Valentines Day is here, and I wanted to tell the story about my love life between two consoles close to my heart.
Now I have had many relationships with consoles. My first fling was with the Game & Watch. Not the Donkey Kong one, although I did go for that one when I was bored some days. I’m on about the Mario one in which you would control Mario by making him jump up and down platforms and left and right while the platforms auto moved from right to left. It was basically the first ever Super Mario Run. It was a good experience, but it wasn’t until I got the Gameboy that I started to pay more attention to video games. I started to enjoy them more in depth, I started to learn about them.
I had various other flings, going through various systems such as the SEGA Genesis, Gameboy Colour, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo 64, and the Nintendo Gamecube.
Now we all have that one where we feel like we fell in love, and while the relationship was fantastic and felt like the best thing ever, you felt like nothing else would compare. Nintendo 64 was this moment for me. I fell in love with the The Legend of Zelda games, and I couldn’t stop playing Banjo & Kazooie, and Goldeneye was a personal favourite because my Granddad used to be a huge James Bond fan, and so I felt a connection with Goldeneye through that. I adored it, but it was was really just the content I enjoyed rather than the actual console.
The PlayStation was the one for me. The console I fell in love with. I had the PlayStation before the Nintendo 64, and I found myself becoming overwhelmed by the N64 games rather than console itself. The PlayStation was everything. I collected game, after game, after game. I’d get the occasional PlayStation magazine from my Mother sometimes every month or every two months. I lost hours of my life to the original PlayStation console. Whether it was playing Time Crisis, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Tekken and whatever else I found myself obsessed with.
It wasn’t just the games though, it was the fact that the PlayStation was the first console in which I started swapping memory cards with friends. My buddy Michael would have his copy of Tomba but be unable to get past a certain area that I had already done, so he’d borrow my card and carry on from there with my saved game. I’d borrow game discs from my friend, Ben. I’d play games for hours with my sister. It was a console I was in love with.
I decided to trade it in eventually and get the upgraded model, the PlayStation 2. I was in heaven. For years I fell into more and more games, I traded memory cards with friends inside little cases. I took it to my Fathers at weekends, I subscribed to the PlayStation Magazine and collected demo, after demo, and found myself hoarding the cheat books that came with every few issues. I was smitten, in love all over again, and it felt like my PlayStation console had grown up with me.
Eventually I did get myself and Xbox (The crystal clear case one, not the black one) by betraying my poor PlayStation 2 and trading it in for what I thought was the better choice. I found myself regretting the choice but learning to live with it. The Xbox never felt the same for me. I subscribed to the Xbox Magazine and did the same things that I did with the PlayStation 2. I collected demos, cheat code books and kept the magazines under my bed, occasionally getting them back out to oogle at the Lara Croft pull out in one issue. Ahem.
Now, while I stayed with the Xbox for a fair few years, I decided to upgrade to the Xbox 360 and stayed with that for many, many years. The PlayStation 3 got announced and I had shrugged it off, mainly because at the time there was that HD vs BluRay war that was taking place. I had already spent a fair amount on HD DVD’s so I was really thinking of value for money. I found myself enjoying the 360’s online experience, playing online with strangers and friends was great.
And then one day.
Without thinking.
I traded it in for the Nintendo Wii.
By this point I was already running games on my PC and had been for a fair few years before I even got the 360, so when I got the Wii, I adored the “innovative” theme of the console, forcing us to stand up and play. But my affair was short lived and eventually the Wii just collected dust after a few months, eventually being traded in for another 360.
The 360 remains my most trustworthy modern day console and I haven’t bothered worrying about getting an Xbox One or a PS4. I have a PC, and I’m a PC gamer, but I trust the Xbox 360 because of how it served me well for years. However, my true love lies with the PlayStation and the PS2, and my god, sometimes I miss it. I have a PS2 Slim lying around somewhere with games such as Kingdom Hearts, and Dynasty Warriors, but I don’t think about getting it back out because I have the memories. I’m scared of returning to my past and ruining what I had. PlayStation will forever mean something to me.
Are there any consoles that stole your heart? Spill the beans on Valentines Day. <3
