I Love The 90s: Video Games.

I Loved 90s games, I'm not talking solitaire, FreeCell or Minesweeper on the PC. I’m talking old school Nintendo (and not the 64) and Sega Mega Drive. You know the ones that you couldn't save on so you had to keep playing and if you had to sleep then you needed to leave the console on overnight, and if you ran out of lives then you had to go all the way back to the beginning of the game. I remember playing 'Super Mario Bros III' for days. I remember playing the level in 'Sonic The Hedgehog' where you get three lives, then killing myself and playing it again I can't remember how many times so I had like 100 lives to last me the rest of the game.

The 90s was the decade that video games evolved from the iconic flat 2D worlds of platform games such as 'Alex Kidd', 'Earthworm Jim' and 'Donkey Kong', into the mind blowing world of 3D. It saw the rise of several new genres of games from first person shooter to Survival horror.
here's one of my favourite 2D worlds ever, Super Mario Bros III.

 

In 1992 came the incredibly addictive 'Street Fighter II' which is aften considered a revolutionary moment in the fighting game genre, not only advancing the detail of the fighters and the battle ground but it allowed friends to do what they have been wanting to do to each other for years, kick the shit out of each other.

 

 

Multiplayer was something that used to be restricted to the arcade but was now readily available in your own home and with that came a new wave of racing games, including my favorite at the time 'Mirco Machines'. you couldn't beat racing round the kitchen table. then years later it happened, the best racing game ever made in my eyes ever; 'Mario kart'. I still play it to this day.

 

In 1996 the PlayStation changed my life and by that I mean, eliminated my social life, it opened the door for adult gamers and it just made playing video games cool. It also introduced me to a very important woman in my early teens, Lara Croft in 'Tomb Raider'.

 

That game was my first experience of playing in a completely 3D environment and I was amazed, excited and terrified all at the same time. The first moment of encountering the wolves made me think, do I really want to play this? Not to mention that bloody T-Rex coming out of nowhere, Jesue Christ! ‘Tomb Raider’ became one of the most iconic games of all time and spawned two follow ups before the decade was out, I loved them both. However, ‘Tomb Raider’ seems tame in comparison to the new development in video games that was about to flourish, ‘The Survival Horror’.

 

Do you remember that moment when you first play ‘Resident Evil’ and you walk round the corner and you see someone bent over a body on the floor and they slowly turn round and it's a bloody buggery zombie! Or when you walk down that corridor and the damn dogs jump through the window - scared the shit out of me. Looking back now, it's lost a lot of its impact since then because so many games have copied its style but you can't beat the original. Oh, apart from ‘Silent Hill’ of course, which was even scarier, if that’s possible.

Here's that first Zombie encounter from 'Resident Evil.'

 

 

Now I know how dated it looks, but at the time it was ground-breaking.

 

I loved games from the 90s; from the way Sonic would look at you and tap his foot if you stopped playing for too long to the tediousness of walking up the stairs and opening doors in 'Resident Evil'. it was an incredible decade to grow up in and there was so much that happened that i haven't even mentioned. PC games like 'Doom', the development of stealth games such as 'Metal Gear Solid'.

 

 

Online gaming started to take off by the end of the decade (I wasn't lucky/rich enough to have the internet until later) and role playing games like 'Final Fantasy' were amazingly popular but i never got the hype and don't really enjoy those kinds of games, give me a gun and let me run. Right, I'm off to play some 'House of the dead'.

 

Was there anything that you remember that I forgot? Which was your favourite video game? Let me know. Like, comment, follow and stay tuned for more fun from the 90s to come.