December 1994

[chrisbid]

the general question here is what kindof gamer were you in 1994?

 

what systems did you own?

what systems were you looking at and/or excited about?

what systems turned you off?

what games/genres were you into?

were retrogames an important part of the hobby?

 

This moment in time was interesting since you had several players, and there was no clear cut leader, and nobody knew who would be ahead the next year

 

a quick refresher

 

the SNES ($99) had finally taken back the lead from Sega, mostly due to the outstanding (from a technical standpoint) Donkey Kong Country. The rendered graphics were a sight to behold, and blew away anything else ever seen on a 16 bit system

 

the Sega Genesis ($99) was starting to fade from the picture, Sonic & Knuckles was the major release, and while very innovative with its lock-on technology, Sonic 3 had kindof spoiled the series a bit

 

the Sega CD ($229) was more or less dead. There were a few games to play, but no "killer apps" that sold systems

 

the Sega 32X ($149) had just been released to decent reviews. Console players had their first taste of Doom, and Star Wars Arcade was a decent system seller. a lot of people were holding out for the saturn though...

 

3DO ($699 - maybe less at this point, i dont remember) This was THE system for audiophiles and technology nuts, but other than being expensive and sleek piece of hardware, there wasnt a lot of mainstream appeal other than John Madden football

 

Atari Jaguar (249 - maybe less?) Im pretty fuzzy with the Jag's status, was the CD player out yet at this point? One year after its release, and sales seem to be sluggish

 

SNK Neo Geo ($499 - again, not quite sure) The games are getting rave reviews in the gaming magazines, but this expensive piece of hardware, and expesive software library are under the radar for most common people and rarely seen on store shelves

 

UPCOMING

 

Sega Saturn ($399) - Screenshots of Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA are promising, but it seems pretty pricey

 

Sony Playstation ($399 - note 299 wasnt announced until E3) - Sony making video games? Namco is on board and Ridge Racer looks pretty hot, but Sony making video games?

 

Nintendo Project Reality (???) - Nintnendo is busy working on something, but its way off in the future at this point

 

 

mind you also at this point, PC games are hotter than ever with games like Doom and Warcraft, and if you want to count it as a system, you also had the Phillips CDi, but that was never really marketed as a gaming machine.

 

Ill post my situation a bit later, after some dinner

[ApolloBoy]

I was 5 years old back then!

 

1: I only had an NES and a Game Gear.

2: I wanted both the Genesis and the SNES after seeing Genny and SNES reviews in Game Player magazine (My dad subscribed to that.)

3: The only systems I knew back then were the NES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, and the SNES. So no systems turned me off.

 

4: Didn't really matter to me back then.

5: I didn't know about Atari or any old stuff until I was 8 years old!

[chrisbid]

thats cool, the game gear was still current, and i wanted one of those, what games did you like on it at the time?

 

better yet, what games did you get for christmas that year? that question goes for anyone that had santa visit them that year

[Lost Monkey]

In 1994 I had:

 

Atari 2600

Atari 7800

Colecovision

Intellivision

NES

SNES

TurboGrafx16 / TGCD

 

 

I was seriously trying to get my hands on everything 'Turbo' at the time, but I was looking forward to getting a Jaguar!

 

I wasn't too big on Sega or Nintendo at the time.

[snorlaxnut]

In 1994 I had:

 

NES

SNES

Game Boy

SMS

Genesis

Sega CD

[chrisbid]

nobody had santa visit?

 

nobody was interested in the Saturn or Playstation?

 

 

well, i had an SNES, a Gameboy, a Genesis and a Sega CD. I went ahead and purchased a 32X, as i knew i wouldnt have the cash to buy a saturn. The Jagaur was honestly under my radar, i subscribed to gamepro (yeah, i know it was/is lame) in the day, and other than tempest 2000, i cant remember any raving reviews of any jag games. I had never seen a Neo Geo in person, and i thought the Playstation would be a piece of crap. What would be the N64 didnt interest me much, but there wasnt much to it yet.

 

i purchased the 32X with Doom and Virtua Racing Deluxe, and that was the extent of my holiday shopping for myself.

 

Retrogaming had just started to make a blip on the radar, as earlier that year Pitfall the Mayan Adventure was released, and it had the classic 2600 version contained within it. Tempest 2000 also made a splash and started a trend of classic game updates.

