Its quite easy to come up with a “top 10” games list for a decade or system, we have the luxury of the internet at our finger tips, but for many of us growing up we had to make do with magazine reviews and word of mouth. Getting hold of a game was also an issue as we were pretty much limited to what we could buy locally or what we might find while on holiday (game boy multicarts!) Games where also expensive compared to today, I remember NES games costing £30 and SNES/Mega Drive/Genesis games being £40-50 over 30 years ago, this meant that games where something of a premium (unless you were rich) Looking back, many of the games I played haven’t aged well or where pretty poor to begin with but we had to make the best of what we had, lending games at school or renting from stores, games that defined my childhood, games that many people wouldn’t consider, games that may never make any other top 10, but I played them to death and love them still today.
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Punchy (Commodore 16) The very first game I ever owned, basic left, right & jump controls used to jump hazards and across gaps.
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Granny’s Garden (BBC Micro) At primary school UK (ages 4 -11) we had 1 computer for the whole school, yes just 1, if you where lucky you would get about 45 minutes in a single school year to use the computer (in pairs) just as you started to progess through the puzzles in Granny’s garden (the only game available) your turn would be over. As such nobody at school got anywhere in the game and it remains a frustration to this day.
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Golden Axe (Sega Master System) One of the first console games I owned, I asked for it for my 12th Birthday, I remember my mum asking me to pass her cigarettes from her handbag about a week before my birthday and seeing it inside, (longest week of my life!) we thought the graphics were stunning! (at the time)
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Solomon’s Key (NES) Stumbled across this by accident in a toy shop, it was in the glass case that held the very limited number of NES games, my brother had some birthday money to spend and we liked the cover art, we played it to death & I remember leaving the NES switched on for 4 days so we could continue our game, we never completed it.
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Turtles Mutant Hero Turtles (NES) During the ninja turtles craze (they had to be renamed “hero” in the UK because ninja was a naughty word!) of the early 90’s we played this game for months on end, when you lost a life we would pass the controller to the next person and continue to play. at one point in my life I knew almost every level in detail and position/spawn of each enemy.
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Super Mario World (SNES) We had to endure what seemed like an eternity to play this game, we had months of screen shots in magazines as the Super famicom launched in Japan in 1990 & US in 1991, we couldn’t play until the SNES was released in Europe early 1992, we were not disappointed and the step up from the NES was incredible.
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Street Fighter 2 - The World Warrior (SNES) The first SNES Game I owned, it came bundled with my SNES which I received for Christmas 1992, we spent hours learning all the moves and holding tournaments in our attic, we believed all the playground rumours thats pressing certain button combinations on the title screen would unlock the bosses as playable characters!
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Championship Manager (Commodore Amiga) Its fair to say I spent far too long playing this game, I had a copy made from a friends copy which would mysteriously corrupt disk 3 on a weekly basis, which meant I had to make more and more copies and always have a backup to hand as not being able to play this game would have been serious to me at the time!
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Lemmings (Commodore Amiga) I played this game & the Holiday/Christmas Lemmings 93 & 94 on Amiga and I had the SNES version (which was a very good version) there’s something incredibly nostalgic when I hear the music or the “oh no” sound effects, one of my all time favourites and still just as playable today.
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Mariokart 64 (N64) Probably the final game of my childhood, played it constantly for years afterwards, played this with girlfriend at the time (now my wife) and we both love the game, I don’t currently own a copy but fingers crossed for an N64 mini in the near future (so I can beat her at it all over again )
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the ramblings of an old man, what games defined your childhood?