Random Gaming Memories

~~Leo656~~ · 04-29-2022, 08:24 AM

The latest AVGN episode has me in a fairly nostalgic mood, and the part where he describes frantically trying to beat Contra before the school bus came had me thinking back to times where I had almost the same experience (our town was only one square mile or so, so there was no buses for the elementary school; your parents drove you or if you were most kids you walked).

Specifically, it reminded me of the time I was in 8th Grade, either couldn't sleep or woke up early (I had awful insomnia until I started smoking pot in my 20s, then it cleared up immediately), and decided that That Morning was the time I was finally gonna buckle down and beat Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES). That's a terrible game, but we kids were less savvy back then. So I grabbed one of my NES guidebooks that had a map showing you where all the Historical Items were - it was misprinted, though, so I still had to essentially "do it all myself" and write my own corrections in the margins, but at least I wasn't flying completely blind; that game is 100% unbeatable without a guide - and got to work. Suffice to say, it was far from my favorite gaming experience, but there was still a deep satisfaction in finally seeing the ending to a game that had been the bane of my existence for so many years. Seeing Bill and Ted rock out at the concert was good enough for me to justify all the time wasted on such a lame game, and it sent me to school in a great mood.

And as James alluded to in his anecdote about selling his original copy of Contra for a sandwich, beating Bill & Ted on NES is the ONLY thing I remember at all about that day, aside from having walked to school. I don't remember if it was snowing or sunny, Fall or Spring, if my Mom still lived with us or anything. I remember absolutely nothing about the school day or what I did when I got home. ALL I remember was that it was the day I finally beat that game. He really isn't kidding that some moments really become part of who you are while others just slip away, lost in the ether.

I have a ton of awesome (and less awesome) gaming memories, far too many to list in one shot.

One of my earliest-ever vivid memories is bonding with my Dad over the Atari 2600 version of Frogger and Donkey Kong. I wouldn't have been older then 3. I remember him saying Donkey Kong might be "too hard" for me, but very soon I got better at it than he was. For a while those were the only games we had, until we got Ghostbusters. And then shortly after that one of his friends gave him a whole big box of Atari games and joysticks just to be rid of them; this would have been in the time between The Crash and the NES saving the industry, so a lot of people figured games were "done" and were either throwing out or giving away their stuff, so we really lucked out in that. Tons of great games in that collection, really awesome memories.

I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module. A "regular" 2600 with the wood-grain finish was in the box of stuff my Dad got from his friend, but it didn't work right. There were a ton of third-party joysticks that were much better than the standard tiny Atari sticks, though. I wore them out but they were awesome.

My Dad wasn't actually much for video games - "Too complicated", he said - but he always thought they were neat and he could play really simple ones. We spent a ton of time on Atari Pinball, Baseball, Football, and that kind of stuff. Obviously they look awful to anyone who's younger than me but at the time they were pretty special. My Dad and I didn't have a ton in common either so anything and everything that could help us spend time together really meant a lot to me. I still remember the first time I ever got a higher score than him on Atari Pinball; he had this visible and odd mix of pride and disappointment. That might have been the last time we played any game together, come to think of it.

Starting in 1988, my sister and my cousin would spend every Summer vacation and Christmas break at our house until we moved in 1995. They were both 8 years older than me, so again, one of the few things we had in common was video games. They weren't anywhere near as into it as I was, but we still spent almost every night playing various Atari games (mostly Megamania, I remember we all loved that one to death) or Super Mario Bros. on NES. We'd stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing those games sometimes.

Christmas 1992 was incredibly special, as I got the SNES (and Game Genie). That whole vacation, my sister, my cousin and I took turns playing the absolute hell out of Super Mario World, finding almost every possible secret. I managed to find (and conquer) the Star Road before either of them did so that was a huge point of pride. We rarely turned it off; we'd leave it on pause to go eat, then come right back to it. Again, that was pretty much the very last game with which we ever had that kind of an experience together, but that week still sticks out in my memory when lots of other things about that Christmas break are just a blur.

I could drop a million more anecdotes, and I'll inevitably do more later. What are some of your favorite and/or most vivid gaming memories, either from childhood or more recently?

*neatoman* · 04-29-2022, 10:33 AM

One time I intended to shut off my Gamecube to save a lifw when I was about to fall into the abyss under pianta village, but instead I opened the disc lid. That's how I discovered a really weird thing, turns out if you do that, the abyss will register as a floor, meaning I was able to walk around on it, really weird.

Another time, I was on vacation with my mother on Grand Canaria. Many the shops there are... Weird, shall we say? Like endless rows of shops with no problems showing off merch with nudity printed on it, pretty wild. Anyway, so we went into a shop selling games, I wanted to buy a copy of Pokémon Leafgreen but the clerk recommended some weird copy with hundreds of other games on it. I was skeptical and wanted to buy the normal copy instead but my mom insisted that I should buy the "hundreds of games" copy, because to her ignorant mind that sounded like a good idea. Turns out the Leafgreen ROM was a shitty fan translation from Japanese someone had given up on halfway through, meaning much (if not most) of the game was in Japanese. One the only four actual GBA ROMs was a crappy Power Rangers game I didn't care, while another was a real translation of Pokémon Sapphire and the fourth I can't even remember. The "hundreds" of other ones were a bunch of NES games and while it did include some decent ones like the original Metroid, most were garbage and quite frankly got repeated. Oh, and this is fun, it's literally the only Gameboy cartridge where the save battery ran out while I was still actively using it, so like less than a year after I bought it, which is something you absolutely don't want to happen when playing Pokémon. I did eventually get a legit copy but it might be what made me realise my mom... Might have been kind of a naive person well into her 40's.

~~Leo656~~ · 04-29-2022, 10:59 AM

Glad someone had something to say.

I can see where your Mom would have fallen for that. Mine is the first "older generation" that understands video games at all, and that's because we're among the first generation that never knew a time when they didn't exist. To our parents, though, something like that bootleg cart or Action 52 would legit have sounded like a great deal. We obviously know better, but we were able to gain a type of wisdom they simply would never have.

Like I could see potentially having to explain to my Dad how something like that would clearly be a scam. Thankfully, he generally knew enough to trust that there were some topics where I knew more than he did.

It reminds me of the time we went to a flea market gaming store, and the clerk was trying to convince me to get Tag Team Wrestling on NES. They almost had my Dad convinced, but my gut told me to get the game next to it - Tecmo World Wrestling - instead, even though I'd never seen or heard of it. It was a little bit more expensive, so Dad was like "...You sure you wouldn't rather get the other one?", but I trusted my gut and so did he. I ended up dodging a huge bullet there, as Tecmo World Wrestling is one of the greatest wrestling games ever made - even though it's f*cking impossibly hard - and Tag Team Wrestling is a giant pile of sh*t.

