It feels rude not to acknowledge some of our childhood inspirations which motivated us to also make games. There are too many to mention, so the emphasis here is on 2D childhood favs.
Without giving away our age, we were exposed to the tape loading of the Commodore 64 before lunch to return and pray that it successfully loaded treasure island and James Pond.
In terms of being wowed by gaming, it could be argued to have started here, however we wanted to reminisce and see if any others also had similar timelines to others.
The NES
Sometimes it was friends rather than ourselves lucky enough to have a personal “entertainment system” which in a way makes its shared memories, the soundtracks, the graphics and our reactions of these immersive games took us in.
Skate or Die
Despite this game having a fairly graphic title, the fun non-violent options on the level select were drawn with attention to detail. It had a great avoid obstacles paperboy-esque look with an edgier feel. I did also love the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and appreciate the need for the feel of the game to be ever so responsive when flying down the route. Being fortunate to be able to access an arcade, I loved the paperboy style handlebars that featured on the arcade version.
Ducktales
Loved the different lands to explore which added literally another dimension to the game and like a lot of Disney products, really good, bright colour palette. This game had fantastic artwork on the outer packaging of the game and unlike a few titles did not result in a bit of a mismatch when compared to the actual gameplay.
Another classic around this era was Castle of Illusion. Being within the U.K we played this on the Sega Mega Drive, known also as the Sega Genesis. It did require a little bit of mastery as a youngster, especially the upside-down level.
SNES Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Oh the unboxing of the SNES, I still remember it, and the again fantastic cartridge box artwork.
This game really did provide so many lands to explore, as well as some great baddies. The quickening tempo of the soundtrack if you were dawdling through really induced the heart to race with a frantic time-keeping. A true inspiration. Other notable gaming mentions include Altered Beast, Streets of Rage and the Sonic franchise providing examples of seamless player motion and introduction of obstacles.
Obviously, this has concentrated on a few early games, which were predominantly on the Nintendo platforms, there have been too many to pick and this certainly is not an exclusive list.
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Super Nova Boy 