Games of your life

The old computer game forum doesn't get much love. I reckon that there are a sizeable proportion of forum members who indulge in a bit of gaming - I happen to love computer games (when I'm not feeling guilty at spending time on them).

Recently, I've been playing Sid Meier's Pirates! on the iPad. It occurs to me that I've been playing that game, or a version of it, for over 20 years now. I'm also keenly aware that I have other "go to" games. Tekken, for example, is my fighting series - mostly because I spend a lot of time getting pretty good at Tekken 2, and my brothers still play it. I'd happily play Mario Kart until they stop making it (or alternatively, I am physically unable to play it) too.

Thinking about it, there are tons of games that have been very influential. Think Metal Gear Solid gave me my first real idea of what gaming could be. Grand Theft Auto 3 too on PS2, but for totally different reasons (c'mon, who wasn't floored by being able to explore a 3D city?). Those are just a few off the top of my head. What are the games of your life?

Dizzy

Ghostbusters (C64)

Alex the Kidd

Wings

Speedball 2

Final Fantasy

Sensible Soccer

Cannon Fodder

Elite 2

Heroes of Might and Magic

Dizzy

Ghostbusters (C64)

Alex the Kidd

Wings

Speedball 2

Final Fantasy

Sensible Soccer

Cannon Fodder

Elite 2

Heroes of Might and Magic

Some good picks there. Had an NES instead of a Master System, so didn't really play much Alex Kidd. Haven't played Heroes of Might and Magic either, but the rest are bonafide classics.

Wings is a personal favourite. Never completed it. Got spanked whenever Bloody April rolled around. Could never bring myself to continue with a new pilot. Someone really needs to do a serious WW1 flight combat game again. You ever play Knights of the Sky or Red Baron, TDD?

Some good picks there. Had an NES instead of a Master System, so didn't really play much Alex Kidd. Haven't played Heroes of Might and Magic either, but the rest are bonafide classics.

 

Wings is a personal favourite. Never completed it. Got spanked whenever Bloody April rolled around. Could never bring myself to continue with a new pilot. Someone really needs to do a serious WW1 flight combat game again. You ever play Knights of the Sky or Red Baron, TDD?

my mate had them...if i remember rightly..but wings was my thing...I was good at the straffing, good at the dog fights but shyte at the bombing......was a brilliant game though.

my gaming machines went like this

C64 - always will have a place in my heart....30 mins+ to load a game and it was so basic...but so brilliant at the same time..getting game for £2 at the news agents..

Amiga 500 - was in awe when I got one of these. Got the cartoon classic pack for xmas around 1991. Delux paint was out of this world (then) some of my all time favourite games was on that machine....throw in the trusted copy disk and I, along with my mates had literally all the games you could get if you get me

Master System - got this 2nd hand from a shop with some birthday money....did not really get into it much (other than alex the kid)

Mega Drive - great in the day

PS1 - PS2 - PS3 with laptops...although the PS3 (imo) blows them all out of the water...it just does not hold the magic that any of the above had

my mate had them...if i remember rightly..but wings was my thing...I was good at the straffing, good at the dog fights but shyte at the bombing......was a brilliant game though.

 

my gaming machines went like this

 

C64 - always will have a place in my heart....30 mins+ to load a game and it was so basic...but so brilliant at the same time..getting game for £2 at the news agents..

 

Amiga 500 - was in awe when I got one of these. Got the cartoon classic pack for xmas around 1991. Delux paint was out of this world (then) some of my all time favourite games was on that machine....throw in the trusted copy disk and I, along with my mates had literally all the games you could get if you get me

 

Master System - got this 2nd hand from a shop with some birthday money....did not really get into it much (other than alex the kid)

 

Mega Drive - great in the day

 

PS1 - PS2 - PS3 with laptops...although the PS3 (imo) blows them all out of the water...it just does not hold the magic that any of the above had

That is very similar to my machine odyssey, TDD.

Started out with a C16, upgraded to a C64, got the Amiga 500. Had the NES and Megadrive around that time too (you could actually plug your Megadrive controllers into your Amiga - and one or two games even recognised the extra buttons).

First PC in 1994, and until very recently, have owned every console ever released (multiples of some, including XBox orig, 360, Saturn and DS).

My advice to you if you love the old style stuff is to check out iPad games, XBOX Live games and PS3 downloadable titles. You should also play the Portal games, the last ones I played that genuinely seemed magical.

having has some more thought and remembering playing some classic Amiga games...here are some more that I remember really fondly

Monkey Island

Dune 2

it came from the desert (classic)

north and south

championship manager (early 90s versions)

Altered Beast

Rainbow Islands

My childhood was spent wasting many an hour playing on a Mega Drive, Game Boy or Playstation.

When I was really young (7 or so) the game boy was my system of choice, so many hours were spnt on Tetris and F1 Race.

The Mega Drive soon came and Sonic the Hedgehog, Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco Grand Prix, EA Hockey were my favourites. When the 32X add on came out I went for it and enjoyed Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing immensely. Hour after hour perfecting combos and counter attacks on Virtua Fighter stick in the mind.

The Playstation brought the Psygnosis (RIP) F1 games, my 13/14 year old mind being utterly blown by Murray Walker commentating on my F1 exploits and the 3D rendered 1995 seasons' cars. Gran Turismo ate up far too much time alongside Tekken 2 and Final Fantasy 7, my god FF7 took a year and a half for me to complete and the whole story/world of that game still captures my imagination to this day.