Some of my fondest memories of being a kid are of actually being able to buy (or rather, have my Dad buy) a game. We didn't have a ton of money, so most of what games I owned was stuff people gifted me when they were sick of it. Outside of Christmas, it was rare to actually just go to a store and buy a game, so whenever we did it was a Big Deal. I still remember coming home from the store with Ghostbusters for the 2600, and Centipede for the Coleco-Vision (one of the only two Coleco-Vision games we had, the other being Donkey Kong).

But one of the best times was when I got Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for NES. There used to be a store chain called Best; it went out of business in 1997 apparently but our local one shut down several years earlier than that, probably 1990. But my Dad used to go there a lot and sometimes he'd take me. When they were closing down the one by us, they had one of those "Everything Must Go" sales, so he took me there to look at some marked-down NES games. Out of a sea of stuff I didn't care about, that gold box stood out, and even though I'd only fumbled my way through the first Zelda game once and only ever half-finished it, something told me there was nothing else on that rack that was going to be worth it more than Zelda II, so that's what I picked.

It was years before I'd ever get farther than the very first Castle and even more years before I'd finally beat the game, but again, to this day the memory remains. I had hours of fun with that game even when I had no goddamn idea what I was doing.

*Original TMNT Cartoon Fan* · 04-29-2022, 11:27 AM

The Contra episode was awesome, especially the ending. I have similair experiences with another video game. The Super NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.

*Andrew NDB* · 04-29-2022, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo656

I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module.

Yeah, that was my first. Though I don't remember about an "add-on module"?

Also a Texas Instruments console. I remember playing "Hunt the Wumpus" on that.

~~Leo656~~ · 04-29-2022, 11:54 AM

Turtles in Time was one of the first games I ever bought at FuncoLand. Pretty sure it's still in its green FuncoLand sleeve, actually. I know at least one of my SNES games is.

Before that I'd rented it so many times that I probably should have just found a way to buy it.

The NES TMNT game was one of the first games I ever rented. There was this little Mom & Pop electronics place down the street from us called Jasko's, they were ostensibly a TV and electronics repair place, but if you just walked in there unawares you'd think they were just a video store. It was a small place, but they had everything you'd ever want on VHS and NES. They were only a short bike ride away so my and my friends used to go there all the time. Back then even a lot of the Mom & Pop rental places required a credit card, but this place just let you pay cash for rentals, a dollar a day.

Anyways, yeah, the first game I explicitly remember renting from there was TMNT. Even then, I was underwhelmed. I loved the music, and the first level was good, but after that it was just... eh. When the Arcade Game came out it was like "Yes, yes, This is what I actually wanted, thank you."

But yeah, I practically lived at that place, and that was the first time I got to play many NES games. You may remember how in the early-90s, a lot of rental places like Blockbuster stopped including the manuals with their games and would either have nothing, or some homemade mock-up that explained the bare-bones basics of the game controls, because Nintendo threw a fit about copyrighted materials being misused, or some such. Well this little Jasko's place was ahead of the curve by a few years on that; the owner got fed up with kids either not returning the games' manuals with the game, or otherwise returning them in such horrible and torn-up condition they were unusable, and so they started making their own one-page "manuals" and gluing them to the inside of the clamshell rental case.

That was another way I'd occasionally get a cheap game or VHS tape, if something older was no longer being rented out often and was just taking up space they'd usually just sell it off for $5-10. They had no sentimental value for the stuff or any care about what it was "really" worth; it was just clutter to be gotten rid of, so I got a couple nice things from them here and there.

Sadly, right when the SNES era was getting into gear, the place abruptly stopped doing all rentals, either games or VHS. My Dad knew the owner a bit, and supposedly, the place was a father and son operation with the father doing the TV and VCR repairs and the son running the rental side of the business. They had some kind of huge falling out and the son took his half of the business (and all the stock) and left. So after that they were "just" a TV/VCR repair place... but to be blunt, I almost never saw a car parked there ever again.

Oddly enough, the place is still there, exactly as it was. It looks completely abandoned - I swear there's a bunch of old 80s and 90s TVs stacked to the ceiling in there, but it's hard to see through the windows when you drive by - but sometimes you'll see a car parked there and it looks like someone is in there doing stuff. I kind of suspect it is/was a front for some Mob-related activity. Regardless, with real estate being such a premium and the fact that it's one tiny little building in the middle of a big otherwise-empty grassy lot, I'm shocked it's still even there. There's gotta be a reason; it hasn't been a "business" since like 1993, yet it's still there, exactly as it was.

Every time we go by it, I remember all the times me and my buddy rode our bikes there to rent stuff. Oddly, I live a lot closer to it Now than I did Then.

~~Leo656~~ · 04-29-2022, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Yeah, that was my first. Though I don't remember about an "add-on module"?

Really? The add-on module was a huge reason anyone even had the ColecoVision, since it was quite literally like owning two consoles in one. There were a ton of great games for the ColecoVision BUT a ton of the more well-known games people already loved were on the 2600. This upgrade module immediately gave the ColecoVision the largest gaming library in the world for the cost of practically nothing, since now one could play ColecoVision games as well as the hundreds upon hundreds that had already been released for the 2600.

This is the basic ColecoVision. Note the giant 8-track tape-sized plug-in port on the front right-hand side:

And this is the "fully-formed" ColecoVision, complete with "Expansion Module #1", aka "The Atari 2600 Expansion":

Clearer picture, Spoiler'ed for size:

Spoiler:

There were several other Expansion Modules, including a steering wheel, trackball controller, and one that basically converted the ColecoVision into a fully-functional ADAM computer. But the main point of even having an expansion port on the console at all, was to have a 2600 clone console that plugged into the ColecoVision.

Atari sued them over this, as you can imagine. They settled out of court with Coleco becoming a licensee.

All controllers and inputs that worked with the 2600 also worked on the Expansion Module. The games played and ran exactly the same as they would on a real 2600. This entire concept was a bit ahead of its time and the first example of "backwards-compatibility" in a home console (even Atari 5200 consoles didn't play 2600 carts, something that cost them a lot of market share among disgruntled Atari fans).

