Those Were the Days is a new weekly article in which Gamervision employees share video game-related memories. If you’ve got a story of your own to share, please do so! We love hearing from the community.

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While playing through the most excellent Yakuza 2, I was reminded how great Sega games used to be. My entire childhood gaming experience was built around the original Sega Master System. While not the most remembered or popular system of the 80s, the Master System was the first system anyone had in my family (excluding computers). Of course, that Christmas, I think I only got to play one game of Hang-On as my uncles proceeded to pass the controller between themselves while my 5 year-old self was helpless to do anything but watch.

Once I finally got the system to myself the next day, I wasted countless hours playing Choplifter, Hang-On, and Space Harrier. Where I grew up, we didn't have arcades or anything, so this was my first experience with this kind of entertainment. Looking back, there was nothing really spectacular about Space Harrier, but something about it stood out. To this day, I wish for an update on the classic (in my eyes) over-the-shoulder shooter. That following year, I got Rambo: First Blood, Part II (the game, not the movie), and at that point I pretty much forgot any other game existed. I became immersed in a top-down Commando-style world where I had exploding rocket arrows for my bow. Completing titles like Fantasy Zone and Zillion II: The Tri-Formation was put on the backburner in favor of trying to save one more POW.

When the Genesis came out, my parents got that for me, but I wasn't necessarily a Sega fanboy. Hell, I didn't even know what a fanboy was when I was 11. Everyone already knows what a good system the Genesis was, so I won't bore you to death about the original Sonic, or playing through Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage. Instead, we're going to jump even farther down the line to the debut of the Sega 32X. For whatever reason, this was the first system/peripheral that I just had to have. I never begged my parents for a videogame system before the announcement of the 32X. I was obsessed with the damn thing. Blame GamePro, and the advertisements in comic books. The 32X was probably a bigger mistake than the Dreamcast's ability to play burned games. The Saturn, which came out just six months after the 32X, pretty much rendered the whole thing obsolete before you even got it out of the box. But none of that stopped my parents from foolishly listening to me, and getting me the 32X for Christmas in 1994.

I had six games for the 32X by the time I packed it up in favor of the Playstation. Launch titles Doom and Virtua Racing Deluxe were constantly fighting for play time. I never had a PC to run games, so this was my first time seeing anything quite like Doom before. Sure it wasn't a complete game (it was missing levels from the PC version), but how the hell would I know? And why would I care? I could shoot things and blood would pour out. That was pretty damn sweet. Virtua Racing got me to fall in love with racing games. To that point, there hadn't been a title on any system that came close to the experience you got when behind the wheel of that supremely polygonal car. From there I moved onto Star Wars Arcade. What nerdy kid didn't want to fly an X-Wing from his or her living room TV? Exactly. It was simple, but flying through the trenches of the Death Star wasn't something readily available to me before that, so I slurped it all up. Occasional bouts of NBA Jam Tournament Edition with friends spiced up my life, but we always found ourselves going back to playing Doom or Star Wars. The less I say about Cosmic Carnage the better. Getting rid of Spider-Man: Web of Fate may be my only actual regret about the whole trade-in games thing. Apparently the catridge now earns close to $100 on eBay. I was a kid, and eBay didn't exist yet.

I never got a Saturn or Dreamcast, but I guess I could always get one now for pretty cheap. I did always want to play the Scud the Disposable Assassin game. I guess I just want Sega to be as important today as they were in my youth, but that doesn't seem like it's in the cards. As long as they still have a prescence as a developer, I can't be too sad.

 

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