As a SEGA kid for most of the 90s, the N64 was my first Nintendo console (I did have a Game Boy so it wasn’t my first system from the big N). I will always associate it with my final years in high school, playing 4 player Goldeneye/ Mario Kart 64/ Perfect Dark every Friday or Saturday evening with my friends. Whether it was shouting in frustration at MK (Toad getting the brunt of it), fighting an army of bots in PD or nearly destroying the speaker on the old TV I had in my room when 4 RCP-90s were blasting away in Goldeneye.
The single player experiences were great too: Mario 64 was my first Mario game besides the land series on GB, Lylat Wars was massively replayable as were Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron. It was Ocarina of Time that really makes me hold the system in my heart. Never experienced anything like it before or since (Breathe of the Wild is not even close).
My only real gripe with the N64 is that it is hard to play today due to its limited outputs: in Europe you can only play it through RF (which is what I used at the time) or composite. Whereas my Mega Drive can output through RGB SCART and looks fantastic on a CRT TV and good on a flat screen, the N64 looks fuzzy on the first and terrible on the later. At least with my modded Wii I have access to many of the heavy hitters which I can play through SCART or component, though I have to use a pro controller or GameCube pad of course.
My N64 is still in working order today but my original pad’s stick has given up the ghost. Luckily I have a second first party pad that didn’t get as much use so I should be ok for a while yet.
During lockdown 2020 I decided to take apart and deep clean my original Mega Drive 2 from 1993. Aside from a bit of dust the motherboard was in great shape and once a bit of compressed air was used to get rid of that and a good scrub of the plastics separately it was running like new. I even took the pads apart and gave them a clean, removing old stickers and residue from newly 30 years ago. Hopefully will last a fair few years more. Might have to look into getting a more modern power adapter after reading this article though. I would t mind; the UK Mega Drive plug is huge and weighs a ton!
The major issue is that in all previous incarnations of the PlayStation parts got cheaper and building got more efficient. With solid sales this meant savings could’ve passed onto new customers as an incentive to sign up. It’s stating the obvious but parts and labour costs are going up in most of the world due to various reasons and this is reflected in the increase in price of technology. Nintendo isn’t putting the price of the Switch up (at least in the UK and Europe) as I’m guessing it is based on older and cheaper tech than the PS5. I for one am planning to stick with my current set up (Xbox One S, Switch and a wealth management of older consoles) for quite a while. I’m ok with that but this is a real bummer for people who were waiting for a price drop and build up of titles before committing.
If it looks like the original Mega Drive II (my first console that still sits under a TV in my game room) then I’ll track one down at some point. The first mini is excellent and this one has some interesting additions. Since I modded a Wii I have 70+ Mega Drive games, plus those on the first mini, so the Mega CD games intrigue me.
I was extremely young at the time so have no personal recollection of the time of the ‘crash’ in the UK, but on reflection it’s interesting that I clearly remember the SEGA Master System being advertised on tv in the 80s, however the NES was much rarer (though I remember seeing them in shops on occasion). When console gaming started to take off over here it was the opposite of the US, where the NES was king and the Master System the underdog. In the UK it was the other way round due to Nintendo pretty much ignoring Europe and that allowed SEGA to get a foothold. Even in the 90s I knew exactly one person with a SNES; everyone else had a Mega Drive.
I remember in the early to mid 90s being at two separate school friend’s houses where we found a NES boxed up in the attic. It was like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark!
On the flip side I started with a Spectrum and although I remember not being impressed with it compared to what consoles could do (long loading times and limited colours vs the smooth play of NES games and the colours and graphics of Master System games) the games were so cheap; £2-£5 compared to £20+ on the consoles!
I first discovered MK in the arcade (my friends and I got thrown out of the tiny back room arcade in a local video rental shop for getting too excited playing the game; totally innocent we were just being a bit loud!). I never had the SNES/Mega Drive port but got it on PC (on floppy disc) a few years later, which I’m guessing was a much closer version to the arcade than either console. I did finally get the Mega Drive cart a couple of years ago. Love the theme tune.