As I left school/sixth form and went to university my interest waned in console gaming. My first laptop PC did however bring Championship Manager to my attention and there came the single biggest threat to my degree. I still play the Football Manager series to this day and utterly adore it.

A purchase of an Xbox 360 after graduating got me back into console gaming. Guitar Hero was the reason I bought the console and still indulge a little now and then, the Mass Effect trilogy has now become my favourite game series with it's wonderful scripting and fully fleshed out fictional universe. Indeed, I am currently enjoying another full play through of the trilogy trying different choices in the story.

My uncle first introduced me to video games when he gave me his NES in the early 90s. Only ever had two games, Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 2. Played those two until quite literally our old television broke. I can remember quite vividly the smell of burning as I tried to get past world three of SMB2, then the sight of smoke rising from the back of the old set.

It was only until I went to my neighbour's house one day that I realised consoles had actually moved on since then. It was probably 1996 or 1997 and said neighbour had a SNES, and he had Super Mario Bros Allstars amongst others. Naturally I had to have one, and on the same day my family got its first dog (who died a year ago today, very sadly) we got our own SNES, not realising the N64 was on the horizon. We got Mario Allstars with Super Mario World, which was just an absolutely amazing game. It took me years upon years to finally finish it, 100% completed. Because of the N64 coming out, stores in Winchester where we could buy games were clearing their stock, so we only managed to get Dr. Mario, which was bundled with another game, I forget which, plus Kirby's Ghost Trap, from Beatties which is now a bookshop.

The N64 came out and I got one for Christmas, I suppose it must have been 1997 or 98? I remember being asked at school what I was getting for Christmas and I rapidly said 'ANintendo64twogamesandonecontroller.' Sure enough I got Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart. Super Mario 64 is the best game I have ever played. Again, it took me years to finish. I remember thinking once we had six stars, that was the end of the game. There were 120 of the ****ers and you had to beat Bowser three times! I had a fair few games for it, but being around the age of ten, never a great deal as the cartridges were £50 each. I had Bomberman 64 (bit of a flop), Yoshi's Story (exciting at the time, crap in retrospect), Paper Mario (brilliant), Banjo-Kazooie (brilliant), Banjo-Tooie (never as good as I had hoped it would be), amongst others.

I also had an original GameBoy, loads of games for that. I'll never forget when Pokemon came out.

I was always a Nintendo kid, so I was clued up when I was in my teens when the Gamecube came out. I still remember pre-ordering it, and for years kept the bundle that you got from GAME after pre-ordering. I picked mine up along with Luigi's Mansion and Sonic Adventures 2 on May 3rd 2002. Again lots of games for it, the one I remember most though was Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door. I had loved Paper Mario, I first read about it in 2001 in Nintendo Magazine and was fascinated by the idea of a Mario RPG with cutout characters in a 3D world. It was a great game but the sequel was absolutely amazing. One of my true favourites.

Whilst I was a Nintendo kid, I was at a friend's house one day in the early 2000s or possibly the late 90s and he showed me GTA2. I got it for PC and it was brilliant. Then the level of hype when GTA3 came out, wow. It was like you had to have that game, and I got a copy for PC. My PC was so bad though I ended up taking it back to GAME and getting a refund, my machine was just obsolete. When we eventually got a new PC with Windows XP (dun dun dun!) I got another copy and played it, but little did I know that the new PC was still way below the system requirements, and it was incredibly sluggish, the graphics were basically a load of squares, but it didn't matter, it worked - sort of! Same situation with Vice City. You HAD to have that game, and mainly because of the soundtrack. V Rock was always my station of choice. I can remember when San Andreas arrived on PC in 2006, I looked at the clock to see it was about 10:30pm. The next time I looked, it was about 5:30am. Honourable mentions for SimCity and The Sims too - very addictive. Ten years later and I'm only just about getting cities to develop in SimCity 4!

I got a Nintendo Wii when I had just finished college, I have a few games for it but nothing too inspiring. By this point I'd discovered Football Manager, which has me addicted when it comes out each year.

I started a new job about six weeks ago and bought an XBOX just to play GTAIV because I love that series so much. I couldn't just let it pass me by. I've got a MacBook these days and games just don't do well on it - I had a bad feeling The Sims 3 would actually make something melt on the motherboard, it was getting that hot. I remember feeling quite old when I bought the GTA trilogy for Mac and they were all on one disc - they used to take about five minutes to load each island and be on two discs! I was brought back to earth though and young adulthood when I was asked for ID at West Quay's Apple store, as they didn't believe I was 18 and wouldn't let me buy it...!

I finished GTAIV today and have ordered L.A Noire. But yes, that's my life in gaming!

Propa geeky thread. Nice.

C16+4: Treasure Island, Fire Ant

Atari STFM: Bloodwych, Dungeon Master, Lords of Chaos, Elite, Civilization, Pirates, Xenon 2, Supercars 2, Speedball 2, Amberstar, etc etc

Some of the classic shareware was cool like Llamatron, Grandad, and Chaos (with Red Dwarf samples etc)

Atari Jaguar: Doom, Cybermorph and AVP were all worth playing (I collected a load of Jag stuff recently)

Other classics were on my mates consoles/Amiga : Streetfighter 2, Mario Kart, Hired Guns, Sonic, Golden Axe, Gauntlet, Micro Machines...

