My Personal Gaming History

I’m not entirely sure what the first game I played was. Thinking logically, two of my aunties had Sega Mega Drives, each with different instalments of Sonic the Hedgehog among their few games, so there’s a good chance I played one of them quite early on. However I do not recall any of that.
I do know my first games console was a silver game boy advance, although as to what games I had I have no clue. I do however remember playing my brother’s copy of Pokémon Ruby after he got bored of it, and getting quite far. This also happened with his copy of Yellow, but I get a feeling that came later. My first GBA game I remember owning was Pokémon Sapphire, as I was obsessed with Pokémon from then on.

My favourite Pokemon at the time was Mudkip. No, I'm not trying to be funny.

The first game I owned on a non-portable console was Bionicle- Mask of Light, played on my brother’s PS2. I thought it was really good at the time, but looking at gameplay videos now I really wonder how I could’ve ever found it entertaining.

My Pokémon obsession was what led me to asking for a GameCube one Christmas, as I found out about Pokémon Colosseum and really wanted it. When I got the console however, I found Colosseum to be really quite boring- it was too slow-paced. Fortunately I had also asked for a couple of other games- Metroid Prime and The Urbz- Sims in the City. I vividly remember repeatedly dying to the Parasite Queen, the first boss of Metroid Prime, and spending most of that Christmas day with the Urbz. My brother had also gotten a GameCube that Christmas. He had a copy of Metroid Prime too (of course we wouldn’t share!) as well as F-Zero GX and Mario Party [Insert Number Here]. He didn’t fare too well with Prime either.
I borrowed F-Zero GX a couple of times and thought it was pretty good, my focus stayed on Pokémon though, partially because of my friends. They influenced me to get other games, such as Sonic Heroes, but sometimes the games they liked were ones I didn’t have the console for.

Eventually my brother started to lose interest in gaming. For my 13th birthday I got my parents to buy my brother’s old PS2 from him and give it to me. The game I got to play with it was Final Fantasy X-2, a game that my friends had been talking about for months. I never did complete it though! My brother sold his GameCube too and all of the games he had, so I could no longer borrow anything.

I bought F-Zero GX for myself a few years later. It was the only racing game I was ever any good at, and I ended up playing quite a lot. It turned out other people considered it pretty hard. One year I heard about there being one of the few remaining arcade cabinets for it in an arcade in London. One of my biggest regrets is not finding out sooner, as when I went to look for it, it was gone. It wasn’t even the first time I’d been to that arcade. Without the cabinet to unlock the extras I had to beat every Grand Prix and every story mode chapter on the hardest difficulty …which I eventually managed. It is definitely my greatest gaming achievement!

One day I'll care enough to record off the TV properly. Today is not that day.

I had attempted to play Metroid Prime a few times, though the only time I managed to get very far was using cheats. When I discovered that that game file had been wiped somehow (it seemed I had a tendency to overwrite or corrupt game data around that time) I finally had started to appreciate the exploration aspect and managed to knuckle down and play it properly. I believe I only got around to finishing the game within the last four or so years (blame the Phazon Mines) but the environments had all become stuck in my memory. I ended up playing the other games in the trilogy and Super Metroid. The treasure hunt kind of gameplay is something I’ve come to really enjoy.

I suppose technically my ultimate game would be a mix of the speed from F-Zero GX and the exploration and adventure of Metroid. It’s difficult to see them coming together though, I mean gameplay-wise they’re pretty much polar opposites. Maybe if it were a racing game with a more detailed hub world that you could explore, that might be close. It would still be very hard to incorporate the feeling of discovery into it though.
As long as there are enough futuristic/sci-fi titles I’ll be happy, but having them on futuristic technology would be a plus. Virtual Reality? Yes please! …Don’t make me play stealth games that way though; the stress would probably kill me.