A History of my Personal Video games!

What was my history of games, Where did I start?

Well with me it all started thanks to my brother’s interest in games as he was the one asking my dad to buy this and that, and soon the Gameboy. Oh yes the first games console I had was the original grey and purple Gameboy, and my first game was…. TETRIS! Whey!

I started gaming when I was about 4 years old as far as I can remember, though I couldn’t understand most games back at that age.. especially “Links Awakening” I did understand Super Mario and Tetris.

As the years went by, my brother had gotten a Super Nintendo which opened up a whole new set of games, IN COLOUR and they had better graphics and sound effects compared to the tiny hand held Gameboy I had. I just found games really fun and interesting compared to other things I did. I did draw back then but it wasn’t anything great. I think what made me get addicted to gaming at such an early age was the challenges that it would give me, and I would always love taking on something someone told me I couldn’t do.

The Super Nintendo

Anyway would play on the SNES for hours and hours and my parents would often complain about how much time I was spending on there and I would often cry when they tried to get me off just to buy myself extra time with my precious SNES. My favourite games from the SNES had to be Megaman X, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, F-Zero, Starwing, Super Mario Allstars, Pilotwings, Firepower 2000, Super Air Diver and A link to the past. 

F-ZERO Gameplay

All the games back then had such awesome soundtracks and catchy tunes, I would just sometimes go on the pause screen just to listen to the awesome music in the background.

After the SNES, we had bought our first big PC from a company called “Tiny” and it was operating windows 98. This was the start of something truly amazing and epic… My PC gaming history, we had a lot of bundle discs that came with our first PC, and all I cared about was the gaming bundles, my brother and I split up the games we each wanted to play, he took the strategy games while I had all the racing games. 

The first PC game I played was something called Moto GP2 or something by the name of that, it was a 3D motorbike racing game, I soon followed that up with Powerboat racing, and Plane crazy, more epic 3D racing games with cool soundtracks on. I soon started to play his strategy games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon and my favourite RTS, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, it was a medieval style RTS which involved training swordsman, mages, undead armies, animal savages, and tons of other cool units to annihilate each others bases.

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms Gameplay

After we’d both beaten nearly all of the games we had, we bought broadband internet! Which opened up a whole new world of gaming online, I would often play really crappy flash games online while my brother would download ROMS and play on emulators and tease me about playing a better game than me. He had downloaded all the Megaman X games up to X5, and I was a diehard fan of Megaman X by then so I was on a mission to play all the Megaman games all the way back from the original NES ones, which I obtained through some methods… online.. J I LOVE THE WHOLE MEGAMAN SERIES! All the way through to ZX on the Nintendo DS.

  I started to discover all the retro games because of the internet and thanks to emulators, I played the Sonic games up until the GameBoy Advance ones and Castlevania as well as playing through all of the Zelda games, apart from majora’s mask and any of the DS games. I would always need a tutorial for the Zelda games as there was no indication of what to do next and I didn’t bother reading through all the dialogue of the game so it was walkthrough’s to the rescue!

I love the internet so much. Just thought I’d mention that here.

After a few years we had replaced our PC with a brand new Windows XP PC which meant we could play some of the new games that had been released and everything would run faster and not crash every 10 minutes… Damn you windows 98 and your errors. We had to replace it because a Trojan literally nuked our PC and it wouldn’t even turn on at that point.

By this time I had moved onto playing Gameboy Advance ROM's and went through a phase of playing all the new Sonic Advance games, the new Zelda games, like Minish Cap and Four swords, The new Metroid games as well such as Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission and lets not forget all the Megaman games, which included Battle Network 1-6 and Megaman Zero 1-4. I was basically finding all the genres from the SNES and NES which were remade into Gameboy advance games. There were some really bad remakes of old games but most of them were amazing.

Zelda, Megaman Zero and Metroid Fusion for the Game boy Advance

I had moved onto playing Nintendo 64 games with an emulator and my favourites were Super smash bros. the original version, I would always pick Samus Aran or Link, Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Banjo and Kazooie, Star fox 64 and F zero X. Those were the first big open world games I absolutely loved to play! There was even Castlevania 64! which was one of the first scary 3D games i've played

Super Smash Bros. N64

I remember the first big new game I played that was just released at the time was Need for speed Underground 2, my brother had bought it from a friend, as you see the common theme; my brother is responsible for all my gaming! I got into a Car Hype for about a few months till it died down.

