my gaming life - Written by Mark Stevens on Thursday, October 29, 2009 0:24 - 2 Comments
My Gaming Life: Preamble
Retroblique’s been up and running for little over a year now, although it has admittedly been living a rather low-key, infrequently updated existence. In lieu of becoming ensnared in NaNoWriMo this year, I’ve pledged to kick the blog into overdrive this November and actually deliver some of the content you’ve been very patiently expecting.
It suddenly occurred to me that I’ve never given you guys an insight into my history as a gamer. The 6% of you who’ve taken a look at the About Retroblique page may be a teensy bit wiser as to my motives for starting up the blog in the first place. The braver 1.5% who’ve visited the FAQ will have discovered which systems I’ve owned and are likely to post about at some point in the future. Nothing substantial really; just some vague muttering and a few bullet point lists.
So, with this newfound work ethic comes a series of posts that will hopefully give you a deeper insight into my experiences as a gamer. Don’t worry: they’re not going to be huge, rambling essays. Just a broad but concise overview of where I’ve trodden in the digital realm and my favorite ports of call.
Here’s what to expect during the weeks ahead:
- Part 1: Life Before Gaming
Lego, Subbuteo, Dice League, Fighting Fantasy & Comics. - Part 2: The Blocky Years
Nintendo Game & Watch, Sinclair ZX-81, Mattel Intellivision & Atari VCS. - Part 3: The 8-bit Years
Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Acorn BBC Micro & Commodore 64. - Part 4: The 16-bit Years
Atari ST, Commodore Amiga & Sega Mega Drive. - Part 5: Rise of the PC
PC Gaming 1990-1994. - Part 6: Into the Third Dimension
Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PC Gaming 1995-1999.
- Part 7: The 6th Generation
Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube & PC Gaming 2000-2004. - Part 8: Return to Retroville
Nintendo GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 3 & PC Gaming 2005-2009.
The more observant among you will notice a lack of certain systems in the list above. Unfortunately, I’ll only be covering the systems I owned or had regular access to. So that means no mention of the Amstrad CPC, SNES or Xbox—but only where this series of articles is concerned. (I’ll still be covering other systems elsewhere on this blog.)
If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to Retroblique with your news reader of choice. That way you won’t have to check back to see whether or not I’ve been fibbing about actually posting some damn articles on this blog. They’ll plop into your news reader all of their own accord.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter if you want to indulge in a bit of geeky banter from time to time.
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2 Comments
I've always been disappointed by the lack of anecdotal retro gaming coverage. Like you, I enjoy reading about individual gaming histories, but there doesn't appear to be many people taking the time to record them.
Sure, there's plenty of people out there writing retrospective reviews of classic games, but very few people offering an insight into what it meant to play those games when they were originally released. No one's writing first hand accounts of the sights and sounds that assailed them the first time they walked into a smoke-filled amusement arcade. No one's writing about those long summer holidays spent organizing tournaments of Summer Games I & II with your mates and the inevitable blisters, calluses and cramp you acquired while playing them. No one's writing about the joy of discovering a shrink-wrapped Infocom import hidden on a dusty shelf in your local independent software store.
Those are the stories I want to read about.
On a related note, one thing I feel is missing from contemporary gaming journalism is a general awareness of gaming history. That's not to say that every review and critique of a modern title needs to make reference to some obscure ZX Spectrum game, but over time you get a sense that, collectively, a web site's writers have very little gaming nous outside of this current decade. I'd wager that your average video game journalist is in their mid-20s and only started getting into the gaming at the dawn of the Xbox/PlayStation 2/GameCube era.
Critics of art, film and literature are steeped in the lore of their respective areas of expertise. When you see a film critic write up a piece on the latest Spielberg or Scorsese movie, you intrinsically know they've also seen The Searchers, Citizen Kane and Chinatown. When it comes to contemporary video game reviewers, you get a nagging sense that anything that happened before 1999 remains outside their experience.
Of course, I'm generalizing, but I think there's more than just a grain of truth to all of this.
Awesome! Can't wait to read more on this, I love reading about individual gaming histories. Might even inspire me to update my about page. ;)