What kind of Gamer are you?

CCCP^

I've been playing games since I was about 5 or 6 years old. The first machine I recall playing was a Sinclair Spectrum, and then our family got a Commodore 64. I'm 23 now, and I just finished counting and sorting my entire game collection - 235 games on 13 consoles including handhelds and games for the PC and its still growing. I spend about 5 hours if not more everyday playing games, and I'm willing to say I've spent atleast 10,000 euro if not more on games in my lifetime.

So I was just wondering, what was your first console and your first memories of gaming? How many have you had and how often do you spend playing them and what was it that made you fall in love with the concept of getting carpal tunnel syndrome, loosing your eyesight and getting radiation sickness from the television whilst spending entire summers locked inside trying to clear Sonic or Mario?

Ivan

I'm pretty much in quite a similar position as you... Bombjack on the Sinclair, with Flimbo's Quest on my cousins commodore. Moving up to a very posh 386 to play Dune 2. But all that was forgotten when I got my lightning fast 166mhz to play quake and eventually Half-life 1.

My first computer that belonged to me as opposed to my family, was a 450mhz pentium 3 that I built myself while working in a computer manufacturers during the summer at age 16.

Sadly though, I missed almost the entire console age (read:Nintendo Age) and instead had to make do with renting a snes or sega on very special occassions (such as my confirmation and every birthday from the age of 10-15). Fun times

These days I own pretty much every console around and maintain a very high-end PC where possible. I'm very specific about my handhelds though as I spend very little time in a position to use them and my DS wins out, hands down

Wisesmurf

I've played some sort of games/consoles for as long as I remember.

Ive had a:

commodore 64
sega mastersystem
sega megadrive
sega game gear

Many Commodore Amiga's (400, 600 HD, 1200 HD)

During the days of the amiga 600 I had literally 100's of games. That was before the days of piracy!

486 processor pc
each and every type of pentium
a few laptops

Ps
Ps2
xbox
xbox360

Still have the 360 and my laptop and hardly use the 360 at all any more.

I'm prob missing more. The benefits of having a geeky dad!

bungler

my first baby was a commadore 64 and loved the track and field game where u had to move the joystick from side to side extremly fast must have went tru about ten joysticks over the years wish i still had one now does anyone even still have one?

mukki

started off with a sinclair spectrum, I didn't like the games on it much, so used to write math porgrams like betting games and lotto number generators

did without for a good few years then got an xbox, I didn't like the games on it much, so used to mod it and play divx on it, i used to mod them for other people too, i'd say i opened over 200 and owned about 50 (1-5 at a time), unplugged the last one last week which i will sadly be dumping, game over


got a chipped psp for a trade in once, I didn't like the games on it much, so i used to use it to watch divx videos when i worked in intel


reciently got an xbox360, I don't like the games on it much, so i use it as a media center extender

0ubliette

First ever machine i had was a Sinclair ZX81. Never used it much as i was only a nipper and the games were bastards to load. Tho i do remember playing a game called dodgems which was great. Moved on to an Atari 2600 which i had about 5 games for, some classics like H.E.R.O and rampage, centipede etc.
After that, it was my faithful Atari ST. God i loved that computer. It introduced me to gaming properly. Classic games like monkey island, prince of persia, zak mckracken, indiana jones & the last crusade (adventure), Xenon 2, Gods, etc etc.
Then a mega drive, for which i had approx 4 games i think, SF2, Mortal kombat 2, sonic, and rock n roll racing.
Then it went PS1>Dreamcast>PS2>gamecube>xbox1>PC>360>PS3>new gaming PC

tman

First game that I remember was a spiderman game on my older bro's Speccy... The first game that I remember well was Tetris for the game boy.

I've been an avid gamer from the age of 8-9ish, but never really had the money to get a serious collection going, and always ended up selling my console and games when it was time to upgrade to a new system.
This kind of changed with the past generation, as me getting a gamecube pretty much tied in with me moving into full time employment. As time went on and my bank balance started to swell (at least at the end of every month...) I stopped selling my games and started hoarding them.
I currently have 150ish split between PC, PS2, PS3, GC, Wii, Xbox, 360, DS and PSP and have no intention of selling any of them now.
I reckon I'd have 250i+ now if I hadn't been selling my previous games to fund buying the new ones.

