By Meat Jesus
My first gaming memory is me, my sister and my mum all sitting round the tv playing Sonic on the Sega Master system, the first console we owned. It was one of those consoles with Sonic built into it so if you had a cart in the machine and Sonic started up, you knew you were doing it wrong…
GETTA LOAD A THIS
Now Sonic was bloody hard, each boss level had no rings for you to collect so if Dr. Robotnik hit you, you were very much screwed. The normal levels took no prisoners either as one misstep usually resulted in a painful death, usually caused by one of the many hazards littered around the stages. The game had an awesome soundtrack as well, one which I can remember very clearly – what I can remember even more clearly though is that drowning music, so ominous (seeing Sonic drown as a young child is pretty damn distressing, by the way).
From the Master System I moved onto the Genesis (or as we Europeans call it, the Mega Drive. I’m still undecided as to which one is the cooler name…) and onto some of my most favourite games from my childhood. Streets of Rage 2 was pure beat ’em up goodness and incredibly addicting , so much so I still go back to the game every now and again. I remember when me and my sister were playing it once (I always went Axel and she went Blaze of course), we got to the final boss and I freaked out and turned the console off, much to my sister’s anger.
Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind…
Gunstar Heroes was another one of my most favourite games growing up, because lets face it, who doesn’t love blowing up EVERYTHING on screen? With 4 weapon types and multiple combinations of those weapons, the types of guns you could create were ridiculous. From exploding firebombs to a player controlled fireball of death that flew around the screen, there were multiple ways blow stuff up. The battle with Seven Force is one of the most visually impressive fights on the console and overall the game looks fantastic. Add in the little quirks such as the shoot em up segment near the end of the game and you’re onto a winner.
So, so fun…
I also had a SNES but I was never as fond of it as I was my Mega Drive. I dunno why though… It’s probably because I never got to experience the many of awesome games on the system until I was older. The only real memories I have of the system was playing a game called Flashback (I had no idea what to do in it…) and plowing through Super Mario World in double quick time as well, thanks to the good old Star World!
I think that’s probably enough rambling for now, check back and I’ll document my Dreamcast years!
Random Drops 