Goldleader's Gaming History

Goldleader80

I'm starting this thread as an autobiographical list of games throughout my life. These games range in quality and not all are great but in some small way I have loved them all. I will post a new one every so often and hope to bring back memories for other users and maybe bring to light some games people have never played before.

Goldleader80

Tetris

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​Tetris was the first game I owned. It came bundled with my first games console the great GameBoy. I remember the GameBoy been released and thinking "I want one of those", I was only 10 at the time and saved my pocket money for months to buy one, at the time I think it was about £70, a lot of money for a 10 year old back in the late 80s. I was the first out of my friends to have one, most people had never even heard of it. A few years later the whole world had one, same story as the Wii!!! Back on topic, Tetris was and still is the most addictive game you will ever play. Its simple in its gameplay which is what made it so accessible to the masses. It was a stroke of genius to have it bundled with the GameBoy and helped launch the handheld around the world. I spent hours playing on Tetris, this was in part down to it been so re-playable and also I couldn't afford any new games for my shiny new GameBoy. Tetris had that pick up and play factor but also the more you played the more lines you wanted to clear and a high score was always the goal. And lets not forget the music, the GameBoy version had three classic tunes and I can still hear them ringing in my brain now. I haven't played the game in years but I know if I were to the memories would come flooding back. These are the marks of great games in my mind no matter the games age you can pick it up and still enjoy the experience.

Goldleader80

Super Mario Land

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​The second game I purchased on my GameBoy and my first introduction to a life of Mario games. Super Mario Land was and still is my fav GameBoy game. Its a traditional platform game in every sense. There is no save and only a certain amount of lives and continues. This didn't make the game hard but didn't give you the chance to restart where you liked. It was and still is one of the very different Mario platforms games, you don't run around Mushroom Kingdom or have to rescue Peach you have to save Daisy, the style of the levels is some what different. But all the usual Mario fun is here like Mushrooms, Flower power ups and Stars. Having just done a little reading on the game it turns out that it wasn't created by the usual Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto but rather Hiroji Kiyotake, this would explain the difference in style. Also the levels in the sub and plane are very different to anything in any Mario game. Back in the day though I had never played a Mario game so didn't notice any of this, I just loved running and jumping around this world. I thank this game for opening up a door to more Mario fun in the future. If you go and play the game now yes the graphics are very poor but the basic game play is still there and very much a Mario game, and will keep you happy for a couple of hours.

Goldleader80

Lemmings

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​Around this time in my gaming life I got my second home computer the amazing Amgia 500 (the first was a Commodore 64, but I can't remember any of the games I had for this). Packaged with the new machine was this little beauty. Lemmings was a massive hit back in 1991. And its easy to see why, it's a fun colourful and very enjoyable game that can at times really make you think. At its core it is a puzzle game, get Lemmings from one place to another with different tools to help, but all done with such charm and music to make you hum to. I always remember if you messed up you could blow up all your Lemmings and it was great fun to watch them count down to 0 and blow up and taking out the landscape with it. This was a part of the game that was a first for its time, the ability to manipulate the environment within the game. Making it very interactive not just a level to move through this was one you could destroy.

Goldleader80

The New Zealand Story

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​This was one of the first Games I got on my Amiga. Looking at it now its a strange looking game and having not played it for about 15 years could be very crap but I remember at the time loving it. I think the cuteness of the game would go against it now but back then it was fun to have animals in sneakers. The game play was basic as most early platforms games were. But this one had the advantage of having different weapons giving it bit of varied play. And unlike Mario you didn't just go from right to left you travelled in all directions. As with most early platform games they were a lot harder than today's standards and this was no different, with no save points you had to work hard to complete the game. Which I did I think or was that with a cheat I don't remember!!!!!!

