July 31, 2008

When it came to gaming, my experiences began with the Atari 2600. River Raid was a favorite. Boxing was fun too. And Pitfall. There was also this cowboy game where you lassoed cattle and that was amusing as well. I’ve gone through an decent line-up of consoles… Sega Genesis (Mega-drive in our part of the world), Atari Jaguar (technological tour-de-force but lame execution), Sony Playstation and that’s where the console line ended. I also had friends with the usual NES/SNES consoles… and one with a Dreamcast (Yawn) and one with an Amiga CD-32 (Amusing and rare). The pattern on all these machines was the same… many games available, but I only played a very small subset but I played them at a high level. Mortal Kombat 2/Virtua Racing on the Genesis. Tekken on the PS. Cybermorph/Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar. Everything else, I’d play but only on a social level - Contra, Pac-Man, Crash Bandicoot… many others that I can’t recollect. Liu Kang on MK2 would make me almost impossible to beat (without a cheat code). Rayden was a close 2nd in terms of favorites. Virtua Racing, in my opinion, remains THE ground-breaking console racing game of the era. It used to have the Sega Virtual Processor (SVP) chip and was the most expensive cartridge you could buy at the time. But yeah… the concept of perspectives, 3D tracks, pseudo-formula 1 feel all done at a fast frame-rate made it worthwhile. If anyone has gone 37.xx on the first course in VRacing, let me know! Everything you see in GT, Ridge Racer, Project Gotham is attributable to this 16-bit trailblazer. I was also pretty good with Yoshimitsu in the original Tekken, but beatable. A very assymettric character from the rest of the pack and it is no surprise he hasn’t been discontinued. Once I got into University, all the gaming was PC-based. Quake 3 Arena & Worms ruled the dorms. Once I got out, Q3 was still a passion but fading quickly as work was more interesting.

Q3

 In a feeble attempt to keep up with my console habit, I purchased the original XBox (I have played it under 10 times to this day). I have played the PS2 @ friends places… but the console fetish is over for now. I have never had a Nintendo device oddly enough. I do have a PSP, on which I play F1 2007 on. I wonder when the bug will bite me again, but I just thought to share regardless… Random thought: Don’t you think Pete Najarian from Fast Money on CNBC looks like Heihachi in Tekken? lol…

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