THE BEGINNING: MEGA-DRIVE, PS1, HALO
Starting at the beginning is probably as good a place as any to start when looking back at what made me the gamer I am today. The first game I actively remember playing was Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Mega-Drive, I was around three years old so this would have been in 1998. We had three other games for the system which were two football games, FIFA International Soccer and FIFA 95, that were almost exclusively played by my dad, and Alisia Dragoon that I would occasionally play but was far too difficult for me to actually enjoy. My older sister and I would play Sonic quite regularly, but clearly neither of us were very good at it because I never remember us getting further than the first stage of Aquatic Ruins, it was a miracle to even get past Chemical Zone. My dad used to work night shifts as a security guard and slipped on some ice in early 2000 which is when the house got the PlayStation to keep him busy whilst he healed. Out of the first batch of games we got for it I spent most of my time playing Croc and Gran Turismo 2 with my sister. Gran Turismo was without a doubt a very important game for me in my formative gaming years as I’ve been an avid lover of racing games ever since and particularly the Gran Turismo series. Much of my time with the PS1 was spent playing film tie-ins and budget titles like Rugrats: Search for Reptar and Action Man: Operation Xtreme. I played almost none of the ‘must have’ titles aside from Spyro and Crash Bandicoot 2 until much more recently. During these years I mainly just spent time soaking in fictional worlds and characters. I loved being other people and exploring new worlds. It was during this time that I visited a friend’s house and played Halo: Combat Evolved, which completely changed how I perceived what was possible with game worlds and stories. It would be a long time until I actually got my own hands on an Xbox and played Halo properly, but this time I spent playing it with my friend is one of the most important early experiences of what shaped me as a gamer. |
REFINING THE PALETTE: PS2 & GAMESMASTER
The summer of 2003 brought with it a PlayStation 2. This was the first console I had that was mine, received as a gift on my eighth birthday. At the beginning there was certainly a repeat of the trend that I had been setting with the PS1 in that I played mostly film tie-ins and budget titles. I did pick up Gran Turismo 3 which is my favourite game in the series and is even to this day a racing game I go back to because I adore it so much. It wasn’t until around 2005 when I would start to broaden my horizons into other types of game. Thankfully my parents were never strict about age ratings, so I was able to experience a lot of what the PS2 had to offer from this point on. Around the same time I discovered GamesMaster magazine. The magazine not only opened my eyes to just what kind of games were out there, but also that I was not alone in taking gaming seriously. Many of my friends liked gaming because of one or two games and they were usually film tie-ins like Star Wars, but at this point I was beginning to like games because of the possibilities they offered that films simply could not. With GamesMaster I could not only see what was happening on the PS2 but also with the Xbox, GameCube, and more. At this point I went on a real binge of games I needed to catch up on including Rockstar titles like GTAIII, Vice City, San Andreas, and Canis Canem Edit (Bully). I rediscovered Naughty Dog with the Jak and Daxter series (which are among my all-time favourite games). It was around this time that I saved up and bought myself a pre-owned Xbox (a crystal one to be specific) and also picked up Halo & Halo 2. Now whilst I did own a couple of other games for the system, I really only played Halo and Halo 2. I became obsessive over them, trying to discover all the secrets I could. Around the time I started secondary school I was given a Wii for my birthday. This was my first non-handheld Nintendo console, and although I had owned a Game Boy Colour & Advance I only owned a couple of games per system and they were film tie-in’s. With the Wii I had hoped to expose myself to so much more Nintendo like Mario, Zelda, and more. But the must have games were too expensive so I stuck with the shovelware. It was here that I realised Nintendo wasn’t really for me. Whilst I have owned a WiiU and now a Switch, I rarely use them, and I often pass up on many of the must have exclusives because even then the few I like I often find I don’t enjoy enough to justify the high price tag. I stuck with those three consoles amassing an impressive games library until the summer of 2009 when everything changed. |
FINDING MYSELF: XBOX 360, PS3, PC, GAMERS OF NATIONS
