My Personal Gaming History

or: Not Everyone Had An NES And Played Super Mario As A Child

Intro

As one might be able to assume, the history of video games, of their spread, their significance, etc., differs from region to region, and country to country. There's certainly been a lot said about the origins of video games and the history of the medium in both Japan and the United States, and it's certainly great that these stories are being told — however, they're not the only ones. Video games were and are an international phenomenon, and especially earlier in their history, they and their players weren't as homogenous as they are now, or frankly, as they're depicted to have been.

What I am trying to say is: In the modern discourse around retro games, the North American side of things is often implied, if not outright stated, to be mostly identical to that of most of the rest of the world. You know, that Atari was the thing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that the Video Game Crash of 1983 destroyed console gaming, until that upstart from Japan, Nintendo, conquered the video game industry with their NES.

That is not what happened outside of the United States.

And that non-American history, what happened in Western and Eastern Europe, let alone in South America, South Africa, in Asia outside of Japan, in Australia, New Zealand, etc. — all that is underrepresented to the detriment of all those places' local history, and to gaming history in general.

History being told mainly from a US perspective means that, for example, most Amiga games are usually derided as "eurotrash" or "eurojank". Or that NES games like the Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man series are seen as these universally beloved classics of gaming. It means that home computers — besides maybe the Apple II, due to its presence in US schools — and Sega before the Genesis i.e. Mega Drive are usually ignored.

Extending this to the United Kingdom, it is also ignored that certain systems had a much closer mind- and market share in other territories compared to the US or UK. As an example for this, in the 16-bit era, Sega and Nintendo seemed rather neck-and-neck in Germany with neither being the objective "winner" of that generation's console wars.

That said, do note that this is my personal history; it is apocryphal, based on my memories, and likely not 100% universally true for all of (Western) Germany, and especially not all of mainland Europe.

Without further ado, let's get right to it!

(With apologies to Adrian's Digital Basement for swiping this phrase from his intros.)

Early History, the 8-Bit Commodores

I'm from what's probably best classified as a lower to middle class family, and so we've never been cutting edge with our technology. We've always had new things later than others, some things never, so most every game system I've ever played while growing up was already on its way out by the time I got it.

The earliest such system was the Commodore 16, their 1984 attempt at creating an entry-level computer to replace the VIC-20, and compete with similarly cheap machines from Texas Instruments and other manufacturers. I admittedly cannot remember much about my experiences with this one, besides having kept ours until its power supply died, probably sometime in the mid-1990s. There is a photo of me sitting on my dad's lap in front of the C16, but considering I was one or two years old at most at that point — meaning ca. 1988/1989 —, I guess my lack of memories of the system from the time is understandable.

My first real video game experiences came courtesy of the family's then-new Commodore 64, when I was around age 4 or 5, thus 1991 or '92. This system was part of a bundle called Video Supergame 64, sold in Germany in 1988 and '89, containing the computer with power supply, manuals, a joystick, a game cartridge, plus various other paperwork and such. There exists another photo of me, this time in front of the C64, now also featuring a fancy Commodore 1541-II floppy drive and some accessories, all placed on an old white serving cart, in turn sitting in front of our Orion-brand TV.

Games I remember playing include Space Taxi, Crillion, Ghostbusters, Boulder Dash, Maniac Mansion, Nippon, Oil Imperium, Hotel, Giana Sisters, Katakis and McDonaldland, among others. Most of those were cracked copies, and we had very few original games, one of those being McDonaldland.

Space Taxi and Crillion form probably my earliest memories of video games, both of which were very difficult for little young me to understand and play: The former is a single-screen platformer of sorts, where you drive a flying taxi cab and earn money by transporting passengers from A to B. The latter, on the other hand, is a logic puzzle somewhat reminiscent of Breakout or Arkanoid, but with blocks of different colors that can only be broken by recoloring the ball itself to match.

