My foray into gaming began in the mid-90s with the Sega Mega Drive II. Man, I fucking loved that console. Still do! I have it on display in my TV cabinet to this day. I mean, It seems a bit sketchy to sell something with my family’s name engraved into it. It also has a super old and no longer connected landline phone number engraved. It was the style at the time, thanks Mum. Honestly, I wouldn’t actually sell this thing. The memories are worth much more than the $100 or so I’d get for it. We spent days upon days pouring time into that Mega Drive. Games like Sonic 2, NBA Jam, X-Men 2, Toejam & Earl, Mortal Kombat and NHL ’96 just to name a few.
Yeah, Sega was king for us in the early days. If the Mega Drive had a play-time counter, I’m sure my brothers and I would have blown through its numbers long ago. We eventually moved on to the Sony PlayStation, and we got a lot out of that too. It didn’t quite track as well as the Mega Drive for us. But nonetheless, we still played the shit out of it. It catered to pretty a wide audience, even my Dad got in on it with Gran Turismo. There was a lot to keep you entertained. Metal Gear Solid was a huge draw, it’s probably the best game on the system. There is a huge list of banger games on PS1. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2, Tekken 3, Silent Hill and the Resident Evil series just to highlight a few. The list goes on. We played ’em all.
While we had our PlayStation for many years, once it started to sit dormant we sold it off. Answering a classified ad in our local newspaper, we were on to the next. The Sega Dreamcast. This bloke from the ad shows up at our house with the console, power cable and a couple games. Dude only had an SCART cable with him. Our TV didn’t have SCART, he said he has the AV cables at home and he’ll be back. I was so sure he was gonna dump and run. Sure enough, he did actually come back. We fired up Crazy Taxi. YA YA YA YA YA! Holy hell, what a fucking blast. The Mega Drive was unreal, but god damn, the Dreamcast slayed. The arcade ports, the originals and the familiar but oddly better feeling Playstation ports. This thing had it all. I still maintain that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 are best played on Dreamcast, not counting the remake.
Name me a console with better retro fighting games, I’ll wait. Seriously, check this list: Soulcalibur, Marvel vs Capcom, Dead or Alive, Capcom vs SNK, Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Rival Schools, Power Stone, Virtua Fighter and even Tekken 3 via Bleem. There was so much to like on Dreamcast. Headhunter was kinda Sega’s answer for Metal Gear Solid, it even had VR missions. It’s one game I intend to revisit very soon. Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, despite their bugs, were excellent modern Sonic titles on release. They still hold up today. Shenmue was one of the first 3D open world RPGs – and it was actually good, too. Jet Set Radio delivered a quirky cell-shaded graffiti fueled arcade action game for the ages. Resident Evil: Code Veronica burst onto the scene with it’s all-3D goodness. Blue Stinger was a Resident Evil clone and may have even been cornier, if that’s possible. Whatever I’m into at the time, I always end up returning to the Dreamcast. Even now, I still fire up Sonic Adventure or crush a few fares on Crazy Taxi.
It wasn’t until a few years later that we bought another major, new console. We borrowed a couple in the interim from friends. The most prominent were an Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2. We did eventually cop one of the slim PS2s. We definitely put some time into it. There’s a fantastic library of games available for PS2. But it just didn’t hit too hard in our house.
It wasn’t until the original Xbox released that we really moved on. This thing felt like the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast. It’s no surprise, Sega was one of the first major publishers to get on board with Microsoft. The Dreamcast is thought to have influenced at the very least the Xbox controller design. It’s obvious pretty obvious just looking at the ‘Duke’ controller. Sega did miss the original launch of the Xbox. However, they went on to release somewhere in the realm of 50 games for the console.
It definitely felt eerily similar, but no, this isn’t Dreamcast 2. This is it’s own beast. And WHAT a beast. Halo revolutionised first person shooters for consoles. Yeah, we did have console FPS games before but not like this on console. Sure, you could argue it was Goldeneye on Nintendo 64. I remember Goldeneye more for multiplayer. You know, where you had to squint HARD to see where you and your opponents were on the screen? And have you played the Goldeneye campaign lately? I did on Switch. It was not my favourite FPS experience. Anyway, the library on this console is unreal. One of my all-time favourite games released originally on Xbox. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Biased though I am, this is one of the best RPGs of all time and it all started on Xbox. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve finished it. Jet Set Radio Future provided what was probably the best soundtrack on the console. I remember absolutely crushing NBA Street V3, Amped, and Ninja Gaiden. I was utter shit at Ninja Gaiden. WWE Raw 2 was probably one of the worst WWE games. But honestly I couldn’t tell you how much time I sunk into it. Halo 1 and Halo 2 got a good run at multiplayer at our place. How good was Blood Gulch? Seriously. There are truly some true gems on Xbox. Some you wouldn’t even expect like The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. That game had no business being that good.
Our Xbox still sits in one of the TV units at my parents house. Disc drive? Broken. As is tradition. After the Xbox, there weren’t many other consoles that really stuck for me. PC gaming was a mainstay, as was my Dreamcast and Mega Drive although their use dwindled. I cycled through various PlayStation 3s, 4s, Xbox 360s, Nintendo Switches, Xbox Ones and even more recently an Xbox Series S. For the most part, I bought them and didn’t use them enough. I ended up selling them. Only to re-buy them when a certain game came out or I had an itch for sports games.
When I lived in a share house, the Xbox 360 was the mainstay. Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies was a regular thing over beers. NBA 2K, I can’t remember the year(s), was a massive hit. This was before it was kinda required to spend on micro-transactions to improve your player. I’m also a huge NHL fan, so EA typically sucked me in each year for their rinse and repeat release. But even then, it was only until the next time I stopped playing and sold it off.
Fast-forward to today. The only console I own now is the Steam Deck, along with my engraved Mega Drive. My wife has a Nintendo 64 which we still play Mario Party on from time to time. The Steam Deck plays all my old classics with relative ease through emulation. It can emulate up to and including the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Results may vary, but it is absolutely capable. Newer PC games also handle well, sometimes requiring FSR but are still more than playable. Best of all, I haven’t felt the need to call it quits and sell it. In fact, I’ve finished more games on this thing in the last 6 months than I have in the last 10 years. I’m not sure about you guys, but this handheld motivates me to actually complete a game again. That’s pretty rare – and I love it.
Well, hopefully this was enlightening for you all, or at the very least interesting to some extent. Until next time!
Dad with a Deck 
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