[ApolloBoy]

thats cool, the game gear was still current, and i wanted one of those, what games did you like on it at the time?

 

better yet, what games did you get for christmas that year? that question goes for anyone that had santa visit them that year

 

Actually, I had the GG since 1992, when my mom bought it for my dad as a V-Day gift. I actually killed it by cramming a piece of a peanut butter sandwich down the cart port! We got a replacement later on. I still have the broken GG!

[Genk]

In '94 I had a NES, SNES, and a Genesis.... I was kind of broke at the time

My highschool buddies and I had just turned 21 that year, and we spent a lot of time at the bowling alley getting drunk and kicking everyone's ass on Mortal Kombat 2.

For some reason I remember really wanting a Sega CD... probably for MK2, I guess

[chrisbid]

one of the reasons i wanted a sega CD was for Mortal Kombat, but i rented it and it was the worst dam version of all time, it was the exact same version as the genesis port, but it had horrid load times, and redbook audio. what a letdown

[Brad2600]

Let's see.

 

In 1994, I was playing Beavis and Butthead on the Genesis.

 

I was playing mostly Genny games.

 

I had a nice collection of NES and 2600 games...safely stored away.

 

That's all that I can remember.

[Raijin Z]

Hmm... 1994... I was 16, I believe. Desparate. Children Services was taking all of my Social Security checks and giving me nothing, so I could only borrow games and systems, unless I lucked out.

[MegaManFan]

I think fall of 1994 was the first console I ever owned - my college roommate and I split on a Sega Genesis from a pawn shop for $50 (yeah they were still worth that much back then). He played NHL '94 obsessively, while my passion was Sonic the Hedgehog. Good times.

[Lemmi]

I was a the Sega Genesis junkie and a SNES super mario world addict

[2600Lives]

Hmmm. Well, I had graduated the year before, so, I was working, and didn't have a lot of time for games. What time I did have was spent beating ass on Street Fighter 2 for my SNES. About this time I got into real collecting, though, as I began to lament selling my original 2600 and went searching for another one. The system I was looking forward to was the Saturn. I figured that Sony didn't know squat about games (bah, I'm not psychic, ok?) and those screenshots of Virtua Fighter 2 looked SOOOOO sweet.

[DeV0]

1994 huh? I was playing snes with a disk doctor attached and the mega drive. I think super mario world got played the most. I also had an amiga 500 hooked to the TV and a vectrex. The vectrex still exists and i know who has it, im gonna try and get this one back

[JerseyDevil]

In Dec 1994, I was 29 and had my NES, SNES and Genesis. I was an absolute NHL '94 junkie. Me and my buddies would get drunk and play that game all night. My Genesis saw most of the playing time, which is funny because I never play it now and my SNES is always on.

[oesii]

Genesis for me, I had outgrown my Atari 8bit and NES in college and in 1994 I picked up a cheap $50 Genny and we had two favorite games in the house. Joe Montana Football '94 or '95 and Red Zone for our blowing up needs

[+Cafeman]

IIRC, in Dec 94 I had just bought the 32X. I was a bit worn out of playing the Genesis for the past 4 years and I had the Sega Genesis 32X CD monster hooked up to my game TV.

 

32X Roared out of the gate in my mind, with Doom (I loved it), Star Wars Arcade (polygonal TIEs and awesome sound), and best of all, the AAA title Virtua Racing Deluxe. But by May 95, the 32x had already lost its luster unfortunately since the follow-up software was largely uninteresting and not very "32-bit" at all.

[Sharky]

Strangely enough, December 1994, I sold my owning remaining computer.. Amiga 500 as I believe it was almost dead and the future of gaming would point to the consoles. (Probably to stop Piratey theft).

 

I always liked computers not consoles, so I stopped gaming.computing whatsoever for about 3 or so years

 

Until I discovered the magic of PCs, I finally brought my first early in 1997.

(only had a 40MB HD Back then )

[Happy_Dude]

Summer of 94' I got my first console, a NES for my birthday. I'd been

bugging my parents for it ever since I played a friends 7800 .... it was

the best system at the time but by the time I got it my friends had SNES's

At which point I got "seriously" hooked on Rock'n'Roll racing and started

pestering my parents for a SNES. (note: I didn't get that one )

[A2600]

A2600 presents Dec. 1994

 

8 years old in full gaming fulgore!!!!

