Childhood gaming memories (contains embarassing photos)

I have a few photos...

embarassing ones as I was quite the little dork


How many American kids even asked for one for Christmas let alone got one and was happy?

Before I even bothered with the NES I had a Master system and well come on Rampage was better than arcade perfect on it, Double Dragon was 2 player when the NES losers had to alternate 2 players (then again it did have that 1 on 1 fighting mode) Plus Gangster town was THE light gun game.

2 years later I got an NES no pictures of me getting it exist though I do have



Dear God what a dork. But hey MEGA MAN 3. It's well documented here I'm a huge mega man fan.

I first read about Mega Man 2 in an issue of Nintendo power (a copy of that same issue I have now in pretty decent condition I keep all my old gaming mags in a trunk.) winning all these awards was some game called Mega man 2. A friend had it and I loved it so on my birthday my grandmother got it for me and where did she get it? of all places a hardware store. We were locked out of my house so grandma and I had to wait until Mom got home before I could play it.

3 I got for Christmas and it was the first game I ever beat. Dad and Grandma were cheering me on while mom couldn't care less. (To this day she's only played 3 games, Safari hunt, 1 VS 100 Live and Scene it)

4 was abit more subdued it was the last game I got as an Only child.



a Pair of birthday cakes

some trivia the 8 year old cake that's Riki from Black Belt. Black Belt being the US Version of Hokoto No ken. I still have yet to show my dad anything related to Hokoto no ken. He and I used to play Black Belt ALL the time.
I wonder how he'd view the game once he found out why everybody expodes when you hit them...

 

Well, at least we know you are at least 9 years old now... :icon_bigg

 

That second picture...it should be your avatar.

 

How brave of you to share these with us.

I don't know if there are any photos of me opening any vg stuff, I guess not. My grandmother shot photos on Christmas, but she passed away before I got my first gaming stuff. My parents usually don't shoot photos on Christmas, so no "evidence" left :-/
My grandfather had the rule that the presents i got from him must not be made out of plastic. I got nice things from him, mind you, just no gaming stuff.

...

Well, uh, nice jammies.

 

i might have pictures of my crying tears of sweet joy on my third birthday getting Mario 3. Or me cosplaying as Ash Ketchum at a pokemon Mall event in 1998 standing in front of a giant Pikachu card in Wizards of the coast.

 

The paradox this photo creates....

Sonic jammies yet.....SNES GAMES....HERESY

My cousin and I used to argue not over what system was more popular no

What system was MORE POWERFUL. My dad too My dad was anti nintendo due to the fact that Nintendo in the 80s and early 90s were assholes who violated just about every ethics code there was (resentment I still hold towards nintendo myself) But anyways My dad belived the SNES "Might just be as powerful as the master system" A bunch of Hooey now as we all know the SNES is the pinicle of 2d gaming.

My cousin however he belived the Genesis was the superior system able to do far more than the SNES could have ever done.

It all seems stupid now becuase I look back on both systems now fondly and Sega is something near and dear to me (they did of course do what nintendon't)

Of course the only SNES games I really played were fighters it wasn't until emulation that I got to see everything the SNES had to offer and my attempts to improve my physical SNES collection was short lived (I DO have Fzero a boxed Castlevania IV, Vortex and Mario Paint)

But man I dunno SNES VS Genesis........ IF we factor SNES/SFC VS Genesis the the SNES/SFC wins hands down.

Stupid nintendo Censorship...

Oh also Donkey Kong Country STILL holds up today. Nintendo sent me this video on the making of DKC and it did have me quite hyped for the game
but the end with the little sneak peak at Killer Instinct......WOW

Of course KI doesn't HOLD up today but RARE was called RARE for a reason...

 

DKC...is a very bland platformer. Run forward, get bananas. back track. get bananas.

Miyamoto himself has a similar viewpoint to me on DKC. Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto criticised Donkey Kong Country, stating that "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good."


the game is incredibly overrated. It's not very deep or engaging.

 

I don't have pictures, all you need to know is Pokémon Yellow.

 

Beautiful pics, people.