One of my biggest regrets in life is selling my Snes - I'll never make a mistake like that again!

Unfortunately there seems to be a vicious circle of either not having enough money to buy games, and having enough money but not having enough free time to enjoy all of them... I'm so tempted to just go on the dole for a while and get through my backlog of games!:p

I'm now 25, and am showing no signs of giving up gaming any time soon... I almost did a few years ago, but the DS reignited my love with gaming

Stephen

As a kid I had a second-hand Atari 2600. Then nothing for a couple of years until I got my hands on an Amiga 600. I loved that thing
Held on to that for a few years and then got a 486 pc. Woah! CD-ROM, zomg! Doom! Quake (at awful framerates)! Sam & Max! Etc.
I've had a whole string of PCs after that - 486>200Mhz Pentium>866Mhz Pentium 3>Athlon XP>Athlon 64>Intel Core 2 Duo (today).

Never had any console until the PS2, which I picked up in 2001 or so. but I played the snes and megadrive a good bit in friends' houses. Since then I've had an Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, GBA and PSP. I'll probably get a PS3 in a few months.

I am one of those people who sold the old consoles to help finance new ones, so all I have at the moment is the current PC, 360 and Wii. Oh and a PSP stuck in a drawer somewhere but it never sees the light of day.

I don't spend as many hours gaming as I used to what with Real Life (tm) and all that but I don't see my fascination with games fading any time soon.

The whole MMORPG thing totally passed me by though, I just don't get the appeal of it. I used to live with a WoW-addict too

TheDoc

guess im a gmaing newcomer

First console i owned was a sega megadrive, shinobi and the boys, great fun playing micro machines with friends.

Then i had a massive decision one christmas to get either a ps1 or n64

i went with the ps1 and it was great, i later then purchased the n64

then i got a playstation 2 which was immense.

i also got a computer, it was a fmaily pc and wasnt for gaming, but i got hooked on upgrading and turned it into a mid 90's beast, at the tender age of like 6 :P

grabbed myself a new computer bout 2 years ago and an xbox last year and have being loving it all

my pc i built myself from scratch and cost me about 800 euro, dell quoted me 2,100

im not much of a retro gamer, into the current things rather then old

also had al lthe handhelds, currently just got mega back into my DS after ordering a m3 simply card

i was mostly a pc gamer with CS,wow,warcraft 3 etc, but am hugely into xbox these days.

Shiminay

I've always been a big arcade game fan, so have always played them through-out my life until recent years where the cost of going to an arcade has gone from £1 for "10 10's" (as in pence pieces) to €20

First games thing we owned (about 25 years ago now) was a "pong" type thing with paddle controls and a few different vairiants of the game with 1, 2 or 3 bats on screen.

Then came our 2600 which was about 20 years ago now (second edition of them I think). There were no shops selling games for it in Mayo so it never got the time it deserved (unless we borrowed games of our cousins who had previously owned a toy shop).

Several years later, I upgraded to a C64 which lasted a long time, but it was old and second hand and didn't play some things. Thankfully though, when my dad got it for me, there was a massive box of tapes with games on it

Brother bought an NES a few years after that and I picked up a Game Boy a year or 2 later. The price of things were a bit prohibitive for us as we weren't very flush, but birthdays and Christmas nearly always provided a new game. The NES is still on the go somewhere in my mother's house I think.

Inbetween this, I played a lot fo my mates Amiga 500 and Master Systems and Mega Drives and SNES' etc. Cousin got a Game Gear for Christmas one year and I decided I should get something similar and managed to find a Lynx second hand.

This was it until I started college and got my first PC and started playing Quake There's been a few since then of course and I abandoned the console world that had served me so well.

Then of course, money for video cards was non-existant so back to consoling I went. I got a DreamCast the day they came out (bit of a Sega fanboy I'll admit) and my brother picked up a PS2. I have one of them now myself and play it quite a bit (along with the DC which I managed to get a load of emulators for.