It's a fascinating piece of history that shows you just how much like the Wild West the gaming market was back in those days. Can you imagine if, like, Sega had released an "expansion module" for the Master System or Genesis that played NES games? Obviously that never would or could have happened, BUT, to a lot of kids who didn't understand the legalities of such things, it was actually something we expected to see. Why? Because a lot of us had the ColecoVision with the Atari module, so we figured stuff like that was feasible. We didn't know it was an extremely-shady, borderline-illegal thing that Coleco had actually gotten in some trouble over.

But yeah, that's what I had as a kid, the console plus expansion module. Until someone stole it. My wife got me a Coleco-Vision for Christmas some years ago but not the Expansion Module, that I still need to replace. I do have a 2600, though, or rather, one of the fancier "clone" ones sold at Sears under a different name.

*Wesley* · 04-29-2022, 06:09 PM

Nice, interesting thread. Thanks for making it Leo656. It’s brought back good memories for me.

I’d say:

Getting my first console in 1996 when I was 9 and loving it. My mother bought it for me. It was a Mega Drive II. She didn’t know II was a second model and neither did I. Came bundled with Mega Games 1 (Super Hang On, Columns and World Cup Italia 90) and Sonic the Hedgehog. It used cartridges with no load times and the picture was so clear. What a difference from a Commodore 64 I got handed down from a cousin. We tried to get it to work, but it never did. The games we both liked playing were Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Micro Machines.

Playing ChuChu Rocket for the Dreamcast and Yugioh games for the DS online in the past.

My mother and I playing Pokémon Gen IV games and me helping her to beat Blue in HeartGold.

~~Leo656~~ · 04-29-2022, 06:33 PM

Thanks for chiming in! I'd love to hear a lot more from people, I'm sure we all have a lot of great gaming memories, Big and Small.

I don't talk about it a ton but games are and always have been one of the most important things in my life. I'm sure that's true of a lot of us here.

*Icebot* · 04-29-2022, 07:13 PM

Let’s see, my first console was the NES, my parents bought it, at first I wasn’t really interested in trying to play but my parents insisted. Once I started I didn’t want to stop. The first game I played was Super Mario Brothers. The other games I played and got to know are:

Duck Hunt
Tetris
Super Mario 2
Kid Icarus
Zelda’s 1 and 2
Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
T&C Surf Design
Wheel of Fortune

A short time later I heard about Super Mario Bros 3 and once I played it I fell madly in love with it! It belonged to my cousin (who unfortunately passed away last December). A short time later my father told me he has a surprise for me, it was Mario 3. But he told me I had to hold the family pet dog to play. I was afraid of dogs at the time but I decided to hold the dog because my love for the game overtook my fear of dogs. Over time I got used to the dog and my fear started to go away.

I have a ton more memories, I’ll probably share more later when I have time, maybe in 20 hours at the earliest.

*Andrew NDB* · 04-29-2022, 07:47 PM

Definitely didn't have that expansion module for the Coleco. I do remember a trackball, though. Possibly the steering wheel... that sounds familiar. There was certainly some kind of driving game I'd play on it.

*Prowler* · 04-30-2022, 12:38 PM

My earliest life memory is of playing SNES Star Fox next to my older brother while sitting on his bed when I was like 4 in 1994.

For all I know, that might have beje the first game I've ever played? But I'd like to believe it was either the original SMB or the original TMNT NES game.

Dunno what else to say as far as random gaming memories go, but I'd say the Star Fox games and Super Mario World were the two games that inspired my creativity the most. I remember drawing maps of those games worlds on my free time back then. Or drawing maps clearly based on those games but with different locations and characters. Such characters could be stuffed toys or my Action Man toys.

*FredWolfLeonardo* · 04-30-2022, 05:21 PM

I was introduced to Sonic via Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Being new to the Sonic franchise, I made some wrong assumptions about the characters which I think are funny looking back.

Most notably, I thought that Dr Eggman wasn't a villain but a crazy mad scientist who helped Sonic and his gang with inventions. I also thought that Shadow and Vector were the main villains of the franchise, with Shadow being the serious big bad and Vector being his goofy sidekick.

*Prowler* · 04-30-2022, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

I was introduced to Sonic via Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Being new to the Sonic franchise, I made some wrong assumptions about the characters which I think are funny looking back.

Most notably, I thought that Dr Eggman wasn't a villain but a crazy mad scientist who helped Sonic and his gang with inventions. I also thought that Shadow and Vector were the main villains of the franchise, with Shadow being the serious big bad and Vector being his goofy sidekick.

As someone who still vaguely remembers a time where Sonic was a big deal and as someone who certainly still remembers when Sega was in the console market, that's kinda funny to read. But yes, I've noticed many people who are younger than me don't seem to know much about Sonic. Some even have trouble grasping how massive he was in the first half of the 90s.

*Andrew NDB* · 04-30-2022, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prowler

As someone who still vaguely remembers a time where Sonic was a big deal and as someone who certainly still remembers when Sega was in the console market, that's kinda funny to read. But yes, I've noticed many people who are younger than me don't seem to know much about Sonic. Some even have trouble grasping how massive he was in the first half of the 90s.

I remember Genesis owners as a kid were largely elitist pricks. At least in my neighborhood and school. I remember routinely they would scoff at Nintendo owners and say stuff like, "You think Mario is cooler than Sonic? Pffffft!!!" "Mario is a gaylord!" "Mario and Luigi are butt brothers!"

I admit, when Sega fizzled out as a console player after Dreamcast the 12 year old me smiled a little as a result.

*Prowler* · 04-30-2022, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I remember Genesis owners as a kid were largely elitist pricks. At least in my neighborhood and school. I remember routinely they would scoff at Nintendo owners and say stuff like, "You think Mario is cooler than Sonic? Pffffft!!!" "Mario is a gaylord!" "Mario and Luigi are butt brothers!"

I admit, when Sega fizzled out as a console player after Dreamcast the 12 year old me smiled a little as a result.

Here not so much because Sega was way more popular than Nintendo back then. The Mega Drive outsold the SNES quite significantly. If anything, a lot of people here are just ignorant of Nintendo and just view it as the Game Boy, Pokémon and Mario company. Most people grew up playing the Mega Drive when they were kids, and then moved on to Sony consoles after they realised the Saturn wasn't going to be as good as the previous Sega console.

I didn't really know there was competition between Sega and Nintendo until I read about it online around 2006 or so though. I was only 5 when the Saturn came out. I had no idea about console wars or what system sold the most. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where I've been exposed to both Nintendo and Sega. My brother got the SNES and N64 at launch and both MD and Saturn when they were already cheap. So if be playing Sonic the Hedgehog one moment and later I'd be booting up Super Mario World on the SNES in 1995. It never came up to my mind that those two were at a war. I liked both Sonic and Mario.

