25 replies to this topic

[NightWolf235]

I was born in 1996 and my first console was the PS1. When I played Driver: You are the Wheelman, I thought video games couldn't get any better! How wrong I was.

[MarcusAurelius]

I was born in the early 1980s so I was just a child then. I remeber these years to be fantastic actually. There was already a primitive version of internet but compiuters ( AMIGA, Comodor 64) for us meant only videogames and typing letters to be print. Also compiuters were rare in the houses. Families were spending more time togheter in the domestic enviroment, usually in front of the TV or playing some board games in the dining room ( Connect Four and Guess Who? were really popular then).
One of the negative sides of today is that families dont talk much as they used to and thats one of the problems I have with modernity. Even at the bus stops pepole would talk to you while today lots of pepole seems to be reserved on the bus. They use their Ipods or use their cell-phones etc.
In Italy there were lots of groups of young pepole who would usually aggregate in front of a cafè bar or in some public garden while sitting on their scooters and motor-bikes. Thats were friendships and loves used to born. It was romantic and even as a child I used to hang out with this groups. Today in the distrect were I grow up I rarely see these groups of young pepole hanging out togeter.
In my country we had many TV channals that were emerging and new TV programms as well including one strip-poker games that would reach high level of audience late at night.
We had aslo many new cartoons and children programs. Lots of new toys were coming out as well.
However, after 12 night 1 o'clock max, the TV would display an image that meant the end of the TV programms. They were resuming only after 6:50 in the morning.
There was also less stress in general. Economic crise, Terrorism, Globalization were unknown words for many. Europe and America were spending lots of money and doing major investiments. Italy was one of the wealthiest countries in the world and there was high consumism thats one of the reasons were are in big depth today.
Fashion was different. Women would usually wear high heels and had sprayed hair-style while converse shoes and blue jean jackets were popular among guys. Lots of teenagers had always a gum in their mounth lol so I always had some chew-in-gum with me to imitate them.
Turn offs of this decade is that HIV started to emerge. Lots of avertisements were showns on tv to make pepole aware of this virus. I remember one advertisment was so scary lol I even saw it recently on YouTube and it seems that it scared an entire generation of children judging by the comments pepole left on the video lol
Comunism was about to end but there was always an arm wrestling between west and east. I remember they were always talking about that on TV. Rambo came out at that time so even us children knew a little bit what was going on then.
Of course life was harder for some aspects, in many job enviroments we didnt have the technology of today, some streets were dirtier and to cure pepole was a bit harder than it is today for many conditions.
Music was also awsome lol..the greatest songs came out in that time and they still play them on the radio and clubs today..

I hope I brought you back in the years a little bit. but then again as we all come from different enviroments we may all have different opinions about this decade.
I would like to live in the 1980s as an adult at least for some years..

By the way I personlly met WJFOX and he is not old at all LOL

Ah the Amiga light years ahead of the competition. I remember among friends that owning an Amiga was almost a status symbol, and there were numerous debates with IBM PC owners on the merits of one system vs another.

I remember everything past my 3rd birthday with total clarity, so the 80s was not so much a blur for me. I remember everyone trying to get rid of their old wooden colour TVs in pursuit of the new metallic chrome Philips TV with remote and stereo. VHS was emerging the winner to betamax and alot of people were getting into VCRs. I played my first Atari game in the early 80s and was awed that it looked almost as good as the local arcade machine version of Space Invaders!

But I also remember being blown away by the Commodore 64 a few years later. I thought nothing could ever match the sheer power of this machine. How wrong I was when a few short years later I witnessed my first Amiga computer. The rightful successor to Commodore 64. I marvelled at games like The New Zealand Story and Bubble Bubble with their majestic splendor of colors. I never wanted a machine so badly and forgot all about my desire to own a Commodore 64 and jumped right onto Amiga. Its 3.5 inch floppy and quicker load times put Commodore to shame and also PC's with their 5.25 disks. I took a class at school in computers because of my love for Amiga, but was so woefully disappointed when the school computers were all IBMs with monochrome screens with no sound and seemed hopelessly outmatched by what Amiga could offer. I of course congregated with Amiga users and the odd Atari ST user, as they had almost the same capabilities as the Amiga. But we ridiculed the PC and even Apple machines for a long time. In fact even when Commodore went defunct alot of us (Amiga users) refused to let our prized possession go. Instead we persisted with our beloved platform until our machines died of natural causes. This is how much more advanced and specialised our machines seemed to us. Owning an Amiga felt like you had an Ipad back in 1990 for at least the novelty aspect alone of increased colors and full stereo sound, PC's would not experience ubiquitous stereo sound until almost a decade later when Creative made the Sound Blaster add on card. And nobody was privy to this indulgence unless they too had an Amiga.

