Thursday, January 31, 2008

My gaming history (P.1)

Having written about my favourite five games of all time a few weeks ago it was a trip down memory and got me thinking about all the different systems I've owned over the years. Thinking about it now it is actually quite a big list consoles and computers I have owned and played down the years. I think I will split this topic into a few posts over the next few days. So let's get started...

For me it starts a good few years ago now, I'd say 1990 would be the year I got my first computer, the Commodore 64. Obviously, it was meant for more than simply playing games but I was young and I supposed I didn't really appreciate what else it was capable of. I do remember trying to program a bouncing ball to appear on screen in QBASIC I presume but I never got it to work. Funny now considering my current occupation. The C64 offered me two ways to play games - cartridge and tape. The only cartridge I had was the one that came with the system and had Flimbo's Quest, Klaxx, Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun and International Soccer. The first game Flimbo's Quest was probably the best game on the system and had very advanced sound and graphics for it's time. Another advantage the game has was that it was on the cartridge which meant it didn't have to load up.

I had the external tape deck for the C64 and a whole bunch of games, some good but if I remember the majority were quite poor. The thought of loading games now is funny. You put the tape in, run it from the command line and wait (and hope) for it to load. It was actually quite unreliable really but at the time we all knew no different. Of the games on tape the one I remember most fondly was a game called Turican 2. I don't remember a whole lot about it other than you were some kind of super solider with a massive laser weapon and the ability to turn into a kind of buzz saw and roll around. I do remember you faced off against a giant, screen filling fish at some point. Weird.

1 comment:

morgor said...

Thanks for this, i've been trying to persuade people that you could get game cartridges on the original C64 but no one would believe me!