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Post by anayo on Jul 29, 2018 16:54:09 GMT -5
This requires no preamble because everyone here can relate to it.
Game 1: Anything on the Super Nintendo
I didn’t get my first Super Nintendo until around 2004. So I have a lot of memories of playing Super Nintendo at other kids’ houses. My next-door neighbor’s son had one. We’d mostly play Mario Kart and Super Mario World. I vaguely remember going to some kid’s house and playing a 2-player hockey game where the players could face each other off and it would turn into a vaguely street-fighter like 1-on-1 showdown where the hockey players would beat each other up. Whoever won would get the puck.
In the late 90’s when both my parents were working and had to drop my siblings and I off at daycare, the daycare had a few Super Nintendos. These also had the obligatory Mario, but more importantly, they had Capcom’s “U.N. Squadron”, which I love to this day thanks to playing it so much back then. The politics of playing SNES at the daycare were weird. They had to draw up a schedule where you could only play once a week. So what all the kids would do was agree to play multiplayer coop with another kid with the stipulation that they’d return the favor on their day of the week with the SNES. I mean, you could just hog the whole thing to yourself, but then you’d only get to play one day of the week instead of two. They would also revoke SNES privileges if anyone misbehaved.
Game 2: Nintendo 64 (pre-1998)
I wanted an N64 bad. I remember one time at age 6 I wanted to see an N64 demo unit, so I said to my dad, “Let’s go to the store to spend quality time together.” He saw right through it and said, “If you want to see the Nintendo 64 just say that.” Whenever my parents were visiting and I’d see an N64 in someone’s house, I’d feel really jealous. One time I was hanging out with a playmate and spied his older brother playing N64. I approached and said, “What’s that?” “Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire” “Can I play?” “No.” “Please?” “No.” “How about after you die?” “No. Leave me alone.”
Game 3: Anything at my cousin’s house
For some reason my cousin would always get games before me. This was especially true from about the Gamecube era to the XBOX 360. I saw a Gamecube and Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time at my cousin’s house. I couldn’t believe how smooth and detailed the graphics were, especially considering the diminutive size of the Gamecube itself and its itty-bitty disks. It just seemed so miniaturized and futuristic. He also got a GBA and Nintendo DS before me. I’d play his copy of Mario 64 DS every time we visited. My first exposure to Gears of War was at his place, too. It just seemed like that kid got every desirable video game. He was that mythical kid who had all 3 major consoles and all the handhelds and every major release worth writing home about.
Alright, your turn. What kind of memories do you have on this topic?
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Post by nullPointer on Aug 13, 2018 17:06:23 GMT -5
My memories of this topic are very much relegated to the N64, for a couple of reasons. When I was younger I was exposed to a wide swath of NES and SNES games thanks largely due to game rentals and a trusted circle of friends who loaned games back and forth. But the N64 had come out just as I was heading off to college. Heading off for college was a bit of a lengthy drive (Northern Wyoming to Northern Colorado) so we stayed over at the house of a distant family friend during the trip down. And it was there that I was first exposed to N64 gaming. They were a fairly well-to-due family and they had the N64 running on a big screen rear projection television. I'm sure by current standards it would seem relatively diminutive, but at the time (and thus in my memory) it seemed absolutely massive. It was easily the biggest screen I'd played on up to that point in my life. Any hoo, they had two games; Super Mario 64, and Wave Race 64. I played and enjoyed a bit of each, but it was Wave Race that really stuck with me. Among other things it was (and is) the easier pick-up-and-play game, and I could see at that time that Mario 64 was a game that one could really sink some time in to. Plus the water graphics in Wave Race on that huge screen were glorious. Heck even to this day it impresses me the sort of water physics they were able to pull off in that game. (Completely coincidental to this story, but the other part I remember clearly about that stop over was that later in the evening the 'man of the house' arrived home with a buddy. They were arguing because he (the homeowner) had spent $40-$50 on a rare sealed print of the first Metallica album (Kill 'Em All) on CD which contained the tracks Am I Evil and Blitzkrieg. His friend couldn't understand how he could spend so much an a single CD. I was 'a bit' of a metalhead then as I am now, and I assured him that it was indeed a pretty rare score and that the asking price was probably accurate (for the time). At the same time I'm thinking, 'Geez do these people have everything!?') At any rate due to the fact that I was headed off to college and soon to be a poor college student, the N64 was completely out of my financial grasp. Within a year one of my good buddies in college was gifted an N64 by his parents along with Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and GoldenEye. Turok was okay, but we spent a ton of time with GoldenEye. The kicker of course is that since it was his console, his game, he was a lot better at it than I was. Fast forward a few more years, and I was (finally) in the market for a new console. It came down to a choice between a PS2 and an N64. I went with the PS2 and never looked back. But the upshot is that I've still never owned an N64, and outside of the few instances listed above, I've only spent any time with the above mentioned games via emulation (and although it's made great improvements over time, I still find N64 emulation to be problematic on several levels ... controller layout, plugin configuration, specific longstanding and apparently nigh insurmountable emulation issues, etc.) So to this day the N64 still feels like a system that's just slightly out of reach.
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Post by toei on Aug 13, 2018 17:18:33 GMT -5
I had a friend in primary (elementary) school who was very much a spoiled rich kid. His parents would literally buy him expensive gifts every weekend (or so it seemed) and he'd complain to their face about them like it was never enough. Anyway, outside of that he was a decent kid. He's the only kid I knew who owned a Virtual Boy. Of course we spent we more time on his PC, playing games like that Magic: The Gathering RPG and Diablo (one person would be in charge of the potions, and the other would walk around and hit things). Spent a lot of time playing one of the WCW games on the N64, too, and Wayne Gretzky hockey, just to get into fights.
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Post by Xeogred on Aug 13, 2018 20:31:30 GMT -5
I had a lot of restrictions and rules growing up for some games... naturally it was always easy to play them elsewhere though! Ironically enough a lot of them are my favorites to this day, Doom, Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid, etc. My first friend with these PSX games and more exposed me to a lot of cool stuff, along with Final Fantasy 7, TRAG Hard Edge, Parasite Eve, the interesting PSX ports of Doom and Duke Nukem 3D (along with the third person ones), etc.
When I was around 5-ish I didn't have a Genesis until a few more years. But I had three different neighbors I can remember where I got to play a lot of the goods, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Ghouls' n Ghosts, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Streets of Rage 2-3, Shinobi 3, one of the Jurassic Park games, these are the ones that really come to mind. I remember one of my uncles having some of these too the rare time we went to Chicago back in the day. I also think one of my neighbors around then had Kirby's Adventure, I remember waking up earlier than my friends and their mom letting me play it in the living room haha.
I have some uncles close to my age on my dad's side of the family, so growing up they had some games I never owned but always played when I was over there... Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Zelda II, and Metroid were the main ones I always hit up. Think the rest were maybe sports games or something.
Gets a bit blurry from there the older I get. Just about everyone I knew had an N64 and I had a ton of games, so it was a constant rotation among friends of different games. Though I guess a standout is playing Turok 2 at one friends house once, he showed me some of the crazy codes and some kind of brain sucking gun. It looked and sounded way cooler in the 90's for sure, heh.
I had one friend during this time that had a PSX and some random games, one of the Crash and Spyro titles I think, Rayman, etc.
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Post by Ex on Aug 14, 2018 9:43:15 GMT -5
The best story I have for this scenario is from 1991.
At that time a friend of mine who lived about four miles from me, got a SNES at release. Back then I was more a SEGA kid who preferred my Genesis and Master System (though I had a NES too), but was eager to see Nintendo's evolution. My mom dropped me off at said friend's house, and I remember us playing Super Bases Loaded all day. Later that night he let me play Super Mario World... and I was enraptured. I played SMW all night long, and by morning's break I had not only beaten it, but had cleared all 96 goals. The next weekend, I spent the night again, and managed to beat Actraiser in one sitting. I was quickly becoming a fan of the SNES. In late November of 1991, he told me he had a new Zelda game I should see. My mom dropped me off at his house, and there I witnessed A Link to the Past during its release window. To say the game blew my mind would be an understatement, I was devastated by not only how amazing it was, but also the fact I didn't own it. I couldn't spend the night that night, but the next day I asked my mom to take me over to his house. She didn't want to (understandably), so I walked. Yes, I walked eight miles (four to his house, four back to mine) just to play A Link to the Past. The next day, I did it again. After walking sixteen miles to play this game, I decided I wouldn't play ALttP anymore at his house. Not because I wasn't enjoying his company and the game, but because I knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas (which was only a month away). A SNES and A Link to the Past. I was fortunate enough to receive exactly both. Ironically this friend started coming over to my house that next year, to check out SNES games I had acquired which he didn't have. I didn't mind at all, we always had good fun with the SNES.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 14, 2018 10:28:23 GMT -5
I've always found these stories interesting. Sometimes, our pasts really do shape our gaming tastes. I got in pretty late on the gaming front. I was always fascinated by them, but didn't have my own legit system until I was 11. That was probably for the best, honestly, because nope, not obsessive at all... I did witness the Atari 2600 at my cousin's house, and the 5200 at my aunt's house. I only got to witness the NES at a few other folks' houses early on. I remember visiting my uncle for Christmas, and his daughters had gotten an NES. Unfortunately, they didn't let me play it. I also encountered the NES when I was in third grade when spending the night with a friend. I barely got to play, but I remember watching the older kids play SMB and Top Gun. And the last time I really got to see one in action, and the one that put me over the edge, was briefly visiting a classmate. He was playing The Legend of Zelda. My word, I was enraptured. I knew what I wanted for Christmas: the NES and Zelda II. Because sequels are always better, right? (I still love Zelda II, though, and replay it more than the