....... according to me!!

I was probably no more than 6 years old when Dad bought us our first video game console, the Granstand Pong, which in the mid-1970's was the cutting edge of gaming technology. Each of the 3 games (Football, Squash and Tennis) were a variation on the basic idea of a straight line 'bat', which you moved by turning a dial, and a dot moving across the screen as the 'ball' ....... we loved it.

In 1977 Atari released the 2600 console which eventually gave us games like Asteroids and Space Invaders. I can still vividly remember spend hours playing Asteroids, and in one marathon session  eventually going 'round the clock' with a score of over 1 million.

Consoles then took a back seat for a while as my video game playing moved to the new generation of home computers.

The year 1981 saw the release of the Acorn  BBC Micro computer and the first opportunity to play Pac-Man, which I swear to God would be the top answer on 'Family Fortunes' if 100 people were asked to name a computer game. Although we never actually owned a BBC Micro I can remember playing Pac-Man on many occasions ....... and not being particularly good at it. (Strangely enough the BBC Micro survived long enough to be the computer I used to do my computer studies GCSE in 1988.)

In 1982 Sir Clive Sinclair brought the ZX Spectrum to the home computer market and with it games like Manic Miner, Star Wars and Outrun. The original had a 48K memory but shortly afterwards a 128K version appeared, which was the one that we got for Christmas. Games were loaded by the built in tape mechanism (which was essentially an audio tape) and of course took up to 15 minutes to load. However the advantage was that if you had a portable stereo with a  tape-to-tape dubbing facility, you could copy the games ....... thank God for Father Christmas!

In the same year Commodore Business Machines (CBM) brought the Commodore 64 to market. I vividly remember the marketing campaign which pictured an elephant standing over the computer, the idea was to emphasis that the C64 had a memory as good/big as an elephants ....... funny to think that the computer I am using to create this web page has 31,250 times the memory of a C64!! The C64 brought us games like Daley Thompsons Decathlon, which involved tapping two of the buttons on your keyboard really quickly to make you run as fast as possible ...... I wonder how many keyboards got sent back to CBM!?

Although I was playing video games on computers, in Japan consoles were beginning to take off with the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The next vivid memory I have of playing video games was in 1988 which was the year Sega released the Megadrive. One of my brothers friends has actually paid to import a console from Japan, for although they went on sale in Asia in 1988, they did not reach the US until late 1989 and Europe until 1990. So we decided to import one too and enjoy endless school holidays play Sonic The Hedgehog (probably Sega's most famous creation).

The Megadrive rekindled my interest in video games consoles, and I have never played a video game on a PC since.

The console market in the early 1990's began to develop at an increasingly rapid pace, and soon Japanese giant Nintendo joined the 16bit console revolution with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in Japan in 1990 but took until 1992 to reach the UK. On this occasion the cost of importing was prohibitively expensive, especially as I was an undergraduate trying to scrap together enough money to buy beer! It was my brother who actually bought a SNES when they were released and shortly afterwards started his first year at Loughborough university. Not knowing what to expect during his first term he decided not to take his SNES with him, so for the first term of what was my third (and final) year at university I was the proud keeper of a SNES. This kept me and my house mates thoroughly entertained as we played games such as Mario 64 and Bionic Commando (and imported America game that needed an adapter to play).

I left university in 1993 and the SNES remained a firm favourite, bringing us even better games like Mario Kart and the legendary Street Fighter.

However in 1994 the mighty Sony entered the video game console market, for the first time, with the now infamous Playstation. In wasn't until the following year that it arrived in the UK and was the first 32bit console to hit the market. The Playstation was also one of the first consoles to depart from the cartridge format, using CD-ROM instead. I thought at the time that my brother was mad trading his SNES in for a Playstation ....... but how wrong I was.

I didn't actually get a Playstation myself until 1997, which was the year Nintendo hit back with the Nintendo 64 console. I was in the Virgin Megastore all ready to part with my hard earned cash and pay £299 for a N64 when I realised that the games were £70 each. This, I thought, was a little steep and as the Playstation has just seen a price cut to £130, I decided to buy one of those instead.

The first game I bought for the Playstation was Wipeout which had the coolest funky tunes playing as you raced in your anti-gravity hover craft round magnetised circuits. However my most vivid memory is of the original Gran Turismo racing simulator which provided my with hours of entertainment building up my collection of high powered cars and racing my friends.

I eventually bought a N64, but only after the price had been cut to £99 and I have to say that I have only ever played one game on it, but what a game!!. I remember going round a friends between Christmas and New Year and they had just got Goldeneye as a Christmas present. I was so impressed I immediately went to buy a copy, only to discover everywhere had sold out. After 3 weeks I eventually tracked a copy down to Our Price in Romford and jumped on a train in my lunch hour to go and pick it up. Goldeneye quickly became the multi-player game of choice when I met up with my university friends and really defined the 'First Person Shooter'.

All this time Sega had been quietly working on a 128bit console which was to give us an idea of things to come. In 1999 the Dreamcast hit the UK highstreet (and the front of Arsenal shirts) but with a price of £299 I wasn't tempted. I eventually bought a Dreamcast when the price hit £99 in 2002, which coincided with the announcement by Sega that it would no longer be manufacturing game consoles. The Dreamcast for me was really a one game wonder ....... Soul Calibur, which is one of the few games to ever score a perfect 10 on the Gamespot review site. I was also quite impressed with Metropolis Street Racer which went on to be mimicked somewhat by Microsoft when they released the excellent Project Gotham Racing series on the Xbox.

The next console to hit the market was the much awaited Playstation 2 (PS2) which was released in the UK just before Christmas 2000 with an asking price of £299. One of my friends purchased one at launch, but I have to say I saw no compelling reason to buy one at that time. It wasn't until Gran Turismo 3 was released in mid-2001 that there became a strong case to buy a PS2 and I picked one up for my 30th birthday at the slightly reduced price of £279.

