Summer, Summer, Summer Time.... Giveaway

Alter Egotist · 01-08-2017 10:06am #1

Hi all,

Giveaway time again.

Entry is simple!

All you have to do is reply below to be entered. I'll make ye work for it a bit this time though. I want you to tell me your favourite retro gaming memory. It can be about absolutely anything from a cool find in a shop to getting a game for Christmas. Just as long as its retro gaming related. I'll pick a winner randomly and send you a boxed rammed full of gaming goodies for you to enjoy.

Keep it retro peoples!

Al.

CiDeRmAn · 01-08-2017 11:08am

My best memory was getting my first "games machine" the ZX Spectrum back at Christmas 84.

I had been calling to cousins and playing their various computers and neighbours Ingersoll and Binatone Pong machines before this, in the 70's, but this was the first one I could call my own.

It was quite a stretch for the family at the time, there was four kids in the family and my dad had survived a heart attack that summer and was out sick for a long time, making money tight.

I never asked for a computer, but my folks somehow found the money and bought me a Spectrum from Jonesborough just over the border.
I certainly wasn't expecting it, the 12 year old me was probably expecting a sketch book and the bigger gifts going to my still Santy believing younger siblings.

But nevertheless, there was the thing, all wrapped up.

In my family I am the oldest child, and I was allowed stay up and watch the Christmas night tv, on this particular night they were showing a Val Doonican Christmas Special, and I got my pressie then.
It was just the most amazing thing! A Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k!

It came with a demo tape, which included a very good version of Breakout, and a pack of other games, of variable quality, including the excellent Horace Goes Skiing and the not quite so excellent Chequered Flag.

Man, I wrung just about every scrap of enjoyment out of that device, using an old B&W tv to play it on, often for the whole day in the good front room.

From early stuff like Knight Lore and The Hobbit to Tau Ceti and Starglider.
Typing Basic programmes in, buying Input magazine, trying to type machine code games for hours and having to go on a hunt for errors.
Just amazing days.

Systems have come and gone.

I own several Spectrums now, but they've not been played.
I also have the enemy, the C64, similarly gathering dust.
Many critical launches of stunning hardware has had my attention, I was an early adopter on numerous consoles, buying the DC and GC from Japan, being at the official launch parties for the DC here in Ireland, many Sony and MS parties, great times, free drinks at the bar too!

But it all pales before that 12 year old me, with his loving Mam and his poor sick Da sitting before him, as he opened the wrapping on that ZX Spectrum.

The best of times.

01-08-2017 12:11pm

I remember getting Duke nukem 3d as a youngfella for my newly purchased PS1. My dad walked into my room while I was playing it and was instantly mesmerized by it, it was the most advanced game he'd ever seen(before this all he'd seen was megadrive).
He still claims to this day that Duke 3d is the greatest game of all time

Star Lord · 01-08-2017 4:47pm

Waking up on Christmas morning 1998, knowing that my folks had gotten me Ocarina of Time...
(Actually, I'd gone in myself to get it on release morning, to buy it for them, for me... but then had to hand it over!)
Finally getting to experience the game, that I'd been looking at online on the run up to it's release, and that the small compressed videos I had seen online didn't match up to experiencing it myself... Finding my way from the Kokiri Forest to the Deku Tree, and from there to the open splendour of Hyrule Field, and on to the gates of Castle Town and beyond... it was the most wondrous thing I'd played to that date, and it all blew me away.

DinoRex · 01-08-2017 5:12pm

Probably playing through Flashback on the Amiga.

Amazing game, but the version I had was all in French. Remember staying up late playing it with a pocket French>English dictionary on my lap to try and work out what was going on and more importantly what the names of objects were. Was particularly hard to work out what to do on the second level where you have to sign on at a job centre and take on various odd jobs about the city.

Tom Mann Centuria · 01-08-2017 5:22pm

My best, earliest gaming memories start with watching others. Watching my brothers play Combat or Pacman into the early hours of Boxing day (Stephen's Day) on an Atari 2600 vader, or watching them play football manager on the zx81 until dreaded ram pack wobble destroyed a season.

For me actually playing, it'd be the first Spectrum I got, paid for out of paper round money, from a 2nd hand shop I'd pass by every day on my route. Took me months to afford it, but what a purchase. Playing Metal drone (crap), Cookie (meh) and Match Day (great) that came with it until starting to build up my own collection.

Typing in an adventure game on a commodore+4 then playing it through with my mum. Not a great game, but one of my fondest memories.

