As a contributing writer to Zero1Gaming.com – it’s obvious that I would have an interest in games so I’m here to talk about how I first got into them and my first experiences of gaming.

I vaguely remember sitting in my living room and playing my next door neighbours Sega Megadrive that I had borrowed for the weekend. I would be playing as everyone’s favourite blue hedgehog – Sonic, a very old version of FIFA ( this was back when I did actually bother playing football games, nowadays – I don’t see the big hype) and a game called James Pond.  James Pond always amused me to be honest – I think it was the title mostly due to the many spin-offs of James Bond in the game through mission titles etc. This was my first ever interaction with games and I must of only been perhaps 4 or 5.  I hated every time my parents told me they wanted to watch something on the television resulting in the MegaDrive having to be turned off as I loved sitting on the floor for hours playing on it.

There was one week I was coming home from being at my Grans during the Summer holidays in which I was glad to be going home because I could play the Sega Megadrive again for hours – yippee! Instead, my Dad took me to my room and showed me that they had bought me my own television for my bedroom. Instantly my mind wandered to “Yes, I can play the Megadrive up here and not have to worry about the parents wanting to watch some stupid documentary!” however, there was a bottom attachment on this new TV. To be honest I just thought it was part of the stand, no big deal, so when my Dad started laughing at me as I turned it on to watch The Simpsons (had a bit of an obsession with them as did any kid growing up in the 90’s), I was rather confused. Turned out the ‘attachment’ was actually a storage drawer with a lovely new gaming console for me by the name of Playstation One. This became my new obsession. I loved playing so many games on that including Spyro, Theme Park World where I would cause countless hours of chaos on the little visitors entering my park, V Rally 2 that my Dad officially was rubbish at and the game also featured a heartbeat sound that was at the start of every race when it was loading up that I got really scared of . Throw in a couple of the odd WWF wrestling game (where I could never learn all of the moves which is where I soon learnt the wonder of ‘button bashing’ ) and I was on my way to becoming addicted to gaming.

I vividly remember playing a game called Croc 2 and this soon started my rage at games when I found them difficult. I would spend hours playing  a cheap copy of it (I got my Playstation chipped for around a tenner which meant I could play copies of games for around a fiver each – perfect for my Dad who was buying me all my games at the time to feed my new found gaming addiction) It was always a game that even though I was getting annoyed because I couldn’t get past certain points, I would forever go back to it in the hope that some miracle had happened so that I would manage to get past that frustrating point. This only lead to me chucking the controller onto the floor twenty minutes later and shutting the Playstation off and never speaking to it again for several hours.

Apart from this, with a games console that was actually mine instead of having to borrow my next door neighbours – I really couldn’t be happier. I could honestly loose days being in my disgusting looking room (sickly looking yellow with posters of 90’s pop bands… yeah, you can imagine *cringe* ) just merely sitting playing video games and completing them. The first ever game I completed was the tie in game for the Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone movie. I was honestly so happy that day that I had managed to fully complete the game as me and my friend had a small competition going to see who would complete it first. Instantly I was on the phone to her bragging about it. Even to this day, I get a warm feeling in my stomach whenever I complete a game, which grows depending on whether I’ve obtained 100% in the game, or got all the achievements for a game. To me, the game doesn’t stop after the campaign, there’s so much more to do in games these days.

Soon after this introduction to gaming, I became aware of more and more consoles and was highly impressed by Nintendo’s GameBoy. It was portable. You didn’t have to hook it up to a TV but just go through countless amounts of batteries just to play a black and white pixelated game on the tiniest of screens. This  solved the problem of being bored at my Grans during the summer holidays – no more watching four channels for a whole week. One of my favourite games for the GameBoy was indeed the Pokemon series. The music was always a thrill to listen to and I am still purchasing the latest instalments of the games even today when I’m twenty years old. Over the years I’ve gone through so many different games consoles including the Nintendo 64 spending hours on 007 Goldeneye multiplayer with friends, Playstation 2 and seeing the Guitar Hero series taking shape (The third instalment will forever be the best one for me) and playing the amazing GTA series. Finally, after months of saving up, my beloved Xbox 360 called Charlie got bought and put through its paces. This was when I first got introduced to the Assassins Creed series and I’ve never regretted playing them.

I think one of the things that always made me love games is the fact you could be controlling a purple dragon one minute and with the change of the disc be driving around in snowy Monte Carlo with a lovely Subaru Impreza and this feeling had never gone away.  I’m always being surprised on how much gaming has changed and expanded especially in recent years bringing more and more people into it and enjoying gaming as well whether it’s by themselves or over Xbox Live or Playstation Network.  I only hope in 15 years’ time I can look back and talk about the Xbox 360 as I’ve spoken about all of the older generation consoles that I’ve mentioned in this retro years post.

 

 

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