Scooby Doo, How Old Are You?! (Unabridged)

 This is the unabridged version of the introduction for my 2019 Halloween special video about the history of Scooby Doo, along with gameplay from the Commodore 64 game titled "Scooby Doo" which I owned as a child. As well as having extra parts I deemed not worth mentioning in the live read I have also included links where appropriate to pages which may have more info on certain series or characters but if you would like a general read up on Scooby Doo you can click here for his Wikipedia page and here for all the Scooby Doo media made since his inception.

I hope you enjoy the extra bits!

Since my Son was born I have been adamant there would be certain movies and TV programs that I watched as a child which I would like for him to at least experience and, with any luck, love as much as I do. Everything from classic cartoons like the Flintstones, weird animation series like The Trap Door and live action shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers will be showcased to him via online mediums and for the ones real close to my heart be available via a healthy collection of DVD's for access whenever he wants after the zombie apocalypse begins and the internet is turned off.

(It is my goal to keep Peppa Pig at bay for as long as humanly possible. The very thought of having to watch that abhorrent pig and her annoying family on a regular basis because let's face it, kids like to watch thing on repeat, repeatably, chills me to the bone. But I digress...)

I have already started his collection of classics after I happened to come across the complete series of Top Cat at a charity shop who were having a clear out of DVDs due to having a ridiculous amount donated to them over the years and there not being much call for physical copies any more, which in itself I find a tragedy. I mean, why go through the visceral exertion of putting a disc in to a player and THEN having to get ANOTHER remote which isn't for your TV to press play when you can watch whatever you want within a couple of clicks these days... am I right?! Eh? I'm not completely convinced but that's another rant for another time... I guess I am old. Now this is probably the geriatric in me thinking this, and in a world where I'm pretty certain everything will be available online at some point in the future either via direct access or through some sort of ordering system I suppose there is a certain redundancy when it comes to physical copies but I can't help but think that these companies who we subscribe to have a little too much power, and through either no fault of their own or even more sinister, by design, they can remove access at any time and you will have nothing to show for it other than an empty bank account and a empty heart. OK, that's probably taking things to the extreme but you get my point! You don't own it and it can be taken away from you whenever, for whatever reason is feasible at the time. Scary.

ANYWAY, it was on this crusade that drove me to checking a couple of other charity shops, CEX, (pronounced "sex", which is a pretty bold thing to do I think!) and when we were up early enough the occasional trip to local car boot sales this Summer when I found the first 2 series of Scooby Doo in pristine condition. As soon as I got back home I popped in the first disc and sat down with my Son for an afternoon of spooky shenanigans with Fred, Daphne, Velma and the MVPs of the cartoon Shaggy and Scooby. And it was after that first episode had concluded that I clocked in the end credits the year of release: 1969.

Scooby Doo was 50 years old!

To be precise, the premier of the original series, "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" was on September 13th 1969 and ran for 2 seasons as part of the CBS network's Saturday morning schedule before 24 hour long specials were made up until 1973. The show then went on a hiatus of 3 years until 1976 when the series was picked up by ABC due to a television executive by the name of Fred Silverman moving away from CBS to become president of their rival network the previous year. This man is a legend in the Television industry and is the person who's responsible for green lighting many classic shows I grew up watching; The Waltons, MASH, Charlie's Angels and a personal favourite of mine I still watch today whenever I see it on, Diagnosis Murder. He was such an integral person to Scooby Doo being commissioned the character of Fred in the show is actually named after him.

When recommissioned by ABC, Scooby Doo ran for a further 15 series producing 179 episodes over 15 years in 6 differently titled variants, (The Scooby-Doo Show, Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo) up until 1991, and it was in this time where we were introduced to other members of Scooby's family, most notably Scrappy-Doo - Scooby's brave and some would say boisterous nephew. Scrappy's attitude in the series along with the change of the group dynamic of the original cast since his introduction has seen a large, very vocal group of passionate Scooby fans actively hating on the pup to the point where he was supposedly written out of the series due to this backlash, but it would appear that this was a plot by the Warner Brothers network to help ease people in to the fact Scrappy would be the villain in the first live action movie... oh yeah... SPOILERS! Surely you've seen the film by now, right?

The then gang disappeared for 11 years. Nothing lasts forever, and with the intended original audience now all grown up and tastes changing from the groovy attitude of the late 60's and 70's which the original cartoon enveloped to a more modern nuanced feel of the 90's with shows like Rugrats, Doug and The Simpsons it seemed like a good time for Scooby to be put out to pasture. But this wasn't the end of the story for our favourite cowardly Great Dane. In 2002 the gang were brought back by the the Warner Brother television network for a series titled "What's New, Scooby-Doo?" which ran for 3 series before being bounced around subsidiaries of the Warner Brother network up until present day, with a new series being shown on the children's channel Boomerang as I write called "Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?". You just can't keep a good dog down!

So, time to throw some numbers at you. In the 50 years since Scooby Doo was conceived there have been 30 series resulting in 413 individual episodes, 37 feature length animated films, 4 live action films, 32 animation shorts exclusively shown on Youtube, 13 comic series resulting in 535 issues, 5 theatrical plays which toured the world and 20 computer games throughout the years running on everything from the Intellivision to modern phones. And it's the second game made, simply titled Scooby Doo for the Commodore 64 that made me reminisce about my fondness for this cartoon and make this my Halloween special for 2019. Not the best of games if I was going to be completely honest with you, and since replaying it as an adult and doing research in to the product which was published compared to the game we were touted a year before release I can say this is a firm case of those rose tinted glasses covering up the worst cracks on show but hey... that's nostalgia for you I guess.

