My gaming journey: The early years

Mysterious box

Considering that we strive to cover video games in all manner possible, there sometimes is a need to get a little bit more personal. When we know a little bit about someone writing the articles/reviews and features on other sites we become a bit more engaged as readers. That's probably why many gaming/news sites/blogs usually have a snippet at the end of an article, telling us a little something about the author. Anyone that frequents a particular gaming site or any site for that matter in which there is some content to take part in, finds a particular writer/creator with whom they resonate. So by sharing my gaming story and how I got into this wonderful hobby of ours, I hope it will make you a bit more engaged as a reader on our site. If nothing else I hope at least it manages to entertain.

I've been playing video games for over 30 years now. My first experience playing a videogame was when I was at a friend's house and they had the Sega Master System console at home. During that time, I was only 5 years old and didn't understand what the console itself was. I only understood that the pictures on the tv represented a game in which I could control a character and perform various actions with. I had so much fun with this game I didn't want to leave my friend's house, but as a five-year-old, I didn't have much say in the matter. After that brief session, I just couldn't stop thinking about the experience that I had and hoped that we would visit that friend again. However, it was never meant to be, as that friend moved soon thereafter. I could have bugged my parents about getting me the same console but honestly, I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know where those pictures that I was able to control on tv came from. So I just trudged on as usual doing things a five-year-old does thinking about that brief but magical session, playing that videogame. A couple of months passed and one day while I was playing outside I saw my father coming home from town. Under his arm, he carried a big white box and on the box it said SEGA. On the box were also various pictures of different games and after a couple of seconds, I knew what it was. It was the same magical box that my friend had, which I got to play with a couple of months prior. That was probably one of the happiest moments in my life when I realized what my father had brought me. One thing I need to point out here is that this was in the year 1992, this was the era of the Super Nintendo(Famicom in the U.S.) and Sega Mega Drive(Sega Genesis in the U.S.). This is to say that this was the era of the 16-bit console. Sega Master System was an old console at that point, it was an 8-bit console. However, being only five years old and not aware of all this, only knowing that I have gotten my first console it sure didn't matter. Also at that time, my family wasn't the most well of financially, we weren't poor by any means (after all we could afford a gaming console, a used one). It was just that money at the time was tight.

Something in a bag

If I didn't remember the first game I ever played, I sure remember the second one. It wasn't any of the more famous ones for that console like Alex Kid or Shinobi. It was a game called Cloud Master. If you think that the Soulsborne games are hard, then please try getting hold of this one and let me know how it went. This was a game that came from the era when arcades were still highly popular and where it wasn't uncommon for games to be ported from the arcade cabinet to the console. What this usually meant was that some of these games were straight ports from the arcade which meant that they were as hard. After all, those arcade games were designed in such a fashion that they would get try to get every last penny out of you if you let them. I'm not sure however if it was an arcade port but it sure played like one. It played very much like those old space shooters, such as Gradius or R-Type. However instead of controlling a spaceship, here you played as a boy floating on a cloud. As is standard for these games, the screen gets filled with projectiles that you have to dodge and weave past in order to get to a boss which you defeat and move on to the next level. I never managed to get past the third level. However, I still see that as an achievement that I was able to get that far. I completed very few games during my early years playing video games. That could very well be attributed to having a young kid's attention span but also being occupied by other stuff like playing outside with friends. A couple of weeks passed and the joy of owning a used Sega Master System was not long-lasting. Not long after I got it, the console broke. My father tried to fix it and even I tried tinkering around with it but it wasn't to be. Occasionally it would start but shut down after 15 minutes. The only way I was able to get in any kind of gaming time after this was when I would visit friends and they would let me play on their consoles. The sessions at friends' houses were varied. Usually, they'd let me play other times not, still though when I did get to play I would have a great time even though it sometimes would be short-lived. During this time considering that the games I played were on the NES console I got introduced to classics such as Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 3, Mega Man 2, Rygar, Double Dragon and others. This was still during the 16-bit era but neither I nor none of my friends had a 16-bit console. Nevertheless, we had fun with what we had.

Forward a couple of years and I get my second console. This time I got the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom in the U.S.). I had no idea how big of a hit this console was, I just knew it was a console and that I wanted one. Once again this was a used console, which didn't even come in a box. I remember begging my dad to buy it for me, and after much pleading and begging he caved in. With the console, I got two controllers and a tv cable. Which were all neatly handed to my father in a plastic bag. No power adapter. Which were all neatly handed to my father in a plastic bag. Now when I think about it, it might have been stolen. I didn't know what was supposed to come with the console, I was just excited that I had gotten one. Being without a power adapter meant of course that we could turn on the console. Somehow we were able to find one that fit in the socket of the console and was able to get it running, mind you it was not the original power adapter. So we were unaware if the power supply being fed to the console was the correct one. All I can say is that the console chewed through a couple of power adapters before we got it right, but I would be damned if I had one more console break on me. It did break a couple of times but I got it working all the same. During this time the type of games I played were for the most part beat 'em ups. Games such as Street Fighter 2, the Mortal Kombat series, Killer Instinct, Fatal Fury, Final Fight and the list goes on. I also owned and played Super Mario World, which is also the first game that I ever beat (at least that I can remember). Considering though that I had two controllers at home and beat 'em ups were usually the games where two people could play at the same time and so beat 'em ups ended up being the type of game I played the most.