The first "console war" I took notice off was during the early 2000s. I found it odd how I was the only kid at school with a GameCube and everyone else had a PS2. By then I was old enough to know more or less what was going on and quickly discovered that the PS2 blew the GC out of the water in terms of sales. Other kids telling me the GC sucked annoyed me and made me insecure. Until then I had never cared or even knew about console wars. The fact there were even Sonic games for the GC and the GBA in the early 2000s didn't make me bat an eye.

I didn't really notice Sega leaving the market until it was too late. I remember reading someone ask in the mail section iif a gaming magazine around 2001 why the Dreamcast died so quickly. That's when it dawned me that it had been a while since I last heard of DC and that Sega was no longer making consoles.

*Original TMNT Cartoon Fan* · 05-01-2022, 04:44 AM

Sega's aggressive marketing campaigns worked very well, at least for some years. Still today, wer'e talking about them more than any other video game commercials.

~~Leo656~~ · 05-01-2022, 06:32 AM

Nobody around here talked like the kids in Andrew's anecdote, thankfully.

But the whole "Console Wars" thing was easily the most aggravating and annoying part of that whole era.

For one thing, Every Single One of those kids who "jumped ship" to Sega for the Genesis had an NES in their house at some point very recently. My parents were not the type to play the "If you want a new system you have to get rid of the old one" game, my parents understood from the Atari-to-NES transition period that different consoles played different games and they weren't about to deprive me, especially after we'd given away the ColecoVision to my older brother when we got an NES, only to immediately regret it and ask for it back within months. They weren't thrilled about having to buy a SNES, but they understood it.

But some kids' parents, if you wanted a new console you had to sell the old one. I get that. But whether that kid's new console of choice was a SNES or a Genesis, they 100% had an NES up until "figuratively yesterday". And NOW they're talking about "Nintendo is for babies" and "Sega is for Cool Kids"? Dude, you were playing Super Mario Bros. 3 last f*cking week, stop acting like a big shot because your Daddy bought you an expensive new toy.

And that's what it ultimately was, too, that "loyalty" bullsh*t. At the end of the day, you had what your parents bought for you. That's it! Your "loyalty" was based on what they deigned to give you, and so teasing other kids about it seemed incredibly f*cking stupid, to me.

Obviously, kids liked Sonic, and the commercials made Sega seem "cooler" than Mario and Nintendo, but in my experience what made Daddy go along with it enough to buy a new console was the fact that Sega had all the sports games. Daddy doesn't give two sh*ts about Sonic, and he doesn't give a sh*t about Mario, either... but John Madden, well, there's your tie-breaker. A lot of kids' Dads bought them a Genesis under the theory that they'd get some miles out of it, too, thus further justifying the expense. And that totally makes sense and worked in Sega's favor, absolutely. But again, these kids were STILL only getting whatever their parents bought, and so "brand loyalty" seemed incredibly silly.

The rich kids I knew had both. ANY kid who was honest would have wanted both, no matter what they said. But most kids couldn't have both, so whatever you had, that was "better". Bullsh*t. The Genesis was on the market for two whole years before ANYONE gave a sh*t about it, it was a complete non-factor in the marketplace until Sonic showed up, but suddenly "Everyone Knows" that Sega and the Genesis are "better"?

Okay, I guess they were all just asleep for two whole years?

Thankfully, nobody I knew was THAT insufferable about it. The SNES kids went over to play Genesis at their friends' houses, and vice-versa, and most of the time it never got too tribal. It was only really a few kids, and they tended to just be Dicks In General about any old thing. Most kids were honest, "I wish I had ______ too but I can only have the one."

I liked the stuff I played on Genesis just fine, but nothing ever blew me away to the point I regretted having a SNES. Even back then I saw through Sonic 1 as not quite being as good as everyone says it is (it really isn't), and I didn't give a sh*t about sports games. If I were a big sports guy, I might have wished more for a Genesis, because they had the better sports games. But I mostly was into platformers and wrestling games, and those tended to be better on the SNES. So I never felt like I was missing anything.

My Dad did ask me once if I'd like a Genesis, but we were not doing well financially and I told him sincerely that if he had the money to spend I'd rather he just get me some SNES games, since I only had a couple at that point. That made more sense to me than having two consoles but still having to rent to play anything on either one. So I told him I'd rather just get more games for the console I already had. Just made more sense.

As an adult, I'm glad to finally have a Genesis but I can say I feel even better about how things went as a kid. Playing some of the same games on both consoles, the ones that were released multiplatform by and large did turn out better on the SNES, thanks to the larger color palette and better sound chip. I do not feel like I missed out at all by not having a Genesis as a kid. But I am glad I have one now.

Now if only I could get this goddamn Master System fixed.

*Prowler* · 05-01-2022, 11:33 AM

Yes.

I do like the Mega Drive, but I don't see how anyone cna seriously suggest it was superior to the SNES. Most of the people I've met who genuinely believe that are people who didn't get the chance to play the SNES until emulators were a thing. So there's definitely nostalgia bias there.

I just think games like A Link to the Past, the Donkey Kong Country series and the Square RPGs plus Earthbound just give the SNES the advantage. The games equivalent to those in the MD just aren't as good. Not to mention, as Leo said, whenever a game came out for both systems, the SNES version was almost always superior.

The SNES has also aged better in terms of graphics, mechanics and sound. Which is understandable. The MD is 2 years older than the SNES. It came out in 1989! And it didn't have Mode 7 incorporated in it nor a sound chip made by Sony.

I mean, I grew up with both the Saturn and the N64. I love my Saturn. It gave me so many precious memories. But you don't see me saying it was superior to the N64 and the PS1 do you? Just like I don't claim the GameCube was better than the PS2.

Anyway, I do love the 90s Sega. They were in their prime and were the kings of arcade games and Sonic was also huge for several years. I also think Sega, at their best, could be crazier and more creative than Nintendo. I just don't see Nintendo coming up with games like Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Nights and Fighting Vipers.

A Sega in her prime would be great for today's market. The problem is, the company seemed to be ran rather poorly, and thus it ceased to make consoles after the Dreamcast. Hell, they have even handled Sonic, their own mascot, poorly. There was a time where Sonic's reputation got so bad that it was honestly just depressing to see. It seems to have recovered a bit in the last 5 years or so, though.

I'd really love to see Sega becoming awesome again and bringing back iconic series from the grave and giving them great modern day entries. But I know that will never happen.

