{"id":75,"date":"2007-06-08T06:33:24","date_gmt":"2007-06-08T12:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=75"},"modified":"2010-09-23T04:59:34","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T10:59:34","slug":"still-got-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/still-got-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Still got game"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago I was rummaging around in one of the many boxes of crap piled up in my study,\u00c2\u00a0when I\u00c2\u00a0found my old Nintendo Donkey Kong<\/strong> game (you know, the old orange clam-shell one).\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know why I’ve still got it – maybe out of sentimental gratitude for all the dull church services it helped me through\u00c2\u00a0during my boarding school days.\u00c2\u00a0 I showed it to my 8-year-old son (Finn) who was distinctly underwhelmed, until I\u00c2\u00a0told him\u00c2\u00a0that this was the ‘original Nintendo DS’ (hey, it has two screens…), and explained that the little guy was Mario of Super Mario Bros<\/em> fame, at which point he stopped looking at it as though it was a fossil, and was asking where you put the cartridges.\u00c2\u00a0 I slipped in some new batteries and – hey presto! – it still worked!\u00c2\u00a0 Not bad for something that must be 25 years old. Finn couldn’t get the hang of it (oddly, for someone who regularly beats me at Fight Night 3)<\/em>, but I was\u00c2\u00a0straight back to\u00c2\u00a0jumping those barrels like a pro (assuming there are such things as professional Donkey Kongers – and assuming that they call themselves ‘Donkey Kongers’).\u00c2\u00a0 All I needed was for someone to say “Please rise for hymn 339” and “Let us pray” every so often and it would have been just like the ‘good’ old days!<\/p>\n

That got me started reminiscing about the different video game systems I’ve had.\u00c2\u00a0 (Hey, it’s a parent’s prerogative to bore their children with stories\u00c2\u00a0that start “When I was your age…”)\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never particularly considered myself a ‘gamer’, but now I look back on it, maybe I am…<\/p>\n

I blame it all on my parents.\u00c2\u00a0 My dad came home one day with one of the original Pong<\/strong> machines (no doubt picked up at a car boot sale, or won in a card game or something…) under his arm.\u00c2\u00a0 This was my first taste of ‘electronic entertainment’ and although I can’t claim to be blown away by the experience (revolutionary though it was), it did provide more entertainment than watching Heino warbling away on the Deutsche Hitparade (we lived in Germany at the time).\u00c2\u00a0 Consequently, the Pong machine spent more time plugged into the coax input of the TV than the aerial did.<\/p>\n

\"3-D<\/p>\n

Several years later I started to get ‘into computers’, badgered my parents into buying me a\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Sinclair ZX81<\/strong> for Christmas, and was delighted to discover that you could also play games on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids nowadays won’t believe that you could get a fully-functioning game of chess in 1K, but you could.\u00c2\u00a0 And it could beat you.\u00c2\u00a0 (Or at least it could always beat me, but that may be because I can’t play chess.)\u00c2\u00a0 The flagship game, though, was 3-D Monster Maze –<\/em> although you needed the 16K wobble-pak for that.\u00c2\u00a0 The ZX81 screen (actually your TV) was black-and-white and a mere\u00c2\u00a040×20 characters in size. \u00c2\u00a0‘Graphics’ could only be achieved through creative use of ‘standard’ letters and block shapes (like those used on Teletext), and any movement necessitated a full screen refresh.\u00c2\u00a0 All of which makes 3-D Monster Maze<\/em> an extremely unrealistic ‘gaming experience’ by today’s standards, but back in the day was still enough to make you jump when you turned a corner and the ‘monster’ (a blocky T-rex – see screenshot) hurtled towards you at a full six-screen-refreshes-a-second!<\/p>\n

I outgrew the ZX81 in about a year, and moved onto a BBC ‘B’<\/strong> (thanks Mom, thanks Dad).\u00c2\u00a0 This was color, had true pixel-level graphics, and was fast enough to run arcade-style games.\u00c2\u00a0 Many evenings when I should have been working towards my ‘A’ Levels were spent\u00c2\u00a0working towards the next level of\u00c2\u00a0Space Invaders<\/em>, Defender<\/em>, and Missile Command<\/em> (I learnt that it’s very difficult trying to mimic a trackball on a QWERTY keyboard, if nothing else).\u00c2\u00a0 The BBC ‘B’ lasted well into my early college days (I was on a Computer Science course – I justified this as research<\/em>!),\u00c2\u00a0 during which flatmate Rob and I would spend hours playing text-only ‘adventure’ games I can’t even remember the name of.\u00c2\u00a0 You know the type: “You are in a cave.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a light to the North.\u00c2\u00a0 What now?”\u00c2\u00a0 NORTH\u00c2\u00a0 “You are in a woods.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a cave to the South.\u00c2\u00a0 What now?”.\u00c2\u00a0 We never did find whatever we were supposed to be looking for.<\/p>\n

