Your Console Story! Or how I ended up with a Sega Genesis.

[netmonkey]

We all had the classic consoles NES, SNES, Genesis, and perhaps others... maybe the Atari 2600, if you're old enough. As a kid, it was probably the greatest day of your life where you finally caught up with your friends by having your first console...!

Here's my story on how I ended up with a Sega Genesis (Mega Drive):

I remember it was my birthday, or some important holiday where I got to pick my present, and we (Mom, Dad, and I) went to this store to buy me a console. The NES was hugely popular and the SNES and Genesis had just gotten to Venezuela and no one in the neighborhood had them yet.

This generic store didn't care on wether I would buy one console or the other, so they conected both to a TV for me to try with Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, never seeing a SNES or Genesis before that and trying out those games, which would you choose? The fat, lazy plumber who dies when he gets hits by a walking mushroom or a blue hedgehog on steroids? I went for the hedgehog, which is exactly what sega wanted people to do!

So, eventually, everyone in my neighborhood bought Genesis. There is one kid who bought a Super Nintendo, and I still talk to him online these days...

My Genesis apparently got stolen when I moved to the United States, along with a pirated Famicom I got as a gift later.

So, do you remember why you got your classic console?

[lailoken]

well... I still remember how I got my first Sega Mega Drive (the name of the Genesis in Europe) though the memory is a little blurry on details.

It was Christmas and the first Christmas where I didn't actually whish for anything particular (up untill then it had been Lego mostly ). I remember walking into our living room and opening a little package that contained Madden (don't know the year, could look it up at my parents place tho;)) and I remember getting annoyed because this friend of mine had a Mega Drive and obviously this game (which it turned out some sales clerk had talked my mom into buying) on its own was useless. So I went to my mom and told her that this was really nice, but that I couldn't play it like that and that it was useless... and my mom smiled at me with that warm hearty smile that all women attain at achieving mother-level-status and told me to go look under the christmas tree. And lo behold! There was a BIG box there I hadn't noticed probably because it was SO big! And that was my Mega Drive and the beginning of my life in games, because even though I never REALLY played Madden (me being german and at age 12 not knowing the first thing about American Football) the Mega Drive shipped with a little jewel known as Sonic the Hedgehog! So that Christmas, that evening, was the first evening I played all night and all the next day. It was the best.

Technically though the Mega Drive wasn't my first game system since we also had an old Atari before that and an Amiga500 and a Commodore 64...

But for me it all really began with the little hedgehog named Sonic. I still remember the Sega-jingle when you turned it on... those were the days... I also still remember playing the two player mode in one of the sequels which was nice... oh and Streets of Rage...

those were the days...

Addendum: Years later it still strikes me as incredible irony that it was actually my parents (by talking to my friends parents without me uttering any desire for a game system at the time) who got me hooked on computer games as they would always lament how I didn't spend enough time outdoors because I was "addicted" to games ;P

[DanJW]

It was christmas. I can't remember what year. 1992 maybe. Our ZX Spectrum (previously owned by Clive Sinclair) had finally packed in. All the other kids had consoles. My brother and I eagerly opened a good looking parcel that had both our names on it. Inside was just a card that said "happy landings". We scratched our heads, trying to figure out what it meant. Were we going on holiday? Was it a mistake? Our parents smiled and said "maybe you should check the landing upstairs". Sure enough a Megadrive was found there, with the big blue hedgehog on the box.

Why did they do this? I have no fucking idea

But oh man, that Sega jingle still lifts my heart

[Kolzig]

This beginning to sound like a broken record, but...

It was Christmas in 1993 or 1994 and I finally got what I had wanted for over an year, a brand new Sega MegaDrive II console bundled with the super awesome Sonic the Hedgehog 2. One Christmas earlier I had like only one real gift that I begged and begged and it was this very machine, but I didn't get it. I was quite furious at my dad because of that, but everything was instantly forgiven a year later, now that I finally had received it. Many of my friends already had MegaDrives, and I had played at their houses countless times. I remember the first time I turned on my own console, damn it was magical to hear that "Seeeeeeeegaaaa!" shout and sonic spinning past the screen and revealing the Sega-logo.

I did play earlier a lot with Vic-20, Commodore 64 and Amiga 500, but those were computers, this was a real gaming console.

[loonyboi]

Let's see..

I was really little (like four) when my father got an Atari VCS for the whole family (back then, that sort of thing happened...he hasn't played a game since). Then for I guess my ninth birthday (or maybe it was Chanukah...I can't remember) I got a Sega Master System. Several years after that, I got a Game Boy, then a Game Gear, and eventually a Genesis.