Over the following years the PS2 became the console of choice with me and my friends, well at least at social gatherings. Party games were top of the agenda such as Micro Machines and the best party game of all time, Bomberman. I have many vivid memories of crazy escapes, explosions and being 'toasted' in unbelievable ways that I couldn't possible mention them all here, but I'm sure my friends will agree Bomberman provided us with non-stop entertainment on almost a weekly basis for nearly 2 years ....... and to this day I still remain undefeated!!

Although the PS2 had become the console of choice, both Nintendo and Microsoft had brought games consoles to the market. Nintendo released the Gamecube in September 2001, whilst Microsoft entered the games console market for the first time in March 2002. At £189 the Gamecube didn't interest me due to a the lack of top software titles. However Microsofts Xbox was a different matter, for one reason ....... Halo!

The Xbox had been released in the US in November 2001 and the reviews for Halo were superb. Having caught the 'First Person Shooter' bug back in 1997 with Goldeneye on the N64, I decided that the Xbox would have to be the first console I would buy at launch. So on March 14th, 2002 my Xbox was delivered ....... and I wasn't disappointed.

Halo was (an still is) one of the best video games ever, and has the honour of being the only video game that I have completed on the most difficult setting ....... in this case legendary!

Slowly my friends started to convert to the Xbox, particularly as the price started to drop, but the main reason that they decided to change was the online gaming or Xbox Live as it was known. This was vastly superior to the Sony online gaming and completely redefined the way we played games.

I eventually did purchase a Gamecube, when the price reached £99. This seemed a reasonable price for a console that ultimately had some very good games, and eventually saw the release of the best game I have played on any console ....... Resident Evil 4 (See my Top Video Games page).

In September 2005 I placed my order for Microsoft's Xbox 360, deciding that I would pay the asking price of £279. The release date was 2nd December, 2005, but due to very strong demand I didn't actually get my console until early February. It was, however, worth the wait as the ability of the Xbox 360 to output High Definition made the games look absolutely stunning ....... unfortunately this also made the Xbox 360 very expensive as naturally I had to go and buy a HD LCD Television to play it on!!!

The Xbox 360 marked the beginning of the move to High Definition gaming and I remember just standing there watching the intro on Project Gotham Racing 3 thinking “Wow!”. It was really the first time either me or my friends had seen High Definition in the flesh as Sky did not launch their HD service until May 2006, to coincide with the World Cup. For sometime I was the only one of my group of friends who owned an Xbox 360. I think the imminent arrival of the Playstation 3 meant that people were delaying making a decision.

The Playstation 3 was launched in March 2007 and debate raged as to whether it was technically superior to the Xbox 360. In my opinion, aside from the ability to play Blu-ray discs, it was not. However this became irrelevant, as broadband speeds continued to improve and the online gaming community grew ever larger it was the Xbox 360’s vastly superior online gaming experience that meant Microsoft’s console won the battle ……. among my friends at least.

I believe the decision by my friends to go with the Xbox 360 was also influenced by the release of the third iteration of the Halo series in September 2007. Strangely enough I recall all my friends managing to play Halo 3 before me. This was because I was in the process of extending one of the rooms in our house to create a larger study which I fitted out with a 40” Sony Bravia HD Television, Dolby Digital Amp and a Mission M-Cube 7.1 Surround Sound speaker package, just so I could play games as they were meant to be played. So I waited until completion late October until I finally experience Halo 3, in all it’s high definition, surround sound glory. Unfortunately this only gave me a week to practise for a Halo 3 competition that had been arrange by the IT department of my company to raise money for charity. I suspect the real reason was to stop the bickering in the IT department about who was the best player ……. the prize was an Xbox 360 but with over 6000 employees eligible for entry, competition would be tough.

So on the 2^nd November 2007, dressed in suit and tie, I put the jean clad IT guys in their place by whooping the lot of them in a 3hour session on the 9^th floor; watched by dozens of people, including many of my colleagues. I won the final head-to-head game on Epitaph 15 – 7 and donated my Xbox 360 to charity!

By coincidence it was Christmas that year that I got a copy of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, which really saw the death of our online Halo 3 games. Having spent a few months playing it I managed to convince my friends that it was well worth the investment and converted them to Modern Warfare. By the end of the 2009 the sequel, Modern Warfare 2 had become the most played online console game ever.

Anyway with my new set up at home it seemed churlish to penny pinch, so I treated myself to a Playstation 3. At the same time I upgraded my Xbox 360 to an elite version, largely because it had an HDMI output which could connect straight to my new amplifier but also because it was black and looked good!

The PS3 is a lovely console and maybe worth the money purely for Metal Gear Solid 4 which rates as one of the best off line video games I’ve ever played, mixing animation and live action to create a hybrid gaming cinematic experience. However I always came back to the Xbox 360 and it’s online gaming, Xbox Live. In November 2008 Microsoft gave Xbox Live a face lift and further enhanced the partying so that you could now play games with a number of friends and only chat amongst those friends. It’s hard to imagine playing video games alone anymore.

Up until now I have failed to mention one of the most revolutionary consoles ever made. Sandwiched between the release of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 was Nintendo’s Wii, which hit our shops in December 2006. With addictive games and ground breaking motion sensing controllers, this really captured the imagination of the general public who by the end of 2009 had purchased almost as many Wii’s worldwide (57million) as Xbox 360’s and PS3’s put together. I bought one for our kids, who have spent endless hours being entertained by Nintendo’s well know characters. I didn’t fit one into my games set up though, as Wii’s only came in white …… until November 2009. So for Christmas that year Santa brought me a surprise present, a limited edition piano black Wii; marvellous!!