One of my favorite memories is something GOH might remember, since he had an SMS. During SEGA of America's early years, you could call their corporate headquarters at 1-800-USA-SEGA, and talk to a live "game counselor" for FREE game tips. I used to call them every other day just to chat about games, sometimes giving them tips. :nod: The "on hold" music was usually arranged game tracks. My young mind was blown hearing keyboard renditions of OutRun & Phantasy Star's music over the telephone.

Anyway, if you kept them on the phone long enough, or just simply asked, they would SEND you, again for free, typed up game notes for any game(s) of your choice. Once, a friend called and asked to be sent the tips for every single game. He got an inch thick packet of papers in the mail a couple days later. I tried that and it didn't fly. I eventually got most of them, but they've been lost over time save for a few.

This free service was very gracious on SEGA's part, and reached out to their fans in a way that Nintendo didn't. It was just one small way they would try to compete, and grow a loyal base. The free service couldn't last, though. It continued into the Genesis era, and ended sometime before the Sega CD's release, when it turned into a pay-per-minute 900 number.

A favorite activity was to call the tip line in the months leading up to the Genesis release and ask the SEGA game counselors for their impressions, because I simply could not wait, or believe that such an amazing machine existed. One guy whispered to me "...the graphics are SO good... that there won't be a SINGLE bad game". I shat bricks.

 

SNES is the pinnacle of 2D gaming? You might have heard of this system called the Saturn..

Oh, and DKC is a Mario sequel, just with different characters. I like the game, but don't understand how nobody saw the similarities between it and SMW, for example.

Also, some gaming memories: I remember looking at the 32X in a Sega catalog and thinking "Whoa, an add-on that makes your Mega Drive have great graphics like Virtua Racing? That's gonna be AWESOME!" I was also (what you mean, was?) a huge Sega fan, and hated Nintendo and Mario. But then again, if you were a kid in the nineties and say you liked Mario better than Sonic, then you're obviously lying. Sonic was just that much cooler (so cool I even watched his terrible cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog all the time!), and I still prefer the 16-bit Sonic games to the SNES Mario ones.

 

you mean the overworld in SMW and DKC,now you mention it.........

 

The age old argument. :110:

People should post their preferences here. I preferred Mario, because Super Mario Land 2 was a kickass game, Sonic was just fast.

 

I always chalked that up to jealousy. I don't think the game is amazing, but it is quite enjoyable and more than Mediocre.

Saturn gets props from me for it's shmups and fighters but I can't think of any great platformers for it that were pure 2d.

Nights of course is fantastic. I never had one back in the day nor do I remember anyone who did.

For the teen years. I skipped the 32 bit generation. But my Cousin had a PS1 and I kept getting EGM telling him what games to get since I saw him so much it was like his PS1 was mine. We got roughly half way through the greatness that is Xenogears before we got bored and I told him how the game ended. The story in Xenogears was SO GOOD that I had to read a spoiler and there was a translated plot guide somewhere online I read over and over.

I still need to get a copy of Xenogears it's probably my all time favorite RPG.

Going back to Nintendo, I didn't remember the 800 number sega had for tips but we did call that number when my other cousin broke my master system by plugging the NES AC Adapter into it breaking the system. He still to this day feels bad about it being married with a kid and all. LOL.

Anyways I trailed off there. Nintendo used to give out freebies for subscribing to their ads in magazine form Nintendo power. One such Freebie was the First Dragon Warrior a game I played but never really left the first quadrant of the over world. By modern standards it's quite a barebones stripped down and boring RPG......and I guess from what I hear the series still is.

20 years later that statement is quite humorous. of course the Megasis had a TON of shit games (so did the SNES) Hard to Beleve people were actually excited about Altered Beast coming with the system. But yeah Sonic he changed everything. Again I had to live through others since I didn't have a Genesis But man o man did I have some good times with Sonic. I even designed a game after Sonic starring my Teddy bear I actually had some good level design if I recall.

I don't however at any point remember being blown away by the Megasis. SNES on the other hand.

Hell I'm STILL blown away by what the SNES could do.

I AM however amazed at the Unique cards the Megasis got like controller ports in carts and another processor in the Virtua Racing cart.