~~Leo656~~ · 05-01-2022, 12:13 PM

Well when it came to 2D fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom, the Sega Saturn WAS far superior to anything else on the market at that time. I personally would not have cared much at that time, since I almost never played fighting games back then, but if you were a fighting game fan in 1997 and didn't have a Saturn you were totally missing out. The PS1 ports of those games were horrible by comparison, and the N64 barely had any fighting games at all.

Every console had its own specialties and that's why anyone with a well-rounded taste would try and get their hands on everything, somehow. The SNES was all about platformers and especially RPGs; if you were a hardcore RPG fanatic (I wasn't yet), the Genesis had very little for you at all but you could literally drown in excellent RPGs on the SNES. Conversely, the SNES had mediocre sports titles but a baseball or football fan would be extremely well-met with the Genesis library. In either case, even if you only liked One Genre of games you'd be set for life on your system of choice. It went a lot deeper than just Mario vs. Sonic; that was just about differing tastes in platformers, but the broader libraries of either console played to entirely different types of people.

For some people, it was as simple as which genre they preferred. An RPG fanatic would have been crazy to own a Genesis; a football fan would have been crazy to own a SNES. And so on and so forth.

This continued into the next generation, to a degree. Ironically, this time it was the N64 that RPG fans would have been crazy to own, as the PS1 had all the greats due to the N64 cartridges' limited storage capacity. 3D action platformers, rather, were the genre the N64 excelled with, due to smoother graphics and no loading times compared to the Saturn or PS1, as well as any type of game that was catered for multiplayer. The Saturn, as mentioned, was far and away the choice for fighting game fans, as well as people who were heavily into the import scene (as some of the very best Saturn games never came out outside of Japan). They also had some great shooters as well. The PS1 was definitely the most well-rounded system, and it more or less had no glaring "weak spots"... outside of 2D fighters, which were far better on Saturn, but there were so many other things to play that only the real hardcores were very upset by that.

That was pretty much the last generation where console preference could truly be divided up by genre, though, as with the next generation most of the Big Games went fully multiplatform (outside of obvious publisher-exclusives). RPGs were still pretty much the primary domain of the PS2, but the Xbox still had some good ones (although the Gamecube sadly continued the N64 streak of not having very many at all). Outside of that genre, though, as things went more multiplatform, which console you preferred mostly came down to your preference in exclusives and graphics, and that's continued to this day.

By the PS2 era, I was working and so I was able to get the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox, and spent a ton of time with all three (although I had fewer games for the Xbox). I will say, the Gamecube has outlived the others by very many years and I can put up with the slightly-blurry graphics in exchange for simply being able to play some games on a more stable platform. Both my PS2 and Xbox died ages ago, and so I've bought as many games as possible for the 'Cube so I could be able to finally play them again, and I can't speak for everyone but to me the graphics don't look THAT much worse. Plus, the Game Boy Advance player was a huge boon for the 'Cube, essentially opening up the possibility to play hundreds more games on your TV with one inexpensive little add-on.

Nowadays, Nintendo consoles are so cheap and their library so unique compared to the others it really makes no sense not to own one. And whether you have a PS or Xbox system mostly comes down to how much you want to play Spider-Man or God of War; otherwise, the libraries are 99% identical and we've reached a point where graphical fidelity is about even between them, as well. We're as close to parity as we've ever been.

But back in the 90s, genre preference was a huge factor, and many people made their purchasing choices based on that. Looking back it's really fascinating to me how every console had its own specialty of sorts. I hadn't really noticed it then, since my tastes weren't as prolific as they'd later become.

04-29-2022, 06:09 PM	#8
Wesley Mad Scientist Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: Republic of Ireland Posts: 1,597	Nice, interesting thread. Thanks for making it Leo656. It’s brought back good memories for me. I’d say: Getting my first console in 1996 when I was 9 and loving it. My mother bought it for me. It was a Mega Drive II. She didn’t know II was a second model and neither did I. Came bundled with Mega Games 1 (Super Hang On, Columns and World Cup Italia 90) and Sonic the Hedgehog. It used cartridges with no load times and the picture was so clear. What a difference from a Commodore 64 I got handed down from a cousin. We tried to get it to work, but it never did. The games we both liked playing were Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Micro Machines. Playing ChuChu Rocket for the Dreamcast and Yugioh games for the DS online in the past. My mother and I playing Pokémon Gen IV games and me helping her to beat Blue in HeartGold. __________________ Donatello: The tracker! It might work. Donatello goes to the back of the Turtle Van Raphael: Shrewd move, Donatello. If we ignore the problem, it might go away by itself. (from The Mean Machines)

04-29-2022, 07:47 PM	#11
Andrew NDB Weed Whacker Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Auburn, WA Posts: 34,579	Definitely didn't have that expansion module for the Coleco. I do remember a trackball, though. Possibly the steering wheel... that sounds familiar. There was certainly some kind of driving game I'd play on it. __________________ [ ODYSSEY \| ORIGIN \| THE IMAGE/VOL. 3 CONCLUSION \| THE SHELLSHOCKED PODCAST \| ON FACEBOOK ]