Though I didn’t get to play one until the very early 90s I can still remember the tv adverts in the UK for the SMS from kindergarten in the 80s. I have a clear memory of my friends and I around a table all chanting ‘Do me a favour, plug me into a SEGA!’ (though I doubt any of us knew what a SEGA was.)
I got to play a handful of SMS games through the converter for the Game Gear and later the converter on Mega Drive (I was lucky enough to give the mark 2 converter for the Mega Drive 2, so no card games for me!)
I bought this in 2006 for £3 and whenever I tried to sit down and play it through I just lost interest. However, after listening to the relevant episode of the podcast ‘The GameCube was cool’ I decided to finally complete it and did so last month.
It’s a very nice looking game but does feel unfinished. The flying levels are good but too few and seemingly tacked on. The animation and graphics are great and the world is fun to explore. However, although everything works fine it just feels unfinished. For example, Fox can actually vary his attacks with a tilt of the stick, but none is more powerful or effective than just mashing A. Compare this to Zelda, where the is a point to Link’s different attacks (chops, jabs, slashed or jumping attacks) that can get past different defences and due more damage. It’s little things like that that I found disappointing; it was clearly planned but never implemented. Btw, was the voice acting localised? In the PAL version the star Fox team all have American accents but the dinosaurs all have regional British accents. I found it funny, coming from the UK, as I’m sure to the Americans playing it the dinosaurs all sounded quite unusual, but hearing a mammoth with a Scottish accent or a stegosaurus that sounds like a farmer was quite amusing!
I remember the game from the N64 box and I got a copy with my OG Gameboy. Last year someone had given away a load of N64 games, complete in boxes at my local charity store. Smash Bros. was too steep at £50 but I did but Killer Instinct complete in box for £15 which seemed fair for a charity donation. Good, silly beat em up, but I’m as bad at them now as when I played Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition on the Mega Drive when I was 12 😂
I was a school kid during the Classic Console Wars, but growing up in the north of England at the time it was a one horse race: the NES has been and gone and the Mega Drive ruled supreme. I knew maybe one or two people with a SNES but Nintendo were pretty much known for the GameBoy and as such we’re not really in competition (although I had a Game Gear I always wanted to play my sister’s GameBoy as the batteries lasted for ever!). Having talked to other people my age it really was SEGA vs Amiga in the early 90s. I remember playing both Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart in shops and not being particularly interested. Sonic was far more impressive at the time for speed and graphics and racers like Road Rash were what we were playing. In the UK Nintendo were not particularly established (which is probably hard to grasp if you’re from the states; microcomputers were all the rage here in the 80s) so I guess there was less of a thrill at going from 8 bit NES to 16 bit SNES. Most of us went from Sinclair Spectrums or Commadore 64s, so regardless of whether you feel the SNES was better than the Mega Drive, you should at least appreciate how impressive SEGA’s machine was to a 8-10 year old at the time! Don’t get me wrong; I grew to love Nintendo, but of all the systems the SNES is the one I gave the least connection to (we picked a side and stick with it in those days. 25 years on and I’m still Mega Drive kid!)
I remember those pirate tv ads well and the comic series in Sonic the Comic.
Hopefully I’ll be getting the Mega Drive Mini soon. Can’t wait to have it next to my SNES mini. The circle will be complete...
Comments 110
Re: Soapbox: The Nintendo 64 Isn't Perfect, But I Still Love It
As a SEGA kid for most of the 90s, the N64 was my first Nintendo console (I did have a Game Boy so it wasn’t my first system from the big N). I will always associate it with my final years in high school, playing 4 player Goldeneye/ Mario Kart 64/ Perfect Dark every Friday or Saturday evening with my friends. Whether it was shouting in frustration at MK (Toad getting the brunt of it), fighting an army of bots in PD or nearly destroying the speaker on the old TV I had in my room when 4 RCP-90s were blasting away in Goldeneye.
