My Gaming History : Space Invaders

Space Invaders(1978)

Space Invaders is not only iconic but was the first arcade game that I ever played. I remember my Dad taking me on a special trip just to put 10p into an upright Space Invaders machine. Strangely as a six or seven year old, what I remember most is the alien pictures on the front and sides of game cabinet.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders

My Gaming History : ZX Spectrum Loading Screens

I get really nostalgic about ZX Spectrum loading screen, probably because took 5 to 20 minutes to load those old 8-bit games. So, you had to stare at them for a long, long time.

Durell, Turbo Esprit

Imagine, Target; Renegade

Imagine, Renegade

Gremlin Graphics, Jack the Nipper

Mastertronic, Finder Keepers

Mastertronic, Agent X

Further reading :
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

My Gaming History : What do we do with our past?

Back in about 1993, when I had my Amiga, I used it convert ZX Spectrum games into snapshot files(SNA).

3D Grand Prix Championship, 1991

This was not a simple task, it required a ZX Spectrum emulator, an old fashioned portable tape recorder, the audio leads and a few 800 kilobtye floppy disks.

1942, 1986

But, here is the question, what do we do with this kind of data? It is actually history at this point!

Feud, 1987

The website "World of Spectrum" maintains an archive, but contrary to popular believe, you technical have to own some of the games to download the files.

Virus, 1988

But, who is interested in ZX Spectrum games now? After my 8 bit generation is gone, who will care? Do I delete my files, or keep for nostalgia?

My Gaming History : Desert Burner

Desert Burner(1985)

Desert Burner was another of my favourite of 8-bit micro games. Published by Sparklers and written by Creative Sparks, it gives me goose bumps just playing the game again.

Desert Burner was like most games of the time was very simple, get to the end of the course by jumping and shooting things.

It was well worth, £1.99 and suspect the team behind Trials HD maybe remember this game too.

Further reading :
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

Micro Men : Retro Goodness

Micro Men is a BBC Four drama based on the micro computer boom in the 1980s and as a child then I was absolutely engross. I actually owned a ZX Spectrum and totally love it, but its interesting to see that Chris Curry and Sir Clive Sinclair seemed to envy each others success with Sir Clive Sinclair trying to compete with the BBC Micro with the Sinclair QL and Chris Curry trying to match the games market around ZX Spectrum with the Acorn Electron.

Official BBC iPlayer page for Mirco Men;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92

DS Lite : Broken!

After a year of solid abuse from my daughter, aged three, the hinge on the right snapped.

To be fair, my DS Lite had endured, being throw at the floor in fits of rage, jam and chocolate, power cable inserted violently and pull out. So, well done Nintendo for producing a robust product and I have read that this hinge problem is resolved in the newer models. Good news as she has a Pink one now.

My Gaming History : Microsoft XBOX 360

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2005 to Present)

In 2006, I had been thinking about buying a new console, the XBOX 360 caught my eye due to its use of high definition graphics, quality sound and XBOX Live community. The PlayStation 3 seemed a long way off and I want to play high quality games without the fuss or expense of upgrading my PCs. The XBOX 360 delivers, but check out the system specification yourself;

Custom PowerPC-based CPU

• 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz
• 2 hardware threads per core (6 hardware threads total)
• 1 MB L2 cache
• 2.7GHz Front Side Bus

Custom ATI Graphics

• Processor 500 MHz clock speed
• 10 MB embedded DRAM (256GB/s)
• 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
• Unified shader architecture

Memory

• 512 MB GDDR3 RAM
• Unified memory architecture

Further reading :
http://www.xbox.com

My Gaming History : Personal Computers

Personal Computers (1995 to Present)

Skipping back in time to 1995, I purchased my first personal computer, it was a homebrew from a local computer store after that I have had a large number of different PCs. So, I have listed them roughly in order starting from my first 486.

