1995: Royal Park & PC comebacks

I was eight years old when my family moved out of our first Australian home and started renting in a nice little suburb called Royal Park. I was in year two or three at the time, and attended Hendon Primary School, where I was known as that weird foreign kid who liked creepy things like monsters and unexplained phenomena like ghosts.

Sometime just before or after we moved to Royal Park, my dad acquired a computer. I don't remember what kind of computer it was, or what kind of "specs" it had, to my eight year old self, it was enough that it was a computer, and it was ours.

I remember it running on an operating system called Norton Commander:














See, it wasn't quite Windows, but it wasn't DOS either. You could actually see a list of all the files in every folder. My computer had a folder called GAMES on it, and that was my favourite folder.

When we got the computer, it had maybe nine or ten games in the games folder, all of which were shareware. At the time I had no idea what shareware was, to me they were full games and I would grow to love each one.

Spitwad Willy













Spitwad Willy was awesome. I remember it being one of the first ever games that was just played by me, in fact I don't think Dad even knew about its existence. It came on the computer as a shareware, but it may as well have been the full version.

The whole idea was that you were Willy, and you spat through a tube at bouncy balls that were bouncing all around you. The balls would start out large and slow, and when you'd shoot one it would separate into smaller, quicker balls. If a ball touched you, you'd lose a life. It was a simple, genius concept. I only ever played it for about five minutes at a time, but I very fondly remember it.

Jill of the Jungle












At the time, shareware was really hitting its peak in popularity, with companies like Apogee, id Software, and Epic Megagames sending out free trial versions of their games, some of which became more popular and widely known than the full versions ever did. Jill of the Jungle was one such game.

A simple run and jump platformer, Jill was just one among many colourful PC platformer games I grew to love during this era. Jill, for me, was also an introduction to sexy female protagonists. I could feel something stirring deep inside of me every time I looked at her pixelated little body. Jesus, that sounded wrong..

Commander Keen













Fuck yeah. Who doesn't love Commander Keen? I remember playing a Keen game, I think it was number four (pictured), and never giving up until I acquired the demos for all of them. Number four was always my favourite, though. I remember it had some really interesting and amusing enemy mechanics, like enemies that would run away from you. It was a really fun computer game world, and it really defined computer gaming for me at that time.

One of the Keen games also had a bonus pong-like game called Paddle War integrated into it, I think, and that was equally badass.

At the time, with me being quite young, I found many games to be too difficult or tricky for me to finish, so I recall being extremely familiar with the first level of pretty much every game I would play. For example, the level above, in the forest, I knew like the back of my hand, but every level after that was like a new discovery.

Hocus Pocus













Hocus Pocus was another one of those Apogee shareware titles. The thing about this one was that it was a bit more recent when I got it, so I was blown away by the shading on the graphics and cool sound blaster sound effects. The gameplay itself was decidedly average, however.

You were a little apprentice wizard, or something. You shot little bolts of magic. What else do you need to know?

At the time, I had a small circle of school friends, and we all lived in the same neighborhood, so we would ride around on our bikes, going from house to house, and hang out. I had the computer and the NES, my friend Ross had a Mega Drive, and my friend Pavel had a SNES. These two guys would be my introduction to the next generation of console games.

Ross would show me an equal amount of amazing stuff and horrible stuff. The amazing stuff included a game called Streets of Rage, which blew me away with its badassity. We would all take turns in co-op to beat the game. I think at one point, Ross may have even lent me his Mega Drive for a weekend, and my dad and I would thrash Streets of Rage and Golden Axe on it.
I was always the Dwarf in Golden Axe, and Dad was the Amazon. In Streets of Rage, I played as the girl and my dad was one of the dudes.

The horrible stuff on the Mega Drive that I was privy to included crap like Cool Spot, Bubsy and Shaq-Fu. All stuff that kids who don't know any better would buy.

Pavel would show me amazing stuff on SNES, like Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct.

For some reason, I never bugged my parents to buy me one of the current generation consoles. I guess I was content enough with my computer. It seemed more personal than a console -- to have all your games in one place, on one interface, rather than on cartridges, which would become sticky after being soiled with cordial and soft drink (I'm looking at you Ross).

1994: Australia & the NES

In 1993, my parents decided to emigrate to Adelaide, Australia, and start a new life for us. I never really knew the actual, proper reason for it, it was always just explained to me as "wanting a better life".