The single player experiences were great too: Mario 64 was my first Mario game besides the land series on GB, Lylat Wars was massively replayable as were Shadows of the Empire and Rogue Squadron. It was Ocarina of Time that really makes me hold the system in my heart. Never experienced anything like it before or since (Breathe of the Wild is not even close).
My only real gripe with the N64 is that it is hard to play today due to its limited outputs: in Europe you can only play it through RF (which is what I used at the time) or composite. Whereas my Mega Drive can output through RGB SCART and looks fantastic on a CRT TV and good on a flat screen, the N64 looks fuzzy on the first and terrible on the later. At least with my modded Wii I have access to many of the heavy hitters which I can play through SCART or component, though I have to use a pro controller or GameCube pad of course.
My N64 is still in working order today but my original pad’s stick has given up the ghost. Luckily I have a second first party pad that didn’t get as much use so I should be ok for a while yet.
Re: Feature: Your Beloved Games Console Is Slowly But Surely Dying
During lockdown 2020 I decided to take apart and deep clean my original Mega Drive 2 from 1993. Aside from a bit of dust the motherboard was in great shape and once a bit of compressed air was used to get rid of that and a good scrub of the plastics separately it was running like new. I even took the pads apart and gave them a clean, removing old stickers and residue from newly 30 years ago. Hopefully will last a fair few years more. Might have to look into getting a more modern power adapter after reading this article though. I would t mind; the UK Mega Drive plug is huge and weighs a ton!
Re: PS5 Price Hike: Here's How It Compares To Past PlayStation Console Prices
The major issue is that in all previous incarnations of the PlayStation parts got cheaper and building got more efficient. With solid sales this meant savings could’ve passed onto new customers as an incentive to sign up. It’s stating the obvious but parts and labour costs are going up in most of the world due to various reasons and this is reflected in the increase in price of technology. Nintendo isn’t putting the price of the Switch up (at least in the UK and Europe) as I’m guessing it is based on older and cheaper tech than the PS5. I for one am planning to stick with my current set up (Xbox One S, Switch and a wealth management of older consoles) for quite a while. I’m ok with that but this is a real bummer for people who were waiting for a price drop and build up of titles before committing.
Re: The Sega Mega Drive Mini 2 Is Finally Announced For Europe
If it looks like the original Mega Drive II (my first console that still sits under a TV in my game room) then I’ll track one down at some point. The first mini is excellent and this one has some interesting additions. Since I modded a Wii I have 70+ Mega Drive games, plus those on the first mini, so the Mega CD games intrigue me.
Re: Here's How UK Magazines Covered The "Great" Video Game Crash
I was extremely young at the time so have no personal recollection of the time of the ‘crash’ in the UK, but on reflection it’s interesting that I clearly remember the SEGA Master System being advertised on tv in the 80s, however the NES was much rarer (though I remember seeing them in shops on occasion). When console gaming started to take off over here it was the opposite of the US, where the NES was king and the Master System the underdog. In the UK it was the other way round due to Nintendo pretty much ignoring Europe and that allowed SEGA to get a foothold. Even in the 90s I knew exactly one person with a SNES; everyone else had a Mega Drive.
I remember in the early to mid 90s being at two separate school friend’s houses where we found a NES boxed up in the attic. It was like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark!
On the flip side I started with a Spectrum and although I remember not being impressed with it compared to what consoles could do (long loading times and limited colours vs the smooth play of NES games and the colours and graphics of Master System games) the games were so cheap; £2-£5 compared to £20+ on the consoles!
Re: Feature: How Mortal Kombat Defined The Console War Between Sega And Nintendo
I first discovered MK in the arcade (my friends and I got thrown out of the tiny back room arcade in a local video rental shop for getting too excited playing the game; totally innocent we were just being a bit loud!). I never had the SNES/Mega Drive port but got it on PC (on floppy disc) a few years later, which I’m guessing was a much closer version to the arcade than either console. I did finally get the Mega Drive cart a couple of years ago. Love the theme tune.
