Can You Remember The First Game You Ever Played?

I apologise for the obscurity of this particular thread, it’s already been a long week and I’m already feeling explicitly groggy. What follows will likely have no substantial relevance nor any decisive resolution, but is something that has become somewhat of a troubling curiosity. So let me begin with a question; do any of you remember the first time you experienced a computer game? I’d personally relish the opportunity to regale you with a sentimental anecdote about inheriting the families NES, being presented with my first games cartridge or narrate the time I was baptised in the accumulated tears of my father, shed through disappointment at trying to complete “Echo The Dolphin”. But with all honesty I don’t remember. I can recall brief images and vaguely distinctive periods of interacting with a game in my formative years, but nothing solitary that can be specifically defined as my first.

Some incipient dementia or perhaps good old senility has likely diminished my nostalgia leaden experiences. If you are in your early 20’s or younger, particularly if you regard Pokémon Diamond and Pearl to be “retro”, then relating back to your first gaming experience may be easier to perceive. But for me, a man in his 30’s, with a number of late nights and copious amounts of alcohol consumed in the interim it’s a far more difficult moment to recollect. It is however evident from my parents favourable affinity for gaming that my exposure would have occurred from a very young age, with a very limited capacity to fully understand what I was watching. Exactly what games console it was is in itself hard to clarify?

The NES is the most likely candidate, certainly the more prevalent console that I recall. But it could just as likely be the SEGA Megadrive too, as this would have been available at a time when I was more self-aware. Memories of playing “TMNT II” “Super Mario” “Donkey Kong” and “Captain Bucky O Hare” are all clearly defined memories. But so to are playing “Sonic The Hedgehog” “Cap Attack” “Mickey Mouse And Donald Ducks Fantasy Of Illusion” and “Cool Spot”. It’s maddening not being able to recollect a moment of such significance. To attach a visual narrative to such a profoundly intimate influence of self discovery.

Perhaps there isn’t one singular moment , but rather a series of amalgamated experiences that form “that first moment”. It maybe that the pleasures of gaming presided through repeated collaboration as opposed to one isolated eureka point. Whatever the case is I find I’m afflicted by a deep vexing sorrow for the absence of such a hugely defining moment.

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So again I beseech you curious reader; what game you remember playing first? Or have you too forgotten? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers.

Let The Game Collection Begin!

Out of pure curiosity I decided to begin expanding my modest game collection, fuelling my already habitual need to fill those pesky storage gaps on the shelves. I’ve accumulated a rather expansive library over the years, largely consisting of PlayStation games and it’s various iterations, utilising my antisocial behaviour effectively but sadly deficient in many of my childhood endeavours. Most of the classic games I played as a younger man are safely secured in my mother’s loft, with an estimated value of roughly £10 trillion (at least by my standards). As ever I, being the concerned son that I am felt obliged to appropriate this collection of clutter from my mother’s house. Yet despite my gracious and fervent protestations to procure them my mother, having technically purchased the majority of these games…..that by rights should have reverted to me!…..*cough* excuse me, declined my generous offer. So until I can deploy an elaborate scheme to acquire them without her consent, all I’m missing is peppers, paint, a camel suite and a copy of Time Out magazine to accomplish it, I felt it was time to branch out on my own and I’ve got to say that logistically speaking it’s very difficult to begin.

You immediately attempt to acquire those obscure titles you have vague recollections of as a kid. “Oh yeah I need to get that one with the corpse, mummy…..thing that threw skulls, or something? Or the one with the Coca-Cola insignia on a beach that exposes crustaceans underwear, wore trendy sunglasses and was a complete commercial whore?” These primitive notions emphasis you’re puerile affection and incentives, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You certainly don’t want to be making random purchases that share no affinity with you’re nostalgic predilections, but at the same time it makes things rather more difficult, by which I mean expensive. After you’ve isolated what platform you wish to start a collection, which is no easy feat and determined what games specifically you wish to bolster you’re collection, you then have to decide precisely what it is you want from the games. I know you’re probably nodding courteously the way a parent humours a child talking about a monster hiding under the bed, but hear me out.

