MY HISTORY OF GAMING PART 2

So after my initial encounter with video games there was a small period of time when I started to lose interest somewhat.

The main problem was that the games were so limited by the technology at the time.  Hand held devices only played one game and as I already mentioned the Pong console that I had was only really for two players and without a regular gaming partner it soon found itself taking up residence at the back of the wardrobe.

At that time I was more interested in playing with my Star Wars toys and I had amassed quite a collection of them.  The thought of playing anymore video games was quite far from my mind I am sure.

Christmas 1983 was a watershed moment as they say.  Without any prompting my mum and dad had decided in their wisdom to buy me a proper computer.  The saw where the world was headed and wanted me to have a head start and so invested in a computer.  I am not sure whether they actually thought that playing games on it would be the prime reason for me powering it up but that's what ended up happening.

On Christmas day 1983 this nine year old boy unboxed his Commodore VIC 20.  I remember that it came with some games but the two a I really remember were 3D Emit Attack and Matrix.  3D Emit Attack was programmed in basic and involved you blasting various combination of keyboard symbols across a fake 3D battle ground.  Matrix was something else altogether.  It was a full on technicolor audio assault coded by none other than Jeff Minter.  I had never encountered anything quite like it before.

The VIC 20 was an interesting computer.  It had a proper typewriter keyboard and a standalone tape recorder supplied which plugged into the back.  The tape recorder was used to load games and record data.  The most important thing was that this enabled you to buy different games so immediately my interest level increased as I was no longer restricted by what I could play.

Despite my initial joy with the VIC 20 it was clear even to me that it was not that powerful compared to other computers on the market and getting new games could prove to be difficult as Commodore had released another computer at the time.  The legendary Commodore 64.  Despite this the VIC 20 was the most important computer I owned because it really got me back into gaming and also I learned how to program in BASIC curtosy of the manual that came with it which taught you the basics of BASIC if you pardon the pun.

It was my sister getting a Commodore 64 that was another game changer.  I was obsessed by it because it was so much more powerful than the VIC 20 despite it looking very similar.  Not only was it capable of better games but the sound was fantastic as well thanks to the SID chip.  If there was one game that really made me want a C64 it was Ghostbusters.

Whenever I was round at my sisters house I would bother her to play Ghostbusters as well as Beach Head and Raid over Moscow.  I was finding it more and more difficult to play games on the VIC 20 and the fact that I never managed to locate a copy of Ghostbusters on it pretty much meant that it ended up being neglected.

That changed in Christmas 1985 when my mum and dad bought me a Commodore 64.  For me it was like arriving in the promised land.  Not only did I get the computer but a wealth of games including my precious Ghostbusters.

If the VIC 20 was important for getting back into games, the C64 was the computer that molded me into a gamer for life.

The incredible thing about the C64 aside from it's sheer power was that it had a huge library of games to choose from.  Over the next few years I amassed a huge amount of games and spent hours playing on it.  I also learned more advanced BASIC as I got older and actually coded my own text based adventure game though I never sent it off to be published.

To select stand out games on the C64 is almost an exercise in folly.  There were simply too many to mention but the Last Ninja series was fantastic.  Brutally hard but compelling it sported some beautiful graphics and an awe inspiring soundtrack.  You also had a plethora of brilliant games from the software house Thalamus such as Armalyte, Hawkeye and Delta.  I could go on and on.

Without doubt the C64 was and remains my favorite games machine I ever owned.  From 1985 to 1991 I played on it regularly until I got a Sega Megadrive (Genesis for readers in the US).  It is worth mentioning that in the time I had the C64 I also owned a Sega Master system which I liked a lot but I always came back to the C64.

The Master System was a great console.  It's arrival was actually inspired by a visit I made to my relatives in Canada when I was 15.  I stayed over at my cousins house and he owned the Nintendo NES system.  It was the first time I had encountered a console since playing on a friends Atari VCS 2600 which was so brutally basic compared to the C64 it was untrue.  The NES was a revelation though.  There was no loading time for games (using the infamous C2N tape loader took tens of minutes to load games) and the control pad with two individual button controllers worked so much better than the more clunky joysticks which only afforded the gamer one individual button.

When I came back from Canada I really wanted a games console.  In Europe and the UK the NES was under competition from the Sega Master System.  The reason I chose Sega's baby was simple.  It had more arcade conversions and they looked and played better on Sega's format than on the Commodore 64.  The problem with the Master System was that the games were far more expensive than the C64 ones and despite crisper graphics the sound was awful.  The C64 ultimately had more interesting games to play on it as well so there were times when the Master System was left gathering dust until a major title came out and I had the money to get it.

Despite my long love affair with the C64 it had to come to an end.  Time moved on and the games dried up as more powerful machines gained a larger market share.  As I looked at what was on the market to go for next, two possibilities came up and choosing between them was almost impossible...so I ended up getting both of them. 

That is for part 3.