04-29-2022, 08:24 AM	#1
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Random Gaming Memories The latest AVGN episode has me in a fairly nostalgic mood, and the part where he describes frantically trying to beat Contra before the school bus came had me thinking back to times where I had almost the same experience (our town was only one square mile or so, so there was no buses for the elementary school; your parents drove you or if you were most kids you walked). Specifically, it reminded me of the time I was in 8th Grade, either couldn't sleep or woke up early (I had awful insomnia until I started smoking pot in my 20s, then it cleared up immediately), and decided that That Morning was the time I was finally gonna buckle down and beat Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES). That's a terrible game, but we kids were less savvy back then. So I grabbed one of my NES guidebooks that had a map showing you where all the Historical Items were - it was misprinted, though, so I still had to essentially "do it all myself" and write my own corrections in the margins, but at least I wasn't flying completely blind; that game is 100% unbeatable without a guide - and got to work. Suffice to say, it was far from my favorite gaming experience, but there was still a deep satisfaction in finally seeing the ending to a game that had been the bane of my existence for so many years. Seeing Bill and Ted rock out at the concert was good enough for me to justify all the time wasted on such a lame game, and it sent me to school in a great mood. And as James alluded to in his anecdote about selling his original copy of Contra for a sandwich, beating Bill & Ted on NES is the ONLY thing I remember at all about that day, aside from having walked to school. I don't remember if it was snowing or sunny, Fall or Spring, if my Mom still lived with us or anything. I remember absolutely nothing about the school day or what I did when I got home. ALL I remember was that it was the day I finally beat that game. He really isn't kidding that some moments really become part of who you are while others just slip away, lost in the ether. I have a ton of awesome (and less awesome) gaming memories, far too many to list in one shot. One of my earliest-ever vivid memories is bonding with my Dad over the Atari 2600 version of Frogger and Donkey Kong. I wouldn't have been older then 3. I remember him saying Donkey Kong might be "too hard" for me, but very soon I got better at it than he was. For a while those were the only games we had, until we got Ghostbusters. And then shortly after that one of his friends gave him a whole big box of Atari games and joysticks just to be rid of them; this would have been in the time between The Crash and the NES saving the industry, so a lot of people figured games were "done" and were either throwing out or giving away their stuff, so we really lucked out in that. Tons of great games in that collection, really awesome memories. I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module. A "regular" 2600 with the wood-grain finish was in the box of stuff my Dad got from his friend, but it didn't work right. There were a ton of third-party joysticks that were much better than the standard tiny Atari sticks, though. I wore them out but they were awesome. My Dad wasn't actually much for video games - "Too complicated", he said - but he always thought they were neat and he could play really simple ones. We spent a ton of time on Atari Pinball, Baseball, Football, and that kind of stuff. Obviously they look awful to anyone who's younger than me but at the time they were pretty special. My Dad and I didn't have a ton in common either so anything and everything that could help us spend time together really meant a lot to me. I still remember the first time I ever got a higher score than him on Atari Pinball; he had this visible and odd mix of pride and disappointment. That might have been the last time we played any game together, come to think of it. Starting in 1988, my sister and my cousin would spend every Summer vacation and Christmas break at our house until we moved in 1995. They were both 8 years older than me, so again, one of the few things we had in common was video games. They weren't anywhere near as into it as I was, but we still spent almost every night playing various Atari games (mostly Megamania, I remember we all loved that one to death) or Super Mario Bros. on NES. We'd stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing those games sometimes. Christmas 1992 was incredibly special, as I got the SNES (and Game Genie). That whole vacation, my sister, my cousin and I took turns playing the absolute hell out of Super Mario World, finding almost every possible secret. I managed to find (and conquer) the Star Road before either of them did so that was a huge point of pride. We rarely turned it off; we'd leave it on pause to go eat, then come right back to it. Again, that was pretty much the very last game with which we ever had that kind of an experience together, but that week still sticks out in my memory when lots of other things about that Christmas break are just a blur. I could drop a million more anecdotes, and I'll inevitably do more later. What are some of your favorite and/or most vivid gaming memories, either from childhood or more recently?

04-29-2022, 10:59 AM	#3
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Glad someone had something to say. I can see where your Mom would have fallen for that. Mine is the first "older generation" that understands video games at all, and that's because we're among the first generation that never knew a time when they didn't exist. To our parents, though, something like that bootleg cart or Action 52 would legit have sounded like a great deal. We obviously know better, but we were able to gain a type of wisdom they simply would never have. Like I could see potentially having to explain to my Dad how something like that would clearly be a scam. Thankfully, he generally knew enough to trust that there were some topics where I knew more than he did. It reminds me of the time we went to a flea market gaming store, and the clerk was trying to convince me to get Tag Team Wrestling on NES. They almost had my Dad convinced, but my gut told me to get the game next to it - Tecmo World Wrestling - instead, even though I'd never seen or heard of it. It was a little bit more expensive, so Dad was like "...You sure you wouldn't rather get the other one?", but I trusted my gut and so did he. I ended up dodging a huge bullet there, as Tecmo World Wrestling is one of the greatest wrestling games ever made - even though it's fcking impossibly hard - and Tag Team Wrestling is a giant pile of sht. Some of my fondest memories of being a kid are of actually being able to buy (or rather, have my Dad buy) a game. We didn't have a ton of money, so most of what games I owned was stuff people gifted me when they were sick of it. Outside of Christmas, it was rare to actually just go to a store and buy a game, so whenever we did it was a Big Deal. I still remember coming home from the store with Ghostbusters for the 2600, and Centipede for the Coleco-Vision (one of the only two Coleco-Vision games we had, the other being Donkey Kong). But one of the best times was when I got Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for NES. There used to be a store chain called Best; it went out of business in 1997 apparently but our local one shut down several years earlier than that, probably 1990. But my Dad used to go there a lot and sometimes he'd take me. When they were closing down the one by us, they had one of those "Everything Must Go" sales, so he took me there to look at some marked-down NES games. Out of a sea of stuff I didn't care about, that gold box stood out, and even though I'd only fumbled my way through the first Zelda game once and only ever half-finished it, something told me there was nothing else on that rack that was going to be worth it more than Zelda II, so that's what I picked. It was years before I'd ever get farther than the very first Castle and even more years before I'd finally beat the game, but again, to this day the memory remains. I had hours of fun with that game even when I had no goddamn idea what I was doing.

04-29-2022, 11:27 AM	#4
Original TMNT Cartoon Fan Overlord Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden Posts: 10,481	The Contra episode was awesome, especially the ending. I have similair experiences with another video game. The Super NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.

04-29-2022, 11:54 AM	#6
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Turtles in Time was one of the first games I ever bought at FuncoLand. Pretty sure it's still in its green FuncoLand sleeve, actually. I know at least one of my SNES games is. Before that I'd rented it so many times that I probably should have just found a way to buy it. The NES TMNT game was one of the first games I ever rented. There was this little Mom & Pop electronics place down the street from us called Jasko's, they were ostensibly a TV and electronics repair place, but if you just walked in there unawares you'd think they were just a video store. It was a small place, but they had everything you'd ever want on VHS and NES. They were only a short bike ride away so my and my friends used to go there all the time. Back then even a lot of the Mom & Pop rental places required a credit card, but this place just let you pay cash for rentals, a dollar a day. Anyways, yeah, the first game I explicitly remember renting from there was TMNT. Even then, I was underwhelmed. I loved the music, and the first level was good, but after that it was just... eh. When the Arcade Game came out it was like "Yes, yes, This is what I actually wanted, thank you." But yeah, I practically lived at that place, and that was the first time I got to play many NES games. You may remember how in the early-90s, a lot of rental places like Blockbuster stopped including the manuals with their games and would either have nothing, or some homemade mock-up that explained the bare-bones basics of the game controls, because Nintendo threw a fit about copyrighted materials being misused, or some such. Well this little Jasko's place was ahead of the curve by a few years on that; the owner got fed up with kids either not returning the games' manuals with the game, or otherwise returning them in such horrible and torn-up condition they were unusable, and so they started making their own one-page "manuals" and gluing them to the inside of the clamshell rental case. That was another way I'd occasionally get a cheap game or VHS tape, if something older was no longer being rented out often and was just taking up space they'd usually just sell it off for $5-10. They had no sentimental value for the stuff or any care about what it was "really" worth; it was just clutter to be gotten rid of, so I got a couple nice things from them here and there. Sadly, right when the SNES era was getting into gear, the place abruptly stopped doing all rentals, either games or VHS. My Dad knew the owner a bit, and supposedly, the place was a father and son operation with the father doing the TV and VCR repairs and the son running the rental side of the business. They had some kind of huge falling out and the son took his half of the business (and all the stock) and left. So after that they were "just" a TV/VCR repair place... but to be blunt, I almost never saw a car parked there ever again. Oddly enough, the place is still there, exactly as it was. It looks completely abandoned - I swear there's a bunch of old 80s and 90s TVs stacked to the ceiling in there, but it's hard to see through the windows when you drive by - but sometimes you'll see a car parked there and it looks like someone is in there doing stuff. I kind of suspect it is/was a front for some Mob-related activity. Regardless, with real estate being such a premium and the fact that it's one tiny little building in the middle of a big otherwise-empty grassy lot, I'm shocked it's still even there. There's gotta be a reason; it hasn't been a "business" since like 1993, yet it's still there, exactly as it was. Every time we go by it, I remember all the times me and my buddy rode our bikes there to rent stuff. Oddly, I live a lot closer to it Now than I did Then.

