The other day I realised that come this December I’ll have been a console gamer for thirty years and it made me wonder back on how much consoles, along with what I get out of them, have changed over the years.

It first started all the way back in 1979 playing ‘Pong’ or *ahem* ‘Tennis’ as it was called on the TV Master with its built in ‘sports’  titles. Back then it was all about the simple joys of competing against friends as an alternative if we had nowhere we could kick a ball around and for when we were tired of fighting imaginary battles with a mixed bag of Star Wars and Micronauts action figures or maybe it was just simply something else to do after reading the latest issues of Star Wars weekly and 2000AD. It was a simple system (by todays standards, it was positively medieval) but had the option to switch games from the likes of Tennis (pong) to Football (4 player Pong) or even Squash (2 player pong with both players on the same side of the screen) with the simple flick of a switch and you could even shoot a little bouncing square with the supplied lightgun (House of the Dead it most certainly was not!) but little was I aware at that time that this throwaway pastime would still be such a major part of my life several decades down the line.

My gaming habit remained fairly steady yet shamefully uneventful throughout most of the years between the Atari right through to the 16bit era (it was during these formative years that I was enlightened to the many delights of music, girls, sex and alcohol). It was only with the advent of the 32 and odd one out 64 bit machines that my hobby, which until now had been a sedately paced stroll, stepped up several gears into a being chased by a pack of ravenous zombies type sprint with the opportunities to now roam through ancient three dimensional tombs, communicate using Hellos, burps and farts to fellow Mudokons and worry about whether I had enough shotgun ammo, or better still Magnum ammo to take out those remaining mansion dwelling Hunters.

The new consoles came with a seemingly much greater focus on story driven games. Whereas before my games had consisted for the most part of conversions of such arcade classics as Space Invaders and Pac-Man or Platformers such as Mario and Sonic, there was now far more reason for putting in hours of play other than just having the highest score. Despite the fact that most of these stories were never going to win awards for originality it was enough to keep me hooked and in some cases such as Square’s Final Fantasy series (VII onwards) the promise of more of those sublime cinematics on top of a great game was worth the many, many hours they consumed. The adventures came thick and fast and despite that these were mostly solitary single player experiences than I’d had with the previous consoles, I would often, and still to this day, converse with other like-minded gamers about our shared yet separate adventures in the likes of places such as Midgar.

Then, in 1999 along came Sega’s foray into the world of 128 bit gaming and with it came the first rumblings of what online console gaming had to offer even if Sega did eventually trip over it’s own shoelaces, fall flat on its face and, holding a tissue to its virtual bloodied nose, run home so traumatised by the event that to never venture into console manufacturing again, I for one will always carry fond memories of the time we spent together wandering around the planet Ragol, checking out Ivy’s  ‘specials’, tagging Tokyo-to and searching for Lan-Di to avenge my fathers murder (still waiting to finish that one Suzuki-san).

The time to mourn was short lived however as along came Sony, Nintendo and the new kid on the block Microsoft and after many an hour wandering around a hijacked Big Shell and gunning down grunts from the back of a warthog, this particular generations defining moment for me came early one Friday morning in 2003 when I played Rainbow 6 for the first time over Xbox live. BOOM! suddenly I was no longer able to easily outsmart the dodgy AI of the opposing team, before their actions were only be defined by lines of code, now they now had real human ‘intelligence’ (sometimes!) operating them. People who would place C4 in places I wouldn’t think of looking and who would come to the rescue of their team-mates if I had managed to corner them. Throw into the mix the in-game voice-chat via the headset meant that my console gaming experience would never quite be the same again.

All this has since lead me to what is our current console generation with it’s glorious high definition visuals and 7.1 surround sound (okay except for Mr Wii who likes being different but has bafflingly made a little go a long way) and their promise of even greater stories to experience, larger worlds to explore with the ability to share those adventures with others like never before. I’ve seen the console landscape evolve from it’s basic beginnings with the likes of the TV Master to the hi-tech delights of the PS3 and slowly change from being regarded by the mainstream purely as toys for children to a multi-billion dollar powerhouse industry where the new release of an expectant title can even garner TV news coverage. Whilst there is still a long way in which this beloved medium can and no doubt will develop, it’s with each little step forward I find myself still being amazed by it all and by all accounts will continue to do so as I can never envision a time (Zombie holocaust,alien invasion or huge tidal wave notwithstanding) where I would willingly give up this gaming habit of mine. The fact that growing up and maturing as an adult is and forever will be, an inevitability (Boo! Hiss!), the urge to play in these fantastical virtual scenarios is even stronger now than it was when I was nine years old although nowadays I can leave my action figures on my shelves as I can now create virtual avatars to roam these worlds and instead of having to make landscapes from the folds and mounds of my duvet it’s now digitally modelled in glorious high definition.

Thirty years on and with all these technological bangs and whistles that modern gaming has at it’s disposal, it’s now more than ever, still about playing with and competing against friends, only now they don’t have to be on the sofa next to me, now they can be pretty much anywhere on this little (Big) planet of ours (unless you reside in North Korea, damn you Kim Jong-il!).