30 Day Video Game Challenge 1 - Your Very First Game

[For concept, click here: http://scubbo.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-post.html]

[Yes, I’ve veered from my chosen list on the first day.  Because, let’s face it, “your favorite game” is about as unimaginative as it’s possible to get - and also, there’ll be severe cross over with many other entries on the list, notably “Favourite Hero”, “Game You Played To Death”, “Your Favourite Computer Game”, etc.  So I’m reposting my first Facebook post, and will write a fresh entry for Day 2 now.]

Oooh, that’s very hard to recall - my earliest memories of gaming are of playing old school pixelly games on my uncle’s computer with my Dad.  There was “Snake” and some other game where you each controlled a gorilla on opposite sides of the screen who had to lob explosive bananas across the intervening cityscape in order to asplode the other (Dad, can you remember the name?).  Being the annoying kid that I was, I realised that it was usually easier to set a straight collision course, and use the explosions to drill through the buildings :)  I also have an unusually clear memory of Dad and Matt (my uncle) showing me how you could use * as a wildcard in Windows Search and being absolutely floored by the cleverness!

I can’t remember if that came before or after us getting a Sega Mega Drive at home, where I spent countless hours on Sonic, and convinced Mum and Dad to play some tennis game with me (where I found it HILARIOUS that the word for “40 all” was “Juice”).

As for games that I actually owned myself, depending on your definition of whether handhelds count, it would be either joint between “Wave Race” and “Metroid II” (my awesome parents got me a see-through Gameboy with these two games, and gave it to me in the corner of one of the playing fields of Holmwood House, near the Adventure Playground - funny how these things stick with you!), or joint between Super Mario 64 and 1080 Snowboarding (again, thanks to my awesome parents - I still remember sitting in Henley’s Fish & Chip shop, on the phone trying to convince them that yes, I did want “the cartridge console” and not “the CD console” - in hindsight, they were probably giving me good long-term gaming advice, but as a kid, it’s Nintendo all the way!)

[EDIT: OMG I just found the gorillas game online!  It was called - ready for this? - Gorillas! http://www.kongregate.com/games/moly/gorillas-bas ]

Next post here: http://scubbo.blogspot.com/2011/11/30-day-video-game-challenge-2-your.html