There's two other games of note for me — the first being Nippon, a role-playing game similar to Ultima, where you're transported to a different world called Nippon, based on feudal Japan, and try to find your way back home. This one was a favorite of my mom, one where I mostly watched her play and just occasionally tried to play it myself. The second game is Hotel, a management simulation in which you manage a hotel chain, starting with just a single location, expanding its size and amenities, eventually going around the world to buy hotels, cars and collectibles. This one might be at least part of the reason I've come to like such management, strategy or building games so much.

This computer was certainly formative for me, not just regarding games, but also regarding programming and general interest in technology, and I still own our original machine and several accessories, like its floppy drives — it's just not in the original "breadbin" case anymore, because my late 90s self though the slimmer, somewhat more Amiga-like Commodore 64C case looked better, and put the mainboard into such a shell sourced from, well, the trash. I've since gotten a C64C case in better shape from eBay, which will likely be its forever home. Unless I can find that specific C64G breadbin again, that is.

The Amiga 500

After the Commodore 64 came the Commodore Amiga 500, a logical next step if you're already aligned with Commodore. Dad started out with an A500 and became a big fan of the platform, while mom got one for both of us some time later, probably around 1993 or '94. Ours wasn't quite stock, tho, and not exactly in a good way — it had a PC floppy drive in place of the original, adapted to be used on Amigas as the interface isn't quite the same between the two platforms. This modification, however, did not allow the system to recognize when a disk was swapped, so you had to boot it with a disk already in the drive. This worked fine for software stored on a single disk, but games that required multiple disks were out, such as The Settlers.

We eventually got another Amiga 500, this time with a stock floppy drive, opening up much more of the platform's games library. Over time, this system was upgraded with more RAM, a newer system ROM, a hard drive connected to the side expansion slot, and so on. Its final incarnation was housed inside a PC AT desktop case, sporting a 68030 accelerator board and I believe even a CD-ROM drive, with the original case now demoted to a mere keyboard enclosure.

Games I've played on the Amiga back then were The Settlers, Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, P.P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon, Traps 'n' Treasures, Lemmings 2: The Tribes, North & South, Turrican II, Theme Park, SimCity and Das Telekommando kehrt zurück, along with many others. Again, the majority of these were cracked copies, with Lemmings 2 and Telekommando among the originals.

My earliest memories here are of The Settlers — once we had our second A500, that is —, a city-building strategy game in a medieval setting, with the primary goal being to control the entire map, by building up your settlement, gathering resources, creating a functioning economy, eventually producing military units to conquer other territories. This is the city-builder I really cut my teeth on, even before getting into SimCity, and is another reason why I still like this genre of games so much.

As mentioned before, I had played Giana Sisters and McDonaldland on the C64, but didn't really understand them quite yet, so P.P. Hammer and Traps 'n' Treasures can probably be called my equivalent to someone else's Super Mario Bros., as these two were my proper introduction to platformers. The former is a puzzle-platformer, more specifically, in which you are a treasure hunter equipped with a pneumatic hammer, which you use to uncover keys, power-ups and, of course, treasures in clusters of drillable blocks. The broken blocks will reappear after a certain amount of time, potentially trapping you inside them, causing you to lose a life.

The latter game is a pirate-themed platformer, where you play as a pirate captain whose crew was kidnapped and treasures were looted by another pirate, and you set out to recover them and escape. You run and swim around various stages, fight using various weapons including bombs, get hints from scattered books, carry boxes to create alternate paths, and buy items using coins collected from treasure chests or dropped by defeated enemies — you could even ground-pound a good two or three years before Mario could in Super Mario 64.

Das Telekommando kehrt zurück is a promotional point-and-click adventure game made for Deutsche Telekom, the German telecommunications company privatized from the former Deutsche Bundespost state monopoly, that has you play as a Telekom field engineer, working to repair a video conferencing system at a nature protection association's headquarters, which, as it turns out, fell victim to sabotage. For a game that was basically made as an advertisement for Deutsche Telekom's services, it's a rather well-made one. It is apparently rather short and easy compared to ex. LucasArts various adventure games, but it still was too difficult for young me back then, and it took until replaying it a few years ago for me to finally clear it for the first time.

