How I Became a Gamer Part 2: The Original Console Wars

The Original Console Wars.

Introduction

This series is about the games I played and the ones I didn't, the consoles, the cartridges, the CD's and the DVD's, the handhelds, mobiles and tablets.This is how I became a gamer.
Thanks for coming back! I was going to wait a whole week to release this next part of my gaming journey but it seems quite popular. I've got lots to say on the subject of gaming so to ensure I don't get distracted from my task and you don't get bored and forget me "She said it would be a series, where's the next part? Grrrr", I present here part two of How I Became a Gamer - The Original Console Wars.

Those Couple of years I didn't have a computer.

If you read the first part in the series you might remember that at some point in my childhood my Spectrum was broken by a jealous friend. It MIGHT have been an accident, maybe my giant Lurcher Percy lurched into her and caused her to throw chocolate milkshake across it. She was always jealous of my Spectrum. I had gone into the garden to ask my Mum for some biscuits. When I returned, my friend was sat, sobbing on the floor, empty plastic cup a foot away from my chocolate milkshake covered computer. However it happened, my Spectrum was dead.

Whilst I was mightly annoyed, it wasn't really a big deal. It was getting harder and harder to get new games. Boots (now a store mainly for health and beauty products) had stopped selling the game tapes a year or so before. The only places you could find games were Indoor Markets and Charity Shops and then it was a gamble whether or not it would work.

And so, I was computer-less. Out of my class only a few people had a console and I was so unpopular I never got invited to play. One incident sticks out for me. A girl in my class called Emily (who had been foul to me my entire life) finally went too far in tormenting me. I didn't hit back, I wasn't that child (I was a geek before it was cool). I screamed. Finally the teacher got involved and the girls parents were called. It was decided that I would be invited to the girls house for what's now called a play-date. No safe spaces back then, it was tough love all the way.

Emily had a Master System, when everyone else had a Nes. I went to her house and we played Wonder Boy in Monster World, Alex Kidd in Miricle World and Castle of Illusion. Out of the three only Castle of Illusion made a lasting impression on me. I was a humungous Disney fan. I remember being incredibly impressed with the graphics. All the colours looked so bright, Mickey looked like Mickey. Even the sound Effects weren't that bad. It was a precursor of a game that I'll discuss in the next section, a game that if I did do a "Best Games Ever" post, it would be in the top ten. At the end of the evening, my parents came and picked me up and we promised to be best of friends for ever.[1]

1991 - The year I got my Megadrive

So, In the end I got a Megadrive. A Genesis to the Americans. It was Christmas. With it, I was given Sonic 1 and Golden Axe 1. My cousins who lived nearby (more cousins, I know, my Mum's side this time) had a Nes with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. I felt pretty superior. My colours were brighter, my mascot faster. For once I had something that everybody wanted to play on even if I was still playing it on our (remote-controlless) 14 Inch colour television.

In the early 1990's I didn't live in city, I lived in a tiny town on the coast (you can take the girl out of the ocean, but you can't take the ocean out of the girl) where the most mainstream shop we had was Woolworths. We didn't even have an Our Price (music store that was sold off by Branson in the early 2000's). Instead we had family run alternatives - High Street Records and Strand Screens (our version of Blockbuster). Neither had console games. Luckily for the children of my town, an enterprising young man stepped up and offered a solution. He opened a shop in town where you could pay to play a Megadrive for an hour for one pound and rent a game for a weekend for two.[2] For the next couple of years I played many games rented from that shop. He did only Sega games and would often sell the games that weren't getting rented out at a discounted price.

Throwing Heads and Swinging Capes

Decap Attack came out in 1992. It was a game about a mummy called Chuck D. Head who was sent to defeat a demon called Max D. Cap who had turned up and destroyed Chuck's skeleton shaped world. It was a weird game. Conceputally it was a pretty simple platformer. The character ran left and right, he could jump. Enemies encountered could be killed with a quick Face-Smash or by being clipped by your throwable head. He also had a rudimentary flying move where if you did a long run and jump, you could keep yourself in the air by repeatedly bashing the jump button.