Then last summer I build a proper gaming PC (which up until last night had been dead for 6 months) and so that's my current weapon of choice. I'm thinking of a PS3 or 360 for GTA and Soul Calibur 4 later this year, hard to decide which of course

AntiVirus

A ZX Spectrum with rubber keys was my first computer. My god the amount of hours I wasted playing Manic Miner.

Kids today don't know how lucky they are with there xbox360's and PS3's and online gaming

jonski

Started in a gaming arcade playing a top down car racer whose name escapes me , bought a second hand commodore 64 which I still had out in my mother house up until they moved there a year or so ago and it got dumped . After I got married I got a NES , TMNT ftw ! and silent service 2 into the early hours of the morning . then a megadrive followed closely by the attachment that went on top , can't really remember any game from it thought .

Some time in the mid nineties my sisters company closed and they were selling off their pc's , I bought a 386 from them with a 80meg HD .. I went mad a bit later and bought a 320meg second drive ( to hold everything I might need for the rest of my life , or so I thought ) . I clearly remember about a year later one of my friends buying a 1 gig drive and we were all out in his kitchen laughing at him because we said he would never fill it .

That first pc is a bit like triggers sweeping brush as in I have never actually bought another pc as such , just upgraded , new graphics card , new sound card , new HD , buy a mobo and chip , need to change the case but then put the other stuff back in .

Around 2000 one of the guys gave me UT99 and a few months later gave me a mod for it called Tactical Ops . Decide I would try it online with my 56k pay as you go connection .Played on the same server a few times cause the crack was good and the guys first asked me onto their irc channnel then their teamspeak and then to join the clan . I stayed with them for 5 years and then when they broke up I joined another clan that we had been friends with and am still there playing cod4 .

The End !

CCCP^

tman wrote: »

One of my biggest regrets in life is selling my Snes - I'll never make a mistake like that again!

I threw my Sega CDX away with a bunch of games, we we're moving and I had just discovered PC games. I wake up at night still and regret that decision. That and losing my Holland '94 football jersey.

o1s1n

CCCP^ wrote: »

I threw my Sega CDX away with a bunch of games, we we're moving and I had just discovered PC games. I wake up at night still and regret that decision. That and losing my Holland '94 football jersey.

What?!!!!
ah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope you do wake up at night, I really do. That's sacrilege. :mad:

I started off playing the ZX spectrum myself. Must have been, hmm...88 or so? My cousins dad bought it for him. I remember the first time I killed someone in Barbarian. It unleashed a blood lust which hasn't ceased. Also loved Target: Renegade and an odd game called Punchy.
Couple of years later he was bought a NES with the Mario/Duckhunt combo pack. So I'd always be around in his playing that.

Didn't get my own console though till Christmas 91. Megadrive with Sonic. After that I was hooked.

Console wise, I currently own:

NES
commodore 64
SNES x2
Nintendo 64
Gamecube
Wii
Gameboy
Gameboy Colour
Gameboy Advance
Gameboy advance SP
Gameboy DS Phat
Gameboy DS Lite
Megadrive I
Megadive II
Genesis mark 3
32x
Sega Nomad
Game.com
Playstation X 6 (!)
playstation 2

There's a sack of controllers to go with all of that

About 600-700 games. I traded and swapped Megadrive ones but stopped after that.

Have yet to buy a 360 or ps3. To be honest, I haven't really felt the urge to buy either yet. Although GTA 4 is starting to tempt me.

edit\
Completely forgot about pc gaming. I've gone through 4 pcs. The current one is 6 years old, so it might be time to move on. Was a pretty fanatical online Half Life Valve player for many years. Wasn't too bad either. Never took to CS. Found the pace too slow.

CyberGhost

My first console was an SNES ripoff.

Loved Mario and Battle City.

Then it was Sega Mega Drive II + Sega CD(useless, only had MKI for it) + X32(useless, only star wars, never played).

I don't exactly remember what games I had for it, but I remember Mortal Kombat, loved it.

After that, I had Panasonic 3DO, very few games, but I loved them, The Need For Speed(the original and IMHO the best one if the series), Road Rash(loved it).