So I'll end this by saying Happy 50th Birthday Scooby Doo, may your cowardly demeanor and courageous appetite continue to bring a smile to children for generations to come.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge

Let Me Introduce Myself Part 3: A Proper PC Upbringing

 I can't believe as a guy who makes YouTube lets play videos for a hobby on PC gaming has managed to get away with waiting until his third blog entry to actually address his PC history to anyone still sticking around to read it! But please, before you go clicking off this I'd just like to say that this is the last introductory blog entry I shall be doing so you can rest confidently now knowing my cynical and slightly sarcastic views and opinions on the world of gaming together with life in general thrown in will commence in the coming entries forthwith. I mean, Logan Paul... what a bellend. AMIRIGHT? But before we start upsetting the legions of unquestioning automatons regarded as his "subscribers", (never has the word fan been so appropriate... it would take a fanatic to be able to defend and justify that prick's attitude and actions towards other people in my humble opinion) we better get on to the subject of my love for the personal computer and gaming upon said item.

Now although I started this blog series with the what's and wherefore's regarding the Commodore 64 I feel the need to create a single entry to detail my history with the open platform gaming machine which is currently going through a bit of a renaissance over the past few years. I could have pegged all this together in to one super-blog as I suppose technically the C64 and PC are one of the same, at least in essence. The one thing which has always bugged me is the fact machines of old were recalled as being "Home Computers" as opposed to all modern iterations which are referred to as "Personal Computers". Why? Is it a price thing? One could argue that today's PC's out of the box is more or less comparable to what you were paying for a Commodore or Spectrum back in the day so I guess it's more to do with the fact back in the 1980's one computer per household was enough whereas today you'd be lucky to find someone who doesn't have at least one piece of technology on their being at any one time if you take in to consideration how advanced a mobile phone is alone these days. But I digress...

I'd like to tell you that after my initial introduction to "home computing" via the C64 I was savvy enough to continue my interest with these modern contraptions all throughout my life but with taking half a decade out due to the convenience and speedy loading times of consoles when I finally did decide to re-introduce myself in to the multimedia extravaganza that had become "personal computing" I didn't have a fucking clue. I'd like to say that after doing intricate research on the matter I had enough understanding of the technology to know what to purchase and what I could expect to get out it for applications, (and games) but as a teenager that was never going to happen! So what amazing application or game charmed me enough to warrent me to try and convince my parents in to spending a sizeable amount of money on yet another games machine as far as they were concerned?  (I'd just like to say at this point that yes, I did play the "it'll be for homework!" card and thankfully they fell for that hook, line, sinker, rod and copy of the angling times.) Could it have been the interactive marvel that was Encarta 95 with those grainy videos and crackly sound bites? Was it the very business orientated and professional look of the desktop in Windows 95? I'm afraid not. I can honestly say in all seriousness it came down to a screensaver based on a Guinness advert.

In retrospect it does seem kind of pathetic to think that what has governed my social and professional life for over a quarter of a century all started with a screensaver for a popular brand of Irish stout, and to be honest it isn't even the best advert they have ever come up with. If you have clicked on the above link you've already seen that the advert itself is just a man doing a silly dance in order to kill some time while waiting for a pint of the black stuff to settle properly but for some reason as a screensaver I thought it was a interactive marvel. I mean, LOOK AT HIM!! He's dancing on my screen whenever I want him to! Well, as long as I don't touch the keyboard or mouse for a predetermined time frame anyway. Now before you start to think of me as being a complete imbecile you need to remember that this was at a time when the most sophisticated thing I'd seen on a computer before this was animation in a Commodore 64 game and this guy was grinding around on the screen JUST like he did on the TV. And I think that's why it struck a chord with me, it was the first time I had seen a computer be able to reproduce a picture like I had seen in another more acceptable and at the time vastly superior format. If I thought more of myself at the time I would say it was because it was at that exact moment that I realised the future potential of the PC and how one day it would rival television, radio and newspapers in it's everyday use as a multimedia platform... but it was only because of a man doing a silly dance for a pint on the screen in order to not have the desktop image burned in to it's surface.

So I got my first official PC! A 486 DX2-66 with 4 megabytes of RAM, a VERY basic sound/video card and a 250MB hard drive. (I think anyway, I'm not too sure on the HDD to be honest.) It wasn't the most up to date computer by any means at the time and I'm pretty sure the guy who built it, (called Mike who I ended up working for eventually) built it out of  "re-purposed" parts but I never had an issue with it from the day I got it until the day I upgraded the machine beyond the original components and case itself. It was at this point that any friends who had secretly been PC gamers came out of the woodwork recognising me as one of their own due to the pale complexion, bloodshot eyes and strong wrists... but that could be any teenage boy I guess. As I stated in my last blog entry the tribal mentality of console gamers ruled the playground, to the point where the very small clique of nerds who preferred a computer to a PlayStation for their boyhood jaunts of gaming would not even bother to defend their steely software platform for fear of being drowned out by a bunch of neanderthals not sophisticated enough to recognise the advanced power hidden away in those mini-towers. (PC Master race FTW!) But with a raise of the eyebrows and a nod of the head I was welcomed in to the coven that was the "I.T.ists". These guys, (and a single girl as we're all for gender equality in our forward thinking group who were desperate for any female attention at that age) opened my eyes to the many different genres unable to be properly showcased on a console. Point and click games, strategy and simulation games became my favourite types with Settlers 2 and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, (VGA version of course!) being two of the first and most loved games I played. Although FPS games can have diverse themes the base workings remain the same but with more story-intrinsic and broadly different mechanics the games I discovered no matter how old they were they still felt fresh.

