My Gaming History: Kris Pt1

So Christmas is nearly here, and the gaming world is slowing down a little. With some time to reflect and some space to breath we thought it would be nice to take a look back at our pasts, how we got from our gaming origins to TSA. Over the coming days you’ll see posts from Peter (colossalblue), Alex (nofi) and myself talking about our fondest memories, our biggest influences and pretty much anything that takes our fancy. So if you want to know why we’re the grumpy old people we are, or why we cling to old games so tightly now is your chance to find out.

This is the most honest thing I’ve ever written. In fact by a pretty huge margin, a margin the size of the grand canyon, this is the most honest I’ve ever been with anyone. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t actually been inside my head knows everything in here, people I’ve been close to for almost a decade don’t know some of these things. Why am I writing this then? I have absolutely no idea, possibly because I have a memory that regularly fails or plays tricks on me, and I don’t want to forget the things in here.

What is this? Well this is the story of why I play games, how I came to them and the things that surrounded me at the time. There’s very little self editing here, everything (with exactly one exception) is how it happened to the best of my memory.

As I sit and write this, I have very little idea what’s going to happen. I don’t know how long this will be, how many stories I’ll write or even if anyone apart from my editor, Peter (better known as colossalblue), will read this. If it’s rambly I apologise, and if you couldn’t care less about my history of gaming, how I got from the Spectrum to the Xbox 360 then I’d stop reading right now. Why bother even taking the time to write a dismissive comment, just leave and read something else you’ll enjoy; TSA alone has another 10,000 options for you.

Every single game I’ve ever played can be simply traced back to one man, my dad. I don’t know how many other people share the experience, although I suspect people who kicked off their habit with Pong are less likely than those who started with Halo. For me though it’s always been my dad, even though he doesn’t really play games he’s always shown an interest. Even now he has opinions on Move and Kinect beyond what he could have gathered purely from advertising (he sees the benefits of Move, but thinks Kinect is more interesting).

He was the one who introduced me the magic of the Spectrum, although after I’d displayed an interest in my Grandfather’s PC and managed to delete the Minesweeper shortcut from my Dad’s machine on the day he purchased it. The Spectrum was probably just a way to keep me thinking I was important and away from newer computers that contained work documents.

Now, I’ve always been a bit behind the curve. When I was getting my hands on that Spectrum the SNES had been out for at least a year and the Master System II that I would eventually move on to had been out for three or four years. I’m not certain on the exact date the tape driven behemoth became mine.

The date isn’t the only thing that escape me, I don’t actually remember much at all from my first gaming machine. I have some vague memories of playing Booty – a pirate based platformer – and apparently we had Football Manager and Valhalla although I don’t think I ever touched them. The only other memory I have from way back when was of a special tape my dad had that had been made by someone at the hotel he used to work at. It was called Gumsgo (a pretty terrible play on Lipscombe) and featured stick-men send ups of his colleagues just wandering about, although it wasn’t a game.

Sadly that’s pretty much all I remember of the Spectrum, but it’s where I got my start and it will always be dear to my heart. I sold it for about £5 quite some time ago and regret the decision. Hopefully I’ll own one again soon, even if it’s just for decoration. Next up was the Master System, and that’s a system I’ve got a lot more to say about.