09/09/2022
To share
The life of an ordinary gamer
Vlom1313
Introduction
Have a good day and a great mood to everyone! I want to share with you some bright moments of my playing experience. Console generations are changing, PC hardware capacities are growing, young development teams are transforming into large corporations. Video games have made a huge leap in development over the past three decades. And I would like to tell you about the kaleidoscope of video games that I have seen over the years through the eyes of an ordinary gamer.
Dendy
The Dandy console burst into the Russian market like a tsunami. It was later possible to find out that in fact they were "Korean-Chinese" clones of the Japanese Nintendo game system, kindly rebranded in the domestic market by local businessmen. But at that time it was a Bomb. There were advertisements on every corner: on TV, in shops, on the streets, but the most viral one was in schools! There is no better advertisement than "word of mouth" and we were that radio. For us, ordinary boys 8-9 years old, the Dandy was something out of the realm of fiction. A device that could revive the book, give the opportunity to control the cartoon quickly became popular and desirable.
Tents on the market with cartridges for Dandies in the 90s were a constant gathering place for schoolchildren and not only.
Tents on the market with cartridges for Dandies in the 90s were a constant gathering place for schoolchildren and not only.
My first acquaintance with the Dandy happened at a classmate's house. That day, after school, we played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until late in the evening. It is difficult to describe the emotions of the game. It was rapture, euphoria, a geyser of endorphins... Whatever you want, call it that. It is not difficult to guess that I managed to persuade my parents to buy my own console quickly. Thanks to the advertising described above, I did not have to explain for a long time what kind of device it is and what it is needed for. And the burning eyes spoke for themselves! And a month later, my brother and I became the owners of the Dandy... with a gun.
On the wave of HYPE at that time, the TV project Dandy New Reality was launched, and a little later the magazine of the same name. Fresh games appeared in the markets and we went there every two or three weeks, each time struggling with a painful choice in front of huge counters strewn with yellow and orange cartridges. The most relish was that you could immediately, without leaving the cash register, try this or that game. Fortunately, portable televisions were right there in the tents. We never asked what our parents and my brother's new hobby cost us...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Battle City
Battle City
Duck Hunt
Duck Hunt
What can I name first of all from the "blockbusters" of that time? To begin with, this is of course Super Mario Bros. - a simple platformer after the first levels broke my fingers and nerves on the subsequent ones. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - a game based on the mega popular cartoon just had to be a hit. Contra is a hurricane action movie for real guys. Battle City - the dances of my childhood, with the titular musical motif forever imprinted on the subcortex of the brain. Duck Hunt is a fun shooting range if the revision of the Dandy supported the gun. You can imagine what I experienced in the game if at that time we were running through the woods with improvised weapons made of branches and cones.
The Walt Disney company did not lag behind the general madness and after a while flooded the market with decent games under the license of Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Little Mermaid.
It seemed that nothing could surprise me anymore, but then I found out about the Battletoads game...
Battletoads
Battletoads
The effect of this game can only be compared with the effect of acquaintance with Demons Souls, which will be discussed later. Fighting toads were the answer to the success of TMNT, but with its own distinctive style, history and humor, well, the complexity of this game has already become a legend. There were rumors that someone from our school even passed it, but it was hard to believe.
Sega MegaDrive 2
A couple of years later, a novelty appeared on the Russian market - Sega Megadrive 2. It was a soldered and improved Chinese version of the Japanese Shogi console. The advertisement beckoned with a magic number of 16 bits, against 8 bits of Dandy, and the juicy picture of the new games was amazing. And anyone who has ever opened a box with a cartridge will remember the smell of Chinese plastic even after n years.
Almost simultaneously with Sega, a new official version of the Nintendo console called Super Nintendo appeared in Russia. But even with the presence of Donkey Kong in exclusives and several other games available only on this system, few of my friends chose to buy SNES. The price of the console was very high. But I still played Donkey Kong with a friend)).
Comix Zone
Comix Zone
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Ultimate Mortal Kombat
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog
There was nothing wrong with the choice of games on Sega from the very beginning, unlike the SNES. It was during these years that the formation of the gaming industry on strong legs took place. Experiments with genres and the way of presenting gameplay began. Well, we, gamers, watched the creation of history.