This isn't the time or place to start listing my favourite games on the PC, (that will be in another blog entry when I can't think of anything better to write about!) there are a few games which really frame that time in my life, mainly due to the fact I was part of the "I.T.ists" at my high school. We essentially were the guys, (and girl) who looked after the network PCs, from standard laborious chores like cleaning them up, (inside and out) to having a go at rectifying any hardware or software issues that crept up from the pupils messing about on them during lessons with one very special Summer where we replaced all the machines throughout the school and helped configure them. Now, that might sound boring to anyone uninitiated in to the group but certain school responsibilities awarded certain perks, the main one being left alone for a couple of hours after school while the teachers finished up paperwork or prepared for tomorrows lessons which meant we had free reign on the schools computers in that time! As well as having a connection to the internet at a reasonable speed for the time, (ISDN as opposed to a 56.6k modem) the more important factor was having access to 30 computers all linked up together.

THAT'S RIGHT KIDS, WE HAD NETWORK GAMING SESSIONS!

In today's fibre optic landscape it's very easy to forget where the humble beginnings of the internet began. I'm not going to lecture you on how today's youngsters don't realise how easy they have it, I'd assume if you're reading this you too suffered the pain of a dial up modem with having to disconnect whenever another family member wanted to call someone while also putting your PC gaming mates on your friends and family list with your telephone service provider in order to get a discount for calling them so damn often because of playing 1v1 on Command and Conquer all the time but I'll say this; THE PAIN WAS REAL. So, having access to multiple computers on the same network for multiplayer sessions of Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom 2 and eventually the original Grand Theft Auto were a marvel and I have very fond memories for that time of my life. This was also a time where no real DRM existed which meant the sharing of 3.5" floppies and CD's with full games on them were common practice, and in the rare times where a game needed to have the CD in the drive in order to get the game working the school had a handy CD re-writer built in to the teacher's work computer and we were "trusted" with the password to it! Even back then it felt like what we were doing for those couple of hours at the end of every school day was something special, groundbreaking even, but I don't think any of us would imagine how much common interactivity there would be in gaming some 20 years later. From your standard PvP games to such simpler things such as having an online high score table to even being able to zap yourself in to someone else's single player experience just to fuck with them a bit. I'm looking at you, Dark Souls! For four years this was my life outside of the rigmorale of forced education and naturally these friendships I made through the PC gaming scene at school carried on outside of it too. Remember the guy I wrote about in my first blog about the Commodore 64? The kid who had a ZX Spectrum who amazed me with his little black box with rubber keys? Well he was in this group too and although I never acknowledged this at the time it would seem in retrospect I owe my love of computers and gaming in general to him... so thanks Pete.

When you're at school playing on those up to date computers everyone involved are on equal terms; everyone has the same specs, peripherals, screens etc. but towards the end of my school life my own computer started falling behind minimum specs for a respectable gaming rig. Games began to run slow or even not at all and seeing as this was a "family" computer and still very capable of performing the tasks asked by the other members of the household I noticed month after month the selection of games I could play were getting to the point of non-existence. At this point I have received a few upgrades from the 486 through birthdays and Christmas gifts - nothing significant enough to mention here, but with no way to finance any new parts for the big box in the corner myself, (I had a paper round where I delivered 300+ newspapers for just over £5 a week!) I had to turn to alternative methods of gaming. This was when I discovered the term abandonware. Abandonware in itself is a dirty word, supposedly any software not directly supported by the developer or publisher could be classed as "abandoned" and so open to free distribution and download. It seemed like a lot of developers were very open to their older games which haven't been freely available for a few years to be easily downloaded and played by people who wouldn't necessarily have played them in the first place, hell, maybe even have heard of them at all! But with the PC being such an open platform this was a very real possibility for anyone savvy enough to have a look on the old interwebs. Thankfully this was the beginning of the internet being a lot more widely recognised by the general populace as a viable way to project your passions to a wider audience and with a bit of digging around the wondrous treasures to be found under the heading of abandonware were mine for the discovering! Suddenly a whole world of older games which were uglier compared to their newer, better looking compadres but with no less gameplay to them had been sprung open to me and were there for me to poke and prod around with. There were games that I had heard of through conversations at school or games I remember hearing about from a few years before which I suddenly had access to and the only constraints to me playing them being the time I could afford to invest in them. This for myself was where my informal education to gaming came in to play and thankfully by having access to a potato of a machine I could now fill in the gaps from the 5 years I'd missed out on while hanging out with the cool console kids. But even better still was I could go beyond even that era, I could experience games from when I first had my Commodore and further back still. My catalogue had expanded so significantly and my choice was so varied now and all because I couldn't run the latest games my friends were playing... and I'm glad. Without this "ailment" I never would have uncovered old gems like The Oregon Trail, Jones in the Fast Lane, Street Rod, Lost Dutchman Mine, Sid Meier's Pirates and Rockstar! to name but a few and even today with every PC I build and/or upgrade I always make sure one of the first actions I do is to transfer my favourite games of yesteryear along with the latest version of DosBox on to the hard drive.