Goldleader80

Sensible World of Soccer

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​Good old Sensi. When this game first came out, and my friends all raved about it, but I just didn't get it and didn't like it one bit. The graphics were rubbish and I thought the game play was way to basic. A few years later I got a naughty copy of Sensible World of Soccer and fell in love with the game. The game's strongest points were the things I hated about it at first, the graphics and simple game play make it an endless joy to play over and over again, there is nothing overblown about the game its all about kicking the ball around and trying to get it in the net. We used to have full on days playing this game with leagues and cup competitions. The one player game wasn't as good, but what one player football games are. There is nothing better than running down the wing cutting inside and taking a long range shot from outside the box with a bit of curl on it and see it fly in the top corner as the goalkeeper is helpless to stop it. They don't make games like this anymore, and the photo realistic and slow game play of FIFA have never been a patch on this game.

Goldleader80

Cannon Fodder

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​Another Sensible Software release, with graphics and style very much the same as Sensible Soccer. It's a hard game to put in a genre, its a war game, its a shoot em up, its a strategy and later a little bit of Sci-Fi. All I know is that it's a fun game to play with simple controls and I still haven't found a game that you control a squad of soldiers with so little effort. The game is littered with little touches of quality for example the way a door or roof flies off an exploding building and can kill you or the grave stones on the hill side between levels. I never played the Mega Drive version but I don't think using a control pad would be as easy as a mouse like on the Amiga. I never completed the game though, it did get harder as it went along and I don't think I had the patience back then. But I tell you what war has never been so much fun!!!!

Goldleader80

Sonic the Hedgehog

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​Around this time I got sick of my GameBoy and did a very stupid thing and sold it and got myself a Sega Game Gear!!! At the time the Game Gear was amazing because it had a full colour back lit screen. The down side was that most of the games were crap Master System ports and the batteries lasted about 5 minutes. Nevertheless I did get Sonic the Hedgehog with it, this was my first time out with the little blue guy with the red shoes on. The game itself is nowhere near up to the standard of the Mega Drive version however for some reason I loved it. The music from the first level is going round in my head even now. What I found so great about the game was the speed you could run through the level, Mario was never this reckless. Granted it wasn't a thinking man's platform game, it was great to just bomb it as fast as you could to get to the end of a level. On the down side it was a very easy game and I completed it many times (however I do remember also owning Sonic 2 on the Game Gear and that was so hard it wasn't worth playing).

Goldleader80

The Chaos Engine/Soilders of Fortune

                                                                                                                                                 
Mega Drive cover, I'm discussing the Amiga version here

                                                                                                                                                 
​Now i still kept some sense after selling my GameBoy by keeping my Amiga. The Chaos Engine was a classic shooting game for the machine. It was, i think, the first more grown up type of game that I owned. Having built a good rep with Speedball 2 the Bitmap Brothers went on to create this hard edged shooter. It was great in two or one player mode. I loved the variety between the 6 characters you could choose. It was one of the first games to have a real story behind what was going on, not just go and rescue someone, this was a world gone to hell. Also liked the fact that it was set in England as the game was developed in England. This was one of the great things about the Amiga, lots of the games were home grown so they had our humour and style in them. They don't make gems little this any more, most games are over hyped and very much styled in the same way. As a side note I have just found that this game was re-released on Windows Mac and Linux a few years ago, it's in the Mac App store, think I might take a look and see if it still holds up!
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Goldleader80

Championship Manager/Football Manager

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                 
​This game and its sequels has sucked more hours of play out of my life than any other. It is the ultimate Football manager game and for anyone who would love to manage a team this is the place to be. I used to spend whole weekends playing it. Each game I would play as a Premier league team to try and win the league and get the England job or I would start at a lower 3rd (2nd now) division team and work my way up the ladder. No 2 game is the same as you buy different players. One thing that sticks in my mind about the Amiga version was the amount of time it took to create a new game, nearly an hour, which gave you chance to get showered and grab some breakfast before you started to play. Because of this game my wife still doesn't see me for at least a month every year when the new version is released.