| |
About Me
See right for a link for more info on the site
I am 36, I live Cambs with my wife and great little daughter.
I have always been lucky enough to have been
around video games for a large part of my life.
I grew up in a seaside holiday resort town so there were arcades
on the seafront (The Carousel, The pier and Charles Mannings
Amusements) it was in these that my fascination re. obsession
started.
The Carousel was the best of these in my opinion, it was run
by Glen, Mark and Paul who used to work there back in the day
and still do, it was the first of the arcades in town to have
the newest machines in. Another good point was it had Pool tables
and a balcony cafe on the first floor.
My friends and I would always go out of our way to go into these.
From this early age there was the rivalry to better each others
high scores right from the early games through to Daytona, at
which point I relocated. At each game we knew who was the "best
in town"
Defender, Stargate & Sinistar D_W
Vanguard MAH
Robotron R B
Time Pilot GDT (me)
To name but a few, other noticeable initials were, WAC, ADI,
M.D, S.C, AM.
(Sorry to those I have not mentioned)
During this time an evolution was happening on the home front.
the Atari VCS2600 was taken onto our homes and hearts. This
was the at the forefront of consoles at the time offering us
the chance to play our favourites at home. It was not long before
home computers entered the market and the exposure that this
gave games. Between us we had access to most of the machines
of the time, the common ground being the ZX 81, Spectrum and
C64 although people had BBC B's, Oric and others.
As I entered my late teens it was not unusual to see 6+ of us
standing around the Tehkan world cup game holding our own tournaments,
although we moved onto bar football on a Sunday afternoon.
After I had relocated and the price of those spectrum games
creeping up 9.99 for Operation Thunderbolt and gunship, however
they were great. I was back visiting the local computer shop
and was captivated by this sleek next gen computer the Atari
ST. This took me back along the road of always wanting the next
big thing ST,STe,A500,A500+,1200,4000,PC. Along the way I have
had the pleasure of playing some of great games, Dungeon Master
(ST), Blood money, Populous. Powermonger.
It was during this time that the console rose from the slump
that it went through, with the NES leading the way, stealing
100's of hours of my life playing Mario and the like. I then
purchased a Sega Megadrive at a cost of 189.99 quite expensive
in those days. This was IT, arcade quality games in my living
room what more could I want?
I was reading a copy of ACE and I saw it, the SuperFamicom and
all of its tricks. I could not wait for this to be released
over here so I bought an import machine with Final Fight, F-Zero
and Super Mario World ( who cared if I didn't understand the
hints and tips?)
Over the next few years I had most of the consoles an imported
gameboy, PC Engine (don't remember why I sold it), Neo Geo,
Turbo Grafix.
What an assortment I only wish I had never sold any of them,
but I did as I favoured consoles and then computers and back
again.
About a two years ago I wanted to play Truxton again so I bought
a megadrive, it was while playing this I yearned for all of
my favourite games of yesteryear, this started the collection
that I have now assembled, which is more about games that I
like playing opposed for collecting for collecting's sake however
I acknowledge that I will add to the various collections to
increase the numbers in them.
There are many other people who collect games most have better
collections than mine and who are far more knowledgeable on
the older systems especially the 8 bit machines. There is a
web ring and mailing list for retro gaming, and it is becoming
ever more popular.
Me playing the GBA at the 2000 ECTS show in London. This picture
was in Issue 90 of Edge. |
|
|