I guess while you're at school you don't really have a lot to worry about other than homework, keeping your grades at a respectable level with only doing the minimum effort needed in order to achieve this and wooing any females gracious enough to show you any interest in you so time can be a very cheap commodity. It's not until you leave education and enter the world of full time employment that you realise that time, your own time especially, is precious. And with every year onward with increasing responsibilities through work and family commitments the value of that hour here or that hour there you can squeeze in for yourself never seems to be enough to accomplish what you would like to do. Even at the age of 17 I started to figure this out rather quickly when I ended my college course early to go and work full time in PC installation and maintenance. Here I was, working 8am until 5pm building and installing computers around the UK for large and small companies on networks compared to my friends who were sleeping in until 10am and going to college/university for a few hours and then going out on the lash on a weeknight. A WEEKNIGHT I TELL YOU!! I've never been a big drinker and although these days I can sink a few back sensibly and be alright the next day this was not a possibility back then as I hadn't drawn that practical line in the sand yet. If I was drinking I was drinking to get drunk. Smashed. Shitfaced. There was no in-between! But as I was in full time employment on a apprentice's wage, (not a lot but I was earning more than my peers at the time) and the fact I chose not to go out in the week as management "frowned" on turning up drunk at work more than a couple of times in short duration I decided to invest my time and money in to my own PC at home. It would be silly not to really as I built them by day, (so I could throw bits in to it and have it all configured pretty quick) and I also had access to all the suppliers who could supply me with multiple components at trade prices! So although the items I decided to buy were still expensive at the time they should have been a hell of a lot more costly than what I payed for them so I splashed as much money at my little box as I could rationally afford! This meant budget gaming for myself - finding good abandonware titles and downloading free to play games - became a thing of the past as I could play whatever new title interested me as soon as it was published! And although since then I have had times when PC gaming hasn't been at the forefront of my social life, (thanks heady twenties!) I have always strived to have a semi-capable PC so I can at least keep up with the computer culture pack and know enough of what's going on at any one time to stay in the loop.

Although I don't work directly in the computer trade now, (still dealing with electrics though!) and the fact I now have a long term and very forgiving girlfriend (who allows me enough time to myself each week to do YouTube as a hobby) PC gaming for me right now is back at the forefront of any spare time I have and I'll relish this time as much as I can in the knowledge that realistically the next natural step for myself and my partner is marriage and children and at the bare minimum time will become even more of a constraint than it is already. My only hope is that my love of gaming, PC gaming in particular will rub off on my spawn and they too will grow up in as exciting a time for computing as I was lucky enough to grow up in. I'd like to think that Padge Jr will one day write a blog when he is my age now, (if writing still exists and Skynet doesn't just read your brainwaves directly) and be able to comment on how he/she had the most amazing childhood playing in the new VR suite they had mum and dad buy so they could do their homework better... or something along those lines anyway.

So that's it! The early years covered at a very basic level. I'd like to think that by my writing you're getting an idea on the kind of guy I am and hope what to expect in future blog entries. I've only really skipped over the basics and have many other stories to tell from both this era and beyond but I'm sure they'll be time for that in other blogs... and don't even get me started on talking about my time with World of Warcraft.

 Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge

Let Me Introduce Myself Part 2: Camaraderie Through Consoles!

Now I don't want to sound too self-indulgent when it comes to me writing these blog posts, although committing my thoughts to virtual paper for the masses to read is in itself a self-indulgent act, (irony!) but I figure we'll all get on a lot better if you can at the very minimum see why I come to the conclusions I arrive at if you have at least a familiarity of my background and what makes me tick. This is me trying to be as clear and transparent as I can be in a world where masking one's true intent for fear of offending someone, anyone, has started to become the norm. I mean, no-one wants to be that guy/girl/non-binary do they?! In a world where it is so easy for someone to take offence and in return recompense in a militaristic fashion it pays dividends to keep your cards close to your chest at all times. And with everybody having a virtual presence either from the likes of Facebook or Twitter to even owning a bank account everyone has a vulnerability which can be exposed and taken advantage of for whatever reason... whenever the feeling arises. That is a scary thought! And who can blame anyone for being a lot more secretive when it comes to omitting their own true thoughts and opinions? But I say this; does it not make more sense to be as open as you dare to be in order to quell any suspicions of the contrary? Surely it is better for someone to know where they stand with you, (for ill or good) than to be forever questioning your loyalties and judgement? And in a world where you will always offend someone either by a differing view or from a lack of forethought to a throwaway comment which we are all guilty of from time to time, (It's what you say/type on the internet, never how you say it!) the only person you should be straight up with is yourself. In essence, say what you mean and mean what you say. I quote Elvis Costello, "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve when your remarks are off the cuff." And when you choose to publish anything on the internet, be it a Youtube video or a blog entry your soul is exposed to being poked and prodded by any and all nefarious types which come across it. People who claim to not be bothered on any level by that either don't care enough about their creations in the first place or are full of shit.

