My love of video games started when my dad bought home a ZX Spectrum which at first we played on an old black and white TV until my dad invested in a little color one for us. I loved it even those early games like Robber which were so basic but at the time there was nothing else like it. Then came Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Underwurlde all three of which were made by Ultimate and were the most fantastic and at the same time infuriating games to play. (I still play them now via a spectrum emulator on the PC and even managed for the first time ever to complete Atic Atac!).
I can't imagine the children of today sitting for five to ten minutes like we did waiting for your game to load (fingers crossed that the bloody thing actually loaded) before you could settle down to some serious gaming as now we live in a world of instant gratification where we no longer feel the need or urge to want to wait for anything.This was also the era where if you wanted to play the really fancy arcade games you literally had to go to the arcade where you would find Pacman, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders waiting for you as opposed to the very interactive games you see today such as Guitar Hero.
As I grew up alot of my friends grew tired of video games and moved on to other things, me however I didn't. My next console after Sinclair finally gave up making anymore was the Atari S, followed by the Sega Mega Drive (hello Sonic the Hedgehog) and then the Playstation. I briefly played on the SNES at Uni as my friend had one but I was more of a Sega girl!
I loved the Playstation and spent hours playing and swearing at Tomb Raider amongst other games! You can imagine my delight when I met my now husband and discovered he had a PS2 I was in heaven! He then introduced me to the N64 and the Sega Dreamcast where had they been all my life! I spent countless hours playing Shenmue and Sega Bass fishing-I even had the fishing rod!.
The PS2 introduced me to the Final Fantasy games, up until this point I had never been a fan of turn based role playing games and thought my husband was mad when he suggested I try Final Fantasy X- well he was right and I was wrong I loved it to the point that I cried at the end of the game!
The rest is history really we currently own an XBOX 360, PS3 Wii, WiiU, 3DS, PS2, XBOX and I also play the Sims3 and I am a huge fan of Steam.
It never fails to tickle me when I go into a well known high street store which sells games, and they try to direct me to the Wii and DS games because as a 30 something mom I wouldn't possibly be interested in playing Forza!!!
Rightly or wrongly my son loves these games too and is a massive fan of Minecraft and all the lego games (he does lots of other things too) but as a family it is something we can all do together.
People have often asked me how can I sit and play games don't I find it boring, well no and I feel like saying well do you find it boring to sit and watch soap operas?
So there you have it I am also a total geek (I do love a good mooch around Forbidden Planet as well) and I love my video games and still plan to give the kids a run for their money when I am in my 80's!!!
