Games of Yore

For as long as I can remember, I've been a gamer. Even before I unpacked my first C-64 with trembling hands, on what I now realise was the best damn Christmas eve of my life (The Christmas of Castle Greyskull coming in as a distant second) you would find me hunched over an LCD-game, or you wouldn't find me at all. It didn't matter where I was, or what I was doing. If I was awake, I was gaming in one way or another. To this day, my only memory of the several trips to Spain my family undertook during the 80's, is the insane amounts of turtles acting like assholes.

"This is the pinnacle of graphics!"

Me, at some point, probably.

But one weird thing I've begun to notice is that for a rather large chunk of time, spanning between the pre-commodore years and well past the early PC years, it would appear that I managed to miss out on pretty much every truly influential hit-game of the day. Maybe it was the fact that, apart from Game&Watch, I never really became a Nintendo fan boy. Or perhaps it was due to my insistence on buying most of my games through mail order (thereby missing whatever game was front and centre at the local game store). But whatever the reason, I rarely recognise the first 50 games in any top-100 list of the 80's and/or 90's, and more often than not I will just nod and smile in gleeful ignorance whenever people reminisce over the games of yore.

Now, I'm not trying to imply that I was less of a sheep than the rest of the world. I'm not saying that I was a special snowflake. I'm just stating, as a matter of fact, that I feel a bit left out, and that I have no idea why that is. I mean, gaming is what I do. It's what I live and breathe for. So how in the name of hell is it that I managed to miss out on so many milestones in the medium, and why does it make me feel like such a putz? Sure, in a few cases I will wear my ignorance with pride, most notably when it comes to Nintendo. I'm sort of a douche that way. But for the most part, it just makes me feel less complete. It's the same feeling I get when I'm arriving late for an awesome party, like there's this piece of fun that's been had by everyone else, and that I'll never be able to claim it no matter what I do to catch up. Command and Conquer will always be a mystery to me. Warcraft will forever be "that game i briefly dabbled with and then quickly forgot all about". The Konami code is... something I guess, I dunno, and Zelda is, as far as I know, the guy in green spandex and an ugly wooden sword. The list goes on...

"Who?"

Instead, when I think back to my old gaming memories, I remember running a derelict moon base in the most awesome spreadsheet of all time. Or trying (and failing) to find my way out of the most annoyingly closed off cave system a dwarf could ever get stuck in. Even when the games I remember were huge hits, I often find that they seem to be missing from the collective memory of the rest of the world for reasons unknown. At least I never hear them mentioned. Like Xenon 1 and 2, or Speedball (also 1 and 2). Pretty much the whole Bitmap Brothers catalogue. Considering how much money they made back in the day, isn't it odd that I never, ever, EVER hear anyone talk about their games? Am I the only one with a whole notebook full of handwritten statistics from my climb to the top as the new manager of Brutal Deluxe?

Even stranger still, I have some truly remarkable gaps within genres that are very close to my heart. I played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (because I'm not a goddamn savage), but I never even tried Elite. How weird is that? The same goes for strategy games, where (as mentioned earlier) both Command and Conquer and Warcraft stick out like sore thumbs amongst thousands of hours of me clicking on tiny little tanks.

The only explanation I can come up with is twofold: 

Firstly, in the early days, supply was limited and everyone that was into gaming played whatever was available. Secondly, these days I spend at least an hour per day reading up on new games, meaning I'll know about almost every release, even if I never try the game. And somewhere in the middle I apparently played my games much the same way that a headless chicken spends it's last moments. Directionless and without dignity.

What about you? What are your most glaring missing entries from the old days?