Digging around in some old family photo albums for a project I'm doing, I came across this picture: This was Christmas Eve 1988. We were about to go to a family party at my grandma's house, when my parents surprised us by letting us open a present each. I'm the kid in the front getting Space Harrier 3D. We actually opened the presents before and then were supposed to sit down to take a picture (that's my brother and sister in the picture - sister is 6 years older and brother is 14 years older), but they couldn't make me stop smiling or get me to put down the game, I was so excited to get it (my fingers are actually digging into the plastic seal around the box in the picture). I was 4 years old at the time. I vividly remember getting this game - we had to run to Toys R Us the day after christmas to get the 3D Glasses because my dad didn't know the game required them. While picking up the 3D glasses, my dad also grabbed Maze Hunter 3D because he thought it looked cool. It was the first Sega "upgrade" i got, I'd eventually get a Master Gear Converter and Sega CD in 93 and a 32X in 94. One of my favorite sega memories hands down. Post your happy Sega memories.
Awesome idea for a thread! Here's my contribution: I used to play Alex Kidd and Sonic 1 MS at a friend's house. They were the first two games I ever played and my introduction to gaming. I must have spent hours at this girl's house totally hogging her Master System. I was amazed at both games and loved playing them. So fast forward several months later after my Father hears that I want a Sega Master System and he calmly says to open a bag he had brought over. Lo and behold it was a Sega Master System with Alex Kidd built-in and Sonic 1 as the game he bought with it. I ran across the room, jumped and hugged him so hard. I was so happy. It's probably the happiest I ever was as a child. I was so excited. I have more memories like this one centred around the Sega Mega Drive which my Father bought for me later along with memories of getting Sonic 2 as the first game I received with the Mega Drive, Sonic 3 as an awesome birthday present and Sonic and Knuckles as a fantastic Easter present after seeing the slick and cool advertisement on television but I'll leave it at that for now. As CoolJerk said post your Sega memories! Looking forward to reading the replies.
I mostly remember cheering myself up before going to have an operation with the fact I would come home and play Sonic3&Knuckles. I could still play that game for hours, especially the co-op with Tails. Not exactly a happy memory, but my contentment with doing what I normally could and did do was notable. I learned a lot about games from the Dreamcast, from Grandia's interesting battle system to Shen Mue's use of quick time events and weirdly realistic gameplay (at the time). I spent a lot of time in Sonic Adventure just running around, running up walls, spin dashing then unfurling from a ball to run at breakneck speed. Not much of a story to it. But those were happy, simple times. Fond memories indeed.
I've got a few. My first game was Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II. I didn't know wtf I was doing and gave up and let my dad play so I could watch. The Mega Drive was his anyway, and that's really how it went with Desert Strike too. Sonic 1 was the first game I witnessed, sure, but I never played it. By the time I was old enough to understand the concept of "press buttons" I was playing Sonic 2 at my after school daycare, and getting trounced at MK3 at home. MK3, incidentally, is the first violent videogame I was ever allowed to play. This came after a visit to my father's best friend who owned a Super Nintendo with Star Fox and MK1. He asked me if I wanted to play, and I told him "daddy doesn't let me play fighting games". He gave me "lolwut" face, went to (presumably) tell my dad he was being an idiot, and they both walked back in and dad picked up the controller and said "let's play". Little tangent there. Another big (huge) Sega memory for me is visiting Sega World at Piccadilly Circus. I only got to go once, and it's a damn fucking shame it's gone now. Visiting that place as a Sega Junkie Child in the 90s was the closest I'll ever be to reaching heaven. There was a coin-op Sonic game there man. Whaaaaat. Incidentally, Tekken 2 was also there and I never figured out why. Here's another. I was spending the night at my after-school club friend's house. He had a Playstation, but we were getting bored of V-Rally (even with the steering wheel!), and taking turns on Bomberman on his GBC was out of the question. Then he remembered. "I've got a Sega too". The Sega he was referring to, however, was a Master System. Not only that, but he couldn't find a game for it. I was gutted. Then he said "I don't even know if it turns on" and flicked the switch. Then a game came on. We both sat there like WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. Ya'll can guess the game, right? We eventually found Strider as well, but we fucking sucked at it :v: One more. Several years later, I'm approaching my first teenage year in Brooklyn. I had a Gamecube and an N64, and quite a few games for both, but I was still a Sega junkie. I missed out on the Saturn and the Dreamcast, and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was the closest I got to living that glory (and YEA YEA YEA YEA YEA of course). I lived in a 3-apartment building, and was real good friends with my downstairs neighbor. We discovered emulators around this time, and would netplay as much as possible (which was basically whenever our parents said we couldn't hang out). His dad was a tinkerer though, and I'd often see something opened up with it's innards out in the open in his house. He'd find broken stuff all over Brooklyn, bring it home and fix it up. Flip it if he didn't have a use for it, or keep it for the house if he did. So one day, my friend comes to me and goes "Aerosol. I've got a Dreamcast". I literally almost broke my neck falling down the stairs to check this shit out. He flicks it on, and the Dreamcast boot sequence starts. I'm freaking out. The intro to Sonic Adventure starts playing. I'm freaking out. Totally bugging out. He played first since it was his. He sucked. It was my turn, and I blew through Sonic's story. Yup, played through the whole thing without giving the controller back. Though, to be fair, he told me to keep playing cause he wanted to see what happened next :v:. We discovered that the Dreamcast's copy-protection was basically non-existent around this time and had a field day downloading games and burning them. Between Dreamcast and Zsnes, that was a great summer.
Can't think of any particularly noteworthy SEGA memories just at this moment, but here's a throwback photo of me from the Dreamcast days: :v:/>
Loved reading your memories and stories Aerosol! Looking forward to reading more. Awesome idea for a thread!
