Retro Time part 2

To continue the discussion of my early gaming influences, lets move on to the PS2. Once again I never owned one of these, but my friend did let me borrow his for a while when he first bought an Xbox. In the little time I had it I managed to beat Final Fantasy X. I know, it seems like those are all I play, and maybe that was true for a while, but that was the last one I played. Now that I don't have that PS2 anymore I kinda want to buy one for cheap and get FFXII so I can get through that too, but I'm not sure that's ever going to happen. The only other game I really played on PS2 was GTA3, but that didn't last very long before I had to give it back.

I would move on to Xbox here, but I never got one. I know, I know, I missed out on all those games, especially Halo and KOTOR, but I didn't have much money at the time so gaming systems were a pretty low priority for me.

I did, however, buy a GameCube, and that thing got a fair amount of use. First game I had was Animal Crossing, and I pretty much played that until I was bored out of my mind with it. Once I paid off all my debt there really wasn't much left to do that interested me, so I gave it up. Next up was Mario Sunshine, and while not as groundbreaking as Mario 64, it was still a fun game that I managed to get through pretty quickly, although I didn't unlock everything. Finally they came out with Metroid Prime and I grabbed that up quick. I had been waiting for another Metroid game to be release, and since the N64 never got one I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen. The game was pretty fun, and I made it all the way through, except I missed one missile pack and I can't figure out which I missed, so that bummed me out. Now we come to the only fighting game I really play, and that would be Smash Bros Melee. I'm terrible at most fighting games, but when all you have to do is button mash I tend to be pretty good, and I of course unlocked everything. The only other games I played regularly were the Mario sports games (golf, tennis, soccer), and while Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker was fun, I watched my brother beat it and decided I didn't need to go through all that work too.

I suppose that moves us on to the Wii. At this point I wasn't into gaming as much as I used to be, and for the longest time I only had the Wii Sports that comes with the system. A little later I bought Zelda and Metroid, but I don't think I ever made it more than halfway through either of those. I have some plans to beat the games I have right now, but it's gonna be tough finding time to do it. All I know is Mario Kart will be first up and we'll go from there.

Xbox360 would be last on the list of consoles, and is also the last console I bought. So far the game I've played the most by far is Rock Band. This game is ridiculously fun, and even though you find yourself playing a handful of songs over and over, I never get tired of drumming, even though if you stuck me in front of a real drum kit I probably wouldn't be able to do much. I also played a little bit into Mass Effect, but that game just overwhelms me with how big it is, I'm a little intimidated by it. I also played through the Halo 3 campaign on co-op, and that was fun, but I haven't played online much. I'm gonna have to overcome my reservations about these games and just play them, they were great from what I could tell.

Last but not least is the PC, and this one is gonna take up a lot of space so get ready to read, a lot. I was very young when my dad first let me on the computer, an IBM 386. I think it had a 8Mb processor, probably about 4Mb of ram, and a hard drive so small it would make today's computers laugh. I had to learn DOS to use it because I don't think Windows was even out yet. Anyway, besides the learning games for kids, we also had a game called Captain Comic. It was a very early side-scrolling game where your character can run, jump, and shoot. The object was to collect certain items and those would lead you to the next area, until you finally reached the goal, pretty simple, and for a little kid it was as fun as any videogame could be. My dad would also bring home shareware from work, including Commander Keen and a couple of the Hugo games. These were basically free games that would usually come with new computers, but the offices my dad visited had no use for them so he would take them. The first RPG-like game I played that I think got me into them in the first place was Hero's Quest. You had a choice to be one of three types of characters and while you could move your character with the arrow keys, you had to type in any other actions you wanted to perform and it was very particular about what words you used as it only recognized certain phrases. It was a great game for the time, and provides lots of puzzles to keep you busy.

Moving on to post-Windows 95 games, the first one that comes to mind is Warcraft II. My uncle actually suggested this game to me, and I was blown away when I started playing. The campaigns were very challenging, and this game pretty much got me to realize that besides RPG's, RTS games were my bread and butter. Not too long after I picked up Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and the expansions, and was once again blown away. I'm not really sure what it is about those older RTS games, maybe the simplicity and the challenge it presents when trying to defeat an enemy that has units that don't differ from your own by much, but they were a blast to play. Next on the list is a game you may or may not recognize, and if you don't you should check it out because it is very unique and addictive. This would be Heroes of Might and Magic. I guess it would be classified as a strategy game, but it is much more than that. You basically have characters called heroes that command your armies, and you move them around but they are limited to a certain number of moves per day. Your army can be recruited from castles you own and the numbers of units replenish at the start of each week. Usually the goal is to take over all enemy castles and defeat all their heroes to win, but the computer AI in this game is very smart and makes the game very challenging. They also had a multiplayer option that let you take turns on one computer. It made the game take forever, but playing against a couple other people made it much more fun. I also played Heroes 2 and 3 and both were well worth it.

And now that we get to the more current games, Starcraft is the first that comes to mind. This game is probably one of the greatest RTS games of all time, and for good reason. I never did make it through all the campaigns, they were just too hard, but the online play was where it was at. Besides the normal mode you could also play maps that others created called 'Use Map Settings' maps. These maps let the map makers program in events and such that let them make something totally different than the normal mode game. I can't tell you how many hours I spent trying make my own maps, not to mention how many more hours I spent playing other maps, it really did set the standard for future RTS games. Next up is another game I played for countless hours, and just happens to be made by Blizzard as well. I'm talking, of course, about Diablo II. When I first got this game I didn't have an internet connection, but despite that it was probably one of the best games I ever played. When I finally got internet and was able to play online is when it really started taking over. I was on there constantly, always looking for the best items, trying to trade other players for stuff I wanted, it was too addicting to give up. I finally stopped playing for a while and my account got deleted due to it being inactive for too long, so when I decided I wanted to play again I found all my characters were gone and I decided it was probably for the better. Of course not too long after that I found myself a sweet little game in Max Payne. I really think the biggest draw of this game was the 'bullet-time' button you could push to go in slow motion like in the Matrix, but it was a fun game anyway and I beat it in about 3 days, so it was on to finding a new game after that.

This brings us to my current gaming obsessions, and number one on the list is, of course, World of Warcraft. If you haven't heard of this game, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog. I bought it about 3 months after its release and have only recently stopped playing, making for about 3 years of playing, give or take a few months. I don't think any other game has taken up more of my time than this one, and it basically caused me to neglect any other games, hence my lack of games on the newer consoles, and I didn't even play much compared to others, it was just that the limited time I did have to play games I would dedicate to WoW, so the other games took a back seat. Only one game took my attention away for a few weeks, and that was the Half-Life orange box, namely Portal and TF2. Very cool games, and if you don't want to spend the money on the whole package, both can be bought separately now. I beat Portal in three days, including the extra challenge levels, but it was still a very good and fresh game, I just wish it was longer. TF2 held my attention for a while, but WoW soon sucked me back in.

I know I left out a bunch, but I think I got the main games in there. If you haven't played or heard of any of these games I would suggest you check them out. Anybody else have some retro games that you think people should know about?