And by 2004 I was still playing random online games and emulator games, until I started to get into MMO’s from going into gaming chat rooms on Maidmarian and playing Moonbase online, I started my first proper MMORPG, Runescape!

Runescape - Someone's rich

Now I was addicted to this game like glue, I would spend hours and hours grinding and killings things, losing all my items and going apeshit over it. I had made a lot of good friends on that game and while I did quit from time to time to play some other crappy MMO chat rooms like Habbo hotel and IMVU, I would always return to Runescape, as there was something about the whole medieval theme which gripped me and got me addicted.

Until the end of 2006 I was hooked on Runescape, but I was slowly getting tired and bored of countless hours of grinding, just to level up or get gold pence in game I was sick of it and wanted to replace it with something else.

That was when I heard about World of Warcraft… Oh my god that game was the most fun game I had ever played in my entire life, while my parents were very reluctant to pay the monthly subscription fee of 8.99 a month I begged them to let me continue playing. Usually a long gaming session for me was about 3 -4 hours, I would spend about 6-8 hours on this game every day. It was that addictive.

The whole friendly environment of the game back then was amazing and I had never seen a game with a world so huge and big with that many players in, I had formed new friends and bonds. And I still to this day are friends with many of my WoW friends, I had A LOT of good memories of that game. It had me hooked on for 4 and a half years, until 2010

World of Warcraft - Stormwind keep

During summer 2010 my brother had bought a PS3 and we often played a lot of CoD Modern Warfare 2 special ops missions together, while he wasn’t an avid gamer like me at all, he was more of a social person now, it was me playing online a lot, but not as much as I would play WoW, cause I would get bored easily of just shooting players without interacting properly.

When college started at the end of summer, I seized all gaming completely until in 2011 when I bought a new expensive laptop. Where I was gifted on my Birthday, Xmas and Valentines Day with Deadspace 1 & 2, Darksiders and Amnesia the Dark Descent, but I haven’t properly gamed in a while since the end of WoW.  I really got into Starcraft 2 over 2011 Summer break though, but it was more of watching professional players play against each other on YouTube, as I was rubbish at the game. It’s the hardest game I’ve ever played. I have been playing a lot of the free games on steam and when portal and TF2 came out as F2P I was pretty excited since I’ve always wanted to play, I just couldn’t be bothered to pay for it, oh god I’m so cheap.

Darksiders - War riding his Steed Ruin, The first horsemen of the Apocalypse

 I think I over saturated myself with WoW and I don’t really want to get back into the full swing of gaming just yet. At the moment I’m still not playing hardcore at all due to a lot of other things in real life although I am casually playing Blacklight: Retribution a free awesome futuristic FPS.

I don’t really know what type of games I would like to play at the moment, I don’t really want to go back into MMO’s as I wasted too much time on there, when I could have done other things, I guess I would like to play more linear type games at the moment so I can finish them and get them out the way and feel accomplished.

One of the most awesome new FPS games I've played in a while, it beats CoD in my opinion. AND its Free to play!

The future of games… hmm I’m thinking hopefully in about 10 or 20 years from now they will have perfected virtual reality, and if that’s going to be true I can’t wait to start playing virtual reality games, and not the crappy virtual reality ones, I mean like a full-fledged open world MMO inside a virtual reality helmet, like the game in the anime “Sword Art Online” That would be pretty awesome to see! 

Concept for a Virtual reality helmet

So there you have it, my brief personal gaming history, whilst I didn’t list all the games I played, I just wanted to show you the ones that were important to me and the ones I really remembered well.

A Brief History of how video games came about! Part 3

The history of computer games - 2000's - Now

So we’ve seen how gaming had developed from being just an experiment by university students as their hobby to becoming one of the world’s most successful businesses with arcades and now home consoles. By the 2000s everyone knew what gaming was and it really did take off with home console gaming and PC gaming.