Spent months playing Golden Eye 4 player on N64...

Then went about 10 years with no interest in that scene but the Wii/PS3/HD picture got me back into it...mainly Call of Duty (sorry).

Propa geeky thread. Nice.

 

C16+4: Treasure Island, Fire Ant

Atari STFM: Bloodwych, Dungeon Master, Lords of Chaos, Elite, Civilization, Pirates, Xenon 2, Supercars 2, Speedball 2, Amberstar, etc etc

Some of the classic shareware was cool like Llamatron, Grandad, and Chaos (with Red Dwarf samples etc)

Atari Jaguar: Doom, Cybermorph and AVP were all worth playing (I collected a load of Jag stuff recently)

 

Other classics were on my mates consoles/Amiga : Streetfighter 2, Mario Kart, Hired Guns, Sonic, Golden Axe, Gauntlet, Micro Machines...

Spent months playing Golden Eye 4 player on N64...

 

Then went about 10 years with no interest in that scene but the Wii/PS3/HD picture got me back into it...mainly Call of Duty (sorry).

Fairly sure I've met one of your heroes judging from all the Jaguar and Llamatron references. Jeff Minter turned up at my gaff late one night. Think it was around the time he'd signed the deal to provide the visualiser for the 360.

Peed on my bathroom floor, as Ms pap always likes to remind me

Zx81 and spectrum initially. Elite was a fantastic game on the speccie along with all the 'ultimate' play the game. Like jet pack attik attack etc

C64 and sensible soccer

Mega drive was awesome at the time with sonic

Ps 1 was all about final fantasy 7 and wipeout for me but some great games on there.

Now gone to ps3 via 2 and am currently obsessed with skyrim

Myst was so atmospheric on an early pc as well

School Daze on the spectrum was quality

Fairly sure I've met one of your heroes judging from all the Jaguar and Llamatron references. Jeff Minter turned up at my gaff late one night. Think it was around the time he'd signed the deal to provide the visualiser for the 360.

 

Peed on my bathroom floor, as Ms pap always likes to remind me

Quality! How comes dude?

Are you a High Programmer?

Yeah Tempest 2000 is classic too.

School Daze on the spectrum was quality

It was indeed as was 'back to skool' both on iPad now

Quality! How comes dude?

Are you a High Programmer?

 

Yeah Tempest 2000 is classic too.

I don't work in games; hit the cross-bar there, but have some friends in the industry. Met Jeff Minter via a mate who was hooking up talent to hirers at the time. They'd been out partying, and turned up at mine.

It was indeed as was 'back to skool' both on iPad now

You should check out Bully. In many ways, a spiritual successor. Never got to play Back to Skool in the day. One of the few games the speccy boys could use to lord over us. We had sound, though

I don't work in games; hit the cross-bar there, but have some friends in the industry. Met Jeff Minter via a mate who was hooking up talent to hirers at the time. They'd been out partying, and turned up at mine.

You know I wouldn't be surprised if that Jeffrey Minter had taken them there wacky mushrooms at some point in his past.

Haven't had time to properly address the content of this thread, but some very good shouts.

Jonnyboy - very pleased to see a Plus4 owner on here. As a C16 owner, I was always miffed that I could not play Icicle Works or Treasure Island on my C16, but even so, I felt we were an exclusive, thoroughly sh4t upon section of the early 1980s computer scene. You Plus4 owners had very few exclusive games, while we C16 owners had to put up with whatever software houses could be bothered shovelling onto the system. It was normally pants. Seeing the p!ss-poor Konami Arcade Collection (awesome on C64) finally brought the "you need a C64 now!" message home quite strongly.

Great to see all the shouts for Sensible Soccer. SWOS in particular was amazing. Ashamed to say that my first act as Southampton manager was to part exchange Matty for Stan Collymore. Don't blame me. Sensi was ruthlessly about speed, and poor Matty didn't have any.

You know I wouldn't be surprised if that Jeffrey Minter had taken them there wacky mushrooms at some point in his past.

He likes his llamas, that's for sure. I've got most of the stuff he has released for iOS. Gridrunner is probably the fave so far, although Caverns of Minos is good and f*cking hatstand.

I feel you might be right.

Sooo many games to pick from.

From the Nes era Mario Bros, Kung Fu, Double Dragon

Amiga era Super Cars, Kick Off, Altred Beast, Golden Axe, Dogs of War, Ikari Warriors, Chambers of Shaolin

Mega Drive era, Mercs, Streetfighter, Toe Jam and Earl, Desert Strike, Mortal Kombat

See if people's selections agree with their "Best Games Ever" from 2009 here : http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?11928-Best-game-ever

NINETY-THREE posts before anyone mentioned SWOS. I preferred Anco Player Manager if I'm honest.

Two words :

Giana Sisters !

Shinobi

Two words :

Giana Sisters !

Ah yes. So much like Super Mario Brothers that by time Nintendo's legal department had finished, you couldn't actually buy the thing!

Kick off 2

Moonstone

Lemmings

SWOS

Civilisation

FIFA International Soccer

Theme Park

Red Alert

Remember as a kid with my dads Spectrum playing football director and roy of the rovers (which if I remember right you had to find a missing team member(s))...never did finish it.

Then it was the Amiga and so many games to choose from and most mentioned on here like:

SWOS, CM, Lemmings, Worms, Settlers, Speedball, Cannon Fodder, Microsoft F1 Grand Prix, Syndicate...ah so many...loved Panzer General and History Line which was basically the WW1 version. Elite 2 as well was another big favourite.

Had the Nintendo consoles of the time as well, first up was the NES with Duck Hunt and Days of Thunder. Then I got a Mega Drive with classics like Fifa, Shadow Dancer, Golden Axe, Sonic, Desert Stike and again ****eloads of games I've probably missed.

My brother had the Nintendo (SNES?) that had Golden Eye, legendary game and the only game I played on it to be honest.

Then the PS1 for me, again Fifa...but Residental Evil was immense and scary at the time! Played it in the dark and still hear them moans now I'm sure! ...Crash Bandicoot, Destruction Derby, Tekken, Silent Hill, Tomb Raider and again loads more I've missed.

From there on I've had both the PS's and Xboxs and gaming is still as good.

Only PC games I really play are FM, Civ and Empire Total War. I am still in Eve (if you liked Elite 2 you'll prob like this)....but don't play it as much as I should due to too much Uni stuff

Remember as a kid with my dads Spectrum playing football director and roy of the rovers (which if I remember right you had to find a missing team member(s))...never did finish it.

Then it was the Amiga and so many games to choose from and most mentioned on here like:

 

SWOS, CM, Lemmings, Worms, Settlers, Speedball, Cannon Fodder, Microsoft F1 Grand Prix, Syndicate...ah so many...loved Panzer General and History Line which was basically the WW1 version. Elite 2 as well was another big favourite.

 

Had the Nintendo consoles of the time as well, first up was the NES with Duck Hunt and Days of Thunder. Then I got a Mega Drive with classics like Fifa, Shadow Dancer, Golden Axe, Sonic, Desert Stike and again ****eloads of games I've probably missed.

 

My brother had the Nintendo (SNES?) that had Golden Eye, legendary game and the only game I played on it to be honest.

 

Then the PS1 for me, again Fifa...but Residental Evil was immense and scary at the time! Played it in the dark and still hear them moans now I'm sure! ...Crash Bandicoot, Destruction Derby, Tekken, Silent Hill, Tomb Raider and again loads more I've missed.

 

From there on I've had both the PS's and Xboxs and gaming is still as good.

 

Only PC games I really play are FM, Civ and Empire Total War. I am still in Eve (if you liked Elite 2 you'll prob like this)....but don't play it as much as I should due to too much Uni stuff

GoldenEye was N64, I think - but what a game. Difficulty on single player was perfect, particularly as you ramped up to Secret Agent and suchlike. Extra goals, more aware enemies.

The bunker on single player was one of the best designed levels I've ever played. Basically had to headshot everything in a very precise, very quiet way for most of the level. Toward the end you pick up a pair of silenced Walther PPKs. That shift from complete sneakery to balls out blasting was genius.

And multiplayer, like you say, absolutely amazing - to the extent where I'm surprised I ended up getting a degree

What a great thread. My gaming life started with the Amstrad CPC464 and games like Daley Thompsons Decathalon, Hypersports, Chase HQ and Robocop. Matchday 2 also would get a number of outings when friends were round. All my friends had Spectrums though and we would always end up playing Gauntlet, Kickstart and Rock and Roll Wrestling. Also just remembered California Games and World Games (?) on the Amstrad which I played so much. Also Renegade and Target:Renegade.

Then moved onto the Amiga 500 after witnessing TV Sports Football. Got that and TV Sports Basketball, which were awesome. Then proceeded to enjoy The Settlers, Sim City, Skid Marks, Kick Off 2, Stealth Fighter, the bulk of the LucasArts adventure games (Indy, Monkey Island, Zakk McKraken), Nitro (great 4 player driving game from Psygnosis) and Panza Kickboxing.

For a short while I also had an Amiga CD32 and enjoyed Pirates:Gold on that before swiftly moving onto a PS! after seeing Aliens Trilogy running. So many games on the PS1 but the main highlights had to be LMA Manager and the Resident Evil games.

Then onto the familiar path of PS2 and only recently onto the PS3. The PS2 was enjoyed with such gaming greats as Gran Turismo, Pro Evo, Resident Evil 4 and LMA again. On the PS3 I've so far enjoyed the 2 Batman games, Fifa 2012, Battlefield 3, The Walking Dead (my first download game), Heavy Rain (unlike anything I've ever played before), Fallout:New Vegas and currently Dead Space, which is AMAZING.

Have been thinking about this. I remember the first time I played 'way of the exploding fist' and thought how on earth can games get better than this ?'

Bruce Lee was a great game as well

Have been thinking about this. I remember the first time I played 'way of the exploding fist' and thought how on earth can games get better than this ?'

 

Bruce Lee was a great game as well

great shout

What a great thread. My gaming life started with the Amstrad CPC464 and games like Daley Thompsons Decathalon, Hypersports, Chase HQ and Robocop. Matchday 2 also would get a number of outings when friends were round. All my friends had Spectrums though and we would always end up playing Gauntlet, Kickstart and Rock and Roll Wrestling. Also just remembered California Games and World Games (?) on the Amstrad which I played so much. Also Renegade and Target:Renegade.

 

Then moved onto the Amiga 500 after witnessing TV Sports Football. Got that and TV Sports Basketball, which were awesome. Then proceeded to enjoy The Settlers, Sim City, Skid Marks, Kick Off 2, Stealth Fighter, the bulk of the LucasArts adventure games (Indy, Monkey Island, Zakk McKraken), Nitro (great 4 player driving game from Psygnosis) and Panza Kickboxing.

 

For a short while I also had an Amiga CD32 and enjoyed Pirates:Gold on that before swiftly moving onto a PS! after seeing Aliens Trilogy running. So many games on the PS1 but the main highlights had to be LMA Manager and the Resident Evil games.

 

Then onto the familiar path of PS2 and only recently onto the PS3. The PS2 was enjoyed with such gaming greats as Gran Turismo, Pro Evo, Resident Evil 4 and LMA again. On the PS3 I've so far enjoyed the 2 Batman games, Fifa 2012, Battlefield 3, The Walking Dead (my first download game), Heavy Rain (unlike anything I've ever played before), Fallout:New Vegas and currently Dead Space, which is AMAZING.

Nice to see enthusiasm for a thread I suspected might have none.

I remember the Amstrad well. Mate of mine had one. Initially, he just had a green screen monitor, but one day, his old man went out and bought a TV modulator and a compilation of games made by Elite. Gained a lot. Of respect for the CPC that day. More vibrant colours than the C64, for sure. Ms pap also talks of her CPC fondly.

Glad you mentioned Psygnosis. Didn't like everything they released, but was impressed with the vast majority of it. Four of us used to play Hired Guns every week, which was a truly smart game.

I had completely forgotten about Nitro too, so thanks for the reminder. Might track that one down for Amiga Forever (very good emulation package).

Something of potential local interest is an old graphical text adventure thingy. It is called Mindfighter, and to my knowledge, it is the only video game that is set in Southampton. It's a post nuclear Southampton, I grant you - and the game didn't review well, but still, it's there for curiosity value.

Nice to see enthusiasm for a thread I suspected might have none.

 

I remember the Amstrad well. Mate of mine had one. Initially, he just had a green screen monitor, but one day, his old man went out and bought a TV modulator and a compilation of games made by Elite. Gained a lot. Of respect for the CPC that day. More vibrant colours than the C64, for sure. Ms pap also talks of her CPC fondly.

 

Glad you mentioned Psygnosis. Didn't like everything they released, but was impressed with the vast majority of it. Four of us used to play Hired Guns every week, which was a truly smart game.

 

I had completely forgotten about Nitro too, so thanks for the reminder. Might track that one down for Amiga Forever (very good emulation package).

 

Something of potential local interest is an old graphical text adventure thingy. It is called Mindfighter, and to my knowledge, it is the only video game that is set in Southampton. It's a post nuclear Southampton, I grant you - and the game didn't review well, but still, it's there for curiosity value.

We were addicted to hired guns too.

Hold on, you're not from Bitterne are you!?

Haven't had time to properly address the content of this thread, but some very good shouts.

 

Jonnyboy - very pleased to see a Plus4 owner on here. As a C16 owner, I was always miffed that I could not play Icicle Works or Treasure Island on my C16, but even so, I felt we were an exclusive, thoroughly sh4t upon section of the early 1980s computer scene. You Plus4 owners had very few exclusive games, while we C16 owners had to put up with whatever software houses could be bothered shovelling onto the system. It was normally pants. Seeing the p!ss-poor Konami Arcade Collection (awesome on C64) finally brought the "you need a C64 now!" message home quite strongly.

 

Great to see all the shouts for Sensible Soccer. SWOS in particular was amazing. Ashamed to say that my first act as Southampton manager was to part exchange Matty for Stan Collymore. Don't blame me. Sensi was ruthlessly about speed, and poor Matty didn't have any.

Here's another Plus4 owner pap. Nopt through choice I must admit - I wanted a C64 for xmas but my mum couldn't afford it so she got me one of these second hand instead. It was infuriating that nobody seemed bothered about making games that could utilise their whole 64KB of memory, but the few that did exist were awesome games. My favourites were Saboteur (the writer of which I had the pleasure of meeting a few years later when working at their offices in Taunton) and ACE: Air Combat Emulator.

Like many others on here I have owned a few different platforms over the years, each with their own favourite titles. After the Plus4 I got myself a Sega Master System and loved games like Golden Axe, Thunderblade and a brilliant RPG called Miracle Warriors (which I never completed because I lost the map that came with it). Then onto the Megadrive... Sensible Soccer must have eaten up most of my late teens, along with Desert Strike and Jungle Strike. I loved Dune 2 which gave me my introduction to the RTS genre. One of my favourite games though, and I can never remember the name of it, was a platform game about a bloke stuck on an alien planet and having to go through loads of tasks and kill loads of lizards to get back to Earth. Anyone help me out here?

Got a Playstation in about 1996 and mostly played Fifa, Formula One and C&C

It was about 1998 when I got my first Windows PC (which had 32MB RAM and a mahoosive 1.6GB HDD!) and not long after Half Life was released, which just blew me away completely. The amount of hours I spent playing online via my old dial-up modem (cost me a fortune in phone bills!) I became a bit of an expert and my brother and a couple of mates and me formed our own clan. I also discovered the awesomeness of playing C&C and Red Alert online against my mates via direct modem connection - always good fun. Then I bought an XBox when they first came out and wasted most of my time getting stoned with my housemate and playing Halo.