04-29-2022, 06:33 PM	#9
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Thanks for chiming in! I'd love to hear a lot more from people, I'm sure we all have a lot of great gaming memories, Big and Small. I don't talk about it a ton but games are and always have been one of the most important things in my life. I'm sure that's true of a lot of us here.

04-29-2022, 07:13 PM	#10
Icebot Foot Elite Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: East Coast, US Posts: 3,225	Let’s see, my first console was the NES, my parents bought it, at first I wasn’t really interested in trying to play but my parents insisted. Once I started I didn’t want to stop. The first game I played was Super Mario Brothers. The other games I played and got to know are: Duck Hunt Tetris Super Mario 2 Kid Icarus Zelda’s 1 and 2 Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle Who Framed Roger Rabbit T&C Surf Design Wheel of Fortune A short time later I heard about Super Mario Bros 3 and once I played it I fell madly in love with it! It belonged to my cousin (who unfortunately passed away last December). A short time later my father told me he has a surprise for me, it was Mario 3. But he told me I had to hold the family pet dog to play. I was afraid of dogs at the time but I decided to hold the dog because my love for the game overtook my fear of dogs. Over time I got used to the dog and my fear started to go away. I have a ton more memories, I’ll probably share more later when I have time, maybe in 20 hours at the earliest.

04-30-2022, 12:38 PM	#12
Prowler Emperor Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Portugal Posts: 9,999	My earliest life memory is of playing SNES Star Fox next to my older brother while sitting on his bed when I was like 4 in 1994. For all I know, that might have beje the first game I've ever played? But I'd like to believe it was either the original SMB or the original TMNT NES game. Dunno what else to say as far as random gaming memories go, but I'd say the Star Fox games and Super Mario World were the two games that inspired my creativity the most. I remember drawing maps of those games worlds on my free time back then. Or drawing maps clearly based on those games but with different locations and characters. Such characters could be stuffed toys or my Action Man toys.

04-30-2022, 05:21 PM	#13
FredWolfLeonardo This ***** used to be Fun Join Date: Mar 2016 Location: Woke paradise Posts: 5,392	I was introduced to Sonic via Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Being new to the Sonic franchise, I made some wrong assumptions about the characters which I think are funny looking back. Most notably, I thought that Dr Eggman wasn't a villain but a crazy mad scientist who helped Sonic and his gang with inventions. I also thought that Shadow and Vector were the main villains of the franchise, with Shadow being the serious big bad and Vector being his goofy sidekick.

05-01-2022, 04:44 AM	#17
Original TMNT Cartoon Fan Overlord Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Sweden Posts: 10,481	Sega's aggressive marketing campaigns worked very well, at least for some years. Still today, wer'e talking about them more than any other video game commercials.

05-01-2022, 06:32 AM	#18
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Nobody around here talked like the kids in Andrew's anecdote, thankfully. But the whole "Console Wars" thing was easily the most aggravating and annoying part of that whole era. For one thing, Every Single One of those kids who "jumped ship" to Sega for the Genesis had an NES in their house at some point very recently. My parents were not the type to play the "If you want a new system you have to get rid of the old one" game, my parents understood from the Atari-to-NES transition period that different consoles played different games and they weren't about to deprive me, especially after we'd given away the ColecoVision to my older brother when we got an NES, only to immediately regret it and ask for it back within months. They weren't thrilled about having to buy a SNES, but they understood it. But some kids' parents, if you wanted a new console you had to sell the old one. I get that. But whether that kid's new console of choice was a SNES or a Genesis, they 100% had an NES up until "figuratively yesterday". And NOW they're talking about "Nintendo is for babies" and "Sega is for Cool Kids"? Dude, you were playing Super Mario Bros. 3 last fcking week, stop acting like a big shot because your Daddy bought you an expensive new toy. And that's what it ultimately was, too, that "loyalty" bullsht. At the end of the day, you had what your parents bought for you. That's it! Your "loyalty" was based on what they deigned to give you, and so teasing other kids about it seemed incredibly fcking stupid, to me. Obviously, kids liked Sonic, and the commercials made Sega seem "cooler" than Mario and Nintendo, but in my experience what made Daddy go along with it enough to buy a new console was the fact that Sega had all the sports games. Daddy doesn't give two shts about Sonic, and he doesn't give a sht about Mario, either... but John Madden, well, there's your tie-breaker. A lot of kids' Dads bought them a Genesis under the theory that they'd get some miles out of it, too, thus further justifying the expense. And that totally makes sense and worked in Sega's favor, absolutely. But again, these kids were STILL only getting whatever their parents bought, and so "brand loyalty" seemed incredibly silly. The rich kids I knew had both. ANY kid who was honest would have wanted both, no matter what they said. But most kids couldn't have both, so whatever you had, that was "better". Bullsht. The Genesis was on the market for two whole years before ANYONE gave a sht about it, it was a complete non-factor in the marketplace until Sonic showed up, but suddenly "Everyone Knows" that Sega and the Genesis are "better"? Okay, I guess they were all just asleep for two whole years? Thankfully, nobody I knew was THAT insufferable about it. The SNES kids went over to play Genesis at their friends' houses, and vice-versa, and most of the time it never got too tribal. It was only really a few kids, and they tended to just be Dicks In General about any old thing. Most kids were honest, "I wish I had ______ too but I can only have the one." I liked the stuff I played on Genesis just fine, but nothing ever blew me away to the point I regretted having a SNES. Even back then I saw through Sonic 1 as not quite being as good as everyone says it is (it really isn't), and I didn't give a sht about sports games. If I were a big sports guy, I might have wished more for a Genesis, because they had the better sports games. But I mostly was into platformers and wrestling games, and those tended to be better on the SNES. So I never felt like I was missing anything. My Dad did ask me once if I'd like a Genesis, but we were not doing well financially and I told him sincerely that if he had the money to spend I'd rather he just get me some SNES games, since I only had a couple at that point. That made more sense to me than having two consoles but still having to rent to play anything on either one. So I told him I'd rather just get more games for the console I already had. Just made more sense. As an adult, I'm glad to finally have a Genesis but I can say I feel even better about how things went as a kid. Playing some of the same games on both consoles, the ones that were released multiplatform by and large did turn out better on the SNES, thanks to the larger color palette and better sound chip. I do not feel like I missed out at all by not having a Genesis as a kid. But I am glad I have one now. Now if only I could get this goddamn Master System fixed.

