What are the video games that marked our childhood?
In Vonguru, we are passionate, with different tastes. However, if we have one thing in common (among many others), it is our love for geek universe in the very broad sense of the term: video games, films, series, novels, comics, manga, technology…. So we got into the habit of sharing this common passion in a series of collaborative articles, Team Vonguru, mobilizing part of the editorial staff around a particular subject on which we also hope to have your opinion. Today, we are offering you the very first Team VG of the year (yes we delayed a bit) with the video games that have marked our childhood the most and of course, we are waiting for your feedback!
To learn about our previous debates, discover without further delay our Team VG on the seventh art, starting with our top 2018, the top and flop cinema and series of 2016 then the top films and series of 2017, Avengers : Infinity War, our theories on season 7 of Game of Thrones then our opinion on this season, our favorite Disney from the Second Golden Age, Blade Runner 2049, A Perfect Day, Mindhunter season 1 and 2, season 4 of Black Mirror, seasons 1 then 2 of Stranger Things, the perfect Halloween movies, Netflix series, summer 2019 series, the 6 Underground by Michael Bay, our favorite movies of 2019 and our top 10 cinematic movies of the last decade!
We had broadened our interest in manifestations of geek culture to the best fictional villains, geek heroines, X-Men and Marvel characters, zombie adaptations, our favorite sci-fi books, the Mass Effect saga, our favorite console and playstyle, our Nintendo Switch track record, our favorite YouTubers and apps, thinking about the law and the image of women in the tenth art, and the most anticipated games from 2019. The VG Teams also discussed our PC configs, our vision of connected vacations, our favorite smartphones, gadgets that we can no longer do without, the media that dominates at home, the configuration of our PCs once again, of our report to crypto-currencies, of the headsets used in everyday life, as well as of the Computex 2018, of our program for a perfect Halloween party and then of Christmas, of holidays and other geek activities, of back to school, our shots high-tech heart of the year 2018 and without forgetting CES 2019, the Halloween 2020 program, of a geeky Valentine’s Day 2020 edition. More recently, we told you about the video games that marked 2020.
Alan Grant : Spyro the dragon
For my part, I am of the generation Jurassic Park (no we would not have guessed …): 1993 represents! I really started playing video games with the very first Playstation. On this console, a game probably marked me it’s a platform game: Spyro the dragon released in 1998 by Insomniac Games. I started playing it when I was 7-8 years old. Indeed, at the time, I only had this console at the end of its life around 1999 or even 2000. Spyro it’s a game where I actually spent hours and hours playing. The goal of this title is to save the dragons that have been turned into crystal statues by the evil Gnasty Gnorc. Only the little Spyro was spared and can therefore save the dragons.
At the time, I found this title quite difficult because the character controls weren’t necessarily obvious. Even more when you had to hover from one platform to another. Obviously, Spyro being a young dragon, he couldn’t fly. I remember having found that a shame. However, this “concern” was fixed in one of the future games. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the character reacted immediately as soon as the joystick was pressed. In fact, that often made my father bitch, who said that this game made your head spin. At the time, I didn’t understand why he kept saying this over and over. Today, after playing it again many years later and with an adult eye, I can see exactly what he was talking about. Sorry Dad …
Like many children I suppose, I had a lot of laughs on the Pacific World level where the monsters hid themselves terrified that they would be killed, or on the contrary, showed us their buttocks that could be burned.
When I was a kid, I never managed to completely complete the game and I know that had me greatly frustrated. Indeed, to complete the game 100% you had to have found absolutely all the gems in all the different worlds of the game. No matter how much I went through all the levels, at the time, I never managed to find the precious sesame.
Today, as a good collector and fan of retrogaming, I have this PS1 game in my library!
And if you didn’t know, the first Spyro games came out in 2018 in a remastered version running on Unreal Engine ! What to discover or rediscover the universe of the little purple dragon!