Then when I was in college I bought an N64, and got a PlayStation for Chanukah. I remember that in particular, as that was the year I spent several days during the week after Christmas locked in my dorm room doing nothing but playing FFVII. I discovered that by ordering Dominoes in the early afternoon, I could get food all day long. This repeated for three or four days non-stop. It was a good time.

After college is when I decided to beef up my console collection, buying the systems I played at other kids' houses when I was younger. This includes a NES (which is probably my least favorite system), a SNES (Chrono Trigger and Mario World made this one worth it), a TG-16 and Turbo Duo (Ys made that one worth it), a Jaguar (Tempest 2000 is one of my favorite games of all time...it's right next to me on my desk here at work) and a Saturn (my favorite system of all time...Panzer Dragoon > *.*).

[Oath]

My first, very own, console was the Mega Drive. Seems to have been a popular choice, considering all the stories posted so far. Anyway, I didn't get mine at christmas, I bought it myself. Actually I only paid for half of it, but I was six years old damnit! Here's the condensed version of the purchase:

In 1992 I had decided to stop buying Lego's and save up enough money to buy myself a console, which was probably for the best anyway. After a lot of waiting around I though that I had enough to buy something enjoyable. Even as my family arrived to the store, I didn't really know what I wanted. I had only ever played on three consoles before that; the NES (at a friend's house), the Fairchild Channel F System II (that my father had bought for himself in '79) and the Master System (at a relative's house).

As I was gawking at all the fancy packaging, something called a "Sonic" caught my eye. So then and there I decided that I wanted a Mega Drive (even the name was cool!). My parents didn't do much to stop me and as a result I've been playing games for way too long (well, actually I was hooked by the tender age of four, playing Shufflepuck Café on the Macintosh Portable, but that's another story).

wins again! Well, covers designed to attract kids win, but it's almost the same...

I still have my Mega Drive hooked up to my TV, but I don't really play it since the controllers are reaching the end of their lifespan. Emulation doesn't do it justice either, even though I've collected most of the games I owned.

[RLacey]

I didn't get a SNES until six or seven years ago. I'd always wanted one, but my parents had a thing about me buying consoles. I eventually managed to purchase a SNES from someone at the choir I was singing in for £30, complete with Super Mario World and Stargate. It had been played only once .

[Nick]

It was christmas. I can't remember what year. 1992 maybe. Our ZX Spectrum (previously owned by Clive Sinclair) had finally packed in. All the other kids had consoles. My brother and I eagerly opened a good looking parcel that had both our names on it. Inside was just a card that said "happy landings". We scratched our heads, trying to figure out what it meant. Were we going on holiday? Was it a mistake? Our parents smiled and said "maybe you should check the landing upstairs". Sure enough a Megadrive was found there, with the big blue hedgehog on the box.

Why did they do this? I have no fucking idea

But oh man, that Sega jingle still lifts my heart

That was it, I remember we got I couple of games first, seeing as we didn't have the mega drive I thought it was for the kid next door. Then we got the mega drive.

Oh happy days.

Our dad beat columns, he played it untill 4am or similar and got a score of 9999 I think. Great

[DanJW]

Our dad beat columns, he played it untill 4am or similar and got a score of 9999 I think. Great

Hah! Yeah. More like 7 am. That rocked. We should make him do it again sometime.

[Dingo Chavez]

My first consoles was the Master System (It was my older brother's though), the second was the NES (again), and the third was the MegaDrive (again), but I remember very little of how I got them. Well if I remeber correctly, my brother went to a Video game store one day when he was very young and was mesmerized by a certain console that had an adorable hedgehog in every nook and crany of it. Next thing I know, he and my dad came home with a couple of rather large bags (I was maybe 5 or 6, so they were huge). My borther who has a penchant for installing things immediately rushed to the TV and pluged it in... "SEGAAAAA" was the next thing that happened, what a beautiful sound it was. Later Sonic The Hedgehog 2 title screen showed, and my brother and sister began playing co-op, I'm the youngest so it's only natural that I get screwed and will have to wait until they're finished to play it... I later had my revenge.

And that's my MegaDrive story.