Then onto ps1 days where me and my younger sister finished OddWorld Abes Oddysee. (as much argument as fun but still!)

I love gaming, it's probably more to do with who I was with, an not what they were playing.

Same today, watching the kids play, and getting the Wii and Wii U out to all play together. (sorry last bit isn't retro)

brianregan09 · 01-08-2017 7:09pm

For me , I was obsessed with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat every summer we would go down to Kilkee and I would pump nearly ten pounds into every day we were below there , Thinking back I must have broke my mams melt and there wallets

But flash forward to Christmas well 3 weeks before it my uncle was moving to England and he couldn't take his megadrive with him for whatever reason and gave it to me , he only had sonic 2 and that 3 pack that had Golden Axe , Shinobi and Streets of Rage

I had asked all along for a portable TV for my room so I could play my games in peace and not have to turn it off when the soaps or football came on RTE, so christmas morning excited as hell I ran into the sitting room and ripped open the TV and box and began eagerly setting up my sega to it , when my mam and dad walked in and said have you checked your Christmas stocking

I hadn't but then I did and there was a game in each I tore it open and to my complete and utter shock Mortal Kombat was one and then opened the other and it was Streetfighter 2 I was legit blown away as this home gaming stuff was still very new to me and I had no idea either of these games were possible at home I thought it was arcade strictly , So that Xmas I played MK and Streetfighter 2 to death and it was probably the best Christmas ever

Jack burton · 01-08-2017 11:22pm

Well not my most cherished memory but one that sticks out is when I played Streets Of Rage 2 with no thumbnail

So its a Saturday afternoon, I must have been 8 or 9 years old. My brother and I rented SOR 2 on friday night, due to go back sunday. So anyone who rented games as a child knows, you play the ever living **** out of them for those 2 days, no questions asked.

We were visiting my cousins who live down the road. They were all a bit older, so into teenage stuff, like working out. One of them had some stupid kind of resistance elastic wire that fixed onto the back of a door. Basically you'd pull this thing 7 or 8ft back and when you let go it would retract into the holder, annihilating anything in its path . Even now after spending a lot of time in gyms and exercising I still look back in amazment how this thing made it to market. The cable wasnt even slick, it was material, so it could snag on things, like a fingernail for example

So between playing and messing around, someone pulled this wire of destruction to the limit. No idea why, but i thought it was a good idea to try and hold it halfway. They let go, wire retracts, snags my thumbnail, and pulls it clean off. Yummy!

So after all the crying and screaming, and a ton of plasters, I'm at home on Saturday night with one of my favorite games that I hadn't beaten and minus one thumbnail, well I wasnt going to let no nail on my right thumb stop me. "I'm going to beat this ****er, thats what Axel would do!"

I only remember every time I hit any button I was wincing in pain. I lastest all of 10 minutes before I sulked off to bed, defeated!

Just something that always stuck with me. I'm fine now BTW

Corholio · 02-08-2017 12:52am

Back in the early 90's, when there was plenty of arcade cabinets in various places, I used to go a local chipper and play Street Fighter II there. Used to go so much that even now the smell of small chippers instantly reminds me of the various sounds of the Street Fighter cabinet. A few days before Christmas I accidentally found out that I would be getting a SNES with Street Fighter on Christmas Day and I can fondly remember going in to town on a very snowy Christmas Eve and playing a good few games in the chipper. I can distinctly remember looking at the game and thinking I'm going to be able to play this at home tomorrow and being blown away by the thought as I had never owned a console from new before then.

A few years ago my family and I were at a dinner of sorts with friends and other family and people get to talking about their childhood days etc. One of the things that came up was how kids are spoiled these days and in my day etc. My mom begins to talk to family members about kids having computer games these days etc and how I used to be inside playing them for hours when I was younger. She then goes on to recite the different sounds she used to hear when she was passing my room, and instead of just describing generic sounds she almost perfectly recites stuff like 'Hadouken', E.Honda's 100 Hand Slap 'Hu hu hu hu hu hu etc' and Guile's 'Sonic Boom'. I remember firstly feeling quite cringe hearing my Mom saying those things :P and secondly thinking that if I was playing Street Fighter that much I should be a pro standard player by now (PS I'm definitely not :P)

Kylo Ren · 02-08-2017 2:20am

Christmas of 2000. The PS2 was top of my want list but it was just impossible to get. I told my parents it's grand and to just get me an N64. Ripping open my presents like something you'd see on the animal channel and I finally got to the box I wanted. Pikachu N64. All was right in the world again. But what's this? There is another box. I rip the front off and the magnificent blue outer box hits my retinas more powerfully than the sun. I freak out. My mother got a call from the manager at GameStop a few days before Christmas informing her they had gotten one back in stock. Two consoles. One Christmas. It will never be beaten.

rgfuller · 02-08-2017 12:19pm

One of my best gaming memories from the early 80s is taking turns with my brother playing Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf on our original 48k spectrum, we both independently completed both games. Oh those frustrating coloured gates in Atic Atac and the walking sounds of Sabre Wulf haunted my dreams for months!

