Remembering my old favourite games

Everyone has those games that they used to play all the time, and yet have now been completely forgotten for several years. It happens to the best of us. But sometimes, going back to the old games can be really fun. Sure, the graphics aren’t as fancy and the characters or stories may have since progressed, or it is even slightly young for you now, but still, for the few hours you’re back on them it is so worth it.

One of my old favourites has to be Sonic Adventure DX.

I got hours out of this game and although it was quite short, unlocking of different characters with different abilities was cool and it did follow a story. I also liked the amount of free-roaming, so you could just chill out between levels. My favourite thing about this game (and any sonic game for that matter) admittedly is the chao garden. The ability to find new eggs while free-roaming for your garden and to collect animals from killing enemies that can be used to customise the chao was just great for me.

I used to love making my chao get gradually more and more evil by feeding them certain fruits and they had to have some form of animal ears. For some, I would imagine looking after chao is quite tedious, but I loved it.

It wasn’t nearly as advanced, but this isn’t my most played chao garden. I spent ages on this garden, from Sonic Advance for the Gameboy advance:

Ah, what a game…

Don’t get me wrong, the levels of Sonic Adventure were good too. Well, most of them anyway. I always hated the level where Amy is being chased by that green robot. Playing Sonic in 3D was also quite new to me when I played this game as I’d only ever known it as a side-scrolling 2D platformer. All this talk about it is making me want to play again now. Arghhhh!

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Another game I loved playing was Ape Escape 3 for the Playstation 2. I first discovered Ape Escape when I rented number 2 from the video shop (yes, videos still existed back then). It was really good and at times quite challenging, but I could never beat the final boss. When number 3 came out, I decided I wanted that too, and it intrigued me seeing all the cute and colourful outfits the new personas offered. I have to say, although the use of personas made this game a lot easier than its predecessor, it was far better in so many ways.

I always played as the girl, partly because I am a girl but also because her outfits were cuter, and she had an extra ability which meant some monkeys would fall in love when seeing her, making them easy catches. My favourite persona had to be the miracle ninja. It was fast, dynamic and just totally awesome.

I liked lots of the personas for various reasons, like the cowboy/girl’s ability to use ranged attacks, although it was hard to get your aim right. The levels all had their unique story to tell and each monkey even had its own personality. Many were dressed in various costumes. For example, in the second level, you explore a forest with a Red Riding Hood theme, in which you can catch Red and the Wolf in ape form. If you managed to capture video footage of various monkeys in every stage, you unlocked the simian cinema, where you could use any caught monkeys and direct your own video with them in it!

The only downside was that each video took up quite a bit of memory space, so I only ever had a few saved at one given time. Still, a solid game for some chilled out action fun.

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The list could go on and on so I’ll finish with one final game that took hours of my life away from me, and that game is Spyro, Year of the Dragon. Of all the Spyro games, this is still my favourite to this very day.

The worlds were imaginative, the characters vibrant and the gameplay still as classic as that of its predecessors. This one  had the best stories, the best levels and more outstanding features. One big time consumer in this game was in the form of skateboarding. I don’t know about anyone else, but completing the skate challenge for the second time – near impossible.

Those pesky things just would not let you catch them! I remember spending hours in total trying to do this task, but with many a break in between as I would just get stressed after a while and rage quit. However, it was fun going off those ramps and such. Sports and Spyro actually went well together. Another cool feature was always the controlling of different characters. Spyro saw you on most of your way, but odd levels would require you to play as someone different with different abilities.

These were often levels within levels and earned you a few extra dragon eggs. It just added some variety really and different challenges.

The moral of the story is, don’t forget your old classics, as even if you’re a bit past them now, they’ll always have that special place in your heart.