• Homebrew - Intel i486 DX4 100mhz
• Homebrew - Cyrix PR 133+ 133mhz
• Homebrew - Intel Pentium 75Mhz
• Intel - Intel Pentium 100Mhz
• Intel - Intel Pentium 133Mhz
• Intel - Intel Pentium 166Mhz
• Intel - Intel Pentium Pro 200Mhz
• Acer - Intel Pentium 233Mhz MMX
• Homebrew - Intel Pentium 2 266Mhz
• NEC - Intel Celeron 1.7Ghz
• Patriot - Intel Celeron 2.0Ghz
• HP - Intel Celeron 2.6Ghz
• Acer - AMD64 Atlon 3200+
• Homebrew - Intel Celeron 2.8Ghz
• HP - AMD Sempron 2800+ Mobile

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

My Gaming History : Maniac Miner

Maniac Miner(1983)

Maniac Miner is the benchmark for 2D platformers, or is it? Interestingly writer Matthew Smith, a legend amongst my generation suggested during an interview that the Miner was a little bit like Miner 2049er on the Atari 2600.

Needless to say, this was the game that spawned "Jet Set Willy" and it's many sequels. Oh and what happened to Matthew Smith, the first 8-bit Rockstar, maybe too much too young, but I reckon he enjoyed ever minute.

Further reading :
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

My Gaming History : Nintendo DS Lite

Nintendo DS Lite (2006) Europe

In 2006 and two days after the European launch of the DS Lite. I traded my DS for its smaller, brighter and more comfortable redesign.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_Lite

My Gaming History : Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS (2005) Europe

In 2005, I purchased a Nintendo Dual Screen, mainly because I was in and out of hospital with my wife, who was pregnant with our daughter at the time and I got bored waiting around. However, I did have problem with the Nintendo DS case and shoulder button design, as it was a very uncomfortable and sharp position for my fingers to sit. Other than that I believe the Nintendo DS is the best handheld games console on the market to date, due to it's clever use of touch screen technology and voice controlled games.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS

My Gaming History : Sony PlayStation 2

Sony PlayStation 2 (2000) Europe

In 2004, I purchased a PlayStation 2 and this became my least played console ever, it lasted less than six months before I trading it in. Why? Nothing about the PS2 made me spend hours and hours in front of it playing games and instead I would play Age of Empires 2 on my PC network.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2

My Gaming History : Nintendo Game Boy Color

Nintendo Game Boy Color(1999) Europe

In 1999, I purchased a Nintendo Game Boy Color, to be honest this wasn't much of an upgrade from the original Game Boy considering it still played the same GamePaks or cartridges. However, it was fun in those boring work lunch breaks and more impressively it was still 8-bit technology among consoles like Playstation and Dreamcast.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Color

My Gaming History : Menace

Menace(1983)

Designed to work on the 16k ZX Spectrum, I strangely really adored this game with it quirky keyboard layout.

The idea of the game was to be naughty when the teacher turned his back, easy but it got really, really fast.

Further reading :
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

My Gaming History : Sony PlayStation

Sony PlayStation (1995) Europe

In 1996, I purchased a PlayStation for literal one game and that game was Tekken 2. It was one of the greatest 3D beat'em ups, I have ever played. I remember the cost of the unit, extra gamepad and Tekken 2 was just short of £300, but it was worth ever penny. This was a really friend console with games like Poy Poy, we drank and played games until the early hours of the morning, awesome.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekken_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poy_Poy

My Gaming History : Posters of the Eighties

My parents always worried that I would become a gun toting, womaniser because my bedroom was covered with computer game posters like this one for "Game Over". Sorry, I don't nipple it?

My Gaming History : Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers(1985)

Finders Keepers is a combination of adventure game and platformer for the ZX Spectrum 48k.

At £1.99 is was good value for pocket money.

This tiny little knight spawned a number of sequels including Spell Bound and Knight Tyme.

Further reading :
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

My Gaming History : Nintendo Game Boy

Nintendo Game Boy(1989)

I brought a Game Boy in the about 1993 with the GamePak Tetris. I think, Game Boy set the standard for quality handheld gaming devices. This is an impressive device consisting it is only 8-bit.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy

My Gaming History : Commodore Amiga A500

Commodore Amiga A500(1987)

In 1993, I swapped to my friend, my SNES and complete collection of games in exchange for his Commodore Amiga A500 plus its 512kb RAM module. A very good swap as it gave me access to a truly powerful multi-tasking computer system and access to hundreds, if not thousands of games.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500

My Gaming History : Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Super Nintendo Entertainment System(1992) UK

In 1992, I brought a SNES, my main reasons were the advanced graphic chips that were capable of more colours on screen, sprite rotation, sprite scaling and games like F-Zero and Street Fighter II.

Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System