As for what happened to our A500 from back then, the upgraded beast in the desktop case, I sadly don't remember. It probably got thrown out around the year 2000, after PCs had reached our family and the Amiga was outdated, almost antiquated. I have an A500 again — probably found at a flea market in the mid-2000s — that I have since upgraded to similar specs as our old one, now happily running all these games off an SD card, without the need for disk swapping and the like. Although I could still dig out the old Telekommando disk, which I still have in its original cardboard case, ready to advertise telecommunication services like it's 1993.

Interlude — Other People, Other Systems

My dad and my uncle were Commodore fans, so Commodore is what I experienced the most growing up. We all stuck with their various platforms, especially dad with the Amiga, until long after Commodore's demise in 1994, too — I believe dad used his Amiga 2000, upgraded with a Blizzard accelerator and Picasso IV graphics card, until the very late 90s, only switching to Windows PCs then. So, while I was aware of other computers and consoles through the news and magazines, I rarely got to experience them.

Two friends back then had Super Nintendo consoles, one of them being where I first played that system, with the game in question having been Goof Troop. This was in the mid-1990s, maybe 1996 if I were to guess. That same friend also had a Mega Drive, but I don't think I ever got to play that console when visiting them.

Game Boy on the Go

Probably around 1994, mom got us an original Game Boy at a game store in a nearby city, complete with an English-language copy of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. My guess is that a German copy would've been more expensive, and there wasn't much budget left after buying the system itself for an interesting game. This system would eventually develop bad vertical lines a few years later, and mom's attempt at opening the shell ended up cracking a circuit board inside, so she later bought a new silver Game Boy Pocket to replace it.

The Game Boy, and said Pocket specimen in particular, is what got me into Nintendo, and console and handheld gaming in general. Not the NES, not the SNES, but the Game Boy.

My earliest memory here is with 100% certainty the aforementioned Zelda: Link's Awakening. Many things from this game have stuck with me ever since — the incredible music, the fun characters, the smooth gameplay, many of the little touches, like you always being referred to as "THIEF" once you've stolen from the shop. I still have the official guide book from back then; it's rather tattered by now, but that's what almost 30 years, with ex. several moves, can do to a beloved book.

Zelda aside, some other examples of games I've played are Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Tetris, Donkey Kong Land, Mario & Yoshi, Pokémon Blue, Pokémon Silver and Pokémon Trading Card Game. I assume none of these really need a description.

Pokémon Silver is something worth elaborating on, tho: I had won my copy in an official Nintendo of Europe contest, where you had to sign up via e-mail for a chance to become an "official game tester". Although this really just meant getting the retail game around one week before it hit store shelves, if you were chosen, along with a fancy A4-sized certificate. That said, I can't deny that it was very cool holding a game you've been anticipating in your hands, a week before most other people could get their hands on it, getting a head start in collecting Pokémon and progressing through the story.

Aside from the games I mentioned above, tho, we didn't really have many until the early or even mid-2000s. I played a lot of Zelda, Mario and Pokémon, alongside games on whichever computers we had at that point.

Interlude II — Systems Borrowed, Systems Lost

This is just a short section on systems I remember owning or borrowing at some point, and what experiences I had with them.

I had a Sega Master System II in the early to mid-1990s, bought from a flea market at the school I'd later attend. I only ever had the integrated Alex Kidd game tho, which I didn't think too much of, so this didn't have a lasting impression on me. I still have this specific console somewhere, along with another SMS2 I bought much later in the 2010s, but I still only have a handful of games for it.

I also had an Atari 2600 Jr., although I cannot remember when or where from, nor what games I might've had. I can only assume I wasn't very impressed by it, coming from the C64 or possibly even Amiga by then. I still have this console too, but without any accessories nor games.

Another system I briefly had actually was an NES! But again, I can't remember when or where from, just that I had Ice Climbers as probably my only game, and I don't know what happened to it.