I loved Street Fighter 2, I mean I really LOVED that game. Even to this day that is probably the game that I have completed the most. I've beaten that game more times than I can count and I've beaten it several times with all the characters on all difficulty levels. There were times when I gravitated toward other fighting games mainly Mortal Kombat 2 and Killer Instinct but I always came back to Street Fighter. After a while, I became so good at it, that no one in my neighborhood was able to beat me. My friends would always complain that the only reason that I managed to beat them was that I knew all the special moves. My response would always be that I'd give them the game manual and let them learn it for themselves. It rarely helped anyone. My only weakness would usually be if I tried to showboat and pick Zangief because he was my worst character and somebody else picked Dhalsim. Often that meant I'd lose (damn Dhalsims stretchy legs and arms). If I on the other hand managed to get in a heavy punch on occasion and stun them just for a moment to let me get in close and grab my opponent, then that usually meant it was time to pass the controller to someone else and it wasn't me that was doing the passing. Ironically even though I knew all the special moves, the characters I played the most were Guile and Chun-Li. Who I consider having the hardest special move set in the original Street Fighter 2 roster. Their special moves usually meant that you had to hold a direction button for three seconds and then instantaneously move your finger to the other direction on the d-pad with some sort of attack button to perform the move. As a result, I rarely used their special moves. The reason why I played them the most (apart from them being the most fun) is that I considered them to have the best aerial capabilities and the fastest light kicks. The usual routine whether I played Guile or Chun-Li would be that I would jump in close to my opponent, usually making a jump-kick towards them and start spamming the light kick button. In the event that they managed to block, I would then make a throw that they would not be able to respond to and then continue spamming the light kick. This tactic worked like a charm 99% of the time.

Thems fighting words

During this time, another Capcom game that really got its hooks into me was Final Fight. I spent countless hours with this game, but unlike Street Fighter 2 I didn't get as good playing this one as I did with the former. At least not up to a point. Final Fight consisted of five stages, the first three were dealt up in three different areas. The fourth stage was just one long area and the final stage consisted of around 5-6 areas. I had the European version of the game in which there were only two playable characters, Cody and Hagar, while the U.S. version had three with Guy as an additional character. I would usually play a great game all to the point where I got the boss of stage four which was Abigail. For me, it was impossible to defeat him with Cody. I would start the game with him and get to that point without using a single continue. Cody was great because he was a much faster character than Hagar. Considering also that you had to deal with several opponents at a time made Hagar quite difficult to play with because of his lack of speed. It took me years to realize that I needed to play as Hagar and throw Abigail around in that fight as much as possible. Once I did figure it out however, it was such a feeling of elation that I've rarely felt afterward while gaming. Once I'd get through to the final stage I would usually die there as Hagar since I didn't necessarily play well as him and would continue as Cody to beat the game.

The SNES years were a much simpler time for me as a gamer considering that I was still just a kid. But for me at that time games were just about having fun, I didn't care about graphics and 3D tech. At one point I owned both DOOM and Starfox, which for that time were visually and technically impressive games. But for me that didn't matter, I remember playing DOOM for the first time and just feeling confused because I couldn't see the character I was playing as. Playing in first-person was just new to me but also strange. I was someone that was used to seeing the character I was playing, so this initial experience with an FPS just felt awkward. This was also the time when the Playstation and the Sega Saturn had hit the home console market. This was something that didn't matter to me and my friends since we were still playing games on our 16-bit consoles. There are so many other games that I could mention playing on my SNES but then this article would never end if I did. What I can say is that during that initial period when I was my younger self I did miss out on some of the great classic RPGs that came out for the SNES. Games such as Zelda: A link to the past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana and the various Final Fantasy games. Contemplating it now I don't think I was ready for those games then. My little brain at that time wouldn't probably have understood that those games had a story that had characters that you needed to level up and that you had to look at a map where you needed to go next. Up to that point, I had only experienced gaming by moving between the left and right sides of the screen and overcoming obstacles in those directions. Everything else outside of that was strange to me. I did play some of these games eventually it was only that it was quite a few years later, at a point where I had left my SNES console and moved on to other gaming pastures. Pastures which involved PC gaming and the introduction of the 32-bit giants Playstation and Nintendo 64.