 

I need to do some digging, there is an awesome picture of me playing Super Mario Bros with my brother and kicking his ass hard in the score dept. And I was only age 4.

There are pictures somewhere of my 7 year old ass shitting bricks when I got the Game Gear from my grandparents one christmas. And not because it was awesome (oh it was), but because it included a copy of Jurassic Park, the only move to ever scare the piss out out me (literally ).

God I was scared of that game... I had a hard time playing it with out thinking that T-Rex was going to eat me.

On that note... I had a shit childhood when it came to consoles. I my parents wouldn't let me have a Genesis (even though I had a Game Gear, go figure) cause they thought it had a horrible name, and the completely gameblocked the SNES cause it was too expensive. Good thing I had friends with more liberal parents The next console I got was the fat PS1 in '97 (essentially 10 years with only one console).

 

Genesis IS A HORRIBLE NAME. I like Mega Drive a bit more.

As for videos an old super 8 of a birthday party and you can clearly hear Dr Wily music in the background the means for us to play these gems have been lost to time.

I think my love/obsession with Video games might have fucked me over though and factored into my bogus diagnosis I had an over active imagination and for journal time in School all I wrote about was Video games....so thus they thought I was in "my own world"

Go figure right?

But COME ON Video games are the great unifier.

I made alot of friends becuase of my favorite hobby.

 

Having arcade graphics at home was a big deal. That was a pretty big jump at the time, from NES & SMS. Yeah, I realized it was a pretty light game that first night, but it was still enough to make your eyes go h:

 

you know what though, I kinda like the SMS version of Altered Beast more. The PC Engine Version however besides being REALLY HARD was closer to the arcade and the Famicom Altered beast while not even being close added a few things to make up for it.

Now as for arcade memories.

The First time I played Street Fighter II I gave a kid a token just you know I'm nice like that then his friend tried to con me out of more...LOL this was a very narrow arcade too it was damned near a hallway not alot of room to move in. So right behind it was this other multi game machine...HMMM it was an MVS so the First time I played SF II was also the first time I played Fatal Fury. THEN on the other end of the mall was a new arcade with SF II CE... Probably the best New game day of my life and one of my final mall trips with my grandmother.

Going back a few years before that there was a Dream machine Arcade I went with my friend Carl whom I have a TON of game related memories with anyways this fat kid kept calling me Urkle (ok I was nerdy but still) he kept bugging me then left then came back. I'm Playing Final Fight and he starts bopping me on the head so I using the machine for momentum drop kicked this kid...he didn't bother me the rest of the night. This arcade is now a parking lot.

Discovered/played alot of game for the first time at that arcade, Marvel Super heroes VS Capcom, Double Dragon, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and they had a few projection screen MVS cabs OH MAN even with my huge LCD in our living room I still can't recreate at home. Great Arcade. That mall started to go down hill then they moved the Arcade to what used to be a petstore and it sucked save for a Street Fighter EX machine.

Another Sort of arcade related memory. Mortal Kombat In church? YEAH it wasn't a good church. I'm 1/4th Armenian so the Armenian church in Providence had a Bazzar every november amongst many things they'd have a few arcade machines, I even met Infamous Mayor Buddy Cianci (think a real life mayor Qumby he's been in at least US national news) at these functions. But anyway I digress There was this KID he was AWESOME at Mortal Kombat I've seen him in the Arcades too he was good but being good at Mortal Kombat is like winning a 1 legged race with both legs. So he was bored and challenged me to Super Street Fighter II....and beat me close match I was fine until his bitch grandmother spoke up and said "You can't beat him he's the king of these games" But these church functions were cool becuase they some how ended up with Beta version of these games or hacks like an early MK 2 where you could fight everyone in any order and they had a version of SF II CE where the bosses were wire frame Cool stuffs Oh and the big one, Fatal fury Special with Ryo selectable. VERY COOL stuff

 

I thought Sonic was Cooler than Mario but have always LIKED Mario titles more.

IMO, Sonic was for kids who had ADD."HOLD FORWARD AND HIT A! OR B! ...or c..."

 

I always pictured you more of a Darth Vader kind of figure :110: