I started with a Commodore 64 when I was about six years old. I had already learned to be careful with and respectful of my things, and I always treated it well. The tape add-on was the dominant means of loading the games, here in the UK, and you would very often find new games being sold near to the checkout at the local newsagents' shop! Most of my favourite C64 games were purchased this way, in fact (for example, Scooby-Doo & Scrappy-Doo, and Magic Land Dizzy). You'd also see them in places like Toys 'R' Us, at the same sorts of prices as at the newsagent. I actually wanted a NES, when I was this age, but I learned my earliest computing skills from the C64, so I'm grateful that I had that instead.
A few years later, I got a Sega Game Gear, having decided on it instead of a Nintendo Game Boy at the last minute. Whilst I liked the games at the time (in spite of buying some disappointing titles, such as Sonic Chaos, which I really had to try to force myself to like because £30 was thirty weeks of saving, or a very big chunk of birthday money, at that age), as I grew older I found that they weren't to my taste at all. The same goes for the Sega Mega Drive, which was my next console, a year or so after that.
I got a Game Boy a while later. I enjoyed its software library, but I found that it really came into its own once I got my SNES, and began to realise what my taste in games really was.
My next machine was a SNES, and finally I had found the system which was to become my favourite of all time. This one has all of my fondest gaming memories (Donkey Kong Country 2, Star Fox, Kirby Super Deluxe, Rockman & Forte, Mega Man X, Sandra no Daibouken: Valkyrie to no Deai - the list is very long indeed), and it played a part in my life for many, many years afterwards, and still does. When I got into SNES emulation in the early part of the last decade, I started buying SNES games again - new ones, that I had either missed out on at the time, or which were never released in my country at all. I still do this, even now! (It's worth noting that the handful of games that I like on the Sega Mega Drive, have much more in common with SNES games than they do with most Mega Drive games.)
The N64 came next. It was interesting to see stuff in 3D, but I noticed that most of these titles failed to hold my interest or provide the same sort of fun as older games had. I also experienced a severe disappointment in Star Fox 64 - what a horrible game! Filled with flimsy, weightless-feeling ships and controls, appallingly bad voice-acting and writing, and cringeworthy melodrama and blatant ripping off of other fictional universes, this was a truly dire follow-up to what I feel is one of the best games ever made (Star Fox, for the SNES). It didn't help that this game ret-conned the superior product out of existence, and replaced the already-established setting with its whiney childishness instead. It was clearly designed to be looked at and listened to, but not played. (I should note that, in the years since, I have come to have an appreciation of Star Fox 64 on its own merits, and believe that on those terms it is actually a competent enough game. However, when compared to what came before it, and what was cancelled in favour of it, I still feel that it is an incredibly mediocre title that cannot hold a candle to the original Star Fox or to the unreleased Star Fox 2.
)
Then there was the Game Boy Pocket (bought because the original Game Boy gave me eye-strain), and then the Game Boy Colour - there's not a lot to say about this. See the entry on the Game Boy.
My next machine was a used Sega Saturn, of which I have some fond memories, even though I only had two or three games for it (and only one that I played regularly). I bought this because of a particular game, but when its sequel turned out to be for the Sony PlayStation, I picked up one of those, as well. Around this time, I found that video games were becoming even less interesting to me, not only due to most 3D games simply not being much fun to me, but also due to too many games wasting disc space on unnecessary fluff, or outright pretending to be some sort of film. This, of course, continued from the stuff I began noticing with the N64. At the time, though, I was too inexperienced to quite figure out why, however.
After that, the Dreamcast. There was nothing of interest to me on this system, I'm afraid. Anybody who claims that there is something for everyone on this machine is forgetting that it had no 2D platformers - or, at least, none that I'm aware of. "3D platformers" don't count, I'm afraid, because they are often erroneously called platform games, even though they normally aren't - they're usually just spatial path-finding or scavenger-hunting titles.
Next up, the Game Boy Advance! This was more like it. It's close to the SNES (but comes after the Nintendo DS) in terms of fond recollections of it. Here, I started finding that more games that suited my tastes were available again.
Next, came the Nintendo GameCube. It had a few great games that I still like, but again I felt the same problems that I had with the PlayStation. I was starting to realise, faintly, why. The Dreamcast and the GameCube were the machines where I started noticing that customers like me were being actively pushed away by many third-parties because of our tastes and expectations of quality.
I got a GP2X after this. It was a First Edition unit, I got it from Craig's store. It was one of the flickery-screen models, and unfortunately it bricked itself as soon as the first official update was issued.
The unit was replaced promptly (a belated thanks to Craig and crew for your excellent service
), but unfortunately the screens on the second lot of GP2Xs seemed to cause me to get headaches, so I had to sell mine.
And then came the Nintendo DS. Now I fully realised why I had been beginning to tire of video games, and found that there was now a machine that brought me as many awesome new experiences as the SNES did back in the day. Anyone who thinks this is about the touch-screen or "gimmicks" is missing the point - it's about the driving values behind it.
I finally picked up a NES at some point after this, and I love it. Again, it's close to the SNES, DS, and GBA in how highly I regard it - lots of stuff to my taste, here. I got it for £30, with a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge box of games. I didn't want some of the titles, and sold them, and in doing so I made almost all of that £30 back! Top tip: You don't need to replace the 72-pin connector in a NES to make it work again - you can fix it for free by opening it up, taking the connector out, and carefully bending the pins up with a small flat-head screwdriver. You can also cut pin 4 on the lockout chip (at least on a PAL unit) in order to not only prevent future "blinking" problems, but also to allow it to play games from the US, and, with an appropriate adapter, Japan, as well.
And that brings me on to the Wii. Yet again, another machine where I'm feeling the same as I did with the SNES and so on. Plenty of excellent arcade-style games, and a convenient way of legitimately buying older titles on a number of machines, too (I bought Pulseman, this way, for example
~£6 instead of £60+? Excellent.). Once again, it's about the driving values, not the input methods - it's interesting how the biggest-selling titles are not those that use all of the features, but instead those that combine them nicely, and put them to use in an excellent game (there are even some that mostly don't use the standard controller at all - again, it's about the driving values). This machine also saw the return of my favourite video game series of all time, the "classic" string of the Mega Man series. Whilst 9 was hugely flawed and had some game-breakingly bad level design decisions in places, I love Mega Man 10 dearly - it's one of the best games I've ever played.