All together now: GET OVER HERE!!!
Re: Sega Master System Celebrates 35th Anniversary In The UK
Though I didn’t get to play one until the very early 90s I can still remember the tv adverts in the UK for the SMS from kindergarten in the 80s. I have a clear memory of my friends and I around a table all chanting ‘Do me a favour, plug me into a SEGA!’ (though I doubt any of us knew what a SEGA was.)
I got to play a handful of SMS games through the converter for the Game Gear and later the converter on Mega Drive (I was lucky enough to give the mark 2 converter for the Mega Drive 2, so no card games for me!)
Re: Feature: The Making Of Star Fox Adventures, The Game That Was Once Dinosaur Planet
I bought this in 2006 for £3 and whenever I tried to sit down and play it through I just lost interest. However, after listening to the relevant episode of the podcast ‘The GameCube was cool’ I decided to finally complete it and did so last month.
It’s a very nice looking game but does feel unfinished. The flying levels are good but too few and seemingly tacked on. The animation and graphics are great and the world is fun to explore. However, although everything works fine it just feels unfinished. For example, Fox can actually vary his attacks with a tilt of the stick, but none is more powerful or effective than just mashing A. Compare this to Zelda, where the is a point to Link’s different attacks (chops, jabs, slashed or jumping attacks) that can get past different defences and due more damage. It’s little things like that that I found disappointing; it was clearly planned but never implemented. Btw, was the voice acting localised? In the PAL version the star Fox team all have American accents but the dinosaurs all have regional British accents. I found it funny, coming from the UK, as I’m sure to the Americans playing it the dinosaurs all sounded quite unusual, but hearing a mammoth with a Scottish accent or a stegosaurus that sounds like a farmer was quite amusing!
Re: Feature: 25 Years Ago, Nintendo Took On The Might Of Street Fighter With Killer Instinct
I remember the game from the N64 box and I got a copy with my OG Gameboy. Last year someone had given away a load of N64 games, complete in boxes at my local charity store. Smash Bros. was too steep at £50 but I did but Killer Instinct complete in box for £15 which seemed fair for a charity donation. Good, silly beat em up, but I’m as bad at them now as when I played Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition on the Mega Drive when I was 12 😂
Re: Feature: How Pirate Television Helped Sega Beat Nintendo In The UK
I was a school kid during the Classic Console Wars, but growing up in the north of England at the time it was a one horse race: the NES has been and gone and the Mega Drive ruled supreme. I knew maybe one or two people with a SNES but Nintendo were pretty much known for the GameBoy and as such we’re not really in competition (although I had a Game Gear I always wanted to play my sister’s GameBoy as the batteries lasted for ever!). Having talked to other people my age it really was SEGA vs Amiga in the early 90s. I remember playing both Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart in shops and not being particularly interested. Sonic was far more impressive at the time for speed and graphics and racers like Road Rash were what we were playing. In the UK Nintendo were not particularly established (which is probably hard to grasp if you’re from the states; microcomputers were all the rage here in the 80s) so I guess there was less of a thrill at going from 8 bit NES to 16 bit SNES. Most of us went from Sinclair Spectrums or Commadore 64s, so regardless of whether you feel the SNES was better than the Mega Drive, you should at least appreciate how impressive SEGA’s machine was to a 8-10 year old at the time! Don’t get me wrong; I grew to love Nintendo, but of all the systems the SNES is the one I gave the least connection to (we picked a side and stick with it in those days. 25 years on and I’m still Mega Drive kid!)
I remember those pirate tv ads well and the comic series in Sonic the Comic.
Hopefully I’ll be getting the Mega Drive Mini soon. Can’t wait to have it next to my SNES mini. The circle will be complete...