HOne of my favourite games though, and I can never remember the name of it, was a platform game about a bloke stuck on an alien planet and having to go through loads of tasks and kill loads of lizards to get back to Earth. Anyone help me out here?

Could this have been Flashback? Very different and involved sort of game at the time.

Games of my life?

well, definitely Elite back in the eighties, it was years before another game on that scale came along. I had a Spectrum and played a couple of management simularors called Tracksuit Manager, that took ages to simulate all of the matches you weren't in and Boxing Manager where you managed a stable of boxers.

Later onto the Megadrive and I was another Speedball 2 fan. All football sims on the Megadrive were rubbish, so my mates and I usually played the ice hockey one instead, which was everything the footie games weren't. Streets of Rage was the other favourite and later on Brian Lara Cricket.

Had a playstation, but only really did Tomb Raider and FIFA, later got a Playstation 2 and just had time to do San Andreas before I became a dad and gaming largely drew to a close.

Recently tried Skyrim, but it was so easy that there was no real challenge.

Ultimate were always the best developer games I can remember back in my Spectrum days, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willie aside.

US Gold always seemed to produce great games for the C64 and Atari 800XL, the Atari being both Cartridge and tape based always had an edge for the Arcade classics of its time, but think my favourite on C64 was Boulder Dash, dropping rocks and avoiding flashing squares to make diamonds you needed to collect.

Absolute favourites on Amiga were Flashback, Another World, Cannon Fodder and Chaos Engine which I can't believe hasn't had a mention yet! Brilliant game activating nodes to transport to the next level.

Sonic obviously was great when the Megadrive came out and it's sequels and the first EA FIFA Football, although you could always score from the righthand side half way line no matter which team you played as, EA Hockey equally as good!

The first Tomb Raider when it came out on PS1 was amazing and the first EA Golf.

And these days for Xbox... Love playing Battlefield, COD, Gears of War, amongst many others.

Been playing Computer and Video games for over 30 years now and don't think I'll ever tire of them. Just don't get the time at my age of 42 now as I used to, maybe a couple of hours a week if I'm lucky.

Cant believe i forgot to mention Blizzards Starcraft and Broodwar on PC, both getting on now but still as playable and enjoyable as the day they were released and still play them both now. Got a new PC recently so will now be able to run Starcraft 2.

Would love to have seen Starcraft in the same mould as World of Warcraft.

I think some game companies should revisit their back catalogs and update some of the greats. I've got the megadrive compilation on PSP which is pretty cool but some of my fav games aren't on there.

Some of my favs are...

Atari 2600

River Raid

Pacman

Hero

Pitfall 1/2

Master System

Zillion 1/2

Psycho fox

Enduro racer

Power Strike

Wonderboy 3 dragons trap.

Altered Beast

MegaDrive

Sonic

Galaxy Force II

Golden Axe

Desert Strike

Bomberman

Saturn

Dark Savior

Fighters Megamix

Spectrum

Rebelstar Raiders (classic!)

Jetpac

Elite

Football Manager

Dizzy

Amiga

Wizball

Turrican

Laser Squad

The Lost Squad

Kickoff series

Player manager

Monkey Islands

Rainbow Island

PC

Bubble Bobble

Half Life 1/2

Doom

4d sports driving

Civ games

Call of Duty 1

UFO Enemy Unknown

PS1

Fifa

Silent Hill

Res Evil

PS2

PES

GTA

PS3

Skyrim

Uncharted 1-3

Wii

Res Evil 4

Fav Arcade

Spy Hunter

Gauntlet

Star Wars (the vector based one they had at the old swimming baths before they knocked it down).

Could this have been Flashback? Very different and involved sort of game at the time.

Flashback - that was it, thanks norwaysaint

I think some game companies should revisit their back catalogs and update some of the greats.

I often think this myself. I used to love the Wipeout games on the original Playstation and I reckon a new version of that on PS3/XBox/PC would be amazing.

Star Wars (the vector based one they had at the old swimming baths before they knocked it down).

Nostalgia overload!

My childhood was spent wasting many an hour playing on a Mega Drive, Game Boy or Playstation.

 

When I was really young (7 or so) the game boy was my system of choice, so many hours were spnt on Tetris and F1 Race.

 

The Mega Drive soon came and Sonic the Hedgehog, Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco Grand Prix, EA Hockey were my favourites. When the 32X add on came out I went for it and enjoyed Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing immensely. Hour after hour perfecting combos and counter attacks on Virtua Fighter stick in the mind.

 

The Playstation brought the Psygnosis (RIP) F1 games, my 13/14 year old mind being utterly blown by Murray Walker commentating on my F1 exploits and the 3D rendered 1995 seasons' cars. Gran Turismo ate up far too much time alongside Tekken 2 and Final Fantasy 7, my god FF7 took a year and a half for me to complete and the whole story/world of that game still captures my imagination to this day.

 

As I left school/sixth form and went to university my interest waned in console gaming. My first laptop PC did however bring Championship Manager to my attention and there came the single biggest threat to my degree. I still play the Football Manager series to this day and utterly adore it.

 

A purchase of an Xbox 360 after graduating got me back into console gaming. Guitar Hero was the reason I bought the console and still indulge a little now and then, the Mass Effect trilogy has now become my favourite game series with it's wonderful scripting and fully fleshed out fictional universe. Indeed, I am currently enjoying another full play through of the trilogy trying different choices in the story.

I graduated this Summer and had to avoid purchasing the latest Football Manager until I'd finished my exams. Seriously felt buying it could have put my degree at risk.