 

Had:

 

New NES (Oct. 1994) B-DayGift

SNES (Jan. 1992) Christmas Gift

New Genesis 2 (Dec. 1994) Christmas Day

Sega Master System II (Oct. 1992) B-Day Gift

Sega Game Gear (Dec. 1993) Christmas Gift

Nintendo Game Boy (Oct. 1991) B-Day Gift

Super Game Boy (1994)

Super Advantage (1994)

 

Wanted: for 1995

 

Nintendo Power

Super R-Type

NBA Give and Go

Sega Game Gear

 

I know its alot of stuff for being 8 years old but my parents where divorced (1993) and I got double the gifts...

 

and I had a very nice godmother!!

 

and thats it have a nice one but the sad part is that my grand mother threw away my 2600 in 1993

[dougy76]

the general question here is what kindof gamer were you in 1994?

 

I was mostly interested in RPG's around this time. Not much of a gamer overall.

 

what systems did you own?

 

SMS, NES, and SNES.

 

what systems were you looking at and/or excited about?

 

None, actually. I wasn't interested much in the new games coming out at that time. I'm still not interested in new games today. I'd say I was most excited about the potential my PC had for gaming, because around that time I got a new PC which was capable of handling better PC games.

 

what systems turned you off?

 

Sega Genesis. I never got into it. I don't know why.

 

what games/genres were you into?

 

RPG's, RPG's, and RPG's!

 

were retrogames an important part of the hobby?

 

Sort of. I was still playing my NES and SMS quite a bit if that was "retro" back then. But Atari was completely out of the picture.

[raindog]

Truth is, 1994 was probably the low point of my gaming existence.

 

As far as TV consoles go, I didn't have any. This is probably because I actually owned no TV.

 

I did have an Amiga monitor with an Amiga 500 hooked up to it. That was the year it finally died, though. The magic blue smoke escaped from the chips.

 

I gave in and bought a PC.... a "screamin'" 486SX25 with 4MB of RAM. I splurged and bought another 4MB when I discovered it was too weak to run Netscape under Linux, and just perpetually swapped when I loaded OS/2 on it. (I was already over Windows by then, though I went back to it for a while when win95 appeared.) I think the high points of my PC existince that year were finding my first program that could display JPG's on my Speedstar 24X card (mmmmm.... pr0n....), and accidentally branding myself with my soldering iron (the last time I touched one) as I attempted to roll my own SB16 MIDI cable from some schematics I got off the net. Shortly after I got my PC, a friend got a Pentium 60 at great expense and I ended up doing all my work (not take-home work, but little graphic design jobs I did for people and clubs I belonged to) at his place while my PC basically sat in a terminal program all the time.

 

I still had my Game Gear and would occasionally take it out to play a round of Mappy. I expect that cart is still in there. I did find a couple of closeout Game Gear games that year at a Mr. Second's (basically a home improvement store that sells scratch and dent stuff).... Woody Pop, I think, and a Pipe Dream clone of some kind (Locomotion maybe?)

 

Finally, there was the office. I was having a miserable time working for a c**t of a boss who was thankfully computer illiterate. Having already gotten busted for using the modem to get on the net at blazing 9600bps speeds, I retaliated by installing DesqView on my 386SX16 with 2MB, and sitting there with Lotus open in one window and one of the following games in the other, waiting for the double-alt-press:

 

Commander Keen

Wolfenstein 3D (this thing was way too slow for Doom)

Duke Nukem

Jill of the Jungle

Some game with a jackrabbit that I had a bitch of a time getting to work under DV

 

I actually wrote level editors in Pascal for Jill and Wolf3D, in the style of ShowGFX/EditGFX. I loved making levels for Wolf3D that were either so open or had so many enemies that the DesqView DOS session would crash and dump me back into Lotus.

 

I'm not sure I've ever played a platform game since then that was as fun as Keen/Duke/Jill, but no matter how you slice it, 1994 was pretty bleak from a videogame perspective from where I stood. And looking at all the failed products from that year, I guess I wasn't the only one.

[Sanriostar]

In '94 I was less than a year into Classic Collecting, but I had:

 

2600, C64, NES, SNES. By the end of '94 I'd have an Inty 'cause I'd found Diner, and I was curious as to why everyone thought the game was such a big deal. Now I know.

[chrisbid]

i find it interesting to see how many people still were involved with the NES at this point, i had sadly sold mine off to help me buy some genesis games, i regret that, as i kept my NES in great shape