The Dreamcast

The new 6^th gen consoles were released in the early 2000’s it was opened with Dreamcast in 1998 and was the first console to have a built in internet modem! It was initially very successful but it declined due to Sega’s bad reputation from previous failures, as well as the anticipation of the Playstation 2, everyone was saving up and waiting for the PS2.

Playstation 2

The next big console that was released was the Xbox, and it was released by Microsoft, and it was luckily saved by the Halo Series in November 2001 as they were selling the consoles at a loss. Halo still is one of the most successful console game shooters, Oh I remember playing Halo on our old school computers on LAN servers, the good old days.

Though as time went on the development costs for games started to increase exponentially as games were getting longer, larger in size and more advanced with better graphics as well as being more than just linear, multiplayer was becoming very popular. In 2004 with the release of Halo 2 they had over 190 people in the credits and the game had taken 3 years just to complete with a cost of $40 million! 

People were beginning to have access to high speed broadband internet, this meant a whole new generation of Massive multiplayer online games, while they were few and far between they were one of the genres that were extremely successful, especially World of Warcraft, which had sold millions of copies, with a monthly subscription fee to top it all off, though it had taken the company 7 years just to complete developing the game. It was these types of MMO games that were different from the rest, there was an ongoing game play so the game would never have a true ending, which left a lot of people addicted.

Mobile gaming was also coming around in the early 2000s though it wasn’t as popular as console games, as it was running old arcade games which no one really cared about anymore. Mobile games were used more as a time killer than a recreational game. Though it is starting to change nowadays with the release of new advanced smart phones and the IPhone, which really has stirred interest from businesses.

Mobile gaming today

From 2005 onwards the 7^th generation consoles were starting to be released, it was opened by handheld consoles first, such as the Nintendo DS and the PSP, while the PSP had much better graphics and power, it was the charm of Nintendo’s dual screen handheld which sold to an entirely new audience of gamers with their release of Nintendogs and Brain Age series, which attracted female middle aged and young audiences compared to the usual male teenagers. 

 

Microsoft soon released their current console, the Xbox 360 in 2005 November, and similarly Sony would also release the PS3 a few months later.  They both featured brilliant HD graphics and integrated networks such as Xbox Live, and the PS Network. They were both very competitive when it came down to their specs, however Sony had priced their console about $200 more expensive than Microsoft’s which had made it the most expensive games console to be sold on the market.

After the PS3’s launch Nintendo did try something completely new and very risky, releasing the Wii at the end of 2006. Which was a motion controlled console, it had lower technical specs and the games on the Wii were no where near as good as PS3 or Xbox games, so Nintendo still remain 3^rd. However the console did become the world’s fastest selling games console, just out of sheer curiosity

Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii

Along with all these new consoles and technological developments, games took a whole new shape and form, full of incredible detailed environments and accurate 3D models with complex textures, the styles of games that would be released would all have Cut-scenes. It was all about the story and lore of the game more than the actual game play now. Games had such a greater meaning to us than just mere hack and slash shoot em up quick entertainment. They were like interactive movies. Which made them incredibly awesome if I do say so myself.

 Cut-scenes are core part of all the modern day games we see today as they would even go to such an extent to use motion capture with real life actors in suits which could capture facial expressions and movement accurately.

Cut-scenes in modern games - Starcraft 2

Gaming has taken a massive step in this modern day era, it has become a full-fledged extremely competitive industry. It has evolved so much and games have become a lot more expensive and time consuming to develop and create due to the competitive nature of the market and change in social attitudes towards gaming. It’s all about the big releases now, and all the small games companies which don’t get as much sales as they needed often end up being bankrupt. Which is sad because there’s less room for innovation if the same big companies keep making the same types of games.

Graph showing an estimate of development costs in games

Well that concludes gaming history so far, I hope you have learned lots about where games initially came from and how they developed over the years. If you are still reading this much of course, next time I shall talk about my personal gaming history.

A Brief History of how video games came about! Part 2

The history of computer games 1980s -1990s

Space Invaders

 The 1980s saw huge changes in the gaming industry especially with so many new publishing companies appearing. People were beginning to realise the potential business of video games, especially after huge successful hits like Pong and Space Invaders in the 70s. In the 80s the first games were registered by the copyright office! These were Atari’s games: “Asteroids” and “Lunar lander”. This sold over 400000 arcade machines across the world!

