Discuss your fondest video game memories from your childhood. Depending on what year you were born in, it will be different for everyone. I was born in '82, so I grew up during the 8 and 16 bit era after ATARI. Old nintendo, Super NES, Genesis were my favorites. I played Super Mario Bros 3 when it was new, which is probably the greatest game on the NES. I also loved the old Mega Man games, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Zelda A Link to the Past... the Donkey Kong Country games are some of the best 2 player games ever. Don't forget Super Mario Kart. I still remember when I got my Nintendo Action set in the late 80s, for christmas. It had the Mario Bros/Duck Hunt combo with the zapper gun. Remember when parents were shocked when Mortal Kombat came out on Genesis with the blood code? Remember when Super NES and Genesis woud take cheap shots at each other with their advertising campaigns? I remember when Mario 64 was on display at Toys R Us and it blew my mind, along with everyone else who stood in line to play it for the first time. Remember when the old cartridge games weren't actually on the shelves, but the box art was there, along with those price tag tickets that you had to take to the back room? Remember when Nintendo Power was a great way to find about the newest games, before the internet? Remember Game Genie? Remember when people actually went to your house to play a 2 player game, before online play even existed? When arcade games weren't dead, and only cost 25 cents to play? When racing games still had split-screen? The 80s and 90s for me, was the golden age of gaming. What year were you born? What were your favorite games growing up? What was the experience like for you, and how does it differ from todays games?

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I've been playing games for years.

Thinking back my earliest memories of gaming include:

Elite
Paperboy
Ikari Warriors
Chuckie Egg
Manic Miner
Jet Set Willy
Jet Pac

All on the Spectrum computer in the 80s.

I never really played arcade games, but remember the Star Wars wireframe one fondly!

And of course Street Fighter!

I remember playing this at sone stage and quite liking it...probably would look awful now

I remember getting an Amiga 500+ and spending hours on Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, and North & South

I was the first to get one. My friends were still in the C64 stage

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I started out on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2, mostly played California Games (fun but annoying), Run The Gauntlet (ditto), Chase HQ (never got past level 3 without cheating), and Ghostbusters, which I absolutely ruled at.

Moved up to a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), played all the Sonic games to death (then bought a secondhand Master System to play the Sonic games on that, which sucked as it turned out), played Super Monaco GP a lot, rented Test Drive II: The Duel several times - a really sucky game by modern standards but at the time I loved it. In fact I spent so much on renting it I could probably have bought it... except that none of the shops sold it, not even the mail order places.
Also, Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage II. And Road Rash II. Happy days.

I didn't do a lot of arcade gaming - there were no arcades near me, there are (or were) a couple in Glasgow but until I was at uni I didn't go into the city much.
Most of what I did was when on holiday and the place we were at happened to have an arcade. I remember playing Power Drift in Leven one time - it was a deluxe cabinet with hydraulics - so it leaned over as you cornered, to simulate lateral g, and when you're like 13 or 14, that's even more fun than the notion of "a date with Jet out of Gladiators".

Looks like you guys grew up during the early 80s, before my time, during the colecovision/commodore 64 era. I never had those but I have seen many online reviews. I don't know how you guys delt with using a keyboard or a neumeric keypad, lol. Although I do have an atari, and I'm quite fond of Dig Dug, and Defender. I have played Pac Man, Paperboy, and Ikari Warriors, though.

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"Cause I'm WAYYYY past cool!!" - Sonic the hedgehog.

Lighty's Web Sites:
http://www.facebook.com/lightysworld
http://www.youtube.com/darkspawn316
http://lighty158.newgrounds.com

Yeah, I'm from 1981.

When you mention the keyboard actually, a lot of games used Q = up, A = down, O = left, P = right, and spacebar for whatever, and that's what I was used to, but Run The Gauntlet used Q and W for left/right and P and L for up/down, and you couldn't alter that, not on the Spectrum anyway.
Well I couldn't get my head round that, so I would sit with my arms crossed over (seriously), so that I could do up/down with my left hand and left/right with my right hand.

I remember playing River City Ransom (yeah, that game where you are supossed to rescue your friend`s gf but spend most of the time beating people into submission to take their money and spend it on food or whatever didn`t have anything to do with your actual quest) a lot when I had a NES. And I still think SNES games to be more funny than most of those high-graphics-but-not-plot-at-all games now
Well, to make a short or long list, here they are, I still play most of them via emulators in my laptop:

Mortal Kombat 1, 2, 3 and Ultimate (No questions asked, everyone played or will play them at some point of their lives)
Super Robot Wars Gaiden: The Lord Of Elemental (From the Super Robot Wars series, this one is the first to feature only Banpresto original characters and is not a crossover between Mazinger, Gundam, Getter Robo, Dancougar, etc)
Treasure of the Rudras (A good RPG game, follows the same style as Final Fantasy but features a creative magic system were you can use powerfull magic at the begining of the game by writing the name of the spell or whatever other word you want on your grimoire via the Enscribe command, I didn`t try to name a spell Lacuna Coil yet)
Phantasy Star 1 and 2 (Think of it as Final Fantasy taken into the future. Not very prominent but great game still)
Cyberknight 1 and 2 (Same as above but with giant mechs, only mecha otakus like myself would find this one interesting)
Final Fantasy 4, 5 and 6 (Well, if you haven`t played one of these already you shouldn`t be wasting your time with the other ones for PS2 and PS3 since they are not as catchy and difficult as the ones for the SNES. Final Fantasy 6 remains one of my favourite games ever, even ranking higher than Xenosaga)
General Chaos (A funny game where you command a squad of commandos against another squad on quick skirmishes)
River City Ransom (Already described above, you`re supossed to rescue your friend`s gf but spend most of the time beating up anyone silly enough to cross your path, take the money from their pockets and then go back to the city to buy food, CDs, etc)
Cannon Fodder (Another war game, hell, I still think the Commandos game series took the basis for its gameplay from this game)
Genghis Khan (one of the first strategy games I got my hands onto, it was great playing it until...)
Gemfire (A great medieval fantasy strategy game, the thing here is that you have to defeat all the other nations to get back the six gems from a crown that would seal an ancient dragon wreacking havoc, and depending on your performance during the game, the evil dragon`s counterpart, a peacefull but powerfull sea dragon known as Pastha would aid you in your quest. Also a great game, but then it came the time where I started playing...)
Herzog Zwei (Even when not well known by many, this is one of the action/strategy games that required medical accuracy to play, since you only control a fighter plane that would become an humanoid giant mecha and you have to bu the units you want, then pick them up, use and order and place them in the exact place, all while having an eye on the energy metter wich would deplet fast whenever you were not in your main base)
I could still mentin some other great games, but the post would get to big, so maybe I will list them up later

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River City Ransom! THAT was fun! One of the best 2 player beat-em-ups! So was Turtles in Time. Mortal Kombat 2 was my favorite of the MK games. For Final Fantasy, the 7th one was the only one I really got into. I loved the characters, and the materia system. As far as using a keyboard, the only game I ever really loved with those controls was DOOM. I still have all the cheat codes memorized for that game. How sad is that? lol

_________________
"Cause I'm WAYYYY past cool!!" - Sonic the hedgehog.

Lighty's Web Sites:
http://www.facebook.com/lightysworld
http://www.youtube.com/darkspawn316
http://lighty158.newgrounds.com

all these games and no one mentions WONDERBOY!

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