“Cool Spot: dealing with crabs, product placement and plagiarism. 

You’re be observing several retailers for the best deals, with many trusted proprietors extending very generous prices, yet at the same time deceiving the goods by subverting the additional postage and packaging fees. A specific game, maybe valued at say £5 or the equivalent could have an attached P&P of the same price. All of a sudden that bargain has escalated. It’s still affordable but still a little jarring. Purchasing old games requires a cautious degree of restraint so as not to make a decision based purely on spontaneity. You have to consider a litany of aesthetic variations too. The cartridge may be in full working order, yet may contain a tear on the box or worse devoid of any case at all. It’s far cheaper and easier to purchase just a cartridge/disc, but there’s certain romanticism about having the original facilities like the case and booklet. It’s also worth noting that you may fraternise with various titles and which to get first, but more than likely the most desirable software is reasonably priced, which is odd considering their popularity. I don’t know why but you’d expect the likes of “Sonic The Hedgehog” to be more valued as a collector’s item than say “Mega Turricane” (whatever the hell that is?) but it’s the more abstract titles that are worth there weight in pixilated gold. I guess that’s because people with any sense already own Sonic The Hedgehog, but I digress. The majority of your purchases will likely be submitted through on-line suppliers, making it difficult to certify the quality of the product beyond the vaguely defined surmise written by the distributor. What the individual would consider acceptable maybe less than suitable for you so as much as anything you’re taking gambles, making this hobby something of significant risk.

I guess initiating a new hobby isn’t as straight forward as I thought it would be. I’m still conflicted on where to start, how to start and what a start entail? A new hobby that will be funded on a shoestring budget in between those pesky spells of domesticity and fatherhood, but one I’m excited to comprehend. Sure it may take sometime to amass a collection worthy of being deemed a library and something that will be advised on in a limited capacity, but that’s part of the appeal. It’s like getting a sticker album for the first time, slowly dedicating time and money to invest in its expansion. Filling in the gaps, getting that shiny you so desperately craved, before the euphoria of finally completing the entire book. Much like any embellished story; it’s not about the conclusion, but the journey. Now, to Mordor!

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What games would you like to add to you’re collection? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers.

Sonic The Hedgehog; The “Not So Mobile” Review.

If you just want to read my review of the mobile version of “Sonic The Hedgehog”, just scroll down to the third paragraph. I waffle on a bit before then!

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. It encapsulates a memorable period in time, most notably the focal extremities of adolescent fervour and the false depiction of idolised sincerity. Some singular intervals in life are portrayed with luminous vibrancy, rainbows and singing birds, all replenished with “Happy Together” by “The Turtles” fawning your blissful convalescence through a field of flowers. You objectively associate fleeting glimpses of childhood with other venerable branches from that period too, in this instance it’s the 90’s I’m trying to evoke. For me the 90’s signifies injuring myself on a daily basis through my own accentuated stupidity, wanting to live in a bouncy castle reinforced with a moat suffused with chocolate milkshake and dramatic hand gestures that permitted imaginary transformation into any of the overtly stereotyped, and racially profiled Power Rangers. Power up guys! “Caucasian Jock!”, the leader (Red). Because he’s white. “The one no one ever picked” (blue). The openly gay geek, chastised because of his sexuality. (Seriously, look it up!) The “I’m just a girl!” *giggle* (Pink). “The black guy” conveniently  portraying the black ranger, (Because of course that’s not racist!) to enforce the premise that this series is multicultural?! And not forgetting “Ethnic minority” (yellow). Who is sadly no longer with us. I’m not sure whether it was an intentionally racist show or not? Evaluated through the eyes of innocence though, this level of complacent recollection is inevitable, conflicting with the ethereal hindrance that is reality. You were ignorant to the bleating cynicism of resentful spectators deriding your euphoric documentation of childhood sentiment. So you can imagine my apprehension when I decided to test the resolve of my deceptive observances by purchasing the mobile iteration of gaming’s most illustrious sub species of Erinaciamorpha, or Hedgehog to you and me. Yes Sonic The Hedgehogs first outing has been converted onto your mobile phone (for quite sometime admittedly).

