Younger gamers have no idea how good they’ve got it. Consoles and PCs are more powerful than early space shuttles. Touch screen phones can offer endless free games at your fingertips and you need never play a game on your own. Gaming today offers an experience that more senior gamers could never have fathomed. You lucky little buggers.
So, in no particular order, this list (drawn from my own misty past) is for the fellow veteran gamers out there.
Some of you will look back fondly at the path we older gamers trod and smile. If you do, well done – you’re probably old too.
LOADING SCREENS
Hope you aren’t sensitive to flashing lights. Oh, and you are really, really patient. Just ‘cos those lines are squiggling, doesn’t mean it’s actually going to work…
GRANNY’S GARDEN
A computer? At school? With games? This is amazing! What can we play? Granny’s Garden? Wut.
PAPER MAPS
Thought your math text book was for sums? Wrong. It’s for documenting your every step.
SAM FOX STRIP POKER
Could we ‘entertain’ ourselves with this? Oh yes. Yes we could. We weren’t all lucky enough to find our pornography under a bush, you know.
THE THIRD PARTY CONTROLLER
Okay, so this is something that we still experience today. Being left with a beauty like this can and always will be a test of friendships.
SEGA WORLD ARCADES
Yeah, there are loads of them still in Japan. Maybe elsewhere. But in the UK, they are mostly a distant memory. Apart from the carpets. You can probably still remember them vividly.
You’ve only got three pounds pocket money and mum will be back in an hour. Choose your games wisely.
MAIL ORDER GAMES
Gaming magazines were awesome. They would have remained awesome if the internet hadn’t killed them all. Great writers, amazing features and a genuine insight into an industry that is very different today.
Oh, and you had to send off a cheque to buy your games after picking from a list on a mail order advert.
KEYBOARD OVERLAYS
So many buttons! What the hell do they all do? Place this handy bit of card over your keyboard and all your problems are solved.
BAD INFLUENCE DATABLAST
Yeah you’ve got Wikis and GameFAQs and everything you possibly need to help guide you through a game these days. We had to wait until Violet Berlin and Andy Crane had finished talking, frantically set up the VCR and record Datablast for the latest cheat codes. Then try to work out what it says when we paused the tape
CUSTOM FLOPPY DISK LABELS
A nice variation on the custom mix tape label for the girl you fancied. Which you also did. Although, we cannot recall if a home made Pool of Radiance label would have the same effect on the ladies. Particularly if you couldn’t stop chuckling about having an ‘eight inch floppy’
3.5″ GAMES ON DISKS
‘PLEASE INSERT DISC 35 OF 50’. Aaaaargh!
THE CODE WHEEL
Anti piracy methods were a little bit different once upon a time. Still better than DRM
THE ACORN ELECTRON
Seriously, fuck you Acorn Electron. All my friends have got a Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrums. Thank god for Chuckie Egg.
ROGUE
Best. RPG. Ever.
Has this given you a hankering for some old school gaming? Take a look at some of the retro consoles and handhelds on offer at Funstock.co.uk