Then came Sony Playstation, I loved this console so much!(I remember being blown away by it's graphics when I first saw in the arcades, it was Tekken 2, damn it was amazing!) played a lot, had tons of games for it, Tekken, Gran Turismo, Twisted Metal,...

Eventually sold that too and bought a PC, and been a pc gamer ever since, I bought a PS2 recently, but didn't enjoy it much and sold it.

I genenrally never keep consoles after their lifetime is over, I sell them.

As for the games themselves, I used to like the arcade games, where you go from level to level, but while growing up I grew less and less patient of those games, I think the last game I finished without cheats was Mario. And the only games I remember finishing at all are, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Doom III and HL2, I loved all 4 of those.

I generally like games that you can jump in quickly, and immediatly start playing. Examples... Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Tetris, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Twisted Metal, Vigilante... get the pattern? I don't like all those story lines and crap, I'm too lazy to play through that, honesly I consider that a waste of time, that's why I didn't play Bioshock even though it got great reviews, solving all those puzzles and collecting crap....... FOff.

It's been a long time since I really "got down" to play a game and concentrate on it, I usually browse, chat, listen to music and play at the same time, that's why I love PCs. I feel kind of "isolated" on consoles

I've got a PSP now and I think I'm gonna sell it too, I hardly ever play it.

Oh yea, I play PSX games on PC from time to time, I like emulators, and when PS2 ones comes out I might play PS2 games also.

witnessmenow

why do you have 6 ps1?

Creature

Wisesmurf wrote: »

The benefits of having a geeky dad!

+1!
My dad bought an PC in the early 90's and I got started on Ultima Underworld and Commander Keen. I've been playing PC games ever since. Before that it was the intermittent bouts of gaming I'd do in arcades or over in friends houses when I got the chance. My parents were quite strict about consoles though and wouldn't buy a nes, megadrive or snes no matter how much I begged. So the first one I ever actually owned was the Sony Playstation in 1996 that I bought with my own money.
At the time it seemed like the end of the world not being able to own a megadrive/snes when everyone else had one but in retrospect I'm glad I went down the PC gaming route instead, even if I didn't have a choice .

CCCP^

o1s1n wrote: »

What?!!!!
ah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope you do wake up at night, I really do. That's sacrilege. :mad:

I do indeed. It's somewhere in Clondalkin on Boot road, which is now some block of apartments or somefink. I had Road Avenger, Tomcat Alley and Fifa - Road Avenger was the fecking bomb. I still have Tomcat Alley but it's not doing much. Plus the Mega CDX was such a nice little machine, not like the ugly bulky models they made earlier. That machine is on my wishlist as we speak. What's the game.com like?

My currently console line up includes - NES, SNES, Mega-Drive/Genesis, N64, Gamecube, Ps1 & Ps2, Dreamcast, Xbox, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Game Gear, Nomad & the DS. If I were to get a next-gen machine today it would be the 360 purely for Bioshock.

CiDeRmAn

Ah yes, the opportunity to list all my precious things in one spot, local gaming for local people, we'll have no trouble here!
But 1st, regarding memories, I spent my childhood coveting my neighbours pong machine, back in the dim and dusty 70's, then, much later I got to start my own obsession. I remember having fun with Battlezone way back when on a Sealink ferry to Wales, not to mention the Donkey Kong machine on the caravan park when we got there!

I go to play my cousins Vic20 as well as my mates Atari 800xl.

Then, finally, in 84 my own gaming career began in earnest.
I got a Spectrum 48k for Christmas, together with a Kempston adaptor and a competition pro stick, sweet!
Then a hiatus for a couple of years, the Amiga and ST passed by without a blip.
Then I got a Speccy +3, what a piece of crap, and a Gameboy, hmm nice.

From there it was the usual suspects, Megadrives, Snes', 3DO (2nd that emotion about Need for Speed), PS, N64, Saturn, PS2, DC, Xbox, GC, 360, PS3, and so on.

I sold my import DC to a guy who didn't, it turned out, have the agreed cash to hand, so I took some money and his Saturn and N64, plus some games, the collecting bug had finally bitten.

