Part 2 – 16bit Era and the Game Boy

Aug 11th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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The natural progression from the NES of course was right into the SNES. I think the SNES may still be my favorite console, mostly for the graphics. There is such a perfect simplicity to the sprits of the SNES. It was just enough power and memory to make larger complex titles, but not overly complicate them. I enjoy modern pixel graphics games, but they are always much higher resolution with so many more colors. It’s just not the same. After the SNES, consoles became much more about polygons and 3D graphics.

In case you didn’t catch it, I had a SNES growing up. My friends had a SNES, one had a Genesis, but we were all basically cemented in as “Nintendo people” at this point. The SNES somehow ended up being a different experience as well, less multi player gaming and more solo playing together. We did play multiplayer titles, Super Street Fighter 2 was one for sure, and of course Mario Kart. Everyone loved Mario Kart.

But a lot was solo gaming. The SNES was also when I started really getting into RPGs. The SNES had so many good RPGs, and specifically, the Final Fantasy series. I’ve probably played through Final Fantasy 2(IV) and 3(VI) a dozen times or more. It was everything I loved of the first game on the NES, except the stories were so much more. It’s a love that would continue on for a long while.

I wasn’t only a SNES person though, my grandparents had a Sega Genesis for us to play when we visited, which was fairly often despite that we lived 2 States and an 8-hour drive away. We didn’t have as many games for the Genesis but I absolutely loved Sonic 2 and Aladdin. Eventually, I did get a Genesis for our house though as well, or maybe we just somehow ended up with the one from my grandparents. It never quite dominated my game-playing like the SNES did. It always felt a little off graphically I think, like everything with just kind of “dirtier” somehow. The SNES was a crisp cartoon world, the Genesis felt like it was trying to reproduce a real environment but ugly.

It’s probably worth noting, even though it’s not a 16 bit console, I also had a Game Boy around this time period. I think the Game Boy was just as played as the SNES. I’ve always been really partial to handheld consoles for sure. I had the gigantic HandyBoy attachment that would split out into a big mess of speakers with a magnification screen. I think it was bigger than the Game Boy itself. My brother had one too, I think part of why we got them was to keep us busy on car rides when traveling, which we did fairly often. My parents liked to go to my grandparent’s home, and we went camping a lot.

Final Fantasy was a big favorite on the Gameboy as well, with the Final Fantasy Legend series, though I would later learn these were technically part of another series called Saga. There was also a lot of Tetris too. I got really good at Tetris in the early 90s.

My Gaming Journey – Part 1 – 8-Bit Era

Aug 4th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Last year when I did Blaugust over on [BI], I dis a series of posts about my history of computer use. I wasn’t really going to try to go all “hardcore” at posting this year, but I decided it might be fun to try to parallel that series a bit with a history of my Video Game memories.

Also, I have no idea if these are all 8-bit systems, it’s just an easy way to segment things, don’t @ me.

Like my computer use, I’ve played video games, essentially my entire life. I’ve played a lot of games. My god it’s a lot. I covered some of the PC based gaming in the other series, so I’m going to stick more to consoles for this series, at least for a while. also the break points are a bit fuzzy because I generally just, keep playing games on every system. I have the same SNES and Genesis hooked up to my TV today that I had when I was a kid. I still own my original NES. I have all of the same carts too.

My gaming journey started earlier than that a bit, with the Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600/7800. I don’t recall my family ever owning an Atari, my friend had a 7800, I think my grandparents had a 2600. I never really understood the difference, I just knew that, for the most part, the games for one worked on another. My favorite games on the Atari included River Raid, Chopper Command, and the Olympic Winter Games. River Raid was my favorite, it is essentially an early top town shooter, you control a little jet flying through a ravine avoiding the walls and enemy boats. There was also a fuel gimmick where you had to pass over fuel cells to refuel. It helped a lot to hold down and slow down.

The Commodore 64 made up a lot of my early gaming as well. We played a lot of Park Patrol and Ghostbusters, even though I never understood how to actually accomplish anything in Ghostbusters. It was still cool because Ghostbusters! Park Patrol was just silly. You were a park ranger who had to wander around rescuing drowning swimmers and avoiding turtles and snakes.

The real gaming adventure started when my grandparents bought my brother and I a NES for Christmas one year. I’m not sure the NES was technically better than the other options, but it certainly FELT better. And it only got better over time. This is the system that basically created my real love for games, starting with that classic Super Mario Brothers. My friends all had a NES as well, and we often traded titles. And between the three of us, we had and played a lot of games, both single and multiplayer.

Notable titles, off the top of my head.

Super Mario Brothers 1,2, and 3
River City Ransom
Final Fantasy
Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road
The Legend of Zelda
RBI Baseball
Willow
Contra
Life Force
Dragon Warrior
Mega Man 3
Tecmo Super Bowl
Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers

I also had an NES Advantage controller as well. I absolutely loved that controller. For those unfamiliar, the NES Advantage was a large flat arcade sticks style controller, that included optional turbo button toggles. These turbo buttons were an absolute blast in Super Off Road. We would play for a while building up Nitro Boosts until reaching 99, the max you could carry. Then turn ont he turbo and jet around the track super fast. It was amazing.

Probably the game I most obsessed over was Final Fantasy. I never did beat it when I was younger, but my friends and I absolutely loved this game and we played it all the time. I also had a strategy guide from Nintendo Power that I obsessed over and probably memorized. It’s an obsession that would last for a very long time as well, Final Fantasy will definitely come up again in future installments of this series.

Speaking of Nintendo Power, that was another long term love developed from this era. I started on Issue 20, with the Mega Man 3 issue, the first to feature a square binding instead of a round binding. I would eagerly anticipate the arrival of every issue. Before the internet, this was how you got news about new games coming out. And the only way to get tips and maps and guides for games. Today you can just search and get it all, but when I was a kid, you had to really hope they would cover the game you were playing at some point. And sometimes, it wasn’t the featured game, it would just get maybe half a page of hints, without any maps.

I just want to close out this era with a nod towards the Sega Master System. One of my friends has a Master System, we never played it much, and I don’t remember anything about it other than if you turned it on without inserting a game, it would load a Snail Maze game. Which was kind of neat.