Lucile “Macky” Deloume: Mario 64
The choice of the game that marked me the most during my childhood took me some time to think about it because I had a hard time choosing. I hesitated especially with the very first GTA released on PS1 in 1997, Zelda – Ocarina of Time released in November 1998, Banjo-Kazooie released in June 1998 and of course Mario 64 released in 1996. Team 1993 like Alan, I have been rocked by video games since my childhood. With a video game journalist daddy, I would have had a hard time missing out! At home, we were incredibly lucky to have almost all of the consoles and games when they were released, often even before. So I spent a lot of time, in my memories anyway, behind the console with my father, and even my mother, especially on Mario 64.
I have so many good memories about this game, so many InGame than at the family level, that it is almost inseparable from my life, even today. I am really looking forward to being able to take the N64 from my parents, bring out the game, and play it with my son when he is old enough. Even today, we find ourselves replaying it from time to time in order to remember happy moments. Some worlds are more striking than others, and if I had to name just one, it would obviously be that of the snow, with the race where you have to bring the baby penguin back to its mother.
However, I leave you with the most legendary credits of the N64, with that of Banjo-Kazooie, game that I had initially planned to process, which was my ringtone for a long time (at the time when we still took the head to customize it).
Antoine « Aykori » Boitel : Dragon’s Lair
As strange as it may seem after having been able to read the games of my colleagues, the game that will undoubtedly have made my childhood is Dragon’s Lair. As you can imagine, in the 90s he was not known for the same reasons as now. We start with a game on an arcade machine in a cinema while waiting for the screening. Then, at the bend of a store, we come across a console version of the living room. Neither one nor two, from the top of my seven years, I go out of my way to get it.
If at first I had, like many people, a disgust with the first level. I was able, thanks to this game, to discover the rage to win and the desire to persevere. My parents have a very simple rule: if you want a new game, finish the one you had before. As much to say to you that the combo of the two had a most explosive result.
If you don’t know this wonder, let me summarize it for you briefly. You play as the knight Dirk, sent to the Dragon’s lair to free Princess Daphne. Until then, nothing more classic than the traditional valiant knight in search of adventure. That being said, the game is divinely punitive. Calculated at the least frame to make you suffer as much as possible. From the non-existent life bar to the most delusional sanctions, it would seem that an army of developers wanted revenge on life itself. Thus born on Dragon’s Lair of the NES. A succession of four levels with the most violent rules that can be invented.
If I am telling you about this game today, it is because it still marks me today. It took me months and a whole summer especially to see the end and an unfortunate PNG ending. And yet, even today, it remains faithfully in a drawer and comes out when I need a challenge. Something that unfortunately I find it very difficult to find now in the majority of recent games. Where the key word is now to offer a story to the detriment of a real difficulty and especially a beautiful lesson in life.
Matthieu “Matthes” Laurent: Hook – Atari ST (1991)
I have a very special relationship with video games. It is indeed for me the first medium behind which I exhausted my eyes. When I was little and my parents wanted to be quiet, they didn’t put me in front of a Disney, they would ask me to go watch my brother (or my father) play. Thus, the first creations of the tenth art that I was able to follow were for me like films that I was following. In this category, I have a very particular memory of the Hook, developed by the late English studio Ocean for’Atari ST at early 1990s (yes, I am talking about a time that those under twenty cannot know).
You all must know the eponymous film from 1991 in which Robin Williams magnifies the role of Peter Pan. You should know that the point and click was one of the most popular game genres in the early 90s, Hook is simply the perfect genre adaptation for the film by Spielberg.
One year after the release of The Secret of Monkey Island and Loom, Ocean was riding the wave of point and click by offering a game with original ideas. From the tension created by the incessant “ticking” of the crocodile to the race required to go and pick up the old woman’s overalls, the memories of this game are great and constitute for me a real madeleine of Proust.
If the English development studio has since closed its doors (not without having released some pearls such as Jurassic Park or games that tore the hair of many players like The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt), and that today the genus point and click is no longer one of the most popular genres (let’s thank some studios indie authors of pearls such as Thimbleweed Park or The Darkside Detective proving us that the genre is not dead) Hook will forever be like one of my first memories of games that gave me the desire to invest myself in this art which has now become the medium offering me the most emotions.
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