By the time I left college, technology had finally caught up with my full slacking potential, and I bought myself a Sega MegaDrive<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 This was my first real games console, and I spent way too much time blotting out the memory of a painful break-up by playing shoot-em-ups and fighting games (!) on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Thankfully\u00c2\u00a0this didn’t last too long, and I soon swapped my MegaDrive for sex.\u00c2\u00a0 (No, not literally<\/em> – I didn’t barter it with a prostitute;\u00c2\u00a0 I just got myself a new girlfriend and was too busy having sex to play video games.)<\/p>\n

A couple of years later I was living in Belgium with said girlfriend (now wife), and I picked up a PlayStation<\/strong> (One) to keep her busy whilst I was out at work.\u00c2\u00a0 Sadly, it kept her too<\/span> busy.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d leave the flat in the morning and she’d be sat in bed playing Tomb Raider<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d come home from work in the evening, and she’d still<\/span> be sat in bed playing Tomb Raider<\/em>!\u00c2\u00a0 Funny how things change – I went from playing\u00c2\u00a0video games because I wasn’t having sex, to not having sex because\u00c2\u00a0my girlfriend was playing video games.\u00c2\u00a0 “Let me just get past this level.”\u00c2\u00a0 “Ok, well let me know when…zzzzz.”<\/p>\n

The PlayStation was finally consigned to the cupboard when we had our first child (the aforementioned Finn), who seriously cut in to our leisure time.\u00c2\u00a0 That lasted until Finn was four years old at which point I decided to give him the great start in life my parents had given me with that Pong game, and bought\u00c2\u00a0him an\u00c2\u00a0Xbox<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, I think I officially bought it for the wife (“Happy birthday, honey!”) to give her something to do whilst she was awake all night with the lump that would become Freya growing inside her.\u00c2\u00a0 Either way, I probably spent more time on it than either of them, clocking up some serious time on Halo<\/em> and Max Payne<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When we left the States we gave up the Xbox (NTSC) and bought a PlayStation 2<\/strong> (PAL) – mainly for the backwards compatibility with the PlayStation One games that we’d kept hold of.\u00c2\u00a0 This one really was bought for Finn, but again, I think I got the most use out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 “Here, let me just get you past this bit.”\u00c2\u00a0 “Here, let me show you how to do that.”\u00c2\u00a0 “No, you’re doing it all wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Just give me the controller.”\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously we had to leave that behind when we moved back to the States (that old PAL vs. NTSC thing again), but I didn’t waste too much time\u00c2\u00a0before picking up a PlayStation 3<\/strong> when they came out on general release.\u00c2\u00a0 At least this time I wasn’t kidding anyone and fessed up to buying it purely for myself.<\/p>\n

So here I am, 40 years old, and once again wasting time on video games that could easily be spent more productively.\u00c2\u00a0 The current\u00c2\u00a0game of choice\u00c2\u00a0is Resistance: Fall of Man.<\/em> This is rated “Mature” (running around a make-believe world pretending to shoot things – ho, very mature!) which means that I have to wait until the kids (and usually the wife) have gone to bed before playing it.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00c2\u00a0power it up at 10pm and before I know it, it’s 2am and\u00c2\u00a0my eyeballs are all dry because I haven’t blinked in four hours.<\/p>\n

The other\u00c2\u00a0night I was just about to call it quits, walked over to the TV to switch it off, and then decided to give it another quick go.\u00c2\u00a0 Being too lazy to walk back to the sofa, I just stood there,\u00c2\u00a0two feet\u00c2\u00a0away from the TV.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0As this is\u00c2\u00a0a 50″ plasma, it filled my vision.\u00c2\u00a0 The effect was unnerving.\u00c2\u00a0 After a couple of minutes of swaying around following my character on the screen, I was nauseous and almost fell over.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s my age, but that Donkey Kong<\/em> is looking like a much safer option…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago I was rummaging around in one of the many boxes of crap piled up in my study,\u00c2\u00a0when I\u00c2\u00a0found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[75,28],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-life","tag-nostalgia","tag-playstation-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}