Friday 30 September 2011

How a Nintendo Fanboy came to be..

For my first Uni tutorial of the year i had to write a short 200 or so word post on a forum about my personal game playing history. I thought i could expand on it and put the "full version" on my blog so you can all see how i came to love all things Nintendo!

I started playing games at a very young age, my parents had a NES and apparently (because they have told me) i used to watch them play Super Mario, Supposedly they even went to bed singing the mario theme tune! So for as long as i can remember i have been very into the Mario games! I got very good at the nes and loved playing games like Super Mario 1, 2 and 3, Megaman 4, Excitebike, Zelda 2, Chip 'n' Dale and Marble Madness to name a few.




We also had a Sega Megadrive with, I think, Sonic 3 and Michael Jackson's Moon walker. but i remember i much preferred playing on the Nintendo!

in '95 we got our first computer and it came with a box of CD's with programs and games on, i remember being amazed at games like Ecco the Dolphin and Comix Zone. but by far my favourite game to play on the computer was Theme Park! (I still love theme park and play on the DS version occasionally)

Around this time i also got my first Gameboy which my parent got me on holiday in France (i think) It was a gameboy pocket, with Wario Land 2, which is an awesome game! and i got a lot of great gameboy games like mario land, kirby, Zelda, Dragon Warrior Monsters, Pokemon and loads more which kept me very happy on long car journeys :)


In about 96 we got a SNES and i played it non stop! Kirby's fun pak was my favourite game, i would play it over and over again, its still one of my favourite games to go back and replay even now. Donkey kong country was another series i played a lot of, as well as all the classics like star fox, mario world and more :) The snes is still my all time favourite console, and i still play it regularly, to think, its been plugged into my TV and used probably at least once a month for nearly 15 years! im surprised it still works!

Then came the N64 and the obvious games like Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64. i was also a big fan of Diddy Kong Racing. unfortunately, when the gamecube was about to be released i needed some extra money so i could afford it, and i made the silly mistake of selling the N64 and all my games so i could get the gamecube, so i lost some quite hard to get hold of games, like Banjo Tooie and Mario Kart 64. Thankfully my Dad was kind enough to buy me a new N64 a few years after the gamecube had been out and i quickly managed to get all the games i used to own back!

Before the Gamecube was the GBA which i also got on release along with Pinobee wings of adventure (a very under rated game!) and Mario Advance. of course the GBA would go on to have many amazing titles like Golden Sun, Minish Cap, Mario Kart, Pokemon Emerald and more. I would take the GBA into school and battle my friends at pokemon and play it whenever i got the chance! :D
Shigeru Miyamoto showing off the Gamecube. if it wasn't for his games i doubt i would be a gamer today.
Thank You Shigsy!

I got the Gamecube on release and played a lot of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Starfox Adventures, Mario Sunshine and other brilliant games. The gamecube was really the first console i had where i had the money to buy new games on release, so i would write the release dates down on the calendar and have count towns to the new GC games coming out, i can remember how much i was excited about the release of games like Starfox Adventures and Animal Crossing!

Sometime after getting the GameCube i got a Pokemon Mini, which is probably Nintendo's least successful hand held ever. but it has some fun games for it like the Pokemon party game and the best Pokemon pinball game there is!



About a year or two after getting the GameCube, One Christmas, "Santa" very kindly got me a Sega Dreamcast, along with Soul Calibur, Chu Chu Rocket and Sonic Adventure. which were all incredible games and this was one of the main reasons i decided to also get some more Sega systems.

The Christmas after that i also got an unexpected console, this one was a bit more obscure though, "Santa" must have read my wishlist this year because i woke up Christmas morning to find... a new console to add to my Nintendo collection.. it was.. The Virtual Boy. and 4 games to go with it! it was an amazing gift, maybe its not the best console ever, but it sure if fun to play and a great thing to own!

By now i had quite a large collection of consoles and handhelds, i had all the versions of the Gameboy and Gameboy advance, including the Gameboy Micro, which i got as a Christmas Eve Present one year! (Wow i had a lot of good Christmas's in the early 2000's!) so i began looking into some games i hadn't played, and i found a game called NiGHTS into Dreams, which was on the Sega saturn, so for ages i had been reading about this game, and i finally decided to get one off ebay! so now i had all the nintendo and Sega consoles that had so far been released in this country. (yes i also got a GameGear and Mastersystem around this time..)
Yes, it's worth getting a Saturn to play this!


Of course i also got the DS on release, along with Wario Ware touched and Mario 64DS and the demo of Metroid Prime Hunters. and i also got the revisions of the DS (except the DSiXL)

Next was the Wii , 8th of December 2006, I still remember that date and the excitement i felt, i woke up early that morning and went to GAME before i started school because they were open early for the launch, along with the system i got Zelda: Twilight Princess, Monkey Ball and Red Steel. Unfortunately i had to go to school that day, that must have felt like the longest school day ever...  when i finished school that day, i ran to the bus stop and i was so excited to get home and play Twilight Princess on a brand spanking new Nintendo console, although i think i spent more time playing wii sports at first! haha.

Up until a few years ago i was mostly only a Nintendo and Sega gamer, but once i started my college course, which was Games Design, i realized i needed to play other systems too and i had been missing out on a lot of playstation and xbox games.. (we did used to own a chipped PS1, but i only really used to play crash bandicoot on it)  eventually i gave in a got a PS2, thanks to a friend pestering me until i gave in and got one so i could play some games like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. And one game i had wanted to play for a long time.. Klonoa 2! :D

Since then i also got an Xbox, Xbox 360, PS1 slim, PS1, some more dreamcasts and master systems, Sega Mega CD, PSP and prety much every other game device you can think of. Over time i have gotten a collection of over 1500 games and more than 30 different systems! As for the future, I guess I will always stick with Nintendo and anything they make (looking forward to the wiiU!!) and occasionally dabble in the Xbox / Playstation when anything interesting appears on them.

Hope you enjoyed this insight into my gaming life, hope i didnt bore you too much!
sorry for rambling on a bit too long..  :lol:

That always seems to happen on here.. i just have too much to say about games!



Till Next time,

Nicktendowii