Gaming Confessions & Blasphemy

My brother and I got a Saturn one Christmas - it was a gift from all our relatives. We got home, hooked it up, and then there was much wailing when none of the games would "work".

This was our first time dealing with a "locking" CD spindle, and we just hadn't pushed the discs into proper position.

At least you got something for it. I let one of my cousins borrow my NES and my rather small collection of games and I never saw it again.

I sold all my Shadowrun source books to raise money to buy a Genesis and then a year later I sold the Genesis to buy SNES games

I kind of feel like I missed out, having never owned an SNES. And I'm still missing out because Nintendo refuses to put their SNES games out on the damn 3ds >:(

Oh, and Aaron D. My first system was a hand-me-down Atari 2600 from my uncle, so you're not that much older

After that was a Tandy 1000 with a copy of Windows 3.1...

Losing your NES collection reminds me of a pretty depressing confession I have. When I was in middle school my buddies and I started pooling our money together in hopes of gathering a giant NES collection, which we kept at our one friends house. It became very sprawling and impressive, and then a tragedy occurred. That friend's family was driving home late from a Thanksgiving Break road trip, and a drunk driver in the opposite lane crossed the line and hit their car head on, killing the entire family instantly.

Needless to say, it was a horrible tragedy, and my friends and I were all too depressed to go and get the collection from his house. There must have been 120+ games, and I think they ended up going to his uncle or something stupid like that. In retrospect, I kind of wish we had gotten them back just so I'd have something to remember him by, but at the same time it was so hard to go through that I'm not surprised we just let it go.

Aw man, you guys reminded me I lent my N64 to some dude and never saw it back. Controllers, games, the whole shabang. I´m positive if I still had it, I´d still play Earthworm Jim and Mariokart on them, let alone Golden Eye.

I loved that damn console! And the controller was awesome! I don´t get all the flack for it. Yes, it looked weird, but it held great!

my rich friend at Sunday School had an Intellivision. I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth. We had a plug in TV pong

pinkdino99 wrote:

my rich friend at Sunday School had an Intellivision. I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth. We had a plug in TV pong

Bet you were glad though, when your hands didn't seize up from using them god-awful controllers.

davet010 wrote:
pinkdino99 wrote:

my rich friend at Sunday School had an Intellivision. I thought it was the coolest thing on Earth. We had a plug in TV pong

Bet you were glad though, when your hands didn't seize up from using them god-awful controllers.

They were better than the Colecovision controllers, which were like the Intellivision's, but larger, blockier, and with that godawful palm-spearing control knob. Great system, horrible controller.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

They were better than the Colecovision controllers, which were like the Intellivision's, but larger, blockier, and with that godawful palm-spearing control knob.

What?

A friend of mine had a Colecovision, and a different friend had an Intellivision, both of which I played many times. I have no idea how the Colecovision controller would be "palm-spearing". I actually preferred the Colecovision controller over the Intellivision controller, because the Colecovision controller actually had something that resembled a joystick, which I was used to having played games on my Atari 2600 for so many years.

kexx wrote:

Aw man, you guys reminded me I lent my N64 to some dude and never saw it back. Controllers, games, the whole shabang. I´m positive if I still had it, I´d still play Earthworm Jim and Mariokart on them, let alone Golden Eye.

I loved that damn console! And the controller was awesome! I don´t get all the flack for it. Yes, it looked weird, but it held great!

You are not alone. I loved that controller as well. That is a very hard system to revisit though. The analog stick is really sh*t compared to modern ones and the games didn't age well at all (same is true of most early 3D era games though).

Edit: of course some of them haven't been improved on in anyway but graphics (Mario and Zelda for example as those are two of my favorite entries in both series).

MeatMan wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

They were better than the Colecovision controllers, which were like the Intellivision's, but larger, blockier, and with that godawful palm-spearing control knob.

What?

A friend of mine had a Colecovision, and a different friend had an Intellivision, both of which I played many times. I have no idea how the Colecovision controller would be "palm-spearing". I actually preferred the Colecovision controller over the Intellivision controller, because the Colecovision controller actually had something that resembled a joystick, which I was used to having played games on my Atari 2600 for so many years.

There's a Colecovision at my grandparents'. It's still awesome, I've been playing it every summer ever since I was a kid. I fully expect to have to fight my cousins to inherit it when they pass.
But yeah, the controller does kinda kill your hand after a while.

The last console I owned...

...was a Dreamcast.

edit: I couldn't find a good hipster image for this one.

Eleima wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

They were better than the Colecovision controllers, which were like the Intellivision's, but larger, blockier, and with that godawful palm-spearing control knob.