“Your free now little…uh? Is that…..sperm?!”

Sonic The Hedgehog is one of the first games I remember playing. It’s commercial notoriety was only garrisoned by the embellished declarations of school-yard chums, chortling each others achievements. So it’s acquisition was paramount for social parity in school. This was also a time in gaming when doctorates were conferred to questionable practitioners, when the general conceit for villainous activity was incarcerating woodland creatures into easily accessible containers, guarded by mechanised crustaceans and moustache twirling was very much regulated by the level of deviousness. Dr Robotnik was a villain that I will eternally refer to as Dr Robotnik. I mean seriously, Eggman?! Adept at crafting implements of destruction, yet deemed a wrecking ball–with all the ferocity of 3 harnessed kittens–was a more suitable weapon for defeating Sonic than a gun. Perhaps if Miley “The Virus” Cyrus was straddling the thing it could’ve been considered deadly! Even your Mean Bean Machine was more intimidating than this doc! (Top marks to anyone who knows what I’m talking about!). So here I am, back where it all began. Rankled by the colloquial envoys of mobile gaming, anxious to ratify Sonic’s long sustained absence from my life and hoping that time hasn’t blemished it’s once perfect image.

“Look, will you stop watching me poo! You know I can’t go if you watch!”

You maybe wondering why I’ve abused 2 paragraphs with an introduction rather than delving into the game? Well that’s because I’m stalling. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog guys/girls, nothing much has changed. Reviewing Sonic is like examining the Mona Lisa and commenting “yep, still a classic”. It still embodies everything I held dear about this game. The frenetic speed, the varied locals, simplistic yet arresting difficulty, the perforating speed-balling (yeah, that made more sense in my head?) and trying to obtain those damnable gilded chaos emeralds is still an accursed exercise in futility. There is something so profoundly endearing about the graphics of this era of platform games that somehow retains graphical fidelity despite its age. This mobile conversion sumptuously translates my childhood into a manageable device, with additional characters to play through including Tails and Knuckles once unlocked. The music is like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a decade. The acoustic agility not only reproduces auditory memories of being a kid, but also motivates you to engage quicker with heightened tempo, generating a palpable sense of haste that encourages the wilful abandonment of considered vigilance. Oh but that’s the deceiving thing about the traditional Sonic games. They lull your cautious restraint, penalizing tenacity with prohibitive restrictions. Designing huge, pivoting lands abounded with steep rotational revolutions that beg to run at, only for intermittent yet variable environmental hazards to encroach your hastened advances, leading to instinctive deviations and often death. Your volatility was only exacerbated by the limited accumulation of rings. As long as you retain at least 1 “precious” ring then you were granted invulnerability, but lose it and well, you’ll well aware of the consequences. Sharp methodical precision as well as customary supply of luck is still the essential mantra for succession here. It’s regrettable then that I can’t finish here with my nostalgic proclivities intact, because despite its glaring cultural status which has remained largely vindicated, it’s installation onto mobile devices presents an issue the original didn’t.

“Still does “Wrecking Ball” better than Miley!”