Load a mates round for a few hours of Brian Clough's Football Fortunes.....Heaven back in the day

Great thread.

So many great games mentioned so far. I recently. Imported the latest Drake game, and I still get the same buzz I did from completing a game as I did when I was a nipper.

Some of my favourites

Res evil 2

Silent Hill 2

Vice city

Occorina of time

That Zeldq game is probably my favourite game of all time.

Have been thinking about this. I remember the first time I played 'way of the exploding fist' and thought how on earth can games get better than this ?'

 

Bruce Lee was a great game as well

I have now got the sound of Bruce Lee's tippy-tap running burned into my mind.

Load a mates round for a few hours of Brian Clough's Football Fortunes.....Heaven back in the day

Is that the one with the board game attached ?

I was weirdly attached to Gremlin's Player of the Year or whatever it was called for a month or so. Loads of faffing about getting a team and then you had a number of opportunities per match to bend the ball past the keeper, the more you scored, the better the result, and your opportunities to play for other teams improved, you got money, awards, got to play internationals etc. Actually it was pretty crappy aside from the shooting on goal screen, but the bending finishes past the keeper were cool, even if they were scored by an invisible player.

some of these games sound ancient lol

I could be here for days lusting stuff I've spent 10+ hours on but the tip if the iceberg is...

NES: duck hunt, paper boy

Sega master drive 2: sonic 1

game boy: Mario 1&2, pokemon, GTA

n64: Zelda, goldeneye, perfect dark, diddy Kong racing, FIFA

ps1: medal of honor, crash bandicoot, tony hawks, gt

ps2:GTAs (100% on SA is one if my greatest achievements) pro evo, tony hawks, ssx, timesplitters, ratchet & clank, nfsu, gt, red faction

ps3: cod, FIFA, elder scrolls, saints row, just cause 2, gt, skate

pc: football/championship manager, sim city, civ, age of empires, command & conquer, rollercoaster tycoon, Sims, black & white, warcraft, starcraft, railroad tycoon, total war

and so many more...

Is that the one with the board game attached ?

 

I was weirdly attached to Gremlin's Player of the Year or whatever it was called for a month or so. Loads of faffing about getting a team and then you had a number of opportunities per match to bend the ball past the keeper, the more you scored, the better the result, and your opportunities to play for other teams improved, you got money, awards, got to play internationals etc. Actually it was pretty crappy aside from the shooting on goal screen, but the bending finishes past the keeper were cool, even if they were scored by an invisible player.

Yep, one with the board game. the Gremlin game was Footballer of the Year and was immense, loved that game. You used to get so many goal cards which represented how many chances you had to score.

Ok, so here's me...

My dad got a BBC B in the early 80s but I never got to play a game on it, my uncle had a ZX80 and then a ZX81 (with AMAZING 16k memory pack), neither of which did much for my idea of computer gaming.

My dad programmed some (very) BASIC maze games for the Speccy, and my grandad (RIP) bought me a Spectrum Christmas 1984, still my best ever Christmas present - with the awesome Match Point (stroppy losing stick man tennis) and the likes of Horace Goes Skiing - "Sorry No Money No Ski". That Speccy took up most of the 1980s, with personal favourites being American Football (type two letter codes from a playbook of offensive and defensive plays and watch the results - we ran an entire league with my mates and my family. Tornado Two Thousand aka TTT, which was a top pixellated jet around 3D landscape game that I always seemed to play on Boxing Day with cousins along with Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Match Day and then Match Day 2 - in which you at least couldn't run the length of the pitch with the ball on your head, and Football Manager was always a favourite despite it's stickman look on the Speccy.

I used to ride my bike to my mate's house to play it on the much more impressive looking C64 version of Football Manager (never "FM"). Back in the day it took 15 minutes to load on the Commodore, and he lived about 2 miles away, so I used to phone him (on the landline) when I was leaving so he could start loading it! Pitstop 2 was also a favourite when I was round there - the tyre wear and split screen was excellent. For some reason I also liked the joystick-busting Tour De France in which you could literally play the entire Tour and had to waggle to pedal the whole way in time trials. It was insane.

Anyway, once the whole "being 12 and having access to a C64" phase was over, I had my teenage years, with many hours spent hunched over in front of the tv playing with myself... on the excellent and hand-cramping magic of Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix - one touch of any other car in your 2 hour-long 80 lap race and GAME OVER, full seasons, telemetry messages about fuel and other cars' positions scrolling across the dashboard on-screen and turbo boost (the space bar) - just like in 1980s F1.

Through my teenage years I had a mate with an Atari ST - and I got an Amiga. I can only remember one game on the ST, a large screen high coloured athletics game. No idea what it was called, but it looked good and played pretty badly. After a year of him telling me how great the ST was, he got an Amiga. I upgraded my 500 to 1Mb - it still has a switch on it now, like I'd ever have turned it off - and all my mates started trading hacked and pirated games. So we got into TV Sports Football, then TV Sports Basketball, and Lemmings, Kick Off, Player Manager, Kick Off 2... and then I went to University.

