It's that time of year again. The time when the weather gets colder, the nights start getting darker, holiday music is being played endlessly in every store you walk in. While this specific part of time has always been a wonderful time of year, it was also the time I looked forward to the most when I was younger. I have fond memories of taking the first Friday for my Winter Break from school and going straight to the video store to rent a game that would tide me over until Christmas day hit and I had a new console or whatever game I had been looking forward to all year to hopefully play. Despite having many of these and all of them being very special memories, I'm going to focus on one in particular; the day I received my Sega Genesis.
I was a soldier in the bloody 16-bit wars. I enlisted on the side of the Sega army in 1993. I'm not sure what made me go with a Sega Genesis over a Super Nintendo at the time, since the first 16 bit game I had the honor of seeing was glimpses of Street Fighter 2 - Ryu vs. Blanka - being played in someones bedroom with 7 much older kids gathered around a TV at someones birthday and I was isolated to another room and left to play Super C since I was much younger than anyone else there. I think what did it for me was the fact that I was learning how to read and would look through video game magazines anytime I went to the grocery store with my family. Seeing images of Sonic the Hedgehog, finding out there was a game based on the X-Men, and probably seeing commercials for the WWF Super Wrestlemania would have inevitably lead to me begging my parents and Santa Claus to please try to get me a Sega Genesis and any game for Christmas that year.
The Sega Genesis is the first console I can say was actually mine. I grew up always having an NES around, but it belonged to my older brother. I can remember waking up that morning and using the usual strategy of giving my parents a hug, excitedly asking them if I could open presents, and instantly targeting the largest box with my name on it. The rest of that day is just a blur to me, outside of sitting there and looking at the box the console came in, looking at how much cooler I thought it looked compared to the NES, and how sexy the curves on the controller were. I'm sure "sexy" isn't a word I would have used to describe the controller at six or seven years old, but it's definitely a drastic change from the boxy rectangular NES controller. To this day, there's just something magical about turning the game on, that white screen with the blue SEGA logo, hearing the iconic "Sega" jingle, and going straight into a games title screen that looks better than anything I had ever seen before.
Sonic the Hedgehog is one of those games that gets a lot of criticism in 2016 for design decisions that don't work great when you look back at the progress platformers have made over the past 20+ years of development, but in 1993, I felt like I was controlling a cartoon. I feel like if you ask anyone who had the pleasure of trying out Sonic the Hedgehog back when it was released, it's very difficult for them to not have a brief wistful expression pass across their face. Sonic the Hedgehog is a game that was considered to be direct competition to Super Mario World. In hindsight, people praise Super Mario World for it's ridiculously expansive world, branching levels, tons of secrets, and easy to control - hard to master game mechanics. What sometimes gets overlooked is that Sonic had two things that made it truly stand out and cemented its legacy in the hearts of those die hard Sega fans; speed and attitude.
As I'm writing this article, I just went through Green Hill Zone's first act, and the sheer speed the game moves at, down to the annoyed look sonic gives the screen any time you leave the controller for too long is something that Super Mario World could not touch. There's also the brilliant use of the Yamaha YM2612 sound processor that gives Sonic and many other Sega titles a score that is unlike almost anything else out there. Due to my transition being straight from the NES to the Sega Genesis, the improvement of the sound was something else that really impacted me and made me pay a lot closer attention to the soundtracks and sound effects used in games. Sonic 1 was, and I say still is a wonderful game that deserves it's view as one of the most important Sega games of all time and definitely showcased the difference in game development philosophies between Nintendo and Sega at the time. Despite all of this raving about receiving the Genesis and Sonic, there was one other title I knew I had to have that still impacts me to this day.
I must have been 7 or 8, but after seeing it for probably 30 seconds, I knew I had to have Street Fighter II. I remember opening the smaller box that this game came in and absolutely freaking out once I realized I could play the game all the older kids said I was too young for. I remember when I finally peeled myself away from Sonic, popping this cartridge in and just getting destroyed over and over by the computer. I was convinced they were cheating because they could turn into electricity, shoot fire from their hands, stretch their arms, and all sorts of other things. I don't know when I threw my first fireball, I just know that I spent so many hours playing SF2CE and was happy just picking ryu over and over and trying to beat all of the stages on easy. Again, this was a different time in gaming history. If someone wants to learn how to do a fireball in any fighting game, there are countless youtube videos and you probably know someone that could teach you the dark arts, but in 1993, at least with my brother, his friends, and I, it was just dumb accidental luck if someone threw one and everyone would get extremely excited when it looked like a player knew what they were doing.
Street Fighter II was such a huge impact to me because fighting games are still one of my most played genres today, and this is definitely where that passion started. I'm sure I probably have dozens of smashed controllers from when I was younger just from frustration of playing SF2CE and Super Street Fighter II against the computer and getting beat over and over, but that's also responsible for me learning fundamentals over time that still apply to fighting games being released today. I can also say that I had a 3 button controller pretty much the entire time I had a Sega Genesis and I somehow made Street Fighter II work for me and still be fun. Now that I think about it, maybe having to think about whether I wanted to use punches or kicks also drilled in that I need to consider what attacks I'm using and what strength instead of just having all six buttons easily available.
Getting a Sega Genesis as a Christmas present is definitely one of the best gaming related holiday memories to happen to me, but I'm probably going to post more if I can get myself back in the habit of writing. Starting with Thanksgiving break and ending at the start of the new year, along with summer vacation, were definitely the time I did the most gaming. If anyone reads this, write in with some of your favorite holiday related gaming memories.
Thanks for visiting and happy holidays!
