to Blighty with our names on. Of course, what with them being Japanese machines and all, a small amount of SCART re-wiring was in order. It was like some kind of bizarre, technological sewing circle as Kevin would call out wire colours and pin numbers and we’d all re-attach our cables, dutifully. Later on I also managed to get an extension device thing that would get around the mechanical region lock, allowing me to play US games.
Now that I was in gainful employment, I decided that I could fulfil a childhood dream of mine and buy myself a proper arcade machine. Les, Disky and myself all put in orders for a trio of cabs and I started perusing the classifieds in the back of trade magazines for JAMMA boards. It was truely amazing just how cheaply you could pick up the older boards for. 20 quid for Flying Shark or Rolling Thunder? Bargain.
A month or two later, using a similar rationale, I decided that maybe I could afford to get into the Neo Geo. 180 quid for Samurai Shodown later and I realised that maybe I was completely incorrect and no-one could afford to get into the Neo Geo. The game was truely stunning though and the series remains my favourite beat-em-up to this day. Still, it was easily the most money I’d spent to enable myself to play a single game. At the time...
Following the EA buyout, we became entitled to their perks. One of which included a free Playstation for every employee. Rather than being locked to PAL gaming, I felt honour-bound to get the thing chipped so that I could play games from other regions. A friend of mine lived near a combined pizza-delivery / console game shop. You could phone up, order a pizza and they’d deliver it then take your console away to be chipped. A week or so later, another phone call, another pizza and you were good to go. It’s a level of business combination that I have not seen the likes of since. In short -genius.
With the next generation of consoles kicking off, it was time for Nintendo to get back into the action. As with the Super Famicom, we were able to short circuit things a bit and get ourselves an N64. Following a marathon 36 hour stint of Mario 64, orders were placed and another big box was flown halfway around the world so that we could sate our game lust. I also had a decent line in converting the Japanese and US N64s so that they were able to play the other regions. It was a lot simpler than the Playstation as all it required was a tool to undo the case and a small hacksaw...
The next buzz around a console was the Dreamcast. A couple of friends and I actually made a point of flying to New York for to pick them up before the UK release. Shame the console just got swallowed up in the Sony’s hype machine. The controller was a bit strange and the most ungainly thing ever, but the quality of the games was decent. Soul Calibur anyone? How about the awesome Ikaruga?
It was a similar story with the Playstation 2. Now these things were like golddust circa Christmas 2001, but it just so happened that we were in Hawaii for New Year and a local Toys R Us happened to have had a delivery that very morning. It wasn’t that there was any particular game that I wanted to play, but I really wanted to have a PS2 because they were so hard to get hold of – a common theme with my later console purchases.
After that it was the Xbox. In a similar vein to the Neo Geo before, I only got interested in the console for a single game – Steel Battalion. 150 quid for the console and 200 quid for the game off
