30 Day Video Game Challenge 6 - Favourite Videogame Villain

This was probably the first of these categories that was a complete no-brainer.  Fair warning, this post is a) adapted from a previous post I wrote on Facebook, and b) deals with a series that I feel very strongly about, so expect length and enthusiasm!

30 Day Video Game Challenge 5 - Favourite Videogame Hero

John Marston.  That is all.

Nah, I'm only messin' with ya...read on...

30 Day Video Game Challenge 4 - Biggest WTF Moment In A Game

What do you know?  Apparently writing questions and tidying a house didn't take that long!  Thank you coffee :)

30 Day Video Game Challenge 3 - "Favourite Videogame Track"

Now this one really was a no-brainer.  Just to be sure that I'd made the right decision, though, I did spend some time considering other possibilities.

30 Day Video Game Challenge 2 - Your Least Favourite Game

[For the concept, go here]


There were a few competitors for this.  I was considering going with "Dead Space" or "Amnesia", and then going off on a tangent about how frustrating I found it that my inability to deal with horror games/films has precluded me from enjoying some genuinely intriguing plots (yes, I look them up on Wikipedia because I can't experience them first-hand - what, stop looking at me like that!).  I was thinking about going for "Oblivion" for the shock factor (for non-gamers - Oblivion was billed as being "the game that would change gaming forever" for a number of reasons, and is still considered to be an excellent experience 5 years after publication), and then explaining that I was referring to its inability to live up to its hype, and the undeniably cookie-cutter nature of what was promised to be a "rich, vibrant world" once you strayed off of the quest lines (How many Ayleid ruins or cave systems can you explore before they start to feel painfully alike?  How many times can you hear several different characters utter the same lines in the same voice before it starts to grate?), but then I realised that was massively unfair to a game that was still fantastic in its own right (to say nothing of the modding community).  Hell, I was even toying with writing about "Mary Kate & Ashley's 'Get A Clue'", till I remembered that, actually, that was a fairly decent and reasonably innovative platformer!  But no, I went with this:

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

30 Day Video Game Challenge - "Ready? GO!"

So you're probably all familiar with the concept from the 30 Day Music Challenges that were going around a few months back.  Same idea.  The basic list that I'm working from is below, though if there are any particularly unimaginative or duplicating categories, I reserve the right to nick ideas from other lists.