Where this iteration fails is not due to lack of quality, poor conversion from the original source material or even the games age; but rather modern technology. The name Sonic denotes acceleration, exhilaration and the level design enforces that propulsion, before inditing your velocity with interspersed obstacles, presumably to keep you on your toes. Just when you think you have the bearing of the level, bang! Your caught out. Here this obstacle is a constant hindrance simply because the touch screen controls are entirely too sensitive and can’t accommodate the reactionary physicality required to negotiate the rapid momentum. Competency is not as proficient as it would be with a Megadrive controller. The reactionary latency is such a nuisance that it almost immobilize’s you, or worse you inadvertently spin Sonic into a propelling spike or lava pit when all you wanted to do is leap over a small crevice! Though the controls restrict your movements through much of the stage, it’s when you reach a boss fight that it’s complications become an evident hindrance, as you fight the controls trying to reposition your thumbs into the correct area. The touch-screen display really doesn’t translate your actions into deliberately encouraged manoeuvres. There’s no neutrality, no reactive physicality to your manoeuvres, just gestural touches that have to be constantly monitored in case your thumb moves 2mm to the right. I can’t tell you how many times he would spin in the wrong direction! The probability of collisions doesn’t just increase, it’s inevitable. You begin postulating the repercussions from simply alternating between a stroll or a stride, totally defeating the point of the game.

Any rapid momentum is mitigated by the gestural nuances of the touch-screen, which directly contributes to the majority of your deaths. Your Sonic the Hedgehog, accelerated velocity and dynamic rapidity is what defines you, not stumbling through stages reticent to exceed an actual hedgehogs pace, lingering on a busy intersection before capitulating to the next set of wheels?! When the environment’s are constantly shifting and spraying ample obstacles for you to engage you need to be in complete control, and your just not. And that’s a shame because it’s clear that huge detail has gone into re-crafting one of gaming’s most illustrious staples. The visual absurdity of propelling a rotating, Nike wearing blue Hedgehog across a course with as many lateral precipices as a teenagers derrière is still as rapturous as it was when I was a kid, just not on your phone.

Have you played any mobile games that originated from an earlier device? And do you like touch-screen games.

Isn’t Every Game An RPG?

The term role-playing game has always confused me, especially in the way it’s regarded by the gaming community.
Your vicarious assimilation, however inured is a participation attributed to a specific role. Whether that’s a footballer or an intrepid adventurer. So why is there such a neglected recognition for anything that isn’t steeped amid extrapolated mysticism? For me the interpretive definition, commonly applied to anything with wizards dragons and other variants on asinine mythology is one made through convenience. I’m sure there are many that consider the term “RPG” a succinct appellation of the abbreviation, an aberration that meekly defines a specific game, but there’s such an exponent variation on what constitutes as an RPG that it’s difficult to accurately extract it’s specifics. If you’re simulating the role of Batman, Lara Croft, Nathan Drake or even a pixellated Hedgehog, are you not by the systemic rule of interaction playing the role of a character? An acquaintance of mine was telling me recently that he doesn’t play RPG’s as “that kind of thing is boring” he suggested. He is evidently more infatuated with a generic FPS in all of its asinine persuasions. Not that I’m criticising (much), but isn’t something like Battlefield or Call of duty a composite of both FPS and RPG? Isn’t every first or third person, racing, sport or any other abbreviation that categorises a genre, canopied under the governing prelude of an RPG?

“Oh those crazy, “nerdy” kids and their role-playing, first person shooters.”

Can you define an RPG by its merits, stature or size? Whether by its limited linearity or expansive setting? It seems a socially acceptable exclusion to anything that doesn’t depict imposing lands replete in swords and dragons, with ideologies specifically reserved for knights of valour as being the pictorial aggregation of a genre loosely defined. You’d think that amid the swell of secularised platforms that someone could recognise the clear parallel that most genres fraternised with role-playing?! An FPS for instance by its very definition is neutrally identifiable, evidenced in the banal troupes and indentured servitude. (Again I’m not having a go, honest!) If the game represents a first person perspective and you shoot things, then it’s probably an FPS. If your goal is to, well score goals in a game of football, then that’s sports. If you’re driving a car round a track, then that’s racing. But all of these types of games are emblematic depictions of an RPG. Aren’t they? Of course many gamers would resist the proposal to refer to anything outside of Tolkien or featuring spaceships as an RPG, which is rebellious in a conformists kind of way, that only conflate’s the negative association with this parlous conduit.

