My Gaming Memories
For most of us, gaming has played a huge part in our childhood and our lives today (why else would you be reading this on a gaming site?). So when the guys at MyGaming created this thread, I thought that it would be an awesome opportunity to throw a nostalgia bomb and see what would come out.
Here it goes.
1. K-TV Power Edition with Sonic the Hedgehog
One of my earliest memories of gaming was watching the K-TV Power Edition on Saturday mornings. In this show, between all kinds of awesome cartoons, was a segment where some kid would phone in to the studio and direct one of the presenters on how to control Sonic on screen, with commands like "Forward!" and "Grab!". After watching a few months, I got my own Sega Mega Drive and Sonic the Hedgehog was pulling off the same moves in my lounge, minus some kid from Boksburg shouting instructions.
For some reason, I remember that you could win a PC with a whole 16mb RAM in that competition...wow.
Anyone remember this?
2. Golden China
Remember the days of Golden China *ahem* I mean NES? Yeah, that kind of happened in '93/94/95 in the West Rand. That was my very first hands-on experience with gaming and I knew nothing about knock-offs or official consoles and stuff like that. Back then, they were simply called "TV Games" and it never really mattered where they came from or what they were played on.
Remember the brightly colored cartridges with the label that said stuff like "999-in-1"?. Yeah right. That didn't bother me though. I played the hell out of those. When it stopped working, all you had to do to make it work again was yank out the cartridge and blow the dust out. Problem solved. You can still get your hands on these through emulators or checking out the Chinese marketplaces that are scattered around Gauteng. In fact, I think that it exactly what I am going to do now.
3. Playstation
I took a while before I even knew about the Playstation. I was still very happy with my Sega MDII, when we went and visited this friends of my parents. Logical thing that parents do, they chuck the kids together and proceed to ignore them for the rest of the day. This time, the kid wasn't half bad. We plopped down in the lounge and he said:"Watch this". This was the first time that I ever witnessed the Playstation. LIFE=CHANGED.
(Remember that awesome opening ritual when you switched it on?)
Those were the days when people had one game, because games were expensive and parents didn't see the need to have more than that. So the most fun you could have without sticking to the same game was the demo discs. Remember those? 8 playable demos that we'd smash into infinity. I distinctly remember Crash Bandicoot and Tekken, and they kind of stuck with me. I still compare many games on their benchmark.
I used to rent a Playstation unit on Saturdays from Video Town in Krugersdorp, then stay up the entire night to play the one game that I hired with it. That is were my fixation with gaming probably came from. Not the Golden China, not the Sega MDII, not the old 386 that was chilling in the house, but the rented Playstation.
In time, I eventually got my own Playstation, where I proceeded (like everyone I knew) to chip it (I had no idea about piracy) and flood my house with cheap and numerous games. That is also where I got my bad habit with backlogs.
Before I was exposed to the internet, I scoured places like PaperWeight at Hillfox, buying cheap back issues of Playstation news and cheat magazines. Sometimes, I would know everything about a game before I even touched it.
4. Cybernet
Because its Cybernet. You are very unfortunate if you have never seen an episode of Cybernet. I was glued to the screen back then and probably still would be today. No other gaming show has managed to hold a torch even remotely close to this show.
Without the internet, the only information that I could get about gaming was my magazines (which were two years old) and then Cybernet. R.I.P. old friend. Gaming television will never be the same again.
That, in (not so) short, is how I got so fixated with gaming and probably the reason that I am spending time on this forum. Thank you for reading.
Originally Posted by Jeremy