 So why do I start the second entry to my blog - which is supposed to be about my gaming history, to allow you to peak in to my mindset and, (hopefully) to help you, dear reader understand how I reach the conclusions I arrive at - with a paragraph detailing how saying what you feel is the truth from your viewpoint could be construed as offensive to others? SIMPLE. Console gaming in my humble opinion is one of the most tribal of technological leisure activities you can affordably be a part of today, and that has been the way since the Atari 2600 burst on to the scene along with it's competitors back in 1977. But why? The answer I think is a relatively simple one; It's because of the hardware and the fact you can't modify or upgrade anything within that base unit you purchased from the store. Everybody has the same set-up, with only the different makes of console to differ you from Willy and Billy down the street. Because of this it's very easy to draw big rivalries between owners of the Super Nintendo and the Sega Megadrive or the Playstation 2 and the original Xbox. Now you could say that that was relatively true for my beloved Commodore 64 when being measured up to the Spectrum ZX and although both very popular at around the same time from a hardware perspective they were an ocean apart in a technological sense. Although these days from a similar viewpoint you have tech-fiends arguing about which company manufactures the best graphics cards, CPU's, motherboards etc. etc, there is such a diverse choice out there that no complete PC can be directly compared to another.

 And they're so damn accessible! Plug and play and you're away! A product for the masses... but still expensive within themselves. Take in to account the fact that buying the base unit is only the start of what is still an expensive hobby if you want to keep up to date with the latest game releases, along with the yearly online subscription you need to purchase to even be allowed to play with your friends regularly means most people still only end up picking one console from the handful available in any given generation. This breeds a playground rivalry from the owner of said chosen console brand to justify their choice; to feel like they have made the wise decision and the owners of the other brands are complete idiots for choosing their complete potato of a machine. And these rivalries can be fucking vicious, man. I remember being at school and hearing about a guy being bullied incessantly because he had a Atari 7800 when all his peers had a NES. Don't get me wrong, I know kids generally can be vicious little shits at the best of times and in that period of your life all you want to do is fit in, but just look how the rivalries of the latest consoles breed as much contempt as past generations of gaming machines yet the average age of your run-of-the-mill gamer is between 18 and 35. That means there are a lot more adults who should know better throwing their tuppence worth in to the shit storm that is the ever evolving console war. We're not completely to blame however, and as long as the behemoths of the video game industry insist on having console exclusives and getting away with blaming "netcode" and other such bollocks for not allowing cross-platform online play from games produced by independent developers, rivalries will continue at the fever pitch it has been at for last 30 years.

 But I digress. Gaming consoles! Console gaming! That's what I said I'd write about and I'll stick to the plan... this time. At 10 years old for Christmas after having my well loved and well used Commodore 64 for five years I was ready for a change. I had grown bored of the wait times for loading games via a cassette, (although in retrospect it was never that long but at that tender age it felt like a eternity) and with myself having just started at middle school the previous September I was very much aware of what other kids were watching/reading/playing and I learnt, very quickly, that console gaming was at the forefront of the playground banter. Friends new and old were pulled in to the exciting world of 16 bit gaming via the Megadrive and SNES becoming more affordable after being on the market for around 18 months and boy! was there a frenzy in that first term at school leading up to Christmas. Obviously you had the cool kids who's rich parents had bought the console within the first 6 months of release and were viewed with starry-eyed wonder due to their veteran status with their chosen machine by their peers but now we, the common folk, could finally enter the gaming clique of our choosing. No longer would we be hovering around the edges of society, (well... the school yard) listening with intrigue about the tall stories of a podgy Italian plumber or a blue hedgehog. Now even I can throw myself headfirst in to the pixel world of whichever gaming mascot I chose to enlist under! The question was though, which one? Both of the popular machines of the time had their merits but it would appear, at least in my friendship circle, that the SNES was the way to go. So on Christmas day in 1993 I awoke to a rather large present which just so happened to be a Super Nintendo Entertainment System complete with a Superscope and Superscope 6 game, (more of a tech demo for the bazooka-shaped light gun but I don't think many developers got the memo on that) F-Zero and Super Mario All-Stars. And that was me set at school; I was welcomed in to the SNES fold as one of their own, a fellow Nintendo enthusiast brought in to the ranks ready to defend the honour of our kind at a drop of a hat. And even today I still think picking that over the Sega Megadrive/Genesis was the way to go... Now was that because of the neater looking graphics? The unique Mode 7 design? The no gore effect in Mortal Kombat? I'd like to say yes, (except for that last one) it was EXACTLY for those reasons, but at 10 years old it boiled down to one key yet shallow reason; it's what all my friends had. A decision made not by good judgement or meticulous research in to the choices I had at the time, but popularity. And although it would seem that at least this time I had chosen the winning side I believe there were no actual losers in this generation, it all just depended on what you found fun. It's true that the Megadrive had the faster paced games and smoother gameplay feel but I was never really in to sports games or action/bullet hell shooters which would take advantage of those aspects on that console. And anyway I had a plethora of interesting adventure games, RPGs, platformers, fighters and racers to occupy my time.