At Uni in 1991, I was the only person in Halls to have a computer - and it wasn't for doing coursework. We roped in the entire floor to my three-division Kick Off 2 league, and it ran for a couple of terms in the evenings. Tried out the add-on packs, but settled on "pure" KO2 for the basic tournament game. My neighbour in halls quickly became well-known for abusing the virtual ref and his love of John-Pierre Papin, his striker when he played as France. A typical sentence would be "Go ON Jay-Pee-Pee my son - ohhhhhh referr-KAHNT!". We went through a joypad basically every week or so for a couple of months early on (I was using the ergonomic ones by then as opposed to the Kempston or Quickshot 2 that were more standard) but luckily for me Diamond Computers on Lodge Road were for some reason happy to replace every single one of them as faulty. I must have replaced at least 6 of them, no wonder they closed down.

Also in my first year at Uni, I bought a Super Nintendo, and discovered the wonder of Super Mario World. I played the guts out of it, getting all of the stars, spending hours at a time looking for the mythical "star 97" (or whatever number it was) which The Sun's computer games page swore blind definitely existed. The peak of my computer games use, I once completed Super Mario World start to finish via Star World and secret exits in under 20 minutes.

Moving out of halls, I also got myself a Mega Drive, and the Amiga fell out of use. My second year at Uni, living in Portswood behind Iceland, was a combination of NHLPA93 on the Mega Drive, which became our competitive game for my student house, then FIFA International Soccer (and later NHL94, NHL95 [which I clocked in season mode, finishing bottom of my division having won over 100 matches in a season] and FIFA95) and Super Tennis and WWF Royal Rumble on the SNES. Various upgrades and peripherals later, I had Virtua Fighter which I never played, Virtua Racer which got played a bit more, and I eventually bought a MegaCD for WWF Rage In the Cage, which was decidedly average even with the grainy CD-video on it.

Graduating, I bought a PowerMac - no games for that, I used it for desktop publishing, and having failed to get a job for a year, sold my SNES with about 40 games, and my MegaDrive with about 25 games as I needed the cash. By the way, if you're still reading this, well done, and if you could reply with the word "banana" that would be excellent. The 6 months before flogging my consoles had mostly been spent playing the awesome Super Bomberman with the 4-player Multitap on SNES. Superb multi-player banter. It wasn't until 1997, some 2 years later, when I moved in with a girlfriend who had a PSX, that I got back into gaming. When we split up I discovered that I missed the games . She was massively into Tomb Raider (there was a passing resemblance in the body ) which I was cool with, and Theme Hospital, which I was not.

I moved to a flat in Pontypool and started playing PSX a bit more, though the rise of the internet and my first personal Sky digital subscription reduced my gaming time a fair bit. I loved World League Soccer 98, which I first saw in Virgin on the Champs d'Elysees in Paris during the World Cup, but wasn't so keen on much else. Managed to buy FIFA99 for Playstation for about £2 without a box, and hated it, though still spent a while messing about with the kit editor.

Then, on a trip to Southport to meet up with former work colleagues, I discovered International Superstar Soccer Pro Evolution during an all-night session. I bought ISSPE and then ISSPE2 for the PSX, and briefly got into hacking the hexadecimal to change the shirt colours, team names etc. Then the PS2 came out, and by the time it have served it's purpose in the early 2000s, I had a chipped Japanese PS2 and every version of PES and the Japanese version "Winning Eleven" that existed, all of them edited and kit and player stat tweaked to fill significant amounts of the early-mid 2000s (as well as crapping about with wrestler editing on the WWE Smackdown series). I absolutely loved GTA, GTA2 and GTA London on PSX, and GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas on PS2, though as I was in my late 20s/early 30s by then I was never that bothered about completing them.

By the time the Xbox 360 came out (and more importantly the PS3 DIDN'T), I was ready to take my PES geekery to a new level. Then, after the glory that was Winning Eleven 10 just prior to the 2006 World Cup, PES got crap. I gradually slid into the less-editable and still a bit-crapFIFA09, then FIFA10 to see if it was better, skipped FIFA11 altogether and picked up FIFA12, in the meantime having moved back to Southampton, bought and sold a house and then got married. We also have a Wii, but Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort are the only thing I've ever played, and they must be 2 years ago now. Somewhere in the midst of all that lot I skipped the N64 entirely, bought a GameCube in 2001, played about 3 games, decided it was gash and gave it to my ex's nephew. Then around 2005 I bought a second hand N64 just to play WWF No Mercy on, which I still have somewhere, used about twice. I also have a GBA and a PSP sitting around doing nothing for the last 6-10 years - the PSP is still running very early firmware, if you know what I mean.

Before I basically stopped playing altogether, the last game I properly got into was Crackdown, which I played to death around 2007. The one thing I love about the Xbox360 is the information which tells you precisely how long it is since you last played a game. As I've mentioned numerous times before, until 2010, I'd regularly pick up a new game and just NEVER play it. I played GTAIV non-stop for a week, and haven't touched it since. Bioshock is still in the box. By now, it's probably 9 months since the Xbox360 did anything other than stream a film, and that was a New Year party with the motion sensor thing, which I can't even remember what it's called.

I dumped my Xbox Live account a year ago, and just haven't missed it. Now GAME in Winchester has closed, I don't even have a nearby shop to wander around just to keep up with what's going on. So I think until I have kids old enough to nag me to play, I'm probably not going to be much into games for a while. Then again, my wife just rang and suggested a game of "something stupid" on the Wii tonight, so who knows ?

Found Rebelstar Raiders online a whileback in a Speccie simulator - used to play that for hours and hours - kids today would think it was daft but it was so absorbing at the time