Sonic The Hedgehog - amazed by the dynamics, the speed of what was happening. Comix Zone - head off the graphics. Mortal Kombat 2.3, Ultimate is a phenomenal success that has spawned a cult. I remember tournament tables, class-by-class games, battles that often came out of the virtual world into the real one. EarthWorm Jim 1,2 is another significant "systemseller" of the Sega era. The pinnacle of art direction and level design of that time.
The Disney company did not doze off this time and gave the go-ahead for the development of such key games of the era as Alladin, Lion King, The Jungle Book, Pocahontas.
It is very difficult to single out more titles, but there were a lot of games and I absorbed them as much as possible.
Shining Force 2
Shining Force 2
Without a battery, it was impossible to complete some games at a time
Without a battery, it was impossible to complete some games at a time
Landstalker. Riddles, hiding places, dungeons
Landstalker. Riddles, hiding places, dungeons
Vektorman offers new vector graphics, instead of raster
Vektorman offers new vector graphics, instead of raster
The games started to get bigger. The duration began to grow. To save progress, slots for round batteries began to appear on some cartridges. I was lucky and Shining Force 2 got caught already with a slot, while a friend bought it without it. But this circumstance did not prevent him from taking turns with his brother to arrange a 20-hour longplay for the passage and tell the whole class about the ending.
An important fact is that often the games on Sega were in English. Why often, but not all? - You ask. And because there was a high probability of buying a Japanese or Chinese version of the game, but that didn't stop us!
When the games became larger and went beyond the genre of an ordinary platformer, then problems began with understanding the plot and the direction of movement for further passage. Mainly thanks to games, I started to learn basic English while the school curriculum was only German.
After adding batteries and obtaining basic language knowledge, games such as Shining Force 2, Phantasy Star 3,4, Landstalker were finally completed.
Well, with the advent of the Vektorman game at the end of the Shogi era, it became clear that a new leap in graphics and a new console were coming.
Sony Playstation
For a long time, the Playstation was only in my dreams. It was increasingly difficult to explain to parents how one "box" differs from another. Enterprising businessmen began to open video clubs in the city, where they could play new games Twisted Metal, Tekken 3, Syphon Filter, Crash the Bandicoot for little money. And for a while my friends and I became regular guests there.
Console player's game club. It's not me in the photo. I found it on the Internet. All coincidences are random)
Console player's game club. It's not me in the photo. I found it on the Internet. All coincidences are random)
At the age of 14-15, something forbidden and scary especially beckons. Silent Hill excited the brain at that time. It was scary to play, but interesting. In a close company in front of the TV, we all shuddered as one when a monster jumped out of the next corner or a locker door in an abandoned school shrouded in fog abruptly opened. The Japanese horror movie impressed me so much that a couple of days later I bought a CD without having my own set-top box. In the evenings, I put it under my pillow and looked at the pictures on the disk. Only after a couple of weeks on the DR I finally bought a console.
Sillent Hill
Sillent Hill
Twisted Metal
Twisted Metal
Tekken 3 - the King of gaming clubs
Tekken 3 - the King of gaming clubs
The number of games on PSone couldn't be counted. There were so many of them that sometimes games were thrown in the middle of the passage in favor of a fresh release. Hits came out in packs for every taste and color. Resident Evil 1,2,3, Dino Crisis 1,2, Fear Effect, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid.
A special place among the games for a long time was captured by the JRPG genre. Beautiful worlds, twisted plots, memorable characters were the hallmark of the genre. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX Squaresoft company printed one after another. Xenogears, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross, Vandal Hearts II were worn to holes, some more than once, as at some point the first translations into Russian began to appear. It became more difficult to choose the "correct" version, because often a clumsy Promt translation could completely break the progress in the game. We were walking blindly through a minefield!
"Fatty" Final fantasy VIII
"Fat Man" Final fantasy VIII
Games became more voluminous, CGI videos ate up all the space and games no longer fit within one disk. Titles on two, three, four and even seven began to appear! disks.
Phantasmagoria - occupied as many as seven disks. But there was also the second part.
Phantasmagoria - occupied as many as seven disks. But there was also the second part.
PC assembly 1
At the end of 2000, I was unexpectedly bought a computer. Apparently the gift meant that I would need it for further studies, but a gamer is a gamer and I began to catch up on what was missed on consoles. Well, and dig into the latest novelties.