You know it's been a while now. A while of me playing video games. From my earliest memories of snaking free games out of the milk bar owner by simply hanging around the shop long enough. Also accidentally knocking out the power plug when some kids much much older than me were playing. To learning what "tea bagging" a mate online in Halo and getting a visit by a stripper while playing Uno! I got to thinking... what are my best memories of playing games all these (25 odd) years? So... here I go:
1) Halo LAN Party - This to me was the pinnacle of gaming. 4 Xbox's, 4 players with headsets in different rooms killing each other and letting the other guys know it! Firsit started out with Halo 1 and we figured "it can't be that hard to connect these babies up can it?". So we strung 2 together and what we started... we still haven't finished to this date!
2) Get Ready! - Actual speech in a video game! The year was 1990 and we were all hearing about how big Sega's Mega Drive was going to be. But to actually have the Mega Drive in our house (before the official release) and have Space Harrier's beautiful sound blaring out the speakers was a treat. But hearing that voice ring out "GET READY!" in crisp 6 channel stereo... man. Hard to explain to a kid now how big a deal that was. Guess you just had to be there!
3) Tiger Upper Cut! - Super Nintendo killed it when they brought real arcade gaming to the house hold. In fact the whole Street Fighter thing in itself was just so god damn big. Never before and never again did we see one singular title dominate an arcade hall. I'm talking about a whole string of SF2 machines lining the Timezone wall. Spining Bird Kick!
4) Play by Play! Sega attempted to pull this off. But they failed miserably. I'm talking about Joe Montana's Sports Talk Football. But years later EA achieved what Sega dreamed of. Commentating in a sports game. I honestly didn't think it could be done so well. Especially in a Hockey game as the game flows so so quickly! But when we bought NHL 98 (PSX) we were in for a surprise! "Wow a truck hit him!" "He shoots he scores". The players names and teams all got commentated on. It was freaking amazing technology and one still in use today. Well done EA!
5) Revenge of Shinobi - I include this title for one reason only. Presentation. This was the first title to get it right! The music was from none other than Yuzo Koshiro and it was stinking hot! That guy knew how to milk a 16 bit sound processor for all it was worth! But it wasn't just the music. It was the whole package. When you fired up that game it was no ordinary title sequence. From the moment you saw that ninja pop up and deflect all those ninja stars... you knew that this was going to be a special game! Was one of the big reasons why I wanted a Sega Mega Drive at the time!
If you have a list of your own top 5 moments or even just one special moment... leave a comment!