Oh god, after reading some of the other memories I remembered playing Deathchase too and dreaming of biking through that forest, that was our first game on the spectrum.

jamesbondings · 02-08-2017 12:38pm

As a six-year-old, i snuck into my brothers' room to watch him play Doom at like 2 am on the Super Nintendo... It was terrifyingly brilliant!
But out of nowhere a big dirty hairy spider crawled out behind the TV - I was petrified. I began screaming "Tarantula" at the top of my lungs.

Woke my parents up got a good clip around my ear. Couldn't sleep in my room petrified it was coming for me. The parents ended up taking the Nintendo out of his room and into the sitting room where they could hear if we were up past bedtime.

phily2002 · 03-08-2017 11:38am

Mine was playing the secret of monkey island on my dos PC. 5 inch floppy disks which you had to change pretty much every time you walked around a corner! My first ever point and click game and i was hooked. There was no internet back then so when you were stuck you had to just grind away till you figured it out. Still my favorite game today, must have played through it over 20 times

Skerries · 04-08-2017 1:18pm

My early attempt at multiplayer gaming was when I set up 2 Amigas using a null modem cable between an Amiga 500 and a 1200 in my room and playing with my mates
The ones I remember playing were Knights of the Sky, Stunt Car Racer and Gloom and thinking this has to be the future

Lemming · 04-08-2017 2:35pm

Not sure which is my most cherished; got a couple for different reasons. For the one I'm going to list, it's a toss up between it, two C64 memories from the late 80s or New Zealand Story on an arcade machine. But I digress:

I got a Sega Megadrive for Christmas ... 1991 I think (definitely early 90s anyway); came with Sonic the hedgehog and two controllers. Every christmas the family would travel to Scotland to visit my mother's family and I borrowed a spare 14" colour portable TV from another of my Aunt & Uncles and would sit in the bedroom at my aunt's house (my mum's old family home) playing Sonic or a few other borrowed games for hours. The bed in the room was one of those fold-out sofas, so I'm sat on my own sofa with my colour TV, Sonic, litre bottles of Irn Bru and the usual boxes of Christmas sweets. But the bit that really stands out for me was the first time I made to the Starlight zone; I think it's the music that makes that level stay in my mind most from that Christmas.

Alter Egotist · 08-08-2017 1:28pm

Back from my well needed holiday. Will pick a winner in the next few days.

Alter Egotist · 09-08-2017 12:00pm

Kylo Ren wrote: »

Christmas of 2000. The PS2 was top of my want list but it was just impossible to get. I told my parents it's grand and to just get me an N64. Ripping open my presents like something you'd see on the animal channel and I finally got to the box I wanted. Pikachu N64. All was right in the world again. But what's this? There is another box. I rip the front off and the magnificent blue outer box hits my retinas more powerfully than the sun. I freak out. My mother got a call from the manager at GameStop a few days before Christmas informing her they had gotten one back in stock. Two consoles. One Christmas. It will never be beaten.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! Through the powers of random.org you have randomly been selected randomly as the winner of my summer, summer, summer time... random giveaway. Feel free to hit me up with a PM with your postal address and a random box full of random goodies will be sent your way!

Thanks to everyone else for taking part and a very honorable mention to Jamesbonding for the "Tarantula" story. It gave me a chuckle. Hit me up also for a small consolation prize!

I mean to do these more often so if anyone wants to give me a nudge if i forget please do.

Al.

Deep Thought · 11-08-2017 9:45am

Well I remember early 1980's, Mate got a ZX Spectrum. We would play Harrier Attack all day.
One evening I went to his place and he told me to put on headphones when playing game to make sure I was at a certain speed while playing, he had made a commentary on the game while playing it.
Geeky but was good fun

I also remember playing a Vertical Scroll on a watch, it was a shuttle and you had to avoid asteroids, also great fun.

Summer, Summer, Summer Time.... Giveaway

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