Some friends owned modems back in these days and was mostly for downloading games. Because most Amiga games were under 2mb I presume with slow dial up speeds it was akin to downloading something around 1Gb today. So maybe pulling an allnighter and having pizza and gaming sleepover nights were common then.

I remember the 80s was a great era for movie franchises, being that a majority started off in this time. Predator, Rambo, Terminator, Batman, Superman, Tron and many more. One of my favourites being the Back to the Future trilogy. Music was alot crazier too and hiphop was finding its momentum in this period. I remember watching Breakin Electric Boogaloo in this time and breakdancing took off like a fever! Car phones were a luxury item and you would sometimes see some yuppie businessman holding a brick for a cellphone. Madonna and Michael Jackson ruled the airwaves. Star Trek The Next Generation graced our screens. Fast food tasted like fast food lol and political correctness was a faraway concept. I too remember life being more sociable and people generally had a good attitude about things. Sarcasm wasn't a virtue back then. So people meant what they said and there was more of an openess and sincerity among friendships.

Finally by the end of it and the decline of the computing platform wars (Amstrad, Atari, Apple, Commodore, IBM) things became alot less imaginative and crazy by the 90s. Amiga was still the dominating graphical platform for creativity for some years yet, and I even held off from buying a PC for most of the 90s because I felt they were inferior to what Amiga offered, even the Megadrive didn't come close, but Playstation did surpass it on a few levels. I remember even running out to buying a memory expansion card for my Amiga when I saw Simcity play in full expanded color as opposed to 16 colors on the cut down lower memory version. So it wasn't until computer graphics caught up by the late 90s that I was convinced. 3d graphics of course solidified PC's victory in my eyes but I still felt I missed the Amiga for many years after even owning a PC. Now its a forgotten platform but it held the advantage for a long time and I bet if Commodore was still around and innovative as in those years, they would of given Apple and Microsoft a run for their money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

Edited by MarcusAurelius, 04 July 2012 - 08:07 AM.

[kjaggard]

My "game" was Monster Hunter.

Other than that, I never played games very much. My parents always put a short limit to how long I could use any electronic device, so I was always outside.

Yeah actually I can't say as I ever remember a game I played as well as the time a friend and I road our bikes through a huge puddle that was almost a small pond. Or that there was any videogame skill that got me as excited as when I finally mastered climbing thirty feet up the steel poles on the playground using only my hands on seperate poles and shifting my weight back and fourth to move upwards one hand at a time.

racing down the street and catching frogs in the pond. My uncle had a stick tied to a rope hanging from a tall tree in his back yard it swung out into the woods, no lake or pond or anything, you just swung out over where it dropped off the raise yard and over the bushes and between trees and then swung back and hit the dirt landing ramp running or did a face plant. I do remember some videogames fondly, but mostly I remember the dawn of internet for the public in the 90s. Running a 28.8 external modem and the amount of information I could access. I made up a game of info chasing, where I'd ask a question and learn about the answer which would lead to something else to learn about, which would lead to something else... ect. I could learn obscure facts and data about Illuminated manuscripts which an hour later would have me learning about marsupials and egg laying mammals which leads to egg hatched marsupial mammals rearing an nursing practices which lead to glandular configurations that give mammals their name but are surmised to have originated from modified sweat glands.

The ninties I remember somewhat mixedly. I remember fondly the science and promise of the era, but at the time I was a teen. With all the emotional and school cultural adjustments I need to make. Angsty as it was I'd enjoy visiting then again. the first half decade of 2000s was a horrible experience for me, but had I not gone through it I'd not have adjusted half as well and come to some place of balance, which likely saved me from giving up on life when I got sick.

But I feel that the best time of life is right now, and the places we will go from here hold wonders and challenges that excite me.

[MoPawnch]

My "game" was Monster Hunter.

You know you were addicted to monster hunter when the 150+ item combinations were all in your head.
Miss that game. My psp refused life support (won't charge anymore) and I've been so busy I haven't touched it since.

[eacao]

Zelda ocarina of time, Super mario and mario cart on the Nintendo 64 was the foundation to my childhood. My sister's friend was a real whiz at nintendo and whenever we couldn't do something, she'd always help us out. Happy days

[iebe]

The only exception was 1989 when we had the fall of the Berlin War and the end of the cold war, that year was pretty special

I can only agree with you that 1989 is a great year! I was actually born on 1-9-89, for those of you that are into numbers.