personal game history part 1.

1. Mortal Kombat 3 - SNES - , what caught my eye originally was the characters and how good they all looked, but given i was 3 years old at the time the violence scared me so i didnt touch it for a while, later i went back and thoroughly enjoyed it, for the sheer creativity of the special moves and combos, and the speed the game was set just made it all flow so fluently, to this day it is one of my favourite games of all time.

2. Donkey Kong Country - SNES - , the first thing to grab my attention were the graphics, which isn't surprising, it was very ahead of it's time and even Shigeru Miyamoto himself critisised the game, declaring it was a watered down game with pretty graphics to mask a poor game, he later withdrew this statement after the game sold through the roof because when it boiled down to it, it was almost the perfect platformer game, it even had 2 player simultaneous co op play which at the time wasn't very commonly seen, the game had outstading music and sound effects by rareware's standards and still has firmly planted itself in my memory forever.

3.  Street Racer - SNES - , a rather obscure game which wasn't very high profile at the time, street racer was a game by early Ubisoft, a very 'wacky racers' style racing game which involved unique characters in a car fitting their personality, each racer had a few weapons and tools at their disposal like electricuting nearby enemies of flying over obsticles with a magic carpet, it also had a few minigames, like playing football with a giant ball or a last man standing royal rumble, all of which played well and added depth to an already deep game, what really set this game aside for me was it's music, themes and melodies which were simply amazing, but since it was sunsoft who did the music, i am not surprised given their music from their own library of games.

4. Poke'mon franchise - Various Consoles - , poke'mon is quite possibly the defining game of most teenagers' childhoods, whether or not you turn into an avid gamer everyone seems to have played poke'mon at some point growing up, i certainly did and to this day it will never be beat in sheer creativity, when poke'mon red/blue first came out they took everyone by surprise, with a simple yet unique style of gameplay, set out on an adventure starting with 1 of 3 creatures go from town to town catching other monsters to add to your team of a possible 6, battling other poke'mon trainers along the way to ultimately taking your team against the end 5 trainers to become the champion, but with features such as being able to link with friends with a link cable and doing battle that way and also trade poke'mon with each other, made poke'mon a smash hit worldwide, branching off it's own card game and tv series, and to this day poke'mon is still going strong in the game industry, and was a huge part of my childhood.

5. Super Mario 64 - Nintendo 64 - , super mario 64 was the first game i ever played on the N64, and my mind was officially blown, i had never seen graphics like it and the way it played was simply phenominal, it truely showcased what the machine was capable of and is likely THE defining game of the N64 era, with it's HUGE worldly adventure into various worlds, made possible by jumping into paintings in princess peachs's castle, meant they could make whatever worlds they wanted and make it believable, with stunning sounds and music and a truely satisfying playthrough each time i play it, it is a game that will never be topped with sheer first impressions.

6.  DooM 64 - Nintendo 64 - , DooM 64, genuinely scared me, to the point where even watching my dad play it would make me leave the room, it wasn't the graphics, or the scenery or lighting, it was the sounds, the music was chilling and the noise that made me leave the room was the noise your character made when he died, just a simple scream but it was enough to worry me, for that reason i could never forget it, when i eventually got the courage to play it i realised i had nothing to worry about, the game is very hard, but not too hard that it isn't fun anymore, it has a creative last boss and the enemies have been well thought out, it was different to earlier DooM games in the fact it was less arcade like and more of a horror concept, with darker lightning and a darker atmosphere, this is most likely because it wasn't made by Id software who worked on the others, this one was made by Midway.

7. Donkey Kong 64 - Nintendo 64 - Given i was a huge donkey kong fan from a young age when DK64 came out i was very excited to get it, it took the bar set by Mario 64 and raised it yet again, after the hugely successful Banjo Kazooie games, rareware decided to have another go at reinventing the donkey kong franchise and turning it into a 3D platformer adventure game, a formula which had me hooked for years, the ability to play as other kongs with unique traits made it able to play through a level up to 5 times and getting a fresh experience every time, with great rareware standard music and sounds and a fun multiplayer DK64 will always be in my top 10 games of all time.

8. Unholy War - Playstation - The unholy war was a rather lowly known game, but an amazing one, it worked in a unique way that there were about 14+ playable characters, half of which wer eall about nature and  half all about machinery and technology, pitted in a war against each other until one force has obliterated the other, it worked as a board game until 2 players met on a single spac, the players would then do battle in a 3d sky view environment until only 1 remains, who would then claim the space, personally i liked the character 'Razorfane' because he was all about buzzsaws and nasty blades which looked very cool, and i have always been drawn to the machine/robot characters in any game at first.

9. Crash team racing - Playstation - CTR is a highly mario kart inspired game, it plays alot like mario kart, but it has more of a bubbly personality with the characters and isn't as static as mario kart 64, mario kart 64 is still a wonderful game, i just feel CTR was more thought out, whether it's the voices or the music, or just the single player adventure, it just feels like more of a complete package.

10. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance - Gamecube - This game is the game that got me interested in game design, there was a bonus feature on the game which showed you how the gae was made by following the team around for a full day, watching the motion capture, the arena design, the characters animation and model design not forgetting the programming, all interested me so much i then had to really analise the whole thing and decide what interested me the most was the character design, seeing the model for shang tsung being made and textured, and cyrax's fatality being made in maya software, made me excited to one day be able to do it myself