 "For fuck's sake Padge! you've been rabbiting on and you've hardly covered any games yet!!" I hear you cry, and I'm just as shocked as you to be honest. As I type this I never really thought I'd go this deep in to the "why's" of console gaming in my past as opposed to the "what's", but I guess that's because I feel I've matured past the minimalist pleasures that a console offers, and which is always on the back foot from a tech perspective compared to the sophistication that a PC can deliver, but that's for another blog entry. (I know... very PC Master Race right?) SO, the games. I played F-Zero to DEATH. I loved it. It was my go-to game for a very long time duly to the futuristic setting, the breakneck speed you travelled at, (over 400 km/h!) and the fact you could be completely destroyed if you didn't pay the attention needed to the car racing at that velocity because of the hazards on the track like the mines... or the other cars low on energy and about to blow up themselves... or the sides of the track which were deadly to the touch! And I also really digged the the instruction manual which doubled as a scene setting comic book! Compared to the Commodore 64 which in itself had a fair few games that felt like they were pushing boundaries of what an entertainment system could offer this game in particular felt like it was on another level completely. It is a classic in every sense of the word and this is shown time and again by the multiple nods it gets in other games, from the likes of Mariokart, (an obvious one) to Animal Crossing: Wild World. The other cartridge I had that Christmas, the aforementioned Super Mario All-Stars was a culmination of enhanced remakes of the first 3 Super Mario games along with the Japan only version of Super Mario 2 labelled as "The Lost Levels". From a relatively sensible child's perspective who would only be getting 2 games to go with his brand new console, (one from Nan, one from Mumsy) this seemed like a cost effective solution to a very real problem for anyone with limited access to funds; value for money. It was 4 games in 1 cartridge damn it! The maths don't lie!! So technically I had 5 games to last me until my birthday and last me they did, and beyond. Now you've probably noticed I haven't mention the Superscope much and that's because no-one else really did anything with it. A gimmicky light gun which Nintendo hoped more developers would support but sadly did not. I guess they were trying to riff off the back of the original light gun idea after the popularity of Duck Hunt but with the thinking of "bigger is better", (it was shaped like a fucking bazooka after all!) but it seems instead of people embracing this mega peripheral and the scope itself becoming a bulwark of gaming it was seen as a one trick pony with too narrow a field of use to be fully seized upon. Sadly this would seems to be a recurring problem with each new console generation, where towards the end of their natural life our living rooms are filled with plastic inessential controllers to games long forgotten about due to the fact it's too much effort to set up compared to picking up a regular controller... but I guess we're the mugs as we keep buying them and buying in to the "unique game design" of using them in the first place... at least until we have a large group of friends or family come round to your house anyway.

 So what of later games? Over the next few years I managed to add to my collection through birthdays and Christmases with both physical copies for games I'd asked for and games bought through an accumulation of money from said celebrations to what I like to think is a nice selection of electronic distractions. Within my assortment you could find the likes of Super Smash TV, Super Mario Kart, Disney's Aladdin and The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter II and WWF Royal Rumble. Although I had a few of the more popular amusements within my collection I never felt the need to get all the classics due to 2 simple reasons, swapping between friends and video game rental. As I've said before, I was blessed with having a large friendship group which meant there were a lot of Super Nintendo's flying around which lead to a lot of different types of games being bought and, like any kids at our age our attention span could be measured in nano-seconds. So when one of you got bored of playing game X we could walk over to our friends house and swap it for game Y for a few weeks which meant (generally) everyone was a winner. Occasionally you would swap a rubbish game for a better one to a friend or as we all started to grow up some people would stop playing with their SNES, (quitters) but were still open to swapping games so the swap at that point was more like insurance than theft - never borrowed, always swapped! The other is a dead concept in the traditional sense these days and that was going to Choices Video in the UK, (a tackier Blockbuster if you're not aware of the brand) and renting a game over the weekend for a couple of quid. I know these days you can stream certain games for a fee or if you subscribe to certain gaming platforms they allow you to play whatever you want for as long as you're subscribed but these are both long-term contractual services, not something you can afford to do on a whim on some cold rainy Saturday afternoon in March. Admittedly, the second hand market is a lot larger at your local Gamestop or CEX nowadays, but you generally have to spend a lot more on a piece of software which you have no knowledge of how it's actually been treated before you acquired it. That makes me uneasy... and with more and more games these days being download only that isn't even an option for 70% of the time. "Games as subscription" is how I believe the business managers refer to it as, more like a subscription to the games you've already paid outright for... but that rant is for another time.

 So what am I getting at after all the babbling... and why have I only talked about the SNES? Surely I've had more than just the ONE console in my entire life? Well, yes I have. To cover them quickly I have owned at one point or another a Gameboy, (twice... there was a headbutting incident) a Playstation, a PS2, an XBox 360, a PS3, a Nintendo Wii, a Nintedo WiiU, a PS4, (well I guess you know what side my bread has been buttered in the following generations of the console war!) and an Amstrad GX4000. Apart from the Amstrad which my grandparents bought to keep me quiet whenever I visited, (it worked... for a short while) all of the others played second fiddle to the PC we had either as a family computer, (for "homework" - LOL!) or as my own gaming machine. That means that my time with the Super Nintendo if the only "pure" experience I've had with consoles where nothing other than that machine was my main gaming focus. I feel it would be unfair to talk about the rest on how they made me feel as a teenager or young adult as these other consoles haven't defined me as a gamer since I first launched Settlers 2 on my 486 DX2 66. Of course there have been console exclusives which I've delved in to over the years which are usually the reason why I owned those consoles in the first place but since my early to mid teens the PC is where my heart has been.

