My answer to the topic I recently created is going to be extremely long, so I've decided to break it up into multiple small blog entries based on the time period. These will be a bit rough, but maybe in future installments I might add some images and colour to break it all up.

 

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I don't know. I dunno why my Dad bought that PS1. He's not much of a gamer; he grew up on a farm with a handful of other siblings before moving down here to the city. Gaming never would be his forte, but I'd be happy to make that purchase all the more worth it for him.

I think there's still a photo of Dad holding me, holding the PS1 controller, playing Grand Turismo. Either that, or I'm having some weird out-of-body experience memory of that very same event. That's where it all started; a very young me, and a demo of Gran Turismo. It wouldn't matter if I won or lost; kids don't care for such large concepts, it's all about the feedback. I could hit a button, and something happened. That is a feeling you don't forget.

I was four years old in 1998. Back then, I was always more obsessed with VHS tapes and LEGO, if only because TV access was very limited. It probably didn't help that a baby me climbed and smashed some glass windows on the TV stand. I was creative, in a very destructive way. It explain my tastes in those early years; I could never win, but the thrill of Ape Escape, Formula 1 '98, V-Rally '97 Championship Edition and the Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace demo and smacking stuff around was enough for me. There was music, lights, and buttons to smack. Sometimes even vibrations.

I had no concept of games libraries, back then. The whole world of gaming was just in those discs. Hell, I didn't even know what a demo was, and it didn't help that I couldn't even reach the end of my games to find out. Thankfully, my mind was expanded on my sixth birthday. It was nighttime; only that year had we moved to this big new house, and I was sitting on the small kitchen table directly under the intense yellow light. I ripped open my package, and there it was.

Jeremy McGrath's Supercross 2000.

Great people are influenced by great works. The likes of Shakespeare, Orwell, King and forth have opened a new generation of brilliant creators. What does it say when my major inspiration was some budget title that didn't even score average?

The riding wasn't very good, I wasn't that great at pulling off the freestyle tricks, and the character creator was marred by the low quality PS1 graphics of the era but...but. It had something. Something I won't soon forget. In such low, terrible quality, it offered power unbeknownst to me at the time; a track creator. YES. I could make actual content for this game. I didn't understand it at the time, but I reviled in it. All the live-long day I spent, placing blocks, testing my track, changing it up and showing it to my young brother. Guess times have changed a lot, in some ways. Maybe not others.