Reading 04: If anyone has an extra Game Boy I could use one
I went back and played some old Sega Genesis games. I never really had any experience playing Sega games that I can think of. Casually randomly playing one with a friend or at an arcade or something, but I never actually owned any. So, I started off with the classic, Sonic.
It was fun, it was decent, it didn’t really hold any sentimentality or interest for me and it didn’t hold me for the hours that I’ve heard others talk about. I don’t know, I know there’s a ton of love for Sonic, but maybe it’s just one of those things where people hype it up a ton and it kind of lets you down. It isn’t a bad game, but maybe just not my style. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I moved on to a weird little game called Wiz ’N’ Liz.
This game was so weird from the beginning. I mean come on look at that graffiti title screen for a game about a wizard going around catching rabbits.
But from what I could gather from playing a few quick rounds, I think I might be pretty good at it. Now this game was fun. Maybe just because it was weird and unexpected, but it held my attention for much longer than I thought it would. I then moved on to the wonderful world of Mortal Kombat.
I remember playing a version of this at the random little arcades they had at bowling alleys with my friend and trying to figure out all the special finisher moves. I’ll always come back and play Mortal Kombat, it’s just fun even when trying to do some of the controls would just switch screens on my Mac. I’ll have to find a more Mac friendly port somewhere else…
Overall, Sega had some solid games and some good hardware from what I can tell from the Sega presentations. They made some mistakes with supporting too much at once, but they definitely pushed the console era forward in a positive way. If people are still talking about Dreamcasts now and looking out to get one, they did something right.
But, like I said, I never really had much Sega experience besides some arcade games. When I was a kid, it was all about the Game Boy and PlayStation. I honestly don’t know many people my age that don’t love the Game Boy, even if it is solely because of Pokemon. But one of the first gaming experiences I ever had was on an original Game Boy playing RoboCop because I was asking my dad too many questions about the game so he just let me use it. Now I was small. RoboCop maybe shouldn’t have been game number one for me, but oh well it was, and it was awesome.
Now dad also had Mario and some other stuff, but whatever RoboCop is cooler. So I always have a nice fond memory of Game Boy and would love to get my hands on one again. My mom had a policy that we had to get rid of our old consoles or handhelds like this when we went to get a new one until recently. Therefore, I no longer have the line of Game Boys I used to, or even my old PlayStations, and I wish I could get them back. If only I could relive the days of RoboCop, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, and some of the OG Need for Speed games.
But whatever, none of that really had anything to do with the prompt for this reading so moving on. Why would a gamer choose one platform over another when going to purchase a system? Hardware specs? Price? Portability? Games? Why yes all of those things. All of that stuff is what makes a console important. If there are franchises that you love but they only come out on one console, you’re going to stick to that console. If you’re all about playing games on your way to work or on the move, then you’re going to be looking for something that’s designed to do that. If you’re on a budget, you’re not going to go out and get the PS4 Pro for $400, you’re going to get something that fits your needs. That’s the main thing that applies to all gamers when it comes down to what system they’re going to get, what fills their needs the best. Whether that be whatever has the most amount of games, has the newest hardware, what can easily fit in a bag, what all their friends have, what they’ve bought since they were a little kid because they’re locked in, or whatever is cheapest at the time. There’s no one answer for every person. One of the few other kids that lived in my neighborhood when I was little had a PlayStation, so I got one too so we could trade games and play the same stuff together. Now here I am only buying PlayStations ever since, and probably going to continue to do that for a long time. There’s a ton of reasons to buy one system over another one, it just comes down to what you care about.
