30 Day Video Game Challenge Thing.

[Cube]

I'm doing a 30 Day video game "challenge" thing (I never got the challenge bit, it's just picking games, but that's what they seem to be called). I figured I may as well post them on here and see what other people would pick for each category (for me personally, I'm not using the same game for more than two.

Spoiler

Day 1 - Earliest Video Game Memory.

Mine is a rather obscure game called QWAK. I'm not actually sure what I played on, although it seems it was apparently an Amiga (I thought it was an Acorn Electron, but the Amiga version looks more familiar, even though I don't recall ever touching an Amiga). It's a game where you run around collecting keys, fruit and gems. I remember it being good fun, but not much else.

 

[Will]

Good thing for a thread, would much rather post these things here than something like facebook.

Quak definitely looks familiar but I don’t recall why. I had a friend that would give me bootleg amiga games and this may well have been one of them.

My Earliest Gaming Memory

For me it was going to my Grandparents house back when I was 5 or 6 and my Grandfather having a BBC Micro, very similar to this one:

I used to spend hours playing loads of games on there, my favourite at the time was called Citadel:

I never managed to complete it and would quite like to go back and try to. There were a few others we played a lot but I don’t really recall them.

Once my Grandfather upgraded to a proper PC (way before most other people even knew what they were), we got to have the BBC and carried on playing it for quite a long time. It was all down to him and these games that really got me into gaming - good times!

[drahkon]

Earliest Video Game Memory

I can't pinpoint how old I was exactly but I was most likely 4 or 5. My parents bought a Game Boy and a few games. We used to go on vacation in northern Germany during the summer. Long car rides were the norm so to keep me occupied I was allowed to play video games
I remember playing Tetris, Kwirk and Super Mario Land quite a lot during those car rides. Can't say which one of those was my first gaming memory, so I'm just gonna say that all of them take a place in that section of my brain

[Ronnie]

Earliest Video Game Memory

Playing this with my ten-years-older brother in his bedroom. I remember 1-2 in particular blowing my mind as a kid for some reason. Might have been the ominous music. I think he must have got the game 4 or 5 or so years after its original release though. Also have great memories of playing Chip's Challenge on the PC back in the day.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Ronnie

[bob]

My earliest video game memory was when my family first got a PC, and playing a game called Think Quick.



I think you were some sort of Knight, exploring a castle, avoiding dragons, and looking for keys to open gates.

Only now have I just noticed it was made by "The Learning Company" which makes me deeply suspicious that it may have been educational...

[Londragon]

Great thread.  If you don't mind I'll mention this on the Podcast this coming week, too.

Earliest Video Game Memory

My Grandfather was ahead of the curve, and had an Atari PONG machine connected to his old school TV with a sliding Tambour door (looked like a bread bin).  Something like this.

[Cube]

5 minutes ago, londragon said:

Great thread.  If you don't mind I'll mention this on the Podcast this coming week, too.

Don't mind at all. Loving the responses for far, looking forward to what people have to say each day.

[Sméagol]

Earliest video game memory

I honestly can't recall. To provide an anwser, I'll go with Super Mario Bros. But it could be something else, like some nameless portable LCD game thing. To be specific (or as far as I can reconstruct my memories), it was seeing Super mario Bros in the toy store, on a demo stand. And deciding that I wanted that. I didn't get a NES until later, and not with SMB1, but SMB2. Before that I actually had a 2nd hand Vec-Trex.

[Will]

1 hour ago, drahkon said:

Earliest Video Game Memory

I can't pinpoint how old I was exactly but I was most likely 4 or 5. My parents bought a Game Boy and a few games. We used to go on vacation in northern Germany during the summer. Long car rides were the norm so to keep me occupied I was allowed to play video games
I remember playing Tetris, Kwirk and Super Mario Land quite a lot during those car rides. Can't say which one of those was my first gaming memory, so I'm just gonna say that all of them take a place in that section of my brain

I still remember the day my Dad took me out and we bought a Game Boy. We got it from Tandy in our local town while my Mum and Sister were at church, my god they were angry with us when they got home. It was all worth it for Super Mario Land though!