What?

A friend of mine had a Colecovision, and a different friend had an Intellivision, both of which I played many times. I have no idea how the Colecovision controller would be "palm-spearing". I actually preferred the Colecovision controller over the Intellivision controller, because the Colecovision controller actually had something that resembled a joystick, which I was used to having played games on my Atari 2600 for so many years.

There's a Colecovision at my grandparents'. It's still awesome, I've been playing it every summer ever since I was a kid. I fully expect to have to fight my cousins to inherit it when they pass.
But yeah, the controller does kinda kill your hand after a while. :D

I loved my Colecovision, and it's still my favorite classic system I own (I'm old; "classic" ends at the NES). The Intellivision controller was smaller and more comfortable in my hands, plus the disc, while annoying, didn't hurt. That stupid Coleco joystick stuck up in the middle of this giant controller brick, and there was no way to hold that thing vaguely comfortably.

Rykin wrote:
kexx wrote:

Aw man, you guys reminded me I lent my N64 to some dude and never saw it back. Controllers, games, the whole shabang. I´m positive if I still had it, I´d still play Earthworm Jim and Mariokart on them, let alone Golden Eye.

I loved that damn console! And the controller was awesome! I don´t get all the flack for it. Yes, it looked weird, but it held great!

You are not alone. I loved that controller as well. That is a very hard system to revisit though. The analog stick is really sh*t compared to modern ones and the games didn't age well at all (same is true of most early 3D era games though).

Edit: of course some of them haven't been improved on in anyway but graphics (Mario and Zelda for example as those are two of my favorite entries in both series).

Graphics have generally never been an issue with me. Hell, I loved 4D boxing in its day, but for some reason, N64 games really do suck now, don't they? I mean, I recently (3 or 4 yrs ago) played Mario 64 to completion, all stars, the whole shabang...man...really didn't age well. I think the only early 3D graphics game I continue to revisit without a problem is FF7, but that's mostly because of the pre-rendered graphics on most of it.

JillSammich wrote:

I kind of feel like I missed out, having never owned an SNES. And I'm still missing out because Nintendo refuses to put their SNES games out on the damn 3ds >:(

Oh, and Aaron D. My first system was a hand-me-down Atari 2600 from my uncle, so you're not that much older

After that was a Tandy 1000 with a copy of Windows 3.1...

Tandy computers that came with Windows? You whippersnappers! My brother and I used BASIC to program our own games on our TRS-80... and saved them on cassette!

I think my brother may have had a Colecovision, but I never got the chance to play with it. I do, however, remember lots of fun times with a hand-me-down Sega Master System.

kazooka wrote:

The last console I owned...was a Dreamcast.

I missed pretty much the whole "game console" thing.

My brother and I received an Atari 2600 for Christmas as a child. That's it. Later it was a Commodore 64, then Macs and/or PCs in college and ever since. Gaming for me happened on computers (and until about 1992, in arcades); Nintendo and Playstation were primitive, novelty toys. Playing import DDR was fun on a hacked "PSone" back in.. whenever that was, but that's it.

So when I poke fun at dirty console peasants (not really), it's because I have no points of identification. It's like a whole different echelon.

Obligatory hipster/blueblood
IMAGE(https://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/files/original/NYorkerLogo_5.19.jpg)

Wow, somehow this thread got re-added to my favourites and now I can't remove it (Page not found error). Weeeeird....

In other blasphemies, I was only vaguely interested in Titanfall until I heard that it was multiplayer only. Now I have zero interest. My friends are all over it, and buzz is positive, but I can't make myself care about it.

I tried 2 matches of Modern Warfare and was immediately put off by the lack of matchmaking and the hostility of the community, and I'm sure that's coloring my opinion of this. Even though there are awesome looking mechs...

Man, you guys must have been rich. Growing up, there were 9 people in my house. I was the youngest and here was the first game system we ever owned:
IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Odyssey-300.jpg)

Years later, my brother and I saved our money and bought an Atari 2600. Then I bought an Intellivison about a year after it came out.

On the bright side, I still own the Odyssey 300 (in box).

Currently, I own an Atari 2600, Bally Astrocade, Intellivision (with Intellivoice), Intellivision II (with Computer), Colecovision, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Jaguar, Super Nintendo, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis (Mk 1 + Mk 2) including the 32x and 2 versions of Sega CD, Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One. I also have some Commodore 64's, 2 Amiga 500's and an Amiga 2000 (with a 68030).

My wife wants me to get rid of it all, but I think she is crazy. Almost every game I own includes the original box, instructions, overlays, etc... I think I have over 100 Genesis titles that I bought new when I worked for Software Etc.