Now my collection contains the following, most regulars have read this before, but for the newbies, here it is....

Atari:
2600
7200
Lynx
Jaguar

Sega:
Master System
Megadrive
Megadrive II
32X
Sega Multimega
Gamegear
Saturn
Dreamcast

Nintendo:
Nes
Snes
N64
Gamecube
Wii
Gameboy
Gameboy Pocket
Gameboy Color
Gameboy Advance SP
Gameboy Micro
DS
DS Lite
Virtual Boy
Pokemon Mini

Sony:
PSone
PS2
PS3
PSP

MicroSoft:
Xbox
Xbox 360

Others:
Panasonic 3DO FZ-1
NEC Turbografx
Samsung Nuon
MB Vectrex
Neo Geo Pocket
Neo Geo CD

Dragon 32
Nokia Ngage
Amiga 600
Sinclair Spectrum 16k
Sinclair Spectrum 48k



And that is that, at least so far, I have plenty of games for each, over 130 for the PS2 and over 100 for the PSone, everything I've ever wanted for the N64 and the only game worth having on the Nuon, Tempest 3000!

Still looking for an Amiga CD32 and a Colecovision, not to mention an Atari Pong/Super Pong machine.

Worst memory?
Letting genuine Virtua Racing Arcade boards slip through my fingers on Ebay, coupled to a few PC monitors and a decent PC steering wheel and pedals I could have been in racing heaven, feck!

CCCP^

Jesus Ciderman, get out often? That's an impressive, but you don't have six Ps1s like O1s1n so it counts for diddly! Do you guys ever read Games magazine? They have a retro section in the back, usually show some guys collection. I remeber this hot chick with everything Shining Force in one issue. My collection is just everything I've played, try not to go too crazy but I can't store it all.

My complete collection as it stands today is attached.

o1s1n

witnessmenow wrote: »

why do you have 6 ps1?

I'm a sucker for seeing old consoles in recycling plants and charity shops. There seems to be an abundance of ps1s. Although I have to admit, It's getting a little ridiculous at this point. I really have to do something with them.

CCCP^ wrote: »

What's the game.com like?

I was actually bought one of those the year it came out. Internet, touch screen, duke Nukem 3d. Sounded too good to be true. It was. piece of crap. Any slight motion on the screen and it all blurs.
The touch screen is the only interesting thing about it. Oooh and the stylus. It's nicer than the DS ones.

Visional

i like fps games

po0k

I like ladies doubles.

BopNiblets

My games machines went thusly:
SNES
Pentium (with MMX! :eek: )
Pentium 4
Athlon 64
Core 2 Duo

I think I started later than most people my age, I blame my parents with the huge generation gap between them and me, but I'm catching up now!
Went for music aswell, I was listening to Michael Jackson when everyone else was listening to Nirvana...

CiDeRmAn

I do get out, from time to time, but I do love my games collection, or "The Museum", as I sometimes think of it, I just think it'd be awful if, in a couple of years, no one can have a quick blast of Samba De Amigo, try out Steel Batallion or know what it is to play Ridge Racer Revolution with a NegCon.
It's a legacy of memories for me too, as even the machines I now have that I didn't own originally, like the Vectrex, I can remember wanting them like crazy when I was younger.

Gaming has become such a rich and varied hobby, combining those who want to scream around Silverstone and New York in a high powered car to those who want to leap out of said car and blow away gangsters, to those who march down corridors with rifles and rocket launchers at the ready to those who want to direct armies and the future of a civilisation.
Back in the day it was all those things too, you jus had to use your imagination a little more, and these titles deserve to be remembered, and more than that, played from time to time.

And just realised I have a couple fo serious holes in my PSone collection, X-Com Enemy Unknown, X-Com Terror from the Deep and Kurushi, any ideas?

F-ZeroFan

Im a huge fan games myself all i can remember playing is the SNES,Sega megadrive,PS1,SEGA Saturn,GBA,GB and N64. and i still hav a few of them here.However i can give everyone here a link to game soundtrack downlods from A-Z from NES to PS3.

http://gh.ffshrine.org/

Enjoy!