Reminiscing
G'day all,
Does anyone else in this forum reminisce often? I'm thinking that because I'm coming towards a milestone birthday in just over a month and that I haven't actually accomplished that much in my life I'm doing loads of thinking about when I was younger and life was simpler and frankly, more fun.
For example, I was 18 and working in a record shop, I wasn't earning much, but life was great. I had enough to give the folks some keep, get a few PS1 games and enjoy a few beers with my friends every month.
I know we all get older and gain responsibilities and the like, but I dunno, sometimes I feel a little out of place and yearning for the 'old days' again.
Or is it just me?
Does anyone else in this forum reminisce often? I'm thinking that because I'm coming towards a milestone birthday in just over a month and that I haven't actually accomplished that much in my life I'm doing loads of thinking about when I was younger and life was simpler and frankly, more fun.
For example, I was 18 and working in a record shop, I wasn't earning much, but life was great. I had enough to give the folks some keep, get a few PS1 games and enjoy a few beers with my friends every month.
I know we all get older and gain responsibilities and the like, but I dunno, sometimes I feel a little out of place and yearning for the 'old days' again.
Or is it just me?
Post edited by big_plums on
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Neither was Clive Sinclair, innit ;)
Or the first time you have to pull out a nostril hair. The first time you realise that you hate modern (at that time) music. The first time you realise you hate teenagers. When you look back and think "I used to be able to get drunk, stagger in at quarter to three in the morning, get up at 6:30 am, go to work feeling like death, and by nine o'clock that same morning I felt great, refreshed, and ready for anything. Now I'm permanently wrecked for most of the day following a night out, even if I'm in bed by one am".
Or when you see kids running down the street with endless energy and think "I used to run about everywhere, just for fun, when I was a kid. Now I couldn't run 10 yards without getting knackered". The way you used to neglect your body and it would cope OK, but now you have to watch your intake. Or the way you know for a fact you were better at playing Speccy games back then than when you try now. Or when you start paying attention to subjects like politics or VAT rises. Or when every woman your age suddenly starts getting slightly broody as their biological clock is starting to alert them to the passing of time. Or when people you went to school with are taking their children's children to nursery school. Or when the teenagers you work with have never heard of the big names you grew up with (Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Clive Sinclair, etc).
And finally... When you realise that you have more in common with your parents generation than with the generation below you. That really makes you feel old.
On the other hand, I'd rather have grown up in the 70s and 80s (as I did) than nowadays, so I'm not really complaining. Plus age doesn't mean too much, anyway, it's your emotional age and attitude that matters.
Shops stopped selling Spectrum games when I was 12 :sad:
Bloody hell, you took the words right out of my mouth :)..or should it be :(
19 for me.
I was annoyed last week when i decided to check out Game for some PC games, only to find they don't sell them anymore!
They even had a poster in the window that said'We have something for every gamer' expect if you're a PC owner!
I think you feel old when you realise that what all the old folk tell you when you're at school, about them being "the best days of your life" is probably true! Well, unless you go to College or Uni.....
My local GAME stor still had them last week. I'll pop in when I'm in town later and have a look.
On a side note, why do GAME shops move stuff around every 3 or 4 weeks? Both my local GAME and Gamestation move everything around all the time. It's not as though they have new formats coming out that often, but they insist on swopping the Xbox, Wii and PS3 stuff all over the place!
why though ? I got rid of my amiga.. I found very few things on it I liked. I swapped it for a c128.. I find it funny, most people on here got an amiga, but what was before it that funded it's development :lol:
I remember the last spectrum game I pretty much played was green beret before mine packed up and I bought an atari and then c64.
then I got to know about c64 scene.. think of it like here is now,with the net / forums BUT back in 1988 :D . when I was on speccy I knew folk locally but c64 I met great folk from all over the globe.
I have fond memories of when / where I bought games and the corner shops that used to do the ?1.99 specials. e.g. I remember getting fireflash+destory for my birthday from WH smith is brent cross .. I also got the hobbit. so dunno what year that was out
getting krakatoa and all or nothing from acton.. and currah speech from acton woolies and hearing the speech on pogo :)
wembley photo centre, getting hall of things :)
but the top memory is easy the first 2 speccy games my mum bought me from the local woolies.. manic miner / jetman.. (and yep I still have both :) )
the thing I noticed when I was younger I had boundless time / energy. Time is a constant, but as we get older I think that aspects becomes more relevant e.g. days seem shorter etc.
I link a lot of my spectrum memories to 3 school friends though. Some 26 years later I'm only in touch with 1 of them now
Erm, 26 for me.