05-01-2022, 11:33 AM	#19
Prowler Emperor Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Portugal Posts: 9,999	Yes. I do like the Mega Drive, but I don't see how anyone cna seriously suggest it was superior to the SNES. Most of the people I've met who genuinely believe that are people who didn't get the chance to play the SNES until emulators were a thing. So there's definitely nostalgia bias there. I just think games like A Link to the Past, the Donkey Kong Country series and the Square RPGs plus Earthbound just give the SNES the advantage. The games equivalent to those in the MD just aren't as good. Not to mention, as Leo said, whenever a game came out for both systems, the SNES version was almost always superior. The SNES has also aged better in terms of graphics, mechanics and sound. Which is understandable. The MD is 2 years older than the SNES. It came out in 1989! And it didn't have Mode 7 incorporated in it nor a sound chip made by Sony. I mean, I grew up with both the Saturn and the N64. I love my Saturn. It gave me so many precious memories. But you don't see me saying it was superior to the N64 and the PS1 do you? Just like I don't claim the GameCube was better than the PS2. Anyway, I do love the 90s Sega. They were in their prime and were the kings of arcade games and Sonic was also huge for several years. I also think Sega, at their best, could be crazier and more creative than Nintendo. I just don't see Nintendo coming up with games like Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Nights and Fighting Vipers. A Sega in her prime would be great for today's market. The problem is, the company seemed to be ran rather poorly, and thus it ceased to make consoles after the Dreamcast. Hell, they have even handled Sonic, their own mascot, poorly. There was a time where Sonic's reputation got so bad that it was honestly just depressing to see. It seems to have recovered a bit in the last 5 years or so, though. I'd really love to see Sega becoming awesome again and bringing back iconic series from the grave and giving them great modern day entries. But I know that will never happen.

05-01-2022, 12:13 PM	#20
~~Leo656~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: nWo Country Posts: 27,703	Well when it came to 2D fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom, the Sega Saturn WAS far superior to anything else on the market at that time. I personally would not have cared much at that time, since I almost never played fighting games back then, but if you were a fighting game fan in 1997 and didn't have a Saturn you were totally missing out. The PS1 ports of those games were horrible by comparison, and the N64 barely had any fighting games at all. Every console had its own specialties and that's why anyone with a well-rounded taste would try and get their hands on everything, somehow. The SNES was all about platformers and especially RPGs; if you were a hardcore RPG fanatic (I wasn't yet), the Genesis had very little for you at all but you could literally drown in excellent RPGs on the SNES. Conversely, the SNES had mediocre sports titles but a baseball or football fan would be extremely well-met with the Genesis library. In either case, even if you only liked One Genre of games you'd be set for life on your system of choice. It went a lot deeper than just Mario vs. Sonic; that was just about differing tastes in platformers, but the broader libraries of either console played to entirely different types of people. For some people, it was as simple as which genre they preferred. An RPG fanatic would have been crazy to own a Genesis; a football fan would have been crazy to own a SNES. And so on and so forth. This continued into the next generation, to a degree. Ironically, this time it was the N64 that RPG fans would have been crazy to own, as the PS1 had all the greats due to the N64 cartridges' limited storage capacity. 3D action platformers, rather, were the genre the N64 excelled with, due to smoother graphics and no loading times compared to the Saturn or PS1, as well as any type of game that was catered for multiplayer. The Saturn, as mentioned, was far and away the choice for fighting game fans, as well as people who were heavily into the import scene (as some of the very best Saturn games never came out outside of Japan). They also had some great shooters as well. The PS1 was definitely the most well-rounded system, and it more or less had no glaring "weak spots"... outside of 2D fighters, which were far better on Saturn, but there were so many other things to play that only the real hardcores were very upset by that. That was pretty much the last generation where console preference could truly be divided up by genre, though, as with the next generation most of the Big Games went fully multiplatform (outside of obvious publisher-exclusives). RPGs were still pretty much the primary domain of the PS2, but the Xbox still had some good ones (although the Gamecube sadly continued the N64 streak of not having very many at all). Outside of that genre, though, as things went more multiplatform, which console you preferred mostly came down to your preference in exclusives and graphics, and that's continued to this day. By the PS2 era, I was working and so I was able to get the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox, and spent a ton of time with all three (although I had fewer games for the Xbox). I will say, the Gamecube has outlived the others by very many years and I can put up with the slightly-blurry graphics in exchange for simply being able to play some games on a more stable platform. Both my PS2 and Xbox died ages ago, and so I've bought as many games as possible for the 'Cube so I could be able to finally play them again, and I can't speak for everyone but to me the graphics don't look THAT much worse. Plus, the Game Boy Advance player was a huge boon for the 'Cube, essentially opening up the possibility to play hundreds more games on your TV with one inexpensive little add-on. Nowadays, Nintendo consoles are so cheap and their library so unique compared to the others it really makes no sense not to own one. And whether you have a PS or Xbox system mostly comes down to how much you want to play Spider-Man or God of War; otherwise, the libraries are 99% identical and we've reached a point where graphical fidelity is about even between them, as well. We're as close to parity as we've ever been. But back in the 90s, genre preference was a huge factor, and many people made their purchasing choices based on that. Looking back it's really fascinating to me how every console had its own specialty of sorts. I hadn't really noticed it then, since my tastes weren't as prolific as they'd later become.