Once forgotten, now found

I remember a while back now, probably around 1997. This was a time when Pentium 3 PCs were like today’s quad core machines in terms of geek factor, the Playstation 2 was just a distant glint in the eye of Sony and Will Smith was hitting the charts with Men in Black. I was twelve at the time and in the second year of my secondary school life. It was at this time that I really started getting into gaming and as the school years passed, the addiction only grew stronger.

What strikes me about that time is memories that I have, memories of events that for some reason still stick in my head now. These aren’t events that I should remember, but for whatever reason it may be, I do remember.

There was a time when myself and roughly six friends all spent the night around another mate’s house, staying up all night gaming and getting thoroughly ill from too much pizza and kebab. It was the first time I ever got to play Banjo Kazooie, and I can distinctively remember a small group of us just taking it in turns on the controller (it was yellow) while the others helped find jiggies and such, it was a team effort and by the end of the night we had pretty much worked our way through a good portion of the game.

Sat in my friends bedroom at 8pm at night on a cold November evening, it was close to fireworks night as the local hoodlums were setting off fireworks in the nearby park, no doubt using the slide as some sort of launch pad. The night ended with me completely scared out of my skin, not because of a stray whistler or dodgy roman candle, but because of Resident Evil. Never had I thought a game could be so scary, so terrifying, yet leave me wanting so much more.

I remember my friend showing me his Final Fantasy VII strategy guide, at the time I didn’t even know what Final Fantasy was, let alone comprehend how it could warrant such a mammoth bible of encyclopaedic content to back it up. Flicking through the pages during a Chemistry lesson (of which, I don’t remember much of) I managed to get only a handful of pages in and I knew I was hooked, I had to play this game and play it I did.

It’s quite peculiar that random events stay hidden in the deepest recesses of my brain, I’m guessing they are stored in some rather geeky cryo stasis capsule of some sort, right next to the databanks on pick ‘n’ mix sweets and the day to day habits of Llamas. It’s funny how your mind works though, and that small little things relating to gaming can just linger around waiting for the memory to be triggered by something completely random.