I guess the console purchase that influenced me the most was my N64 purchase. When I was 10 I bought my first Video game magazine (I couldn't read english back then, but I liked the pictures), I knew the N64 as Ultra64 at the time and I had no idea that they revealed it (nor that they unveil consoles, I thought that video games are made by cute magic pixies back then, it's a shame that I discovered otherwise) and when I opened the nylon a Mario 64 poster droped out, it had a gameplay screenshot of Mario in real time 3-D world on it. That blew my mind, I was acquainted with 3-D graphics with my (brother's) Saturn, but actually moving around and climbing trees and best of all doing it with Mario. To tell the truth, I didn't even know if it was a game, it just looked too futuristic, so I asked my brother (who had an amazing understanding of english for his age) to read the article and he told me that it is the new Mario game on Nintendo's new system (that was apparently already out in america, but it was the first time I saw it). After months of dreaming about it my father finally got me one with Mario 64 as an early birthday present, ironically enough, I got sick that day so my brother pluged it in and played it before me. Mario 64 was still gorgeous with an excruciating headach and an upset stomach.

That's when my love for video games really started.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

It was Christmas season, December 1999, and my niece (college age) and I were shopping. I knew she owned a Playstation, but myself was not a gamer at the time. We went to F.A.O. Schwartz and poked around. There was a big promotion for Toy Story and these guys dressed as wooden soldiers were walking around showing off the various stuffed toy versions of the characters from the movie. One of them, some college jock type, had the cowboy one, and he passed by us and said out loud, "LOOK!! I GOT WOODY!!" Geri and I burst out laughing and moved on, the jock staring at us (I don't know if he ever got it).

Anyway, we went up to the second floor (or was it third, I forget) where they had the electronic toys and games and she vanished. I found her soon after, sampling the Playstation, a snowmobile game. I said, "Hey, c'mon, we gotta go......wait, lemme try that." I was pathetically hooked. But the console was too expensive, so we went to a nearby Toys R Us and I found it for $99. I bought it with a copy of Silent Hill and Test Drive Off Road 4x4. The Off Road game was boring after a while, but I ended up playing Silent Hill every single evening, in the dark, with headphones turned up.

[twmac]

I was hooked on computer games when I started playing Granny's garden on the BBC microcomputer that my father acquired from the school that he had worked at closed down.

My first home console experience was the NES, with Double Dragon 2. But the first time I experienced a games console that was mine...

I was in Coventry over the summer holidays (1991 I believe), staying with my grandparents. It was only about a month after my birthday and my parents had agreed to let me have a Mega drive.

It was originally supposed to be a NES, so that I could trade games with two kids who lived across the valley from me in the Algarve. Fortunately they upgraded to the SEGA console just before I went on holiday.

I picked a Megadrive up second hand for a hundred and ten pounds, with two control pads and three games (a decade later I picked up my second Dreamcast for the same price with twice as many games).

Sonic was good, Altered Beast was awesome (and completed in two hours); but it was Quackshot that held my attention for two whole months until I started playing Super Smash TV.

I remember getting back to Portugal and excitedly trying to tell my parents about it all, and them getting that bored look in their eyes.

I still see it now when I talk about my job...

[miffy495]

Unlike most of you, I never owned a Sonic game until I got the Mega Collection for my GameCube. I've always been a Nintendo gamer at heart, and the origins of this are right here. Ahhh... Super Mario World. How fondly I remember you.

It was my fourth birthday, December 1991. My mom and dad had no idea about video games. All they knew was that every time I went to my friend Evan's house, all I did was play that damned Sega Genesis. To this day (and despite it's really not being too good) Kid Chameleon is one of my favorite games as a result of these days at Evan's, but I digress. They also knew that my babysitter's daughter had an NES, and that every day after school when I was waiting for my mom to pick me up after HER class (doctorate... damn overachieving family) I would stare at Battletoads for hours on end. God I loved Battletoads.

That year, I begged and begged and begged for a Nintendo of my own. In retrospect, I was quite the annoying little puke. But the day came. (One of the benefits of a birthday so close to christmas is that when something is expensive, you can convince your parents by saying "well then make a COMBINED present!") On my birthday, my dad had already gone to all the trouble for me. There was the SNES hooked up, with the Super Mario World title screen showing. I played and loved Super Mario World. And luckily, I was a tactful young bugger. For the first few months until I realized that my parents' cluelessness had blessed me with superior technology, I was dissappointed. Why you ask? Because I could never fucking play Battletoads on an SNES!

Luckily when Battletoads vs. Double Dragon shipped, all was made well again, and my younger sister and I would play co-op late into the night. She's not much of a gamer anymore, sticking to Harvest Moon, Anything with Yoshi, and Donkey Konga, but those late night gaming sessions turned me into the nerd I am today. Thanks, mom and dad, for getting me the wrong thing for my birthday. That screw up shaped me more than I would ever have guessed.