My Context

When I was a child my parents got me a Mega Drive. I didn’t really understand the concept of buying a console, or the price individual games were, but I wanted one. My friend had one, and that meant I needed it in my life, so I didn’t feel bad that I was missing out. After a bit of obvious scrimping and saving my parents got me it. It came with the Sega Mega Collection, which was Columns, a tacky motorbike racing game, and a football game. I didn’t like football, and I didn’t care for racing, but Columns was amazing, it was in my eyes a better Tetris, I’d spend hours on it. From here I went to Sonic, and from that I went on to weirder and more wonderful games such as Cool Spot, Zool, Toejam and Earl, and so on. I loved it, the more ridiculous the game the better. At the same time I had an obsessive appreciation to Worms, and also the 1993 X-Men title, and Separation Anxiety, the 1995 Spider-Man/Venom game. Both were side-scrolling beat-em-ups, and I loved them because I loved comics, the stories were incredible and thinking that I could actually play as these character’s made my childish heart sing. From then on I was hooked on the genre, my life was consumed with Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and anything similar I could find.
The Playstation brought me games that would define my experience that would make me understand my love of brilliant storylines, how I decided just how important they were alongside amazing gameplay, and these games were Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Abe’s Oddysee.
Playstation 2 introduced GTA3, Timesplitters, and Shadows of the Colossus, while the game cube gave me the resident evil remake, which was not only the most brilliant looking game I had ever seen but had also taken something from my youth and improved on it in every inconceivable way, from graphics right down to the script, removing the infamous Jill sandwich line that had haunted me to this day.
The Xbox 360 has given me some of the biggest gifts, allowing me to understand everything I’d wanted from games, from gameplay to graphics to incredible storyline. Games such as Mass Effect and Bioshock, as well as the Assassin’s Creed and Batman: Arkham series’ proved this to me, bridging the gaps between all of these things to give a truly impressive experience.
Through my love of gaming I now see how it branches out and has influenced me in a great number of aspects in my life. My love of Sonic and later Metal Gear got me into drawing, starting simply and then growing an understanding and appreciation of different artists. Even survivor horror games have influenced me to become a massive horror fan, and Resident Evil probably went a long way to help my appreciation of truly awful B-movies.