We arrived on April 19th, 1994, which was coincidentally also my 7th birthday. The place they put us in for the first year of our new Australian life was this isolated complex of near-identical units called "Pennington Migrant Centre". There were other families there, many from Russia, and many with kids of their own who would become my friends.

The day after we arrived, my parents took me to the city to explore and to shop. One of the things they bought was a Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, for my birthday. By this point in time, the NES was in its twilight years, and the SNES was definitely out. Not knowing anything about video game console generations, my parents bought me the cheaper console. Hey, they all do the same thing, right?

I didn't care. I was happy. Overjoyed, even.

Along with the console, my dad and I picked out three games. I think we picked them just because their covers looked cool/interesting. We would come to love two of them, and regret buying the other.

Super Turrican














Super Turrican was awesome. At the time I was hugely into robots and transformers and just dudes who were like, half machine, so I think it was probably I who picked this game. The game was a hard-as-nails platformer, sort of like a lesser-known Metroid. I think Turrican could even turn into a ball as well.

Controlling a robotic badass (presumably named Turrican), you traversed a weird world full of metal hands that floated in the air and tried to smash you, as well as all manner of other bizarre enemies. It was very cool, but also very hard. I could not get past the first level, so my dad had to take over playing the game.

Something else about this game was that the levels went almost as high vertically as they did horizontally. This actually caused my dad and I to draw up maps of the levels on A4 paper. I don't think we ever finished Turrican, maybe because we got stuck.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles















This game. This game totally ruled. I also picked this game because at the time the Turtles were my heroes. This game gets talked about very negatively these days, especially when people compare it to the later NES turtles games, which were more traditional, easier, scrolling brawlers. But to me, this game was fucking awesome.

You controlled the turtles on their quest to stop Shredder from doing... something, and also I think Splinter was kidnapped, I dunno. The plot didn't matter. What did matter was the fact that you were the turtles, you fought some downright bizarre and imaginative enemies (99% of which were made up and not from the series, but I didn't care), and the game was god-damn hard. If you've played this game, you would remember the dam-swimming bomb-disarming level, where everything you touched would hurt you and you also had a timer to race against. Nasty.

My dad and I got pretty obsessed with finishing this game. We actually got into the habit of leaving our NES on overnight, because I don't think it had a save or a password feature. One time, a couple of my Russian friends were at my house, and one of them wanted to play a game so he turned off the NES. I cried for hours. We had maybe two levels to go...

Dad and I wanted a memento of our time with this game so we began to record our progress on VHS. I think this VHS still exists, in a dusty corner of a cupboard in my mum's house somewhere.

And yes, we eventually did finish it. And it was good.

Elite














Elite was the game that we regretted buying. I think my dad picked it. I know the game has been lauded for its intricate portrayal of space trading and combat, and I think dad even tried to play it alone for a while, but I was having none of it. "It's just two colours!" I remember saying.

We only ever owned these three games on our first console, but we definitely used to rent a whole lot more. A rental that I hold in really high regard was "A Boy and his Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia". It was about a boy and his blob, and how they deal with the trouble on the blob's home planet, Blobolonia. I remember actually being emotionally touched by the boy's friendship with his friend, who would follow him anywhere. Also the concept of feeding jelly beans to your blob and your blob reacting differently to each flavour was a very novel concept in platformers -- up until then I was used to "A is Jump and B is Attack".

My mum and dad would take me sometimes to the local Foodland supermarket, and while they were collecting groceries, would leave me alone with the sole arcade machine at the front of the store -- motherfuckin' "Street Fighter II". I remember being wowed by this game -- smooth, colourful graphics, amazing looking characters, the exclusivity of having to pay a dollar to play. I think I got to play only a couple of times, and both times I chose E. Honda for some reason. The only way I would win is by doing that thing where he moves his hand really fast over and over again.

Another thing I recall from this time, in a similar vein, is what my parents used to do when they would go shopping at Port Adelaide. They would leave me in this small, privately owned computer store for at least an hour, to play on the computers there while they went about their business. There was only a handful of computers there, and not that great a selection of games -- the only one I distinctly recall was a collection of Monty Python minigames. The visits to that store stopped after one fateful day, in which one of the sales assistants physically chased after my parents and me after they picked me up, and said something to the effect of "We are not a daycare. Don't come back".

1987-1993: Russia & early PC games

I was born in April 1987 in a city called Nizhni Novgorod, which is home to around a million people on the banks of the river Volga in Russia. I remember my early life being decidedly average. I never attended school in Russia, only kindergarten. I never wanted to go.

