Hello and welcome to my blog, Press Start. My name is Marc Holden and you will most likely care as much about that than the fact that I have another two-page blog that you've never heard of in your life, which is entitled 'Read This At Your Own Risk!' This blog, however, is all about video gaming.
I've been a big fan of computer games since I was a five or six year-old. My first console was a SEGA Megadrive, followed by a SNES. Around that age my favourite games were anything to do with Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the one I played most of all. Those were the innocent days of racing through levels, cheating death, collecting stuff, and bopping baddies on the head thus reducing them to nothing. I'm positive the only game I had for the SNES was Super Mario Brothers. Then again, was there really anything else worth the time of day?
The Nintendo 64 was the console that really turned me into a fanatic. To this day, it is my favourite piece of gaming hardware I've ever owned. I have many fond memories of split-screen multiplayer sessions on Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64. When playing Goldeneye, my mates and I used to love having the main weapon - you could set the best weapon available to the players when setting up a multiplayer battle - as proximity mines. We'd always fill an area with them and then forget where we'd placed them, inevitably walking into our own booby traps on a regular basis. Rocket launchers were a laugh too, as sometimes you would fire it whilst standing nipples' length from the target and it would either whizz past them and strike a wall, where your running momentum would take you into the explosion you created, or it would strike the target and transform you both into virtual mince. Fun times.
Anyway, fast forward to the present day where I own an Xbox 360, PSP, PC, Playstation 2 and a Nintendo 64. I went through a period where I almost ceased to play computer games. I'm not sure if I had too many other interests to make time for it or if I genuinely didn't think there were any half decent titles out there. I studied a bit of Computer Games Development at college, but I didn't feel I was focused enough to carry on. Almost a year later, I've decided to give it another shot in the hope of making some sort of career out of it. This blog is just one way of maintaining my interest in the subject.
With Press Start, the aim is to produce insightful, crude, entertaining and irritable facts and opinions in all things related to video gaming. Past, present and future. I hope I can achieve this with my notoriously short attention span. Please note, however, that nothing posted on here is aimed to cause offence. Anything I say is all in the name of honesty and fun, it is not designed to be taken literally or seriously and I don't expect it to be.
Enjoy!
Marc Holden (Twitter - @TheMarcHolden)
