Videos James
Like any other suburban kid who grew up in the 1990s, I played a lot of video games instead of going outside. So I have a lot of nostalgia about them. But a lot of that nostalgia isn't about the games themselves, but about everything else around games. Here's things that stand out:
- The 16-Bit Wars. Team Sega all the way! In fact, I would say Sega was the first time I experienced any sort of brand-loyalty.
- Fighting games. I like everything about that generation of fighting games except actually playing fighting games. Music, level design, character designs, the CHARACTER SELECT SCREENS. I just don't want to play fighting games.
- The magazines! My personal choice was Game Players, who were edgy, which was cool to my pre-teen mind. But I also remember Electronic Games Monthly being the respected standard, and Next Generation being Very Serious. Next Gen was the one you'd get For The Articles.
- All of the consoles I never had. Sure, I had the Sega Tower of Power (I did not have the Master System converter, and I'm still sad about that), but what about the TurboGrafix-16 (and later the Turbo Duo, an absolutely beautiful machine)? What about the Amiga CD32, with its weird controller? The Sega CDX, my god what an amazing machine. Rumor has it, someone on my street has a Neo-Geo, and can you even imagine??
- (I still to this day regret passing up that TurboGrafix at a garage sale for $8. What was wrong with me??)
- Looking at the import games in EGM. There was a Sailor Moon fighting game!
- The failures, and how interesting could be: the 3DO, which was too expensive but had some interesting ideas (Daisy-chaining controllers! What the heck!), and some cool games (both the definitive versions of Road Rash and FIFA); the Atari Jaguar. If it had been released a year earlier, it could have changed the market entirely! Also, people make fun of the CD attachment, that it looks like a toilet seat, but I love a good CD attachment. Also, my beloved Dreamcast. It was way ahead of its time (and also Sony did it dirty and I haven't forgiven them for it since).
- All of the different controllers were their own little worlds. Everything now is either a descendant of the Playstation Dual Shock, or the Xbox 360 controller. I loved the controllers that took chances or made baffling decisions: the Dreamcast with the VMU port, a memory card with a screen that interacted with a bunch of games! The Atari Jaguar with its number pad, and the overlays that came with games to show you what each one did. The N64 three-pronged controller, which was strange but no one really knew how to handle 3D yet. And then contrast that with the simple beauty of the Japanese Sega Saturn controller.
- This is to say nothing of the handhelds. The Gameboy Advance might be a perfect system. And I badly wish I knew where my Neo Geo Pocket Color was. It's in a box somewhere!
To me, that's what video games nostalgia is. Sure, some games are still fantastic. But there was so much more going on that was far more interesting.
-Kosmo