To conclude, my first and only dedicated foray in to console gaming as a youngster brought me acceptance, camaraderie and a shared wealth of gaming diversity, and I guess when I slip on those rose-tinted glasses I can kind of see why the latest generation of the console wars have soldiers on either side fighting the good fight as intensely as they do... it's for that feeling of kinship and inclusion.

 Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge

Let Me Introduce Myself Part 1: The Commodore Years

Happy New Year Everybody! As part of my New Year resolutions in 2018 I have decided to assault the internet from several new angles in order to further enhance my bid for world domination but I feel I must start this new blog with one essential caveat:

I am a man-child. 

 GREAT! Now that we have that established this I think it's time to fill you in on how exactly I have gotten to this point in my existence. I mean, c'mon... a thirty something who's only just been doing Youtube for the last couple of years? Where the fuck has this asshole been eh? And I'll tell you no lie, my origins story isn't a rags to riches tale full of drama, suspense or anything else that could make this original or particularly inspiring... but it's my story and it's all I got. And I've been told by this website I need to write something to actually class this as a "blog" so here goes:

(And before we start I have a quick **DISCLAIMER** for you which definitely applies to this blog post and I'm sure it's pretty safe to say will apply to about 90% of what will come out of this in the future. I will be using swear words and crude language at times and I'll probably touch on subjects which some people may find themselves to be a little oversensitive about. But remember this, opinions are like arseholes; everybody has one and at one time or another they're full of shit. That goes for everything I say on here... and that also goes for any thoughts that get conjured up by yourself while reading anything I write on here... you judgemental twat.) 

That was a JOKE... just so you know what you've let yourself in for!

Where was I? Oh yeah... So where did this love of gaming begin? What is my origin story? Well, it all started off when I was 5 years old and my parents bought me a Commodore 64. I can't for the life of me remember the reasoning behind this, I don't think I was running around in my Bananaman pyjamas demanding the best selling personal computer of the time and my parents themselves are not computer savvy in the slightest, not even today! So my only reasoning behind it was the fact my mother had a friend who's husband and son, (who was a year older than me... the son, not the husband) were REALLY in to their computers, especially the Spectrum ZX and maybe Mumsy saw the potential of a having one of these new fangled and now reasonably priced home computers for her young son to be able to mess around on, maybe even do his HOMEWORK on in the future! (Yeah, right.) Maybe she foresaw the technological revolution that was about to dawn on the world and thought that she would give her baby the head start in being fluent with such a device before it became mandatory knowledge; knowing it is easier to adapt and excel at new skills from a younger age rather than having it forced upon him in the future at school where having any lesson which could help you in the real world once out of education would be met with more resistance. MAYBE, (and I fear it is this reason alone) she just wanted to shut up her little shit of a child because all he banged on about was how he enjoyed going round to her friend's house and playing on their computer with her friends son. Whatever the case on Christmas Day in 1988 I opened up a brand new Commodore 64 which came with the Hollywood Pack, (comprising of Rambo First Blood: Part 2, Miami Vice, Platoon, Top Gun and the Great Escape) and the TV Quiz Pack. (That had Trivial Pursuit, The Krypton Factor, Blockbusters, Bullseye and Every Second Counts - Classic 80's TV game shows!) And that was me set for a couple of months for the very least... Well, until I found using the keyboard to control most of the games was an absolute nightmare so I incessantly bugged my parents to buy me a joystick. One of several in fact. MAN, those early games LOVED the joystick waggle! A technical term for you there; It means to alternate pushing and pulling the joystick to the extremes of it's x axis until either the suckers holding the thing in place lost their grip and you smashed your hands on the desk OR the centre point of the joystick is so irretrievably damaged your player characters in every other game will forever be inching themselves in a certain direction... even when you didn't want them to. But now with joystick in hand, (always plugged in to port 2 for some reason!?) I had the world of gaming from home at my fingertips!

I feel blessed knowing that I grew up in the infancy of home computing at an affordable level and I don't just mean from a hardware perspective. I understand that as far as PC gaming is concerned these days the main shop front for all tastes is Steam and from here you can find pretty much whatever niche you are looking for; be it AAA games or an unknown indie gem just waiting to be plucked from the ever growing gloop of available software whenever you want it. And, (if you have the patience.. another topic for another day) for the price you are willing to pay but back when I started you could walk to your local corner shop and there, wedged in the corner by the magazine racks sat a cardboard stand with all sorts of games for as little as £1.99. It just seemed so exotic and new! This made going to the shops with me in tow a nightmare for my parents as I couldn't understand why they would't buy me that latest game I clocked eyes on when they were so cheap. (Taking in to consideration that £1.99 in today's prices would equate to around £5/$6/0.000406 Bitcoins) In retrospect I see now that they were trying to teach me the value of material items by limiting my access to new shiny things, be it a new C64 game or a level axis joystick but when new games came out on a weekly basis there was always something else I had to have. Now, this may all seem trivial by today's standards where several dozen games can be released per day but back then it just seemed like the constant flow of new and innovative games would never end and I, (as an aspiring gamer always looking at expanding his gaming pallet and recreational library) just had to be at the forefront... or at least what I thought was the forefront. In reality that little cardboard stand never even scratched the surface of what was available for the Commodore 64 by the time I got my sticky little fingers on it in 88'. Unbeknown to me at the time was the fact that that little stand in the local newsagents were games of and from the homebrew community; little games that "bedroom coders" were creating/ripping off and generally selling from the back pages of popular computing magazines of the day which had built up a reputation for the polish or mechanics and put out on a larger publisher's budget range. Don't get me wrong, even back then there were your AAA publishers putting out bigger budget games with the latest TV or movie licences to instantly pique your interest and get you to part ways with five times the amount of cash in your pocket compared to those "lesser" titles but generally that meant the smaller companies and sole coders had to be more innovative, more experimental, and I guess that's why even today I'd rather try out some interesting obscure game from an unproven developer over these safe bet "AAA" indistinguishable games that soul sucking publishers with a conglomerate of developers under their ever watchful, ever judging gaze like to shit out on a yearly basis... but hey, that's business I guess. RANT OVER... back to the games.

