Idiot Productions

I was trying to think of things to write about on this ol’ website of mine, its surprisingly hard to just write about stuff, well it is for me anyway.  I’ve plumped for telling you computer games.

This life style choice of mine started when I was around 6-7, and my parents brought me a ZX Spectrum and a telly for Christmas, I’m informed that this cost them a small fortune at the time.  It came with a light gun, missile command, operation wolf, bulls eye and a few other games. I also had pacman land, and some pinball game.  My cousin also copied me all of his tape games so I had the likes of outrun, paperboy and many many more, proof that piracy was as rife then as it is now.  I loved his little speccy, especially operation wolf and missile command. I’d spend hours staring at the telly playing them. Needless to say, I was rubbish, or games where much harder back then.  A few years later I got a master system, this was my first step into console gaming, something that I’ve been into ever since.  The master system got a lot more attention than the speccy, you didn’t have to faff around loading, you just jammed the brick in the top, flipped the switch and you where in.  The first games I got with it where Alex the kid (built in) sonic 1 and Barcelona Olympics. It was sonic that I really connected with, and was the first game I ever completed from start to finish, including all the gems.  I had so many games for the master system, and so many different genres as well. Many where platform games, some puzzle games, a few sports ones, some crappy licences (Mick and Mac global gladiators, only MacDonald’s could make a game about trying to save the planet).  I got the master system in the summer when my parents moved us all to a different part of the country and I didn’t know anyone. I can still remember now being in Dixon’s and they had the master systems and the mega drive on looping demos. My parents asked me which one I wanted, the mega drive demo was the sonic the hedgehog bonus game, which involved spinning around a lot, I thought this looked far to confusing and plumped for the master system instead. The following Christmas I got a game boy.

On Christmas day I didn’t really get to see much of my nice new game boy, my dad and uncle had hijacked it and started playing Tetris, seems Nintendo where at the for front of gaming for everyone, even back in the nineties.  The game boy was a fantastic little system, and Nintendo have rarely made a step wrong with there handheld systems (no one mention virtuaboy).  It was the first time I got to play a Mario and a Zelda game, I could take it anywhere with me, I could play it in bed at night when I was meant to be asleep, fantastic, what more could a ten year old kid want.  To this day I’m still a big fan of the Nintendo hand held machines. Out of all the current game consoles I have, the DS is probably the most used. 

Out of all the machines I’ve owned, the SNES was the one that got played the least, but is the one I’ve revisited most now I’m older.  The main reason the SNES got so little attention was I never really had any games for it. This was mainly down to cost. Master System games where about £20-25 a go, most SNES games where £40+ some even as much as £60, because of this I only ever had Mario All-stars, Tiny Toon Adventures, Lawnmower Man and Mortal Kombat 2.  Obviously Mario All-stars was good value, I played all the games on that to death, Mortal Kombat 2 was more down to hype and gore than it being any good, Tiny Toon Adventures was a pretty good licence of the cartoon series and lawnmower man was shit, like the film. I’ve since gone back to the SNES and played some of the greatest games ever created, titles like Final Fantasy 6, Zelda Link to the past, Mario world and Mario Kart to name but a few.

I think it was getting the Play Station for my 14^th birthday that really sealed my passion for playing games.  When I got it, I only had the demo disc it came bundled with, but it was enough.  I was blown away by wipeout, just the way it looked and played was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Also games like destruction derby, battle arena toshinden, Tekken, Jumping Flash and ridge racer were all completely new experiences for me. Unlike the 16bit games, most of the 32 bit games haven’t aged to well, the cutting edge graphics of the time look pretty terrible now, especially Tekken. Two things really stand out to me from playing the play station, one was my OCD for playing Time Crisis and the other was my first tentative steps into the world for Japanese RPG’s.   

To probably be continued.