20 minutes ago, londragon said:

 

Now this brings back memories! I almost wish I had one of those now.

[Nicktendo]

Earliest gaming memory

Standing in the corner of the living room by the table lamp because my dad refused to switch on "the big light"

20 minutes an evening was all I was allowed. 1990. Some great memories of this and Tetris. 

I may have played a NES and SMB3 at my next door neighbour's house before this, but honestly it's all a haze these days. The GB was the first one I owned by proxy (Dad got one for boat trips across the bay in Hong Kong when he was working there). Don't think he realised his mistake when he introduced me to it once he came home. He still regrets picking one up to this day, I'm sure. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Nicktendo

[Ronnie]

Following on from my earlier post, I vividly remember going to Toys R Us when the NES was in its prime, seeing walls of games in plastic security cases. It was like Christmas had come early. This was back when there was no internet, barely any gaming magazines and you just picked a game based on the box art. That's how I ended up getting (and falling in love with) Cobra Triangle. In some ways I kind of miss those days, now you often times know almost everything about a game before you've even received it.

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Ronnie

[Goafer]

Earliest Gaming Memory

Kikstart on the Spectrum and the Spectrum in general. Games took forever to load and half the time they'd fail. Good times.

Still have my Spectrum and Kikstart somewhere. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Goafer

[Londragon]

Earliest Gaming Memory
Kikstart on the Spectrum and the Spectrum in general. Games took forever to load and half the time they'd fail. Good times.
Still have my Spectrum and Kikstart somewhere. 

I have very fond memories of Kickstart 2 and making our own courses, 2 brothers, on the Commodore 64 , great game.

[martinist]

Earliest Gaming Memory

I can't remember if it was a game called Gunfight or a game called Outlaw. They both had the same pixel cowboy guys so i'm not entirely sure. It was my dad's old Atari 2800 I used to play a game where cowboys shot at each other. Might have been Outlaw now that I look at google images. I used to hold the joystick upside down since i was left handed and the button was more comfortable for me to press.

Edited July 1, 2020 by martinist

[Dufniall]

Day 1: Earliest Game Memory

Pfew, this is harder than I thought! The timeline is so blurry for this. I must have been around 4 or 5 and it was a time we didn't have a game console at home yet. I know my brother was hospitalised back then for a long time (nasty disease) and I was spending a lot of time at friends of my parents when they went over to the hospital. They had a Game Boy with Tetris and Super Mario Land. But I also remember playing Duck Hunt at a very young age on the NES, holding the light gun against the TV haha. And said hospital had a Sega Mega Drive with Alex Kidd.

But somehow I think before that I already played the Commodore 64 somewhere, and 2 games come to mind first.

Rambo

And Radar Rat Race

I'm not 100% sure but the Commodore games feel vaguer in my memory than the Nintendo games. I know we did get a SNES and Game Boy a couple of years later ourselves. But whether I played the NES, Gameboy or Commodore first I really can't remember. But my memory thinks it's the Commodore.

[BowserBasher]

Day 1. Granny’s Garden

This was one of I think two educational games that were on school computers, or in this case the BBC micro back when I was like 5 or 6. Only really remember a few bits but looking it up I’m remembering more of it now. And just found out there are updating versions around now. 

[Julius]

Awesome thread idea @Cube, love it! Really nice reading about how everyone first touched base with gaming. 

Day 1: Earliest Video Game Memory

For me, my first gaming memory would undoubtedly have to be tied to the PlayStation, which has been in my family's possession for as long as I can remember. It belonged to one of my dad's friends who kindly passed it on to us after upgrading to a PS2, and he gave us a load of games, two controllers, and a few memory cards. We've had it that long I can't even remember it being dropped off! 

