Gaming DNA

 

A recent episode of Slightly Civil War on the Escapist Magazine discussed who had the best first console between debaters Yahtzee Croshaw and Jack Packard. Yahtzee was arguing that his Magnavox Odyssey 2 was better than Jack’s SNES, but during their post-debate podcast where they have more of a relaxed discussion about the topic Yahtzee mentioned the idea of peoples personal gaming DNA, which is to say the gaming experiences they grew up with based on which consoles they owned. I thought I’d spend this blog post describing and discussing my own gaming history and my own “gaming DNA”.

Gaming in my family would have started off with my dad during his own childhood/teenage years; I’m not too sure about what machines he owned but it was definitely a PC, a BBC Micro I think, rather than a television console. Whichever one it was, once he had children and we had a Windows PC in the house he would still continue playing the occasional game, now with me and my brother watching. It was actually more my brother who was the gaming enthusiast between me and him, and he would often watch me dad play through the various Tomb Raider games or LEGO racers, or Age of Empires. My brother would eventually take up the keyboard and mouse for these games himself, up until he acquired a PS1 I think from a cousin of ours. This was the first console that the family had, but it was one that never played on myself as I was either still too young or more interested in playing with LEGO or both.

My brother also got himself a Game Boy Colour at some point (and I’m spelling ‘colour’ with a u, because shut up) I’m not sure when or where from (a shop, probably), but it’s worth mentioning to highlight the handheld strand of my gaming DNA. As with the PS1, I rarely played on it the GBC.

After the PS1, my brother remained brand loyal and got himself a PS2, while I carried on playing with LEGO with no real interest in gaming. That’s not to say I had absolutely no interest, I still watch my dad and my brother play things like Age of Empires and Medal of Honor, and I even remember playing a demo disc of Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions. But my real interest in games came from a friend of mine who lived up the road.

I would often go to his or he would come to mine and we’d play on our bikes or in our back gardens, but sometimes we would go in his house and I’d watch him play a game that remains one of my favourite games to this day: Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. I was obsessed with this game. I talked about it to my dad, while never actually playing myself. It would be a long time before I got around to playing the game on my own. But my dad had a copy for PC, and so I started to watch him play Oddworld, usually at my request.

After watching my dad play Abe’s Oddysee, he went ahead and got us a copy of Abe’s Exoddus too, and it was just a great as the first one, and with the addition of a quick save feature I started taking control of the game for myself. I loved Oddworld. It was the only game worth playing as far as I was concerned and it was what led me to getting my first console. The third Oddworld game, Munch’s Oddysee, was going to be exclusive to the Xbox, so I had to get one, and so I did. And that was my first console.

For the longest time I stayed well within my comfort zone, but I got myself a few other games for my new Xbox. I got myself a copy of Rare’s beat’em up action game Grabbed by the Ghoulies, which I still play occasionally. I also got the 2 LEGO Star Wars games as well as Star Wars Battlefront’s 1 and 2, which I remember playing a lot of 2-player split-screen with my brother. And speaking of him, he bought himself a handful of Xbox games for himself, although always acknowledging that the Xbox was my console. Not his, MINE. I was doing the same with his Playstations, while getting a go at Spider-Man 2 for the PS2, and that one Spider-Man game for the PS1 which can only be known as “that Spider-Man game for the PS1” because it had no subtitle.

Anyway, the games my brother got for the Xbox were Halo: Combat Evolved, a game I do look back on fondly; Fable, a game which to this day is one of my favourite games of all time; TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, also one of my favourites; and SplinterCell, which I did try back in the day but never finished I have never got around to trying again. It was probably around this time that I started playing more games on the PC, as well as on all of the consoles me and brother owned between the two of us, namely Age of Empires II. With all of these games I was playing on PC, PS1, PS2, and most of all, the Xbox, I was fast becoming into gaming. I got myself a Nintendo DS around this time too, probably to complement my brothers Game Boy.

After all of that my history of gaming I quite simple where consoles are concerned, for a time at least. My brother and I both got ourselves an Xbox 360, followed by a PS3 each. He later sold his PS3, but I’ve still got mine. My brother bought himself a PSP, and then sold it. During this time, my family also acquired a Nintendo Wii, a console that my mum started using too, if only for the likes of Wii Fit and various Yoga “games”, but me and my brother went ahead and got ourselves a copy of Mario Kart, and later my brother also bought Mario Galaxy 2 for a house party he was hosting. Those are the only 2 actual games we’ve got for the Wii.

Eventually generation 8 came along and my brother got himself a PS4, it was a few years before I followed suit and got one for myself because I was losing interest in games around this time. I still replayed a lot of my old favourites but I was lacking a lot of interest in any of the newer ones. I spent most of the seventh generation playing Call of Duty multiplayer, before that franchise became god-awful. After a few years though, the number of games on PS4 that I would have liked to try was building up so I finally dished out for my own machine and have continued my renewed interest in gaming ever since. In fact my interest in gaming, particularly gaming history has only gotten bigger since.

With my interest in First-Person Shooters, particularly TimeSplitters and Perfect Dark (neither of which have ever been my absolute favourite, but they’re up there) which both act as spiritual successors to Golden Eye on the N64. Only GoldenEye has never been released anywhere else. Perfect Dark was remastered and released on XBLA, but no GoldenEye. This was the game that popularised FPS games on consoles, and I’ve never played it. There was only one thing for it: get a second-hand N64. But I decided to take this in steps; I had Nintendo Wii, so let’s work backwards and get a GameCube first.

I got a GameCube. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was worth buying one on its own. Then I got and N64 and played GoldenEye. I didn’t really care for it that much, but I thought why stop here? I already had DOSBox for playing some of Yahtzee’s Croshaw’s old indie games, so I didn’t stop there. Over the last year or 2, I’ve got myself a C64 emulator on my laptop to go along-side DOSBox, as well as Fusion, a Sega emulator for the Master System and Genesis. I bought the NES and SNES classic editions. It’s likely that these emulated and classic editions will one day be complemented with an actual second-hand NES, SNES, Master System, and Genesis, along with all the systems that I don’t have emulators for. But before that happens, I would really like to get a Switch for myself (my brother already has a lite version), and the PS5 is coming out soon, but perhaps even more ambitious, I would really like to get an actual gaming PC, but they are absurdly expensive.

Anyway, to sum up my gaming DNA in terms of consoles, my own history is Xbox to Xbox 360 to PS4 to EVERYTHING IN THE FUCKING UNIVERSE. Throw in a PS1 and PS2 for an expanded version.