As a kid at that time, I remember seeing Defender appear at the local pizza place. At one point, that little corner arcade had a Defender, Asteroids, PAC Man, and eventually a Star Wars cabinet.
Defender was a stand out experience. At that time, there was nothing like it.
Needless to say, getting pizza was amazing! We, friends and I, would wolf it down and run off to dump the money we saved and whatever we could mooch from the always intrigued, and somewhat confused adults at the table.
Curiously, one remarked to the effect of the pizza being a side show with the real money going into beer and games. I do not recall them playing much, content to drink and enjoy our antics.
The very first time I saw Defender, a friend and I had been studying the games, reading about graphics, and thought it was something special just from attract mode. Good resolution for the time, color cycling, 16 colors, and the motion spoke to something intense.
Of course it totally was!
Those sounds pumped out of a respectable amp, lots of bass, and bang on clarity were the kind of experience one does not forget. Same goes for the visuals. That particular cabinet was not totally new. It has seen some love.
All combined, little bits of dust on the CRT, great, worked in controls, other artifacts one would see from a machine seeing consistent and aggressive plays, the only way I can describe our impressions was like that of a powerful sports car, idling after a pro worked it in on the track, and then... our turn.
I say, we, our... because the first few runs was a two player experience. One would be watching, trying to understand all the baddies, flow, what happens, when, why, all while the other is staying in game, blasting away, hoping to clear the level.
We would alternate too. Play every other level, whatever made sense as we gained the skill needed to play through.
But the real show was an older kid who showed up one day able to play for a considerable time. Game difficulty ramps for a while. New players have no real idea what is to come, and the moment they do, they crave it again and again. A person can get into flow just watching someone play this game.
Raw games like this, and by that I mean having really solid basics along with slowdowns, and such that would normally take one out of the experience, ended up taking one deeper into it all. Soon, those are known, expected, a sign of mastery.
For an example, see the original "Star Raiders" on Atari 8 bit computers. It is similarly raw, with similar slowdowns. Years later that game was fixed with highly optimized particle computations and would run at a solid 50 / 60hz depending on whatever region it was played.
Some appreciated it, but a surprising number of people, myself included, found it more sterile. It just is not the same.
Stargate is kind of like that, but is also a different game, so it does not detract like the fix to Star Raiders did.
And through all this, I just wanted to convey how those early experiences went. This game is remarkable, and for many, again myself included, an experience worth having anytime. This title gets a player into flow, the zone, whatever people call it, rapidly.
Yeah hard to describe probably to anyone growing up in a post-YouTube, post-Steam, post-Playstation store era, but getting a video or playable demo of like 20 or 30 games on a demo disc that was sometimes packaged in with a magazine you'd buy in the store was incredible.
My memories of this are also from playing it on the original PlayStation. When I saw the article headline I immediately heard the "Ridge Raaacer" voice in my head, it's been 20 years and I still remember it clearly.
I really loved my Sega CD though. Shining Force CD and Corpse Killer (a FMV shooter) seemed revolutionary at the time.
I also had some turn based Dracula adventure game where you chose how to spend your time that was terrifying to me so I once hit the “rest” button in my Victorian era London apartment until it was 1994, which I thought was pretty hilarious ( Dracula would just immediately kill you when you ventured outside but 10 year old me didn’t quite realize how video games worked).
The PS1 didn’t really have those weird experimental FMV games but wow demo disks were my bread and butter for a poor kid.
I still remember the day I walked into my local games store and bought it off the shelf. It was flying off the shelves. I think there was a cover disc demo the previous month which had started the hype machine.
Had one as a kid too. It was my intro to video games so I've got fond memories of it. It's funny I had a lot of fun with the games but didn't realize until years later that a lot of the games we had were just clones of more popular games.
I miss this model for games. Demo disks were my favorite thing in the world. I'd play a demo a dozen times or so before I decided that it was worth begging a parent to buy the game for me.
The “prompt” was a very very brief yellow flash on the periphery of the screen in the direction you were supposed to move the joystick. I tried it a few times as a kid but was far too poor to get past the first one or two prompts. The visuals were mind boggling and the gameplay was abysmal, so my friends and I would usually just stare at the demo reel before moving on to a game that would stretch our quarters farther (gauntlet, tmnt, street fighter, etc). Ah, those were the days…!
That sounds terrifying lol. I loved these games as a kid as well but couldn't play it because of how scary they were. It wasn't until I became a young adult that I was able to actually experience them, as well as horror movies.
As for the console I also got extremely lucky and managed to snag one with no mod chip or any other alterations whatsoever. Now that we have software exploits for the PS2 through FreeMcboot it seemed like the best bet from a collection standpoint.
I don't remember reading any of the manuals of any of the games I played as a kid in the 80s. I don't even remember seeing them. I just remember putting the game in the console as quickly as possible and figuring it out.
Fond memories… a game shop had one you could play on as a guest, there was always a queue. Unimaginable to young me that some people actually owned them.
I remember playing and enjoying a side scrolling shooter with weird penis-shaped space ships (Last Resort).
You’re also my hero. I remember being like… 13 and seeing a copy of MG:S at the store… for PC! I will freely admit it, I hid the copy behind the most boring games on the shelf, and came back and bought it a week later, it was still safely hidden. I distinctly remember the clerk that I paid was quite irritated, almost as if they couldn’t find where I hid it so they could buy it themselves.
In any event, that game, and that port, were a part of my childhood that I will always remember.
reply