I also did get an SNES in the late 1990s, also from a flea market, but yet again didn't have many games for it — more specifically, the only actual game was SimCity. I later got a Super Game Boy for it as well, which gave the system more of a purpose, as it allowed me to play Pokémon Blue, Yellow and Silver on a much better screen.

Something I borrowed once was a half-broken original PlayStation that only worked when upside-down, and even then only barely. I vaguely remember a flight game, maybe Ace Combat, loading very slowly if at all, rendering the terrain with wildly corrupted textures. This wasn't really much of an experience with the system, as much as it was helping to try and figure out what's wrong with it — I don't think I could help in the end, but at least I tried, I suppose.

Otherwise, I didn't really care for PlayStation, Mega Drive or Saturn much, although I do remember seeing the Saturn and its games in mail order catalogs and thinking that it actually looked pretty cool, while thinking that the PlayStation's design was kinda stupid.

IBM PC Compatibles

On the computer side of things, after the Amiga came the PC. These machines only entered our lives in the late 1990s, probably around 1997 or 1998, by way of a 50 MHz 486DX2 system my parents bought me at a local computer store. This was formerly used as a server, so some of its idiosyncracies are no surprise — it had two full-height 800 MB SCSI hard drives on an Adaptec SCSI host adapter, for example, but no CD-ROM drive. Along with this machine, I got two games: SimCity 2000 and Civilization II.

SimCity 2000 was the MS-DOS floppy disk version, so I could play this on day one of owning the system, while Civilization II was on CD-ROM, which means I had to wait until my aunt gifted me SCSI CD-ROM drive by Teac — model CD-532S, I remember clearly — for either Christmas or my birthday. The former game hence makes up most of my earliest PC gaming memories, including the first time I stayed up until sunrise, just playing through the night, building up my city, getting all the way to creating Launch Arcologies. I don't think I ever got to the Launch arcos to actually, well, launch into space as they do if you have enough of them, tho.

Our PCs got upgraded and replaced a lot over the first couple of years in particular, because dad eventually got PCs himself and we ended up with many hand-me-down parts and such, so my memories of those are a bit of a blur. From that original 486, over a 100 MHz 486DX4 I accidentally fried, to Cyrix 6x86s and AMD K6s, eventually reaching a build based on a 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird in the early 2000s, which lasted me until at least 2007.

As for games, I still had burned copies from friends, but thanks to things like budget releases and full versions on magazine cover CDs, I did have more originals than back on the C64 and Amiga. Along with SimCity 2000 and Civilization II, other games I remember playing are, for example, The Settlers II, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, GTA 2, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and later Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, The Curse of Monkey Island, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Battlefield Vietnam.

The turn of the millenium is also when I first started using the internet regularly. Starting out with a 56k modem, we eventually got 16 Mbit/s DSL via AOL. I began learning more about games and systems I missed, the history of gaming in other parts of the world — like, what, why'd they call it "Genesis" in the US, that's so weird? —, as well as what new stuff was coming out here and elsewhere. It's also where I first encountered emulation and emulators of systems like the Game Boy, SNES and the still very recent Nintendo 64. In fact, an AMD K6-233 with a Voodoo Banshee graphics card is how I first played a certain milestone game that's still among my all-time favorites — The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, via the infamous UltraHLE.

From here on out, PCs ended up co-existing with consoles and handhelds for me, and they still do to this day.

64-Bits of 3D, the Nintendo 64

My first experience with the Nintendo 64 was when I borrowed one alongside F-Zero X from a friend's friend, while I lent them my Game Boy Pocket with a game, likely Pokémon Blue, around 1999. It was also my first experience with analog controls, making my initial performance in F-Zero anything but stellar. Only after my mom demonstrated how to carefully move the stick did I get better at the game. In retrospect, F-Zero was a terrible introduction to the platform for someone coming from purely digital controls, but it didn't deter me from either the N64 nor the series. On the contrary, the mind-blowing sense of speed, the graphics and music really left an impression on me, making me want a copy of my own.

