I have been a video gameplayersince I was 9 and I am now 25 but I will never forget Christmas 1993. Basically I got into video games through my childminders son who at the time had a Sega Master System and I can remeber player Alex Kidd In miricle World, Zillion and Shinobi. It was around the begining of 1992 when my childminders son told me he was going to a video games convention and would be buying a japanese Mega drive(Genesis) that would play all games across the board. When he brought it home he had some half decent R-Type game but then the classics followed such as Revenge Of Shinobi, Sonic and one of my favourite Strider. Once the Mega Drive was released in the UK all my mates had one and i still had my Atari 2600 and Gameboy. I remember all the hype surrounding the Super Nintendo but the closest I thought I'd get to one was by winning one was in a compition. I remember my parents absolutely loved my gameboy and tetris especially, I remeber my step dad asking me what i thought of the Mega drive and I had a big smile on my face and told him I thought is was wicked. In all honesty I wanted both if I could because I loved the Mega Drive for Sonic, Wonder Boy, Golden Axe and Strider but I was a big Mario fan. Then it got to november time in 1993 and I remember just scrummaging in my parents bedroom not even looking for my xmas present specifically. I looked up in the top shelf of their build in wardrobe and there it was in a catalouge mail order bag but I could clearly see the  black box with the red words SUPER NINTENDO. I nearly wet my pants, the next day at school I told all my friends about it I was s overjoyed. I remember Christmas eve I was so excited i went to bed at 6pm to make the evening go faster but ended up not being able to sleep. When Christmas finally came it was one of those presents where I just squelled like a **** and was still just as excited. It came with Super  Mario World and to top that my Grandad(RIP) got me a colour tv for my bedroom and my mum had obviously told my uncle cause waiting under the tree was a copy of......... SUPER MARIO KART. On top of that I got Super Soccer as well a few day later.  I was the most popular kid in my street and up until i traded it for Internatinal Superstar Soccer Deluxe In 1996 we were still playing Mario Kart. What a machine I dont think anything has matched it apart from the Mega Drive, many great games Zelda, Star Wing(Fox), Secret Of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter and PilotWings this was the Golden Era for me when it was the SNES and Mega Drive going head to head. Im not a Nintendo fanboy but eh prospect of being able to play some or all of these games on the Virtual Console. To me this is when games were still fresh and original and in alot of cases even Movie licences were of a slightly higher quality.

16-BIT ERA I SALUTE YOU