Funny, the only things I received as gifts were the Odyssey and my first Commodore 64.

My first console was some variety of Pong. My Colecovision didn't show up until Christmas 1983, basically right at the Great Video Game Crash. As much as I loved that thing, nothing ever beat the thrill of walking into an arcade with a pocket full of quarters. To this day, I'm not sure anything gaming-related ever has; actually having money to play games and getting the opportunity to get into an arcade was a rare enough thing that it just felt so damn magic.

PRG013 wrote:

Currently, I own an Atari 2600, Bally Astrocade, Intellivision (with Intellivoice), Intellivision II (with Computer), Colecovision, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Jaguar, Super Nintendo, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis (Mk 1 + Mk 2) including the 32x and 2 versions of Sega CD, Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One. I also have some Commodore 64's, 2 Amiga 500's and an Amiga 2000 (with a 68030).

Nice. I have an Atari 2600, 5200 (non-working), and 7800 (that is such a great system), Intellivision, Colecovision, Commodore VIC-20, TRS-80, TI-99A, NES, Genesis, PSX, Game Cube, Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. I think that's it.

PRG013 wrote:

she is crazy.

Especially the Odyssey in box. Those belong in a museum.

I just realized that the one and only console I've ever gotten as a gift was the NES back when it first came out. Later, my brother and I pooled our money and bought an SNES. Every console since then, I've paid for myself. I don't even know what it'd be like to get a console as a present.

Back to confessions:

I can't/won't play multiplayer. It's kind of a no fun restriction, since there's a lot of cool potential for game design and fun in multiplayer games. I just know that I don't have the skill or attention span for it. I have fun initially. Then I sometimes get distracted because I'm bored of playing the same deathmatch on the same few maps over and over. If I don't get distracted, or if I do and come back, I pretty quickly get tired of not getting any better. I have a terrible memory for maps, so "learn the map" is never something I've been able to do. I also have terrible reflexes and aiming. That means that at my very best, I'm on the low end of mediocre. That's really not fun, and the repetition from before means I won't commit the time to really getting better. I can only smack my head into that brick wall so many times.

"Play with friends" you say? Never seems to work. I can usually only do MP for an hour or less before I get frustrated and quit out, so I hate telling people I'll play with them tonight, only to have a bad match and disappear. And, since I don't play very long per session, or of a single game for a long time, meeting new friends that I don't know IRL doesn't really happen either.

So yeah, I basically write off any game that's mostly MP, and it kinda makes me sad, because I feel like I'm missing out on something fun.

Chaz, half of me is saying all the things you've heard before. The other half is nodding sympathetically. For me, it's game types I cannot play multiplayer - I am rotten at RTS games, so I never play them.

I think there is a lot of value, in every situation, for recognizing what you are good at and what you enjoy, and there's nothing wrong with avoiding the rest. Try not to feel too left out, sounds like you have good reasons for your choices.

The most fun I've ever had with online multiplayer has been the asynchronous variety. The leaderboard type that updates in real-time. I'm thinking Trials HD, SSX (2012) and the godly Forza 4 Rival Mode where you see your own progress in relation to your friends play out live as if they were right there.

It's a low pressure deal where I can score-chase at my own pace with real people. It just about the only online gaming I'm interested in.

I'm in much the same boat as Chaz when it comes to multiplayer, although sometimes I fall into a multiplayer game really hard for a little while. I played The Last of Us multiplayer for at least two months, and TF2 and L4D are games I find myself going back to over and over again, or at least I will be going back to them (especially L4D2) once I get a computer that is capable of running them properly. I especially need a new computer for Evolve. I already know that game is going to consume my life for an extended period of time.

I don't know if this is so much a confession as it is a regret. Back in the days of the SNES, I owned many of the best RPGs the system had to offer. Final Fantasy 4 and 6, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound. Then the N64 entered my life, as did a computer and the internet, which led to the discovery of emulation. Suddenly I could play all my favorite SNES games right on my computer. I no longer had need of that old console gathering dust under the TV, not when I had the new hotness. I gathered up my SNES and my entire collection, took it all down to the nearest game store and traded it all in to put towards some N64 goodness. $161 was what I got for my SNES and games, and I thought that was great. I could get 3 whole N64 games!

Now I sit here, trying to build up a healthy retro collection, and I'm looking at the ridiculously high prices of SNES RPGs. Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, altogether worth more than my entire SNES collection was worth back in 1997. I see Earthbound complete-in-box and I weep...

