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Speed Racer

Yellow Ranger wrote: »

Yoshi's Island is easily my favorite game. Talk about a game running on all cylinders. Every little thing is tuned to perfection.

The music, level design, bosses, sprites, and control were all top notch. So many great little touches. Like the security cameras watching Yoshi during the mini games, or the expressions on the faces of the enemies.



Speed Racer, did you ever do the secret two-player mini games?

I... maybe? It sounds familiar but I'm not certain.

It has been entirely too long since I played this game.

GPIA7R

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Zaylenz

Besides the Sopwith game and those like it on the PC, my first console was an Atari 7800, which was a Christmas gift to my sister and me from my parents. I played all the usual games for it, Pitfall, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Combat and River Raid (which was my favorite). Besides those I got to play one game where you played as a submarine shooting sharks and stuff, and there was Haunted House, which at the time was very creepy (especially to an 8 year old).

One thing I've been hoping for with the XBLA games is they'll eventually release a Live compatable version of Combat. They've made Dig-Dug and Ms. Pac-Man available, so I'm holding out hope. I think it'd be a blast to play with some friends over Live.

Cameron_Talley

No, that's Yoshi's Story. Yoshi's Island is for the Super NES.

And has one of the best final boss battles EVER.

Nightslyr

My first 'console' was a Commodore VIC-20:

It was a cartridge-based system that plugged into the TV. Without a cartridge inserted, one could program in BASIC. The best games were Gorf and Radar Rat Race.

Gorf:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEdtM05tZeU

Radar Rat Race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mOWeThizZg

Judge-Z

My divorced parents and step-father teamed up their funds to get me an Atari 2600 for Christmas back around 1983. I was ridiculously excited. Then, a few months later, my stepfather sold the thing as punishment for kicking the neighbor kid's ass. Needless to say this really pissed me off, as he didn't pay for the thing by himself, and he was the one who taught me that if someone was giving you shit, you should stick up for yourself - never start a fight, but finish it. My stepfather, a man of many contradictions and hypocrisies.

After that was the good old NES, from my Dad and stepmother. My stepmother (who was also the person who would drive me to and play in weekly D&D sessions at a local book store, concentrated awesome, that woman) was more addicted to it than I was. After I got Zelda, she would be the one playing it all weekend when I would come up for visits. Nobody I know was more disappointed in the big game play changes in Adventure of Link than she was! (She also got me my first Gameboy. Which I never got to play when she was around as she developed a Tetris addiction as well!)

My final early "console" was my good old Tandy 1000. Man I loved that computer, and all the classic games that came with it. Starflight. The Gold Box D&D series. Anything Microprose. I had that beast right through college until 1992!

Yellow Ranger

GPIA7R wrote: »

It was a great 3d Yoshi-based game for the N64, featuring Shyguys (my favorite Mario baddie, ever) as the prominent "enemy". It was smooth, polished, and involved lots of nice music and fruits.

The CD Soundtrack was shaped like a Yoshi head.

I like Yoshi's Story more than a lot of people, so hi5 for that, but confusing Yoshi's Story for Yoshi's Island is a little like confusing A New Hope with one of the prequels. :P

@Speed Racer: You could play the balloon tossing and the watermelon seed fight against a friend. You want to hold the balloon as long as possible, but not too long or it pops. I recommend yelling HOLD....HOLD like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

The Weazel

My first experience with gaming was on a TRS-80 Color Computer that my pops bought for $20. It had a pile of weird 'Edutainment' software that came on what I presumed to be 8-track cartridges. It also had a add-on that used cassette tapes as storage. You'd play the tapes for a period of time, then the game would load. We had a whole bunch of games on many a cassette. One game stood out above the rest. Zaxxon, a shmup developed by SEGA. I played the shit out of that game.

Then we got a Gameboy. My brothers didn't really play it much, but I was hooked. Then, after I saved a whole bunch of money for almost a year, I went out and bought a SNES. But I'll never forgot that POS computer. It's what started the fascination.

Sanius

My first videogame from my memory was Megaman 1 on the NES. Nearly 18, I feel proud to say that I vaugely remember the days of the SNES (mostly in its golden years), the release of Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 (and beating them all five times over), the release and sequential orgasm that was Metal Gear Solid, and the gold cartridge Zelda:OOT. I almost threw up in excitement.

I spend hours upon hours playing that N64 promo video that showed Pilotwings 64 and Supermario 64 with that fat dude that tries to jump in the painting but fails. It felt wrong, but so right.

I remember the sega channel fondly. but I was around the age of six, so I found it enthrilling to play these seemingly random games everytime I got on. Little did I know they had new games every month, but the idea for the time amazed me. I did not understand how it worked, and it was like pure bliss for a child.