Considering how much more into games I was than my friends it took me so long to get onto the HD seventh gen consoles where the real bread and butter of new games I wanted to play were. I opted for the Xbox 360 first primarily because of Halo and Gears of War (which I had read a lot about in GamesMaster). Another birthday gift, I stuck with the Xbox 360 until around 2013 when my Xbox Live account was shut down by Microsoft due to ‘security concerns’. I was so upset; I had lost thousands of hours’ worth of game progress and hundreds of pounds worth of digital content. I had bought a PS3 in 2011 to pick up some of the exclusive games like Uncharted & Heavy Rain, so I decided then and there that I would sell almost everything I had for my Xbox and re-buy it on PS3. Microsoft had done me dirty, and I wasn’t ready to forgive them anytime soon. The PS3 ultimately became my favourite games console of all time. I really love how different the system is to almost anything else, and it’s incredible just how much the thing can do. It was around this time I started really getting into disassembling electronics to see what was inside and the PS3 was one of my first ventures too. The seventh generation of consoles is one that’s really close to my heart as it’s the first set of systems I really funded myself for the most part. I also amassed a collection of games so large they needed to be stored in two separate rooms and I’m still trying to comb through the backlog today. It was this generation of games that truly formed the types of games I enjoy today with titles like Mass Effect, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Dead Space, InFamous, Mirrors Edge, Bulletstorm, Race Driver GRID, and Blur. I look back on it now and whikst there are certainly some duds of that generation, for the most part it feels really high quality, memorable, and generally still experimental in some key areas. It was also during this time that I dabbled with PC gaming, mostly just delving into Valve games like Half-Life, Portal, Left4Dead, and Counter-Strike. But I also discovered some gems like F.E.A.R. and Crysis as well. During these years I also collaborated with Fred to create a YouTube channel where we would record our co-op gameplay and share it online. I also joined the GamesMaster Facebook page where I met James, this later turned into a small number of us creating our own spin-off group where we still discuss gaming news to this day long after GamesMaster’s demise. |
OUT OF TOUCH: PS4, PS VITA, XBOX ONE
I got a PS Vita and PS4 soon after they launched, but from the off something didn’t feel right. I spent more time on the PS3 than I did on those systems and around the same time I started university. I didn’t have much time to game anymore and whilst there were certainly some games that captivated me, for the most part my game time wound down. I picked up an Xbox One for the Master Chief collection’s launch, and I have only ever used it for the sole purpose of playing Halo and Gears of War games on. After my three years at uni were done I got a job as an Apple repair technician and mixed my love of ripping tech apart and fixing it with an actual income. This took up a lot of my time and continued to restrict my gaming ability even further but I wasn’t totally out of genius ideas. A lot of my commutes and lunch breaks were spent playing my PS Vita, now several years old, and I was combing through a back catalogue of PS+ games that were generally really high quality. It has become my favourite handheld system especially because of its functionality with the PS3, PS4, and now PS5 with Remote Play, and the various other media capabilities. |
RETRO REVIVIAL: PS1, PS2, PS3, MAC
Because the PS4 and Xbox One were failing to really capture my interest I decided to revisit previous generations and play what I had missed out on. The great thing about this is I was able to emulate a lot of the old systems on my Mac via Windows bootcamp and they often ran like a dream. Otherwise, I had held onto my old consoles and took them into work whenever they needed maintaining. During this time I played classics like Metal Gear Solid, God of War, and Silent Hill. It was also a very cheap hobby to maintain at that point. Retro gaming was my jam for quite a while, and I was having way more fun with it than I was with the eighth-generation systems. It really gave me a chance to work through my backlog, discover all the awesome things I had missed when I was younger, and on top of that it gave me an even greater appreciation of gameplay mechanics and the technology of the time. |
PLATINUM PURSUITS: TROPHIES, PS5, GAME THRASHERS
This act of working through my backlog eventually led to me earning a few platinum trophies from PS3, PS Vita, and PS4 games. I’d always enjoyed earning trophies but never really sought them out until I was trying to squeeze ever last drop of gameplay out of something, because I didn’t have the money or time to be playing new AAA releases that were all £60 and 100+ hours in length. This led to me getting into some trophy hunting on my favourite titles. I certainly won’t do it for every game, but if it’s a game that’s particularly special to me I’ll put in the extra effort to get the platinum for it. I managed to get my hands on a PS5 in January 2021, almost by chance really, and I’m looking forward to the new possibilities that come with games being designed specifically for SSD read/write speeds, as well as the fantastic feedback functions of the DualSense controller. Which brings me here. I’ve been writing game reviews for over ten years now, and recently I started my own website, The Perks of Being A Ginger, for film reviews. But Game Thrashers is an opportunity for me to collaborate with people that are as invested in gaming as I am on some really great projects that I hope you’ll like! |