RnRClown wrote:

I also burned out on Red Dead Redemption in and around Mexico. I was really enjoying it until my final few hours where it suddenly became tiresome.

Heh, Mexico is my favorite part of that game.

I'm finding I'm still enjoying GTA V far more than some of the smaller indie darlings I've played of late (FTL, Kerbal Space Program, The Banner Saga, to name a few). I absolutely adore those games, but in terms of amount of time I've spent in a game vs. how much of that time (and how much of the game) I actively enjoyed, GTA "wins" hands down.

Chaz wrote:

I just realized that the one and only console I've ever gotten as a gift was the NES back when it first came out. Later, my brother and I pooled our money and bought an SNES. Every console since then, I've paid for myself. I don't even know what it'd be like to get a console as a present.

Back to confessions:

I can't/won't play multiplayer. It's kind of a no fun restriction, since there's a lot of cool potential for game design and fun in multiplayer games. I just know that I don't have the skill or attention span for it. I have fun initially. Then I sometimes get distracted because I'm bored of playing the same deathmatch on the same few maps over and over. If I don't get distracted, or if I do and come back, I pretty quickly get tired of not getting any better. I have a terrible memory for maps, so "learn the map" is never something I've been able to do. I also have terrible reflexes and aiming. That means that at my very best, I'm on the low end of mediocre. That's really not fun, and the repetition from before means I won't commit the time to really getting better. I can only smack my head into that brick wall so many times.

"Play with friends" you say? Never seems to work. I can usually only do MP for an hour or less before I get frustrated and quit out, so I hate telling people I'll play with them tonight, only to have a bad match and disappear. And, since I don't play very long per session, or of a single game for a long time, meeting new friends that I don't know IRL doesn't really happen either.

So yeah, I basically write off any game that's mostly MP, and it kinda makes me sad, because I feel like I'm missing out on something fun. :(

One of the reasons I switched online nicknames was just how horrible I was at games like (long ago) Counter-Strike. When I did finally manage to kill someone...I figured it would be embarrassing to be killed by a Winnie the Pooh character -- and far less satisfying to kill me.

That said, there are many coop games, some twitchy and some really not, that you might find you love playing with GWJ folks. Maybe you'd be semi-bad at Borderlands 2, but who cares when you got 1-3 Goodjers along. I got back into playing some Left 4 Dead 2 and dude, I suck at it, but nobody seemed to mind. It's the whole reason to play with wonderful people like we got here. In non-twitch territory (not a FPS), games like Terraria and Starbound have some great multiplayer with Goodjers at a much slower pace. Build a huge building together. A random work of art. Go exploring, digging, (and in Starbound, serious looting of populated worlds) and bring back stuff to add to the home base of the Goodjers.

I can't stand Resident Evil 4.

I've tried, multiple times, to get into the game and I just don't find it compelling at all.

The village section is okay, but it craps out after that.

As far as I'm concerned, Code Veronica is the true RE4 and the Resident Evil CG movie Degeneration (where Leon and Claire are in the airport) is RE5. It's so weird they went with Las Plagas for RE4, yet traditional zombies for the movie.

RE Revelaitons is RE6. The other RE4, 5 and 6 don't exist.

Roo wrote:

That said, there are many coop games, some twitchy and some really not, that you might find you love playing with GWJ folks. Maybe you'd be semi-bad at Borderlands 2, but who cares when you got 1-3 Goodjers along. I got back into playing some Left 4 Dead 2 and dude, I suck at it, but nobody seemed to mind. It's the whole reason to play with wonderful people like we got here. In non-twitch territory (not a FPS), games like Terraria and Starbound have some great multiplayer with Goodjers at a much slower pace. Build a huge building together. A random work of art. Go exploring, digging, (and in Starbound, serious looting of populated worlds) and bring back stuff to add to the home base of the Goodjers. :)

You're not wrong. For me, Terraria/Mincraft/Starbound don't work at all because I just lose interest in that kind of undirected "experience" thing instantly.

I actually did play Borderlands 1 all the way through with the same group of three guys, and it was fun except for the one guy who liked to hoover up absolutely everything, even if you needed it and he was just going to sell it. I have a bit of a hard time joining new groups, even friendly ones. It's probably some kind of minor social anxiety thing. I also have a hard time distinguishing voices, and really hate when games don't display who's talking. Then it just turns into a random mishmash of people talking, and I can't get to the point where I know who I'm talking to or playing with.

When I did finally manage to kill someone...I figured it would be embarrassing to be killed by a Winnie the Pooh character --

I used to race against Fluffyjumperman in Burnout Takedown, and it was so funny to be beaten by him.