I'm 8 years old and im sat down in front of an amazing machine called the zx spectrum +2. As my family goes through the frustration of trying to actually get out of the goblin dungeon in The Hobbit i dont realise that in 21 years time ill feel an urge to recreate this moment and drive myself insane by playing it again and yet again want to tear my hair out at the infuriating command system.

Collecting all the consoles and computers from my childhood is turning out to be a rather expensive excersize but thank god for Ebay, while sometimes not the most reliable of sources the volume of items that can be gained here cannot be overlooked. Playing my way through Street Fighter 2 and Pilotwings on the Snes brought back so many good memorys likewise Streets of Rage 1 and 2 never seem to diminish the joy they give over the course of time. Of course recreating your childhood comes at a price ignoring the financial type the confused and resignated looks of my wife, as she trys to imagine why i want to buy all these relics of gaming past when i can just use my 1000 pound pc to play all i have bought and more on any number of emulators.

But there is something that i feel when i sit down in front of my Amiga or play Tetris on that big old brick of a Gameboy that is more than i get from recreating the games on my computer. "You are mad!" some of you are thinking, no madder than anyone who collects things to excess i suppose. Luckily my wife has accepted my need for these things now but only at the cost of beanbags in the room earmarked for my retro gaming heaven.

To end a rather sharp change of subject, after having many long discussions with a friend on this ill put it down here. Im totally against FPS/RTS on any console system, i've never found controllers to be friendly towards these genres and im sure many people will disagree with this point of view. They should be reserved for PC gaming, the whole affair of porting games to one platform or another rarely works, I recently played Lost Planet on my PC and it was such a badly done port from the Xbox360 version it destroyed the game and any chance i had of enjoyment i may get out of it. Playing C&C with a controller and slowly scrolling around the screen with no chance of shortcut keys or macros makes me cry. This being said im sure console owners without PC's would rather have an FPS with sluggish aiming and movement than no game at all, I on the other hand refuse to play such games on my consoles call me a purist or call for my head its up to you.

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