There were two mini games which you might get to play at the end of the level. One which I'm sure activated if you collected coins that were scattered throughout the level. I think it was a slot machine type of thing. The other had you put a number of "Chuck's" at the top of five paths. Once all had been placed, the Chuck's would follow the maze paths down and some would encounter a prize at the end. When I was given Decap Attack for my eleventh birthday, I played it constantly. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 had been completed months ago and I was ready for a new challenge but, to my shame, I never completed it. It's now available on Steam as part of the Sega Megadrive & Genesis Classics Collection.[3] If you've never played it why not give it a go[1]

It was Christmas 1992 and I was fresh back from a holiday of a lifetime - 3 weeks fly and drive in Florida. It was the first time I'd ever been abroad, first time I'd even been on a plane. I went to Disney World, Unversal Studio's, Sea World, Wet and Wild and Busch Gardens. I did it all but nothing compared to meeting Mickey Mouse. My favourite soft toy at home was a Mickey Mouse plushie, I had a Mickey Mouse duvet set complete with matching curtains, wall paper and carpet.

This room has about half the Mickey Mouse's that I had.

Anyway. Christmas 1992. There's a game shaped present with my name on it under the tree. When I'm handed it to open and there in my hands is World of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, I literally danced with joy. This was it. The game I had been waiting for. Even though in those days we didn't have the internet, we still had magazines and Sega Power and Games Master had been talking about it for months. One of my cousins came to stay for a week and we played through the two single player different single player campaigns, doing a level each and swapping when we died. And die we did. Then it was time for the cooperative campaign.

Check out this video of someone playing through it. Unless we get a re-release, you'll be lucky to get to play it again (legally anyway).

I can honestly say I had never had so much fun in my life. The levels were had different parts to them. We were forced to play together to progress, Mickey pulling Donald through gaps he couldn't otherwise fit through. It was completely magical. This game has yet to appear on Steam for the Genesis collection however Disney have released an updated version of Castle of Illusion (which I literally just bought, it looks freaking amazing) so maybe World of Illusion will get the same treatment.

A surprise bouns one before I go. I was going to just do the two but this one kept creeping into my brain. During a particularly cold January my Dad bought home a game that we would spend the next ten weeks (we still had only one tele so we had to share the it with my Mum in the evenings) engrossed in. It was one of only three D&D games that were released on any of the Sega platforms. The game was called Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun.

This is probably my favourite Megadrive game ever and the one that had the most influence on my tastes as I got older. It had eleven different storyline areas and multiple mini area's to discover. It had shops to buy and sell your loot at, spells to learn and bugs to abuse[4]. The game had three modes of play - free exploring for walking the top down world, turn based strategic battles in the world and the "fling your sling" cave mode. As the caves were explored maps were drawn in the menu screen, grid based so we could copy them out for our next party. They didn't change so we could mark where enemies, traps and items were. It was my first RPG and I was hooked.

Well that's the end of How I Became a Gamer Part 2: The Original Console Wars: Losers Go First. That's right, I've still more to say, we'll be stuck in the 90's for a little while longer when we come back with Part 3: Nintendo vs Who?: The Winner Takes It All.

I also wanted to say a massive thank you to anyone out there who has interacted with my posts in any way. I'ts really given me the confidence to keep writing. Goodbye for now. x

[1] If you're interested the cease fire didn't last. But I stopped being a victim for a while.

[2] Mums and Dads treated this guy like a glorified babysitter, paying for five hours on a Saturday whilst they went and did all their shopping then out for lunch.

[3] If you spot other games in the Sega Collection on Steam that you fancy I would strongly suggest holding off buying them. There is a site called Bundlestars.com that regularly does pick and mix bundles of games. I recently got ten Sega RPG Games for £1.99. Go sign up for the Bundlestars and then come back and tell me which great deal you couldn't pass up ^-^

[4] I found a way to replicate the healing potions that respawned in the cellar of the church in the city.