marrakoosh

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

It’s back…

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

…and it’s better…

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

…than ever before…

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

..and probably ever since.

Sorry. A bit drunk. Couldn’t resist this New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Tres tasty. So much so, it’s all gone. Epic.

Please very quickly go to the bottom of this post and start the video going. The music will accompany the prose. Honestly, it makes it so much more interesting.

So here comes my MegaDrive memories, which also weirdly includes the CD-i…

I can’t really do a megadrive-based blog without talking about the SEGA Mario. Sonic.

I remember one of my friends, Katie – whom I played lots of tennis with – had a MegaDrive. We played so much Sonic 2, Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3. I remember you could plug Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles and then it kinda added some extra things to the game. We had an awful lot of fun with it. We literally spent HOURS playing that, and being as I didn’t own the console, I wasn’t allowed to be Sonic, so was always Knuckles. That really crappy red guy with floppy hair and I would kinda float as my special move. Crap. We completed it a few times and I am sure that once you completed it you would go through again getting the super emerald crystals or something ridiculous.

Once again, this occurred over the summer. Obviously.

With Katie, these were all the games we played – apart from Theme Park and Theme Hospital, but these were later on, on her PC.

Moving from this to MegaDrive playing with, at the time, my best friend Matthew; we played so much Desert Strike.

What. A. Game.

The first level was incredibly tough. This massive great desert. Lots to do. Lots of things that would easily shoot you down. But then you could come across some random man in the desert, and he’d turn out to be an incredible pilot! Used to think it was incredible. You’d shoot a tent. It would explode. A crater would be left behind. ANd controlling the helicopter itself was an absolute art.

Wait…why am I bleeding? There is blood all over my middle and ring finger on my right hand.

Hmmm. Seems I picked some skin round my nail (always do it) but didn’t see I had gone a bit too deep and it had bled.

Damn. Now I find blood on my mouse and glass. Sigh.

Right, so that’s cleaned up now. Back to DS. As ever with games back then, I remember it being fairly unforgiving. The amount of times I died, and had to start again and shit. Pretty annoying. But as ever back then, we carried on. None of this easy save things. Hell, the Amiga used to give you a password for every level, which you would write down and then input to carry on your progress. HA. Lemmings did that. You’d end up with a huge list for all the different levels of difficulty and by the end you hate a notepad full of them. Those were indeed the days.

Sequels to DS? Jungle Strike, where you got to drive like a hovercraft, bike and a stealth bomber or something silly. Urban strike was worse still. I’m pretty sure the last level was INSIDE a casino. Ridiculous. The others, Soviet and Nuclear strike on the Playstation were pretty awful from what I remember.

Aside from DS, we also played some tennis game. Davis Cup World Tour Tennis or something. Loads of fun. Had enough depth for us, but very challenging. I don’t think Matt and I ever got past the first round of the cup. We were awful. But good times nonetheless.

Finally for MegaDrive was Premier Manager 3. First foray into football management sims that would culminate in all-nighters on Football Manager 07 in my third year of university with my housemate. We’d chain smoke (one did the funky stuff, the other normal cigs) and sit at my computer and play it all night. Taking it in turns. Drinking cheap bottles of wine from the bottle. I’d be Everton, he’d be Villa. Haha. Honestly, the amount of time we spent on that was absurd. It would take hours to get through just the first game, because we’d both spend so much time sorting out our team at first. We’d start to limit the time to 5 minutes and eventually, after about a week, we completed the first season. Facing each other in the league or cups was the best. Watching the match on a fairly slow speed, seeing all commentary. What geeks we were, but high and drunk geeks nonetheless.

Anyway, back to Premier Manager. You were forced to a Conference team (usually Dagenham & Redbridge or Kidderminster as they started with most money) and told to work your way up. Buying crappy players from your league. Expanding your stadium and it’s facilities. Speaking to agents. Even choosing the sponsors and where they would go on your boardings!! Great depth. Overwhelmed to be honest. Here’s a picture.

Can you work out what each one meant?

I don’t think we ever took a team to the top, probably Div 1 at the best. We had short attention spans back then and were just getting into the whole buying FHM phase, and Caprice posters. I’m sure we weren’t the only kids to do this.

Okay, I’m sorry but I need to wrap this up. I need lots of sleep tonight. I’m afraid CD-i will come Thursday where it will be short, thus reserving Playstation (FFVII, Porsche CHallenge, Tomb Raider 2, Twisted Metal World Tour) until next week. For the better, for the better.

Peace out homies. Here’s a tune to thump to whilst reading…