I have a bunch of memories tied to that thing: being petrified by the first fifteen minutes of Dino Crisis over and over again; having an absolute blast playing through the Activision Spider-Man games with my dad before and after he went to work, which along with the animated series and turning cereal boxes into houses for me to use with my action figures, I had Spidey my childhood on all fronts; playing the PlayStation Yu-Gi-Oh game with a close friend; my dad thinking I was a chess genius playing a video game version on the PlayStation, then I showed him after a few hours that pressing triangle actually made the best move...good times! 

But I think the absolute earliest, at a guess, would have to be Tomb Raider III. 

I have absolutely no idea how far I got into that game. I remember sliding down slopes, jumping (and often failing) to avoid spikes, I remember a quad bike, and I have a clear memory of a swimming pool too. There's no way I finished that game. 

What I imagine is actually my earliest memory of playing it is actually pretty vivid: I must have been only 3 or 4 at the time, it's a Sunday evening, and I'm roaming around Croft Manor when my dad comes home from shopping with a multi-pack of McCoy's - I remember that because it was the first time I tried Thai Sweet Chilli, and I felt like I had been conned out of a decent packet of crisps, because I wasn't a fan 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Julius

[Sméagol]

I think I'll try to go for "hard mode" which means I need to think ahead of what games I'm going to mention where.

[S.C.G]

Day 1 - Earliest Video Game Memory.

 

Burnin' Rubber

Price: N/A (Pack-in title)
Developer: Ocean
Released: 1990
System: Amstrad 6128+

It was Christmas 1990, that was when I had my first real experience of a videogame on our brand new Amstrad 6128+ computer. The machine itself had Basic loaded onto a cartridge, in addition to having a disc drive which was how you would play and program most games. Though there was another piece of built-in software on that EEPROM cartridge, a lesser-known racing games by the name of Burnin' Rubber, developed by Ocean Software, who were a pretty big company back then. (incidentally, Ocean were bought out by Infogrames Entertainment SA in 1998, who then went on to become Atari SA in 2009, before having to file for bankruptcy in 2013)

The best way to describe this title, is that it's a bit like Outrun but with less scenery, crossed with Top Gear as you are taking part in a race and you just see how far you can get. There is only one piece of music in the entire game, the title screen theme which is actually pretty memorable, but once you get into the main game, it's all engines revving through the gears, tyres screeching and the all too familiar sound of your car hitting a barrier, crashing and flipping multiple times.

You'll likely only get a little way in on your first try before the time runs out, but the more you play it, the further on you'll get and you'll notice the palette change slightly as you get through more laps of the course. There are also tunnel sections to drive through, which do break up the gameplay a bit but in practice, it just means that you have to be even more careful not to crash into the sides, or get battered by the rival racers.

Get ready, for the race of your life... or at least a rather charming racing game, with some nice presentation for its time.

I'm probably making it sound more exciting than it actually is, you can see what the game is like from the image above, in motion it holds a steady enough framerate but for its time, it really was there just to showcase what the Amstrad 6128+ could do, as it was a very capable machine. These days, if you can find a way to play it on a modern PC, then it's worth a go, or even if you happen to own either an Amstrad PC which can play it, or the GX4000 which will play just the cartridge, as there are ways to hook these machines up with a modern scart cable; but even then, don't go expecting much more than a nice crisp image of what is quite a basic racing game.

Personally, I can only remember good things about it, this is a game which my brothers and I would play a fair amount, never really getting that far into the game until weeks or months later, inbetween playing other games from the disc which were programmed on the machine from lines of code printed in books and magazines, in addition to some other officially licensed software. Burnin' Rubber was always there though, on the machine and it really made for a fantastic first impression, in addition to being the first proper videogame I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

Verdict: Burnin' Rubber is a brilliant example of an early racing game, which really took advantage of the power the Amstrad 6128+ offered at the time.

[RedShell]

My earliest video game memory? Well, it was a very long time ago! I know that much.  

The earliest one I can recall is playing the Commodore 64 version of Bubble Bobble in the late 80’s, and a lot of that memory is no doubt due to this:   

Certainly not my earliest video game experience (that was probably another C64 game, or something in the arcade) but it’s the earliest one that I can still vividly remember today.  

