The Fiore Scott Files: Retro Video Games (Part 1)

I was talking to my father about how my 14 year old brother hadn't been able to play his video games since he began high school just two weeks ago, when it hit me, I've been playing video games since my motorskills where advance enough to do so. Now I'm only 23, so I've never even seen an Atari up close, but I'm been appreciating the gamer side of myself since my father
bought us our first system, the Sega Genesis.

I can only remember good times with this system. I would sit next to my brothers for hours just playing Terminator, Sonic the Hedgehog, Madden '93, and my favorite Decap Attack. And yes I did just spend 30 minutes searching the internet trying to figure out the name of my favorite game. I enjoyed it that much.


Sega Megadrive Collection Trailer Decap Attack by objectifsega

My older and I also realized that we only ever where able to complete Decap Attack, while the upper levels of Sonic 1 and 2 and Terminator always alluded us. But at that time, for most of us "gamers", a term that I didn't even recognize I fell under until a few years ago, winning and progressing through all the levels of a game was never the main goal. It was about having fun. My brothers and I never had a problem being stuck on the casino level in Sonic or getting killed on the 2nd level in Terminator. We just started over.

Those wonderful days lasted for many years until the advent of the CD and the creation of the Playstation.  Man how we loved our playstation. Of course my father bought it for my brothers, seeing as I was a girl and didn't do such things, but I considered it mine because I enjoyed playing it as much as they did.

And we definitely played the hell out of system. Especially when we saw just how awesome and upgraded the games where compared to our Genesis after playing the demo disk. I just know you remember those. Those disks contained my first taste of playing a first player snowboarding game, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Spyro, and Gran Turismo 2 (that wasn't in an arcade). It was also our first time experiencing such gorey video graphics with Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

Now if those aren't some beautiful but crazy graphics, I don't know what is. Seriously people, who thought that up?

The number of games we had drastically went up from the 5 or so Genesis games we had to at least 30 Playstation CDs. I could never get into the Final Fantasy franchise but I also wanted PaRappa theRapper. I would let me brothers spend hours playing Madden or Tekken and wait for them to allow me to get on so I could play my Crash Bandicoot. And God forbid if I ever won against my brothers in Mortal Kombat. It was on then.

But I can't forget about my favorite excuse to leave the table at Denny's, Arcade games. Whenever I got a chance, at it was rare, to go to an arcade the one game that I always made sure to save quarters for was the Simpsons game.

I was usually either Bart (everyone wanted to be Bart!) or Marge with her vacuum. This is the only arcade game I was able to beat, I'm pretty proud to say. And it took many tries and many quarters, but I was always entertained.

And then there was the fighting arcade games: Marvel vs. Campcom and X-Men.

I would jostle with the boys to get a joystick so that I could play. I was usually a female character in both games (I'm looking at you Chun-Li and Storm) and was able to hold my own against anyone who played. Yeah I mostly button-mashed, but it did its job.

I've been gaming since I was 7 and at 23, I'm still plugging away on both consoles and computers.Clearly, my gaming started early and it still has shown no signs of stopping. But that's a story for Part 2.  

What were your favorite old school Genesis, Playstation 1, and Arcade games?