For me, I'd love to go back to 1980. I loved the 80s. The great music, the clothes (yes, I had big hair (hardly got any these days! :cry:) and frilly shirts back then!) - swapping (remember doing that - 01 811 8055! :smile:) a purple and rusty Raleigh Chopper for a ZX81 sometime in 1982, which seemed like a bargain back then but probably not so much these days - have you seen the price Raleigh Choppers fetch on eBay now! :-o
Saving every penny from my paper round to buy a brand new 48k Speccy sometime in early 1983 will always be a great memory, although a little bittersweet these days for one reason or another.
Oh, I could go on and on... But I'll spare you all!
So, if anyone has a spare ticket for that time-machine please save me a place - back to somewhere c. 1980! :-)
I've been doing it a lot more lately, probably since I got that Speccy I've been banging on about... there's something about loading the old games up on a real Speccy that you just don't get in emulation, a certain "je ne sais quoi". I like playing lots of 80s tunes while I'm on the Speccy too, to get myself fully immersed in nostalgia. :smile:
As a character in the Amiga game Worms would say, "Traitor!".
I didn't know that PC game sales in shops were declining so much. No doubt it's mostly due to online sales (both online shops that post real games, and online downloadable services), as the PC is still a very popular games machine, but it's sad in a way I suppose.
It's an old retail trick, people mostly just buy the same sort of things, so shops move stuff around so that when, out of habit, you go to the same section of the shop, to buy whatever you intended to buy, you see something new, and are tempted to buy that too.
Supermarkets do it a lot, and it's really annoying, as if they didn't then I could do my shopping on auto-pilot, whilst day-dreaming.
Today is much better than the older times in so many ways, but there were definitely better things about years gone past. The thing is, you tend to remember the best as being better than they were, and you don't tend to remember the worst too much, so nostalgia does colour your judgement of the past.
The worst thing is that no matter how rubbish the present is, in the future you might well look back and think "I didn't realise how much I had back then" :-(
I wish I could go back into any point in time I chose and change things. Life would be so much better as a result.
I think for full price it was either Doctor Who, or Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix, and after that there were still budget games released, and the last one was a codemasters game (maybe a Robin Hood one?).
No doubt someone will know for certain and post here.
can't say speccy wise
It's probably either Street Fighter 2 or Nigel Mansell. Both appeared early in 1993, i don't remember anything appearing after that, apart from a few rereleases from Alternative Software.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0009406
Must amaze people here that some of members under 30 like the speccy!.
1993 was the year Alternative stopped releasing Budget titles too...that seems to be the year when it all stopped, apart from things like Zenobi who kept releasing stuff through mail order...
I was 16 when Your Sinclair finished! I thought I was a bit older, but no...I was still just a pup! :)
I was 31 when the last one was released.
This thread makes me feel old:sad:
We seemed to reach a zenith back then, both in culture and technology.
I remember watching Johnny Ball Explains All, Tom Baker in Doctor Who (later Colin Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.)
I could spend ages on how the Young Ones made me split my sides.
How about the Sunday afternoon where me and my brother (Andrew) watched Dark Star, hilarious... :D
TV nowadays is just plain crap.
Used to love Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and Dire Straits.
The Sinclair series of computers were designed to amazing specifications. Only a pity that the dunderheads in government didn't back Sinclair...
Come to think of it, the Eighties were probably where the UK started to come unstuck and start its sharp decline...
God I'm depressed now...
Someone mentioned that they were happy to be a kid in the 80s rather than now...screw that! Back then I'd love to have had access to the internet and all the retro/emu stuff, dodgy files/downloads, online gaming....and erm...those sites dedicated to the study of nakedness etc.
But as Beanz said above, you often remember just the good times. I hear lots of friends going on about 'wish we were back at school', hell no ! Rose tinted glasses i think are being used way too much. Cant stand much of the 80's tv either, thank god for tons of channels on Sky even with a lot of crap. Download any american shows i want instead of waiting for months for them to be on tv etc
I dont try to look back that many times now, dont think its healthy (Yeah i know says the bloke on a Speccy site). I never wish it was another time though or think 'damn wish i had done that differently', just always look forward and dont regret any mistakes.
Its funny how things turn out though. I remember that channel 4 program where they go back every 5 years to see how this group of people are doing, i look back at my friends every 5 or 10 years and its amazing the changes.
My mate who was dumped by his gf, was on his own in this tiny flat, depressed as hell. 5 years later he met a very nice girl (who was loaded !), has a huge house now, happy as anything. Things can change for everyone.
I think things arent bad right now when it comes to gaming for example, retro is in, can play any Speccy game i want from WOS and on an emulator. Its great to see gaming so mainstream now.
Are you really called Marvin?:D
Yes actually, I have a pain in my diodes all down one side.
God, brain the size of a planet...