The dimensions that are proportionate to RPG such as size, themes and scale indicates the constitutions of what a contemporary RPG’S are supposed to be. I understand this is a very broad acquaintance and that games need to be regulated into condensed categories, but to me signifying something that conjures so much expansive connotations, the arbitrary RPG description facilitates a multitude of attributes. I may be misguided in my reasoning, it’s been known to happen on occasion, or perhaps Cod fans are just as geeky as the kids that dress up as their favourite gaming characters. So just admit that your cool, blowey uppy world war simulator is a role-playing game! Ugh. Nerds!

Are all games RPG’s? Leave a comment that agrees me entirely……by which I mean leave an impartial suggestions. Cheers.

The Gaming Narcoleptic.

Drifting off to sleep for approximately 6.5 winks has become a regulatory theme for me, largely part to my newly acquired senility, which is considerably problematic. Not because it punctuates continuity or that my character remains as stationary as a detected spider trying to cross the living room carpet, but because of the superfluous progression I make while idle. I often attempt to extend my evenings beyond sensibly recommended passage of time, as such my vacant listlessness presents a lucid cacophony of vivid monochromatic imagery and new dimensional immersion into whatever game I fell asleep playing. While my physical self diminishes into interim dormancy, with my chin resting on my chest, shoulders hunched, hands clasped around the clammy controller, girlfriend shaking her head in disconcerted irritation my mind is active, alert, continuing where my conscious self left off. I attempt to make full use of my lucidity by amending any arrears that have risen through my passive absence. For instance while playing The Witcher 3 I inevitably drifted into a state of riposte, whereby I attempted accumulate funds through the exchange of harvested materials and amenities derived from the vanquished corpses of droopy boobed aquatic wenches. I knew I was dreaming, yet I felt inexplicably linked to my PS4.

“I knew that dream was special because I normally dream about naked……Marge.”

Shorn of consciousness I was determined to veer stridently into the verbose disillusions that rippled with such earnest placation. The flourishing world appeared so accepting of me, submissive to my lingering poverty that I had sustained through the negligent restoration of my weapons. I was now trotting through pristine verges with a huge, vascular stallion between my legs (Oh grow up you!). The extraneous pastures that ordinarily housed some subverted vagrant were now replete with an array of continually spawning treasures, to which I plundered with succinct glee for my own affluent leverage. Even though my horse was fully laden I still found time to indulge in alternate “activities” with my concubine, Yennifer, if you know what I mean? *wink, nudge, wink*. Even detained in the custodial prison of my mind it’s still exhausting going “at it” for such an extended period of time. Going back and forth, in and out, shuffling and posturing with no protection! But I needn’t tell you how addictive Gwent is. Of course I was riding on the back of a unicorn, naked! But being steeped in the vestigial activities of variable commodities that has allowed me to achieve so much were sadly figments of unconsciousness. Realising the futility of my ethereal clemency was incredibly deflating. It also doesn’t help that your lids are roused out of their slumberous embrace by the familiar blow to the back of my head, from an agitated girlfriend who had begun tapping her foot and shaking her finger like Sonic the hedgehog.

Even once your addled mind has adjusted to the municipal evocation of reality and ocular synchronism has been stabilised, seemingly watching from afar as Geralt responds to your arrival with continued stoic resolve, your instantly aware of your brief convalescence as though you’ve just hit pause in your mind, instantly reactive to your previous contingencies and continue gaming. And in that pithy euphoric moment before you recognise that your assured capacity for discovering ample wealth and owning Yennifer over and over again (in Gwent) that all your versatile solutions and gathered provisions were simply falsified depictions of the game. All that hard work accumulating honey combs to sell to a sugar loving vendor is now absent, resulting in 2 hour-long vacuity. And a nasty headache where my girlfriend hit me over the head for nodding off again!

How often do you fall asleep while gaming? Let me hear about your unconscious gaming experiences. Cheers.