first.) So eventually, the NES started to filter into the neighborhood. One of my cousins had the NES, and mostly bad games. But he did have SMB3, so that worked out. But I was RPG-obsessed by this point, so I didn't value it as much, and almost no one I knew had any games like that. Another kid in the neighborhood had the NES, and had access to more games. He had a cousin that would occasionally visit, and he had one of the coolest things I'd ever seen: a pirate cart, called the Famicon, than had 82 games on it. Cool! Of course, most of it was early NES stuff, but still. Eventually he sold that NES to my twin cousins, and I'd play some of the unique games they had. I actually ended up buying that from them a long time ago, along with the carts. They had, through a gift from us and some purchases from Funcoland that we combined on, stuff like Mega Man and Vice: Project Doom. The guy that sold that NES got a Genesis, and for a while, that's the only place I saw one. He had the standard Sonic stuff, but at some point, he managed to get hold of Phantasy Star III. I didn't get to play for long, but I was utterly fascinated. Another of my cousins managed to snag a Genesis, although again, he didn't have the greatest games. Sonic 2 and X-Men were pretty much it. He also had the NES and Battletoads, though, which was my only exposure to that game for some time. One other thing I remember is reading all about the SNES, and I wanted to play one so badly. Well, one of the kids at church was visiting one of our mutual friends, and not only did he have the SNES, but he had Zelda. Mind. Blown. Thing is, I ended up having to watch someone else play Final Fight, when all I wanted to do was try Zelda. "No, you don't want to play that one." Sorry, I ain't stupid. I know exactly what I want to play. But kids don't have that much pull. I think I got to play for like five minutes before we were booted outside for "having played enough". Boo. (And in the interim, the older kids had taken over the system. Ulterior motives, indeed. Although I think they got the boot not long after.) Once I got my own SNES, I rarely had reason to visit to play other stuff. That happened after FFIII had come out, and around the time of Chrono Trigger. All my other friends had already fallen off the wagon for the most part, but that was okay. I was snagging good stuff when I could, which took very creative spending when you didn't have much money. In hindsight, I think our house ended up being more of the one you visited to play interesting games. My brother and I typically cycled through games a bit, doing trades at the pawn shop, so you could typically be guaranteed there would be something new to try out. Ironic, that, considering how little money we had, but somehow we made it work. We typically had a rotation of around 15-20 titles at one time in the NES days. Anyway, that's enough for now! I think so much of how difficult games were to acquire accounts for how much I tend to treasure them now, even if I'm not actively playing them. Nostalgia is a heck of a drug.
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Post by Ex on Aug 14, 2018 12:28:16 GMT -5
I think so much of how difficult games were to acquire accounts for how much I tend to treasure them now I understand that. When I was a kid, getting ahold of games and anime was a difficult and very deliberate affair. Nowadays kids can just download games for free, and watch anime for free, online at any time with their phones or tablets. Just slurp it from the ether. Such a different world then what we grew up in. Although I like my childhood better because it made me appreciate such things more, and made experiencing them much more special.
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Post by Sarge on Aug 14, 2018 13:23:08 GMT -5
Emulation blew my mind, honestly. It's still hard to comprehend that today's generation can download anything from that era that they want. I definitely think that accounts for why a lot of them (certainly not all!) don't appreciate it quite as much as we do. Then again, a lot of folks that experienced that generation don't care anymore either, so... well, human beings are complicated. The anime thing is absolutely true, too, and also holds true for TV. I mean, I missed out on most of Sliders, but the whole thing is on Hulu. I've totally been catching an episode here and there.
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Post by toei on Aug 14, 2018 17:05:48 GMT -5
I used to have this daydream as a kid where I'd discover this secret store that sold every game ever made for a dollar each. All the games I'd read about in magazines but couldn't find or afford... Emulation IS pretty insane.
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Post by anayo on Nov 18, 2018 18:43:27 GMT -5
nullPointer Yeah I remember I used to fantasize about having a really big projection TV cause I thought it would make split screen multiplayer games easier to play. Funny how split screen isn’t really a thing anymore. I don’t think younger me realized that the resolution was still low, so it just blowing up a 240p image to bigger size. Xeogred You just reminded me. When I was maybe 6 years old I went to a kid’s house and he had this shmup on the Sega Genesis. I mostly remember you could swap the shooting angle of your bullets (straight ahead, vertical, other weird angles). Also the boss on stage one was a fish. There was a “kill everything” power up we’d save for the fish cause we couldn’t kill him otherwise. Any idea what this game might have been? Oh man, stories like this are why I started this topic. Thanks for sharing this. I got an NES in 1995 cause they were basically antiques by then, but I could still feel the shockwaves Nintendo made in the 80’s. Nintendo's still relevant, but they used to be a huge phenomenon back in the day.
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