you're oh-so right Doug, there are no good gaming posters on OA! it's just some sort of Internet spamming playground!
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this nostalgia thread proves that when OAers get their shit together they kick GAF's sorry, repressed ass
What I loved the most about gaming back then was that I had no idea how games were made, had no idea about sales figures or gaming politics and I wouldn't have cared anyway. If a new game was out I would want to play it, nearly regardless of what it was.
I had been gaming via C64 and Master System for a few years after Atari died in the arse. The SNES was the hot item at the time and of course I wanted one. I asked my parents to get me one and they did, or at least they were going to. Instead they got me a Megadrive with Sonic, Columns and Streets of Rage. This was the best decision ever since I loved Sega gaming thanks to Master System, and at the time I was already skipping school just so I could stay home and play Phantasy Star.
Having played Sonic on Master System I was really impressed with it, but seeing it on Megadrive was like going from black and white to colour, such was the leap. It was phenominal and still to this day I can easily turn on any of the older Sonic games and play the shit out of them and have an absolute blast.
Back then we could hire out games for a week for cheap, so that's what I did with my allowance a lot of the time. Hire two or three games for a week, play the shit out of them, take them back and get a few more. I was like a pig in shit playing games on the MD like Strider, Two Crude Dudes, Sonic, Phantasy Star 2 etc.
During this period I got my first taste of Madden with Madden 92, having seen highlights of the sport on TV. One of my all-time favourite gaming moments comes from Madden 92 when a player gets knocked out, and the ambulance comes onto the field running over anyone in its way (IMG:style_emoticons/default/roll.gif)
Infact during those days EA were at their absolute best IMO, infact they were downright awesome. Madden was shit hot, Road Rash was amazing, Desert Strike was almost too fun for words, NHL was non-stop enjoyment. They had fun "low key" releases like General Chaos and Skitchin' too which were very good for a good 15-20 minutes of play time.
My birthday happens to coincide with a big release day in Sega's history - Sonic 2sday. Any Sega fan worth their salt can now tell me what day I celebrate growing older. On Sonic 2sday I turned 15, and about a year and a half before that I had already begun buying gaming mags ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/btw.gif) I have kept every gaming mag I've ever bought and still have them right now, dating back to 1991) so I knew what was coming and when it was coming and I was off my head excited.
Sonic 2sday/my 15th comes around and what do I get? Sonic 2 of course! Like I said earlier 1 was an eye-opening experience, but in comparison Sonic 2 ripped your eyes open and shot nitro directly into your head. I had played Mario before but for mine at the time Sonic kicked the ever loving shit out of Mario thanks to the pure speed of the game. Sonic 2 is still my favourite Sonic game, and favourite Sega platform game. Infact it was my favourite platformer period until Donkey Kong Country came along two year's later. To this day DKC and Sonic 2 are still 1 and 2 in my books. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/worshippy.gif)
Not owning a SNES at the time and being totally in love with the side-scrolling beat-em-up, and as awesome as Streets of Rage was, I still still a tad jealous of SNES owners with Final Fight being available. It was the chunky, high-colour graphics that did it. That all went away when Streets of Rage 2 was released. I've played just about any side scroller you'd wish to name, but none as much as SoR2. Sure it was walk-in-the-park easy, but it was so fun it didn't matter, and holy shit did it look and sound good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/worshippy.gif) Max (IMG:style_emoticons/default/worshippy.gif)
That same year, finally, Street Fighter 2 was confirmed for a Megadrive release. I'd been playing the crap out of it at the arcades but I wanted to train at home and I didn't own a SNES at the time, so needless to say I was a tad excited about the news. The first lot of screenshots for the game quite frankly looked like garbage, but as the release neared it started looking REALLY good. Once the reviews started rolling in, if there was a MD mag that reviewed the game, I bought it just to read as much as I could and see as much as I could.
At the same time the 6-button MD pad was released, and it was a perfect match. Sure the voice samples in the game were fuzzy garbage and the black guy was removed from the intro, but it didn't matter, it was Street Fighter 2 and I had it at home and it cost a bomb and it played like a million bucks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Around the same time I started playing the multi-game Neo Geo MVS cabs and the graphics on those games were leagues ahead of what I had at home. I had seen the AES machines for sale but they were ridiculously expensive (and nothing has changed, except I now own one (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sun1sp.gif) ) so the best I could hope for at home were the MD versions of games like Fatal Fury (which, really, sucked) and Fatal Fury 2 (which did not suck). However seeing screenshots and reading reviews of games like Art of Fighing 2 made me insanely jealous. In hindsight I shouldn't have been since Art of Fighting overall was shit.
For the first few years that I owned a MD I actually didn't feel the need to own a SNES, such was the level of superb gaming available, but in 1994 I did feel the need so I got one and for quite a while I forgot about my Megadrive. Mario Kart was pure genius, Mortal Kombat 2 was 100000x better than on the Megadrive, Clayfighter just LOOKED great and the TMNT Tournament Fighters game was waaaay better on SNES.
I had seen the screenshots in mags for Donkey Kong Country and it was the best thing I'd ever seen at the time and I knew I had to have it, and upon release I had it and played the shit out of it, repeatedly. The snow levels frustrated me to no end but I still managed to get through them with patience. To this day I can still play DKC whenever I want and still get the same buzz I did in 1994.
The arcades at the time were really on fire, and one that owned me was Killer Instinct (available for your home in 1995 only on Nintendo Ultra 64!). The graphics, the booming sound, the ridiculous combos....I was smitten. Every Sunday afternoon I would sink many coins into that machine and play as much as I could. But I didn't get really that good until the remarkable home version was released on SNES. It wasn't arcade perfect by a long shot, but fuck me did it still play brilliantly, and I trained and trained and trained and trained, to the point where I could Ultra Combo off one punch and everything about every character (save for all the shadow combos) were memorised. KI was one of the few games I could say I was nearly unbeatable at. Damn I was good, and really I should have been with the amount of hours practice and vs gaming I sunk into it at home and at the arcade.
I could probably sit here for the entire weekend waxing nostalgic about 200 other 16bit games I went apeshit for, but I'll stop here, having already written enough prose to put just about everyone off reading it.
For me, the 16bit days were pure gaming joy.
Top 10 Megadrive games -
Street Fighter 2 SCE
Sonic 2
Flashback
Madden 92
Thunderforce IV
Phantasy Star 2
Streets of Rage 2
Shining Force
Shinobi 3
Virtua Racing
Top 10 SNES games -
Donkey Kong Country
Killer Instinct
Mario Kart
Zelda LTTP
Mortal Kombat 2
Super SF2
Starfox
NBA JAM TE
Yoshi's Island
Stunt Race FX
the "LOL XFAG/SFAG/emoticon spam" OA taunts become equally useless captioned pics or three-four liners on GAF done by late teenagers aiming to sound like experts since they act out of FEAR, whereas on OA their drivel is raw and uncensored
even if the console war takes the center stage there are very good game arguments/threads done every day, and people like I contribute a lot of stuff to divert the readers from these PS3/360/Blu-Ray follies
yeah, it JUST can't be that a bunch of educated guys amid a bunch of admittedly worthless members (just like on any other board) prefer to swear by freedom instead of kneeling before a bunch of arrogant distinguished mentally-challenged fellows with bansticks! OA is just as educative as your G-Mail spam folder!