There was something however, that I always did want to go to. My dad worked as some kind of computer guy, possibly a programmer, in an ordinary office building somewhere in the middle of the city. Every now and then he would take me to his work for the day. Presumably to keep me from dying of boredom, my dad used to show me games that he and his colleagues had installed on their work computers.

This was to be my introduction into the world of games and gaming.

To a five year old kid who was until then brought up on crappy low-budget Russian kids tv shows with bad puppets of squirrels and badgers singing happy songs, to see a game where a motherfucking barbarian goes around a motherfucking dark fantasy kingdom chopping shit up with a huge sword, is definitely an eye opener.

I would sit on my dad's lap and he would show me these games in his office. He would play them on these old, obsolete-even-by-then computers, on 12" screens.

There are only five that I can remember now, but I'm sure there were more:

Sid Meier's Civilization













This was my dad's favourite, and at the time I could not figure out why. To my young eyes, it was just moving a bunch of little squares around a map. I was always bored when my dad played this game, even though he would try to explain the concept -- that he was in charge of a whole country, or that he was being attacked by the Romans, or that he had almost completed the Great Library.

It all went over my head, but little did I know that my dad's enthusiasm for this game would plant the seeds for my own obsession with the game's sequel, Civilization II, around seven or eight years later.

Barbarian













When I would get bored with Civ, my dad would say something like "Do you want to play Varvar for a while, then?", which was the Russian word for Barbarian. I don't remember a lot from this game, but I do remember being very impressed. My dad never played it that much, he always preferred thinking games, I think he just showed it to me to impress me.

The premise is you are a badass barbarian, killing guys in a fantasy setting. Why? Why not!

F-19 Stealth Fighter
















This was my dad's second favourite. Microprose, who developed Civilization, also created this tactical flight simulator. I remember thinking how hard it looked to play when dad used to play it. The game was mission-based, with my dad being sent out on sabotage, recon missions, etc.

One of the things I most fondly remember was the feeling of success and elation the game gave me when my dad completed a mission -- it showed the pilot landing safely, then the hatch opening and the grinning pilot giving a thumbs up, or waving, or something similar. Then it would show him partying in a colourful room with all his friends.

Knightmare















Knightmare was totally badass. The premise was simple -- you're a knight, you enter a spooky castle, and proceed to slaughter thousands of ghouls and gremlins to get through each level. It was essentially a vertical shooter, but instead of being a plane, you're a dude, slowly walking up, and enemies come from the top of the screen. You start off shooting a single arrow, one at a time, but along the way you can change your ammunition by finding powerups -- you can eventually shoot knives, boomerangs, flaming arrows, triple arrows, all with their own strengths and behaviours. Cool.

Each level was themed. One would be a grass-themed level, then the next would be desert themed, then fire-themed. It all defied physics because it was meant to take place in a castle, but whatever, it was cool. Each level would end with a boss fight. The boss would just move from side to side across the top of the screen, shooting various projectiles at you.

My dad showed me this game back in Russia, but he never got that far into it. Maybe the second level or so. I like to think that with this game, he was waiting for me to grow up a bit, because when I had turned about ten or eleven and we had emigrated to Australia, my dad and I revisited this game, but this time we played it co-op! Yes, thats right. My dad and I, two knights side by side, kicking ass. I think we made it to level nine or something.

There were other games as well, but them I don't remember as much. I think there was one game, that was monochrome red-and-black coloured, in which you were a ninja sabotaging a facility of some kind. You had shurikens I think, and could climb walls, and there were attack dogs and other dudes.

I never really played these games in Russia. They all looked so difficult, and my dad was so good at them that I think I was mostly interested in seeing him succeed, rather than trying them myself.

But they planted the seed of gaming passion that would take hold of me later in my life.

Introduction.

Hi, I'm Art. I'm 23, live in Adelaide, South Australia, and I haven't done anything overly important in my life yet. Maybe one day I will, but nevermind. There have been few things in my life I have been actually properly "passionate" about, whatever that means. I guess it means something I really, really, really like, or like doing. There was drama and acting for about two or three years, but that fizzled out pretty quick. No, the one thing in my life that I can say I am undeniably passionate about is gaming.

I began to think, where did this love come from, how was it molded over time, and where is it taking me? I began to think back on my life and my love affair with my controller.

I doubt many people will read this blog because I will talk about games in an insular, personal context, so consider this a therapeutic, nostalgic, personal trip back in time.

I will start at the beginning of my life and work through each period of my life, and the games I was playing then.

Think of this blog as one guy's love letter to his favourite artform.