The N64 was definitely a decent contender against the PlayStation here, at least from my point of reference; I probably knew more people that owned one, than those who owned a PSX — or if anything, people had both systems. On the other hand, the Saturn I had eyed in mail order catalogs was nowhere to be found in real life, and my own system I bought in the mid-2000s was probably the first one I ever saw.

I got my very own Nintendo 64 for Christmas 2000 as the Pokémon craze swept up the Western world, complete with Pokémon Stadium. Or well, I would've gotten the game that Christmas, had its shipment not been delayed in to January 2001. Still, seeing my own Pokémon, caught out in the wilds of that tiny Game Boy cartridge, in 3D on the TV was very cool. Even the minigames were kinda neat!

Those two games aside, others I played — be it through emulation or on real hardware — were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, as mentioned before, as well as Mario Kart 64, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Sin and Punishment, San Francisco Rush 2049, GoldenEye 007, Super Smash Bros., Snowboard Kids, Bomberman 64 and Bomberman Hero.

After playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time emulated, I finally got my own cartridge off a friend in 2003 or so, who sold it to me for price not dissimilar to what you'd pay nowadays. The first time I played through it properly, on that cartridge, I was assisted by mom, who'd print out parts of a walkthrough whenever I struggled with a dungeon, and relay the instructions to me as I played the game. And, while it has become a bit of a meme, the Water Temple was definitely among them.

The N64 is still a highly memorable system to me and my closest friends, for me personally for its rich single-player games like the Zelda titles, but for us together also for its multiplayer capabilities and the games that made use of them. Mario Kart 64 especially is still a fun get-together today, with honorable mentions going to F-Zero X and Super Smash Bros. in this regard.

Conclusions

My personal trajectory, from the end of the 1980s to the early 2000s, can be summarized as follows: Coming from the Commodore 64, I went to Amiga 500 and Game Boy, followed by PCs and Nintendo 64.

For me, Sega's Mega Drive came after the Saturn, due to only getting one after I'd already gotten my Saturn, although I had played some games like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 emulated on PC before. The Saturn in turn came after the Dreamcast; I bought my first DC shortly after Sega discontinued them. My first PlayStation came by way of the slimline PSone around 2002, after the PlayStation 2 had already been released.

Much of the "classic gaming experience" from a US perspective I'd only even heard about much later, let alone experienced myself back in its day, such as the NES's impact on the industry and overall history. To give some examples, my first Mario game was Super Mario Land 2 on the Game Boy, and I only played the original Super Mario Bros. trilogy much later under emulation. My first Mega Man game was likely either Mega Man Battle Network or Mega Man Zero, again through emulation on very early Game Boy Advance emulators like iGBA — the first one of those I played from an original cartridge was either Zero or Battle Network 3 Blue.

Circling back to the home computers, terms like "eurojank" are tossed around way too easily and apparently generalized as covering everything Amiga. It's very much unfair to those platforms, games, and the people who grew up with them. Are there definitive stinkers on the C64 and Amiga? Certainly! As there are on the NES and SNES! I'd encourage anyone with this dismissive mindset to try out some Amiga stuff with an open mind sometime, lesser-known or -covered titles in particular — I'd recommend P.P. Hammer and Traps 'n' Treasures. They aren't masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, but also no worse than your average NES or SNES game.

Finally, the discourse around retro gaming and gaming history very much needs more international voices. Reporting on the US, and US-based reporting on Japan are overrepresented to an incredible degree. Europe and the United Kingdom are also often conflated as being one and the same, especially by non-European authors and journalists. The video game history and culture of individual regions, individual countries, needs to be told to an audience as wide as possible, not just to diversify the voices represented in general, but to depict and document it correctly.

Invite people from Spain onto your US-based podcasts! Make video essays about gaming in Taiwan! Dig up the history of video games in South Africa!

Because video game discourse — on YouTube, on podcasts, on social media — is much too US- and Japan-centric.

And that is a crying shame, because I am sure there are many interesting stories that otherwise will never get told, and will eventually be lost forever.