The costs to produce new games were relatively low and it let forth a whole wave of new idea’s and unique, bizarre and awesome games which meant that a whole new array of games which defined the genres we all know today were created!

These ranged from Action, adventure, role playing, Beat em ups!, Platformer’s, Hack and slash, scrolling, Shooters, Real time strategy, Stealth games, vehicle simulators, and the list goes on…

As well as new games and genres being created, technology was also developing in full swing, a series of new cheaper rivals suddenly emerged in the early 80s, due to companies and businesses investing in the video games industry. These included the iconic Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit and many more different consoles. 

The new consoles were helping the Home Computer system and games market set up their foundations by raising awareness through many advertising campaigns. Nearly everyone was aware of what a video game was by now. Or they were being told about it.

I remember my brother and dad using a Commodore 64, and it looked exactly like the computer’s we use nowadays with the keyboard and everything, I remember playing Terminator 1 on there with a Joystick controller and typing silly things on the basic word program they had, though I was never any good at it, as I was only 4 or 5 years old I had no idea what I was doing.

The Commodore 64 was released in August 1982 and it was very successful due to its marketing and competitive price, it had the same controller ports as the Atari 2600 which allowed people to use their old joysticks again and it soon became the most popular home computer in the USA and was the single best selling computer model of all time internationally and still is!

The Commodore 64!

In 1985 there was the start of new 16-bit graphic machines, but they were way too expensive back then so they weren’t that popular during the 80’s however in the 90’s we saw a huge boom in sales for the 16 consoles. More than 8million American homes now had a video game console which totalled to more than $4billion a year!

Online gaming was starting to form and people were using their Dial up board systems in the 80’s for online gameplay they were very crude and people would often play text adventure games. So it wasn’t as popular as video games back then until MIDI Maze and Doom were released in the late 80s/early 90s.

Nintendo, a small company founded in 1889 started to invest in the video game industry and soon became one of the biggest game’s companies to date and one of the most influential ones at that.

During 1985 the market was dulling down but was swiftly revived by Nintendo’s release of the 8bit Console the Famicom, more commonly known as the NES! Oh yeah! It came with Super Mario Bros. and It became a huge Success instantaneously, it was dominating the American and Japanese markets up until the early 90’s It used game pads and debut the most famous game series out there.

Metroid on the NES

Some of the more famous games that we may remember from that era are: Pac-Man, The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Slayer, Kings Quest, Ultima, Wizardry, Dragon Warrior, Golden Axe, Metriod, Castlevania, Turbo and many many more.

   

Soon came the handheld era of the Game Boy, in 1989, This was my first proper console, and it has sold over 118.69 million copies worldwide, My first game was Tetris! Which was a huge hit selling millions across the world as it was bundled with the Gameboy,

The 90’s was the big decade for the rise of the best games franchises out there today in my opinion. It saw the release of MMORPG’s Such as Ultima Online, Everquest and Runescape!

It brought lots of change due to the development of technology and 3D graphics coming around being the big changer. The genres that were established were becoming more solid and given more importance as big games came around. As well as the introduction of proper competitive online gaming.

Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario!

It founded Sega’s mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog one of the most recognisable video game characters, next to Mario of course. Consoles such as the Sega Mega Drive, SNES, in the early 90s and during the late 90s Playstation and N64 were starting to come around. Amazing new 3D games were being released on the market, There was very little talk of arcade games after all of that had been released, it was inadequate and annoying compared to the home consoles we could play in the warmth of our own homes.

Goldeneye for the N64

It was the decade of truly amazing thought out games for the genres, Real time strategy games had a whole new meaning to them as games like Warcraft, Starcraft and Command & Conquer came out. These are the games which gave birth to E-Sports. Something I wish that will become a sport as big as football or baseball around the world. We got to see the Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil and Silent Hill be born, the main pioneers of survival horror games that we see today! As well as Doom, Quake and Golden Eye, the games that would create the basis of FPS games we see today!

I would say the 90’s was the foundation platform for most of the modern day games we see today, the games might look different with better graphics and amazing visuals, but the ideas that were forged in this era are still here in today’s games.

Next time we will have a look at the modern day era of computer games and what happened with the industry!