I recall trying to enter in the debug code in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, failing many times. My oldest brother did it correctly once, and I had so much fun having millions of rings and being super sonic for as long as I wanted.

bwanie

Started out on a x886 hercules pc, played the shit out of Prince of Persia, Loderunner and street fighter (the original) .

Then i got a Sega master system mkII. My favourite games were wonderboy III, alex kidd, shinobi and golden axe.

Then came the SNES, easy favourites: SMW, Mario Kart, LTTP, SF2, Mk2 and Simcity. Played lots more though. ( i actually don't really like Yoshi's Island. It looked great but i never really got into it)

GPIA7R

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bwanie

that music was the most soothing muzak ever.

Sam

this isn't exactly early or console gaming, but when I was 8 someone got me (or passed on) a China pirated copy of Theme Hospital, only it turned out to be P.O.D on the disk.
Which I enjoyed more than I think I ever would've enjoyed theme hospital. P.O.D was fucking sick, yo.
(basically the first 3D racer I ever played)

The first 3D game ever....definitely Time Commando.

Genji Gloves

GPIA7R wrote: »

Oooo Simcity, yeeeah I played a lot of that on SNES.

I always played, expecting an "ending"... like... "What's after Metropolis?"... and to this day, I still don't know if there was more beyond that...

There is no end. SimCity is a game of constant loss. SimCity hates you.

Anyway, there IS a level above Metropolis. I guess if you ever get there, you can consider the game to be beaten. Welcome to...

Megalopolis!

bwanie

that cannot be real...

can it?

Genji Gloves

bwanie wrote: »

that cannot be real...

can it?

Yep. From what I've read, if you beat all of the scenarios (something I've never been able to do), you get one that is basically a 0% water map called Freedom, which is one of maybe 3 maps in the entire game even capable of supporting a megalopolis without rampant zone-stacking.

The highest population I could ever get was like 300,000 or so because I couldn't get this map... the nuclear fallout scenario sucks...

UncleSporky

bwanie wrote: »

that cannot be real...

can it?

500000k population is a megalopolis.

I see he put all his industrials at the edge so that much of the crime and pollution bleeds off the edge of the map and isn't counted.

You really have to have a perfect balance to get that far.

GPIA7R

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bwanie

damn, i never fathomed that there would be a hardcore simcity scene, but there you go.

edit: looking at that map i just realised he has zero fused area's. Somehow getting as many as possible of those was my ultimate goal in that game.

wish i could remember my best city's nr of residents

citizen059

I had an Atari 2600 growing up, and that was about it. My parents were of the opinion that as long as I had a functional Atari, I didn't need any of that "new nintendo crap".

It's alright though, I had fun with it. I still have my Atari up in the closet somewhere, my wife has tried to get rid of it a couple of times but threatening divorce seems to work. I have about 130+ games for it as well.

With the 2600, some games were obviously better than others...I always enjoyed the Activision titles. Sucks that I was too young to get in on the deal where you beat a high score and get a patch for it. I always wanted some of those. Of all the Activision games, I think Starmaster was my favorite.

It was a grand day indeed when I finally beat the game with a high enough score that would've earned one of these:



Other favorites included Tunnel Runner and Solaris.

There was a later game, very similar in gameplay to Solaris, that was like a "flight sim" of sorts. You had a black, triangle shaped stealth fighter and you got into dogfights with other jets. You could do multiplayer with P1 flying and P2 manning the weapons, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the game.

Guibs

My parents when I was a kid bought me my first game console:



and it came with this game which obviously was a favorite:

Genji Gloves

bwanie wrote: »

damn, i never fathomed that there would be a hardcore simcity scene, but there you go.

edit: looking at that map i just realised he has zero fused area's. Somehow getting as many as possible of those was my ultimate goal in that game.

wish i could remember my best city's nr of residents

I bet it wasn't C73,760 people.

h8b1llg8ts

Because my dad was a computer programmer since the late 70's I had to start off with something a little harder at the age of 5. My first gaming experiance was with the Atari 800xi and cassette drive games. For those of you how don't know you had to prompt each game to start and load it off the cassette. Then flip it over to load the other side.

But after all is said and done you would get one of the greatest games of all time ...

Bartholamue

Did the Colecovision version of Donkey Kong have all four levels of the arcade?

Speed Racer

Man, Donkey Kong is good times. Me and some friends found one in an arcade once. We bought a large pizza, set it on top of the cabinet, and just sat there taking turns. We were about $3 in apiece before we managed to clear level one.

TechRat

Bartholamue wrote: »

Did the Colecovision version of Donkey Kong have all four levels of the arcade?

I don't think so. The only ones that did that I'm aware of were the versions for the Atari XL/XE and - get this - the TI Computer.