Play Away The Years

I’ve played a lot of video games over the years. We were the only ones I knew who actually had a vigitrex (don’t be alarmed if you don’t even know what that is) which was basically a black box with a screen that had green lines moving. Our teenhood brought with it years of Arcade mania, spending hours and days playing the likes of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Metal Slug!

Every weekend mom would drive us to Jasmi’s Exhibition Road, which had the best arcades in town. It used to be the only place that had the latest and best Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat arcades (Ah, the beauty of ripping someone's head off, burning them into smithereens or pulling their spine out!). There was this cool dude who no one could beat, anyone who would challenge him couldn’t last more than a couple of minutes. And he never uttered a word. He’d just stand there, staring into the screen, doing what he does best… kicking-ass.

We then somehow convinced our parents to splash out on a Neo-Geo, which was the coolest, most powerful and awesomest console of the early 90s. Bring on the brilliant fighting game Samurai Shodown and the likes of King of Fighters and Fatal Fury. We actually had to drive to Saudi Arabia to get the cartridges – there was only one store we knew of that sold them, and they were expensive at the time. At home, we used to stage “Samurai Shodown tournaments” – my brother always kicked our asses with his Charlotte. Shortly after that, we had another gaming revelation – the Mega Drive! The Mega Drive had the best arcade games on the console, and even though the selection was pretty limited, we needn’t more than SF and MK to enjoy it.

When the first PlayStation came out, the world was never the same again – we would go to Souq Almagasees to get the copies CD’s for dirt-cheap, at first it was BD1 but then it dropped to nothing more than 500 fils! Imagine that. And god, how many times have we bought corrupt copies, go back to the vendor and ask, fruitlessly, for a refund or an exchange. And I know what you’ll say, how on earth can you forget the FAMILY GAME! Are you kidding me? A console with 3000 in-built games!!! Not that you’d ever need any of them, all you would play is Super Mario.

It’s amazing when you think about it, and look how far video games got nowadays with the technologies of the PS3 and Xbox. I have played a ton of games on my PS3 and some of them have been memorable experiences.

My top 10 PS3 video games:

1. Red Dead Redemption
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
3. Grand Theft Auto IV
4. Dead Space
5. Heavy Rain
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum
7. InFamous
8. Assassin’s Creed II
9. Resistance: Fall of Man
10. FIFA 11