[Ronnie]

Bubble Bobble is up there for me too, alongside SMB, but the NES version. The secret exist ending blew my mind as a kid. 

[Nicktendo]

2 hours ago, Julius said:

I have a bunch of memories tied to that thing: being petrified by the first fifteen minutes of Dino Crisis over and over again

Hahah, yes! I was probably a lot older than you (maybe 11 or 12) but I still remember absolutely shitting myself playing this game. It was the first "horror" game I ever played. What a game. Still love it more than the PS1 Resi games to this day. 

2 hours ago, Julius said:

But I think the absolute earliest, at a guess, would have to be Tomb Raider III. 

I have absolutely no idea how far I got into that game. I remember sliding down slopes, jumping (and often failing) to avoid spikes, I remember a quad bike, and I have a clear memory of a swimming pool too. There's no way I finished that game. 

What I imagine is actually my earliest memory of playing it is actually pretty vivid: I must have been only 3 or 4 at the time, it's a Sunday evening, and I'm roaming around Croft Manor when my dad comes home from shopping with a multipack of McCoy's - I remember that because it was the first time I tried Thai Sweet Chilli, and I felt like I had been conned out of a decent packed of crisps, because I wasn't a fan 

Again, older than you, which is why me and my friend tried the "Naked Lara Croft" cheat. Absolutely not worth it.

 

[Nicktendo]

3 hours ago, BowserBasher said:

BBC micro

90s School kids, can I get a hell yeah?! 

It's our planet, it's our place, we must save the human race, eaaaaaarth warp, we must save the woooorld! 

Definitely remember playing Earth Warp on the BBC Mirco in Mrs. Hill's class (year 4) at Woodthorpe Primary School. Ollie the Alien, what a guy.

+ 10 internet points for remembering "Through the Dragon's eye". Also had a BBC Micro game as far as I remember...

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Nicktendo

[martinist]

32 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

90s School kids, can I get a hell yeah?

Holy shit i remember earth warp!!! That space ship scared the crap out of me as a kid. It always looked like it wanted to kill me. I remember having nightmares of it chasing me some nights.

I prefered watching Numbertime. Less nightmares, more mathmatics.

Edited July 1, 2020 by martinist

[nekunando]

 

My earliest gaming memory is already documented in N-Europe with the first entry in my '12 Games of Christmas' feature from 2015

 

Super Soccer

This is the game that started it all!

I honestly can’t remember what I received from Santa for Christmas in 1993 because my big brother had asked for a Super Nintendo and it completely stole the show from the moment the present was unwrapped.

The box was MASSIVE! Not only was the console inside, as well as 2 controllers, but also the Nintendo Scope, Super Scope 6 and probably most notably, Super Soccer.

As the first console and games we owned, the moment the power was turned on and the powerful intro music and pictures were displayed on the TV was amazing.

 

Grabbing the controller felt exciting. It was new. It was magical.

So, too, was Super Soccer.

Taking to the pitch with one of the 16 international teams, each with their own ridiculously awesome music which played during each half, depending on who was attacking up the screen, was always filled with drama and excitement when playing with my brother, even to this day. I say 16 teams, but I’ll never forget my dad somehow discovering the secret Nintendo team by holding start while selecting your team with B on controller 2. Goodness only knows how that even happened, but we were forever grateful!

For me, there are things that Super Soccer does better than most modern football games! Firstly, the penalty shootouts are actually simple and FUN, unlike the unsatisfactory equivalents in the latest FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer games that overcomplicate things. Secondly, there’s the option for manual goalkeepers and you’ll have to trust me when I say that this is the ONLY way to play Super Soccer!

I will forever love this game as my introduction to gaming and for genuinely still being an extremely fun game to play with my brother, a rivalry that is just as strong in 2015 as it was some 22 years ago.

With Human Interactive sadly no longer in business, there doesn’t appear to be any possibility of this ever appearing on the Virtual Console at any point, but we'll always have Christmas '93!