A bit about a few retro consoles and what they mean to me

Retro gaming the very concept means different things to different people, it's all about nostalgia and what your nostalgic for, what the computer or console and its games mean to you, what you associate with them.

I can take just about any machine and give you a story about it, about what it means to me, who I was at that time, what my hopes and dreams where, the friends I was playing the games with, the music I was listening to. The first two machines I remember having were the 48k spectrum and the old wooden Atari 2600, this was at a very early stage in my life when my dreams didn't extend much further than to be like my older brothers. The first game I remember playing on the spectrum would have been a Mister Men educational software tape, I think I was about 3 my mum would be playing Beatles tunes in the background and id just be tapping away not really sure of what I was doing. Soon however I would be growing and as I did I would be playing tank and all manner of simplistic games on the Atari with the whining loading scream of the spectrum in the background, the spectrum games were usually better but the Atari had the instant use appeal to it. In fact I felt rather spoiled as a kid because I had both, when I would visit my friends houses they would have 1 of either an Amstrad, a Spectrum or a Commodore 64 and we would have to play board games or play with transformers while the games loaded. This makes me associate these machines with long load times but also with board games and friends, so no matter how crudy the graphics may be there is still a warmth to be had from seeing them, playing them or even reading about them.

The Master System and the NES I never owned when they were current I always played them at other peoples houses and typically they didn't seem to be owned by kids my age. My first experience of the Master system was a much older cousin had one, it was an original Master system and I cant even remember the games he had , the Master System 2 though I have memories of seeing them a lot id be with one of my older brothers and he would be at a girlfriend house and that's what her or her brother would own and basically id end up playing the Master System and they would disappear obviously now I know they were at least kissing if not screwing but back then I was so absorbed by the likes of chase HQ that I simply didn't give a toss where they were, so I guess the Master system 2 reminds me of sitting in strange houses shunting criminals off the road while loud music usually of a heavy metal persuasion hides noises not suitable for young ears.

I seldom saw a NES, I remember playing them a few times at houses but it certainly wasn't a regular deal, I remember buying one for about £20 with a bunch of games once the Super Nintendo was out and I already owned one, I was so in awe of it yet everyone thought I was crazy for buying ''that old piece of junk'' it was the first time I really got a machine after its time, sure I got new things and I had old things laying around left over from when they were new but this was the first time I had made what you could call a retro purchase. I don't associate music or friends with the NES I associate total silence apart from the game, I took to the NES like some kind of art appreciator I wanted to hear every beep to see every pixel to study and admire them. It was the first time I really though of games as being beautiful in there own right. It was here in this moment that I became more than just a games player but a game collector and when I really began to appreciate them.

This Months retro Video Game purchases:December 2015

OK so it is that time of the month again, the time when one month is pretty much over and a new one is about to begin, so its is once again time look at the retro purchases I have made in the past 30 odd days. To be honest I have been at work more with it being the whole busy Christmas period and again like last month I have brought more new games that were in crazy sales and such. Also for the first time ever I actually have started my Christmas shopping for next year literally straight after Christmas, now no I am not sad enough to fight and punch in all of the boxing day sales but I have grabbed the odd thing while leaving work and began to fill a box which I will reopen towards the end of next year to give me a great headstart on sorting out next years gifts.

I didn't even so much as look at a retro game up until December the 8th. Also to be honest this was a last moment thing, I was on my way home and decided to stop off at a small town which I know sometimes has a market in the town square. I got all of the following off of one store. I got Konami Krazy Racers for the GBA cart only for £2.50, which was cool as I have wanted this for quiet awhile due to the fact many people have talked about it favourably so l cant wait to give it a bash. Then I grabbed both NBA courtside and Pool Paradise both complete for gamecube for £1 each.

The last thing I got from here was a bit of a strange purchase basically its a Modded/Fake Golden Axe 3 pal cart, I really wanted to look inside it and eventually managed to get it open. Looking at the board its very basic so I am going to guess that its a cheap reproduction, it might be in a pal shaped cart but the first thing I noticed was that it wouldn't play on my English Megadrive, it basically came up with a message saying it wasn't intended for this territory so I tried it in my Japanese Megadrive and it worked great, the whole game is there with everything just the same as it would be if this was a real version.

On the 15th I had something I had ordered a few days previously arrive from ebay and that was 

a Japanese copy of Gain Ground boxed but with no manual, this cost me £8 including postage and is something I was very happy to have gotten myself as I love Gain Ground, also the first ever copy of Gain Ground I owned was a Japanese copy (which also strangely had no manual) so its nice to have this again.

Latter in the day I managed to look in a small pawn store I sometimes visit and was very surprised to find a Raiders of the lost Ark Atari 2600 loose cartridge which I got for £3 and a fully complete boxed version of Haunted House for the Atari 2600 for a further £3, was really surprised to see games this old for sale, never expected this pawn store to buy and sell them.

On the 18th I hit a few charity shops and managed to get, Dancing Stage Euro Mix for the playstation(1) complete for 50pence, Tony Hawks Underground for xbox complete for £1, The Sims for ps2 complete for £1, and Mary Kate and Ashley crush course, for playstation(1) case and disc missing manual for 50pence. Yeah I know the last one is a bit of a weird purchase but I mostly just got it as the case was pure almost new looking and my intention is to swap one of my rarer games into it that happens to have a less well maintained case.

On this day I also received a rather cool bit of tech in the post, I got a NES USA to UK converter/Adaptor for £9 including postage. Now there are two reasons this is really cool, one is that usually these cost a lot more, the other is that I happen to own about 10 American NES games and dont own an American NES, one of these games just happens to be Mega Man 2.

On the 23rd I returned to the pawn store which I had gotten the Atari games from and found that they now had a copy of OutLaw for the Atari 2600 cart and manual in good condition and with a very batted box for only £1.99 which I jumped on, after all its kind of cool that there is any box at all when its made of card and the game came out in 1978

Yesterday I managed to pick up Chili Con Carnage for psp complete 75pence and Ape Academy box and UMD (no manual) for psp for 75pence from a diffrent pawn store. I also recieved a Megadrive game in the post I ahd purchased from Amazon but there was an issue here. I had purchased what was supposed to be a copy of RBI baseball 94 and what arrived was a case with the cover for RBI 94 but an RBI Baseball 3 cart and a very rough batterd RBI 3 manual. Yet I cant moan as when I complained I got a full refund including postage costs and got told to do as I please with the game. So I will keep the cart and proberbly use the case for another game as a replacement for a cracked case., or I might even make my Golden Axe 3 cart a case.