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23/03/2017

☆ Kingdom Of Carts - Video Games Memories - Part 1 ☆

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Britt and Faye From Kingdom Of Carts have kindly agreed to share with us some awesome video games memories that will stir up some awesome recollections of your video games past!
Settle back and get ready for Part 1 of our 2 part special with our friends from Kingdom Of Carts...

Let's begin with Britt's story...
"Britt & His Honeymoon Gaming Parents"
"My earliest gaming memory was of watching my uncle playing Formula One Simulator on the Amstrad CPC, I was probably about 4 years of age at the time and completely enthralled, a few months later I was given the Amstrad as a gift and aided by my Mum's job at Woolworths (she received  staff discount on computer games, awesome) I began to build up my collection.



The games that stay in my mind from around this time (1988-90) were titles like Curse of Sherwood (I still get flashbacks to the archers), Buggy Boy, Death Wish 3 (no idea how I sneaked that one past my mum!) A View to a Kill (I don't think I ever made it past the mines), Biggles and the Dizzy games, how I loved those Dizzy games! Come to think of it, I seem to recall having pretty much all the Codemasters games and spending an especially long time playing the Quattro collections.
As I type this, the feeling of awe that washed over me as I loaded up Super Robin Hood and heard that digitised voice, "WELCOME TO ROBIN HOOD" has returned.
I couldn't believe that my Amstrad could speak to me! Bundled with the Amstrad was a guide on how to create your won BASIC card game, I vividly recall spending an entire morning diligently typing seemingly random symbols and letters only to finally run my 'game' for it to show five cards on the screen and then instantly crash...yay.
At around the same time, my uncle had a Commodore 64 and so when I visited family on the weekends it was 2 player gaming all the way, which was a real treat as at the time I was an only child.  Strong memories from the games library on the Commodore 64 are Ikari Warriors, Action Biker (such, such great music), The Last Ninja and the almighty Gunfighter (THANK YOU, Tony Love).



It must have been around 93/94 that I inherited an Amiga from another family member and also received a Mega Drive for Christmas from my parents...er....Father Christmas, I mean. easily the best Christmas presents I ever had as a child! It was truly the best of both worlds, I used the Amiga to indulge in my love of games such as Syndicate, Walker, Brutal Sports Football, No Second Prize, Theatre of Death, Cannon Fodder and various Graphic Adventures (Monkey Island being a real turning point for me as it was the first time I got genuinely emotionally involved in a game world, I cried when I finished it because I knew I would never have an experience like it again. it remains one of the few games I have never re-played as I  cherish the memory of it too much).

On the Mega Drive, I would play Landstalker, Shining Force, Batman Returns, Road Rash 2, Quackshot and myriad others that make up one of the favourite times in my personal gaming history. My brother is seven years younger than me so when he got old enough to hold a controller, we spent countless hours on classics such as Toejam and Earl, Sonic 2, X-Men and Streets of Rage 2.


During the inevitably awkward later teenage years, whilst I still kept up with the changes in the gaming industry and played modern games with friends, family etc. As I moved around during those years I would sell off a lot of my consoles and games for various reasons, (needed cash, no room for them, etc.) and it was only upon meeting Faye in 2008 that my passion for the entire history of games came flooding back to me, that I finally relaxed and stopped seeing playing video games as maybe something that I should have outgrown to do more 'constructive' or 'sociable' things.



Through our first few months together we bonded over shared gaming memories and came to realise that there are a purity and innocence to playing games, a magic that can be re-captured anytime. For my birthday, Faye bought me a Mega Drive and a handful of games and I've never looked back. Now, in 2017 we own hundreds of games over dozens of consoles and each one comes with its own memory and history. I was lucky enough to be born at a time where gaming came from its 8-bit home beginnings to morph into what it is today, the biggest form of media in the entire world and deservedly so, in my eyes.

Most people have their own cherished memories of playing video games at some point, from my parents playing Double Dragon on their honeymoon to brothers sharing an LCD handheld in the back of a car on a family trip to my mum getting addicted to chess on the Amstrad, leading to frankly the somewhat odd situation of me telling my mum to stop playing games so much (so that I could!), my dad stealing hours on  the Mega Drive playing PGA tour Golf 2 and Alien 3 (and then doing the same for Medal of Honour and Colin McRae on the PlayStation) and from a young couple nervously meeting for their first date in a bar, breaking the ice by talking  about a shared love of the Sega Mega Drive and then getting a taxi back to a shared house in Trehafod and spending all evening playing Turtles on the Nintendo and eventually starting a gaming channel on Twitter called Kingdom of Carts.


Games are awesome!"
Don't Forget To Follow Kingdom Of Carts On Twitter >>>HERE<<<
For More Awesome Retro Gaming Goodness!

I'm Guessing That Those Of You Reading This Would Have Shared Some Of These Awesome Memories....
Let Me Know Your Fave Gaming Memories In The Comments Box Below....


"Stay Frosty"

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