AND OH THE GAMES! None of them were really sophisticated compared to today's standards I confess but I guess that would be unfair to contemplate anyway. It was a different time. A different era even! It's like comparing a new Ford Mondeo to a Model T, but I digress... Games back when I was a youngster had such a wide variety thematically so it seemed like there was always something new to attempt. Note I say attempt and not complete; the majority of games were quite short when broken down in to parts so most developers ramped up the difficulty or sometimes even made their games impossible to complete, (or put on an infinite loop) just so you as the end user could get the maximum "value" out of their product. This is still a common practice today albeit cultivated in a different way - see most "AAA" open world games for proof of that. One of my most played games on the Commodore 64 was victim to this but that made it no less playable as far as I was concerned, (namely due to the fact I didn't know it couldn't be completed at the time!) and that was a game called Werewolves of London by Viz Design. I just loved the fact you could run around the streets of London killing innocent people and policemen alike while also very occasionally getting the opportunity to slaughter a family member who cursed you in the first place! The music was also excellent in my humble opinion, partly an original song and partly, (mostly) a rip off of the song Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon. Another favourite of mine which was a little more mainstream but still with a horror theme was the original Ghostbusters game by David Crane and is what I believe to be the most authentic Ghostbusters experience to date. It had a karaoke section at the title screen if you wanted to sing along with the theme tune damn it!! A very refined game back in it's day too, you could deck out your car (a choice of 4) with whatever equipment you wanted/needed, go and try save the city and when the game was over you had a special code given to you at the end which represented your bank account number and would result in you having more start up money for your next playthrough so you could buy even MORE equipment! As long as you make a profit that is. It even curtailed the frustration of waiting for the game to load off the cassette by running a very basic version of Space Invaders called Invade-A-Load! Another game I have a soft spot for but to this day I find ridiculously hard to get past the first level of is The Flintstones by Teque Software. I'm told it comprised of four levels but I only ever got to see two of them as they were the only ones available in practice mode; the first comprising of level 1 where you as Fred have to paint the front room of your home before Wilma gets back but with the dodgy controls, your paintbrush/bird walking off and Pebbles being a little shit escaping from her pen and drawing on the walls this was nigh on impossible! The second level was actually level 3 where you had a game of 10 pin bowling with Barney after finishing the painting of the room, (level 1) and changing a tyre on your car. (level 2) Level 4 comprised of you and Barney going off to find Pebbles and BamBam after they run away together... supposedly. As I said, I've never had the pleasure of playing them! One of the few games I did manage to complete was Postman Pat 2 (by Enigma Variations Ltd) based on a children's program still airing to this day! The premise was simple; you, Postman Pat has had his van broken down on the hottest day of the year and you need to deliver your letters on foot while staying hydrated by doing favours for the local villagers who would reward you with cups of tea. This would keep your "tea meter" from running out and therefore stave of dehydration. (It's always bothered me that he didn't just have glasses of squash instead... much more refreshing!) You could bung lifts of a couple of locals to help you around the village if you ever crossed paths with them but it was possible to complete the game without their help. The big baddie in this game were a roving band of feral chickens who would steal your post and run across several screens before dumping their quarry and pegging it before you have the chance to catch up with them thus making you more dehydrated from the chase! (The little buggers!) I have been classically trained too by the way. The likes of Rampage, Blue Max, Buggy Boy, Paperboy, Outrun, Afterburner, Batman, Wrestlemania, NARC, Robocop and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles donned my gaming shelf to name but a few and I have many a fond memory of rushing home after school and loading up a game to play before tea then having to turn it off just when I was making progress in a game due to my dad wanting to watch the news... sometimes life is cruel.

That was my gaming life set for the next half a decade until at 10 years old on one cold Christmas morning I unwrapped a Super Nintendo. And so started the next chapter of my life I dub "The Console Years" but that's for another time. (And another blog entry!) And even though gaming as a hobby and my taste in games in general have evolved well beyond the likes of Fantasy World Dizzy, (my favourite Dizzy game by the way) I will always have a soft spot for my Commodore 64, which incidentally I still have in a drawer under the guest bed along with all my games and, (what I still believe to be) a working joystick.

Now I understand that if you've made it this far there is a good probability that you have fond memories of the Commodore 64 also and maybe even some of the games I've mentioned here but if you are curious in looking deeper in to any of the above versions I've done my best to find a relative link to each game for your further perusal and, (I hope!) a bit of a nostalgia trip. If you are unlucky enough to have not experienced any of these gems the first time around most can be found in emulated form on the interwebs. I implore you to go out there are try them out!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge