The weather was typically unsettled in May 1994. Midway through my year-six school trip to the Isle of Wight we’d gone on a day trip to Blackgang Chine – a kind of magical theme park of sorts where we were told Queen Mary in 1920 had her hat knocked off by a massive whale’s jaw bone. Anyway, that’s not important. We’d come inside to a cafe area as it had started to rain. In this cafe I have two of my most vivid childhood memories: hot cinnamon flavoured hard round sweets and a Virtua Fighter arcade cabinet. As a young lad who’d essentially learned to read and write largely off the back of Mean Machines SEGA magazine, you can imagine my excitement.
I expect people born in a more modern era than the 80s who have watched TRON probably think that arcade games were everywhere back then, sprawling aircraft hangar-sized warehouses packed to bursting with the very latest cabinets of the day. That wasn’t the case in Sussex where I grew up. Pubs sometimes had a golf machine and there was a sit-in Postman Pat van inside Sainsbury’s that was very popular, but that was it unless you were lucky enough to go to a fancy leisure centre, the kind that had laser tag as well as a swimming pool. Of course, I had no money so no way to play this Holy Grail of arcade games.
Oh, but I watched it, my lime green shellsuit reflecting back at me. Virtua Fighter’s Attract Mode ran through short fights between the characters as “get go, get get go” accompanied the most banging bit of music my juvenile ears had ever heard – and at that point I’d heard Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)”. All the while the screen taunted me with INSERT COIN(S). “I have no coins, and I must scream,” I thought to myself wittily as I remembered the 1967 short story by Harlan Ellison and contemplated how I’d be glad to see arcades die a death at the hands of games consoles. My humour will forever be wasted on people, I pondered before coming up with a plan. I was determined to play Virtua Fighter, so I set my sights on a SEGA Saturn.
People think console wars are a new thing, brought about by the internet (mostly social media) and a human desire for tribalism. They are not a new thing. Growing up you were clearly either a SEGA kid or a Nintendo kid. In the UK, at least in my memory, SEGA dominated. Of my friends at school who had games consoles, I reckon about 80 percent had a SEGA Master System or a Mega Drive, 15 percent a NES, and a handful a SNES. We had other things, too, of course. I owned a Commodore 64, some friends had Amigas and Atari STs, but games consoles were the coolest. Then you had the rich kids who owned a Mega Drive and a SNES. Those people could f**k right off, to be frank – unless they wanted to be friends. Kids are fickle.
Early in 1995 Mean Machines SEGA ran a review of Saturn Virtua Fighter. I must have read that review a hundred times or more. At that point we knew the Saturn was coming to the UK that year, but not exactly when. I’d skip through the gaming mags of the day to look for the ad for Special Reserve, a video game store that offered mail order. The ads would have a small order form printed on them which you could post to order games, consoles, and more (my parents bought a printer from them once). I was desperate for the Saturn to appear so I could use my significant savings (I used to clean a restaurant at the weekends for cash, and I’d lined up someone to buy my Mega Drive/Mega CD combo) to land myself the console of my dreams and Virtua Fighter.
This kind of behaviour I’m sure comes across as bizarre, but you’ve got to remember two things: I was a child (have you met a child?) and the internet didn’t exist. Information was not at our fingertips so it was perfectly possible to go through life not knowing much at all. It wasn’t until Issue 35 of Mean Machines SEGA, the cursed one with Jim Carey’s Riddler on the cover, in a Special Reserve ad, that I knew I’d need £349.99 for a Saturn and Virtua Fighter. I didn’t have £349.99. I cut out and filled in the order form, anyway. You had to also include a cheque to pay for the items being ordered, but I thought it best to prepare as much as I could. Positive thinking and all that. I put the order form inside an addressed envelope and stored it in one of my drawers.
Weeks passed, my savings pot gradually getting bigger, my eyes absolutely ballooning each time I saw new blurry screenshots of Saturn games each month. Such was life in the 90s, as the system had been out in Japan since November 1994, I was already reading about sequels to games that were yet to be released in the UK, and my growing brain was struggling to cope. Virtua Fighter 2?! As a diehard SEGA fan I also had to convince myself not to throw away my money on the impending 32X, which somehow felt more real despite its clear inadequacies to the Saturn.
It must have been the end of the summer 1995 when a friend of the family (do people still have those or was that a pre-Millenium thing?) dropped by with something for me and my brother. He’d just got a job managing a huge Blockbuster (RIP) and he knew the pair of us were obsessed with video games. If someone does some sleuthing and proves the date to be inaccurate, I’m sorry, but this was about 30 years ago and we didn’t document everything with 100 photos back then.
“We got this in,” he said, handing over a brown box that appeared as exciting as the ones supermarkets give out next to the checkout counters that used to be used for transporting pears.
We opened the box as eagerly as any 12-year-olds would, fighting over who could look in first.
Inside was a loose PlayStation and a boxed copy of Ridge Racer. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d read about the PlayStation in CVG magazine, but I didn’t know it was out. In fact it hadn’t been released in the UK yet. Blockbuster had some in to rent out and we’d got to have a go just before. Or at least that’s what we were told. We had one night with it before the console and game needed to be returned, so we legged it to our bedroom, plugged it in and played as our tiny minds couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. It’s fair to say that Ridge Racer blew us away. Even the PlayStation game cases were cool.
Our house was crowded in those days. We ushered in our parents, nan, uncle, and cousin to take a look as if the moon landing was being broadcast live. Seeing these first proper 3D console games back in the mid-90s was such an incredible experience. The world seemed to be changing in front of us, the 16-Bit Mega Drive I’d previously considered to be the greatest thing ever created suddenly looking like old-hat. I have a memory of showing my mum FIFA on the Mega Drive and asking her if it was the TV or a game. How foolish I was to think that was near photorealism. Of course, the PlayStation and Saturn, with Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter, would never be bettered. I’d seen the light. Games had peaked.
I bought a new issue of CVG the next day. £289 for a PlayStation and a second controller. Ridge Racer on top and it was still cheaper than a Saturn. I turned away from my Mega Drive/Mega CD stack, but I could feel its stare. ‘Sony PlayStation’ I wrote on the Special Reserve order form. ‘Ridge Racer’ I added. In November, thanks to a birthday haul of cash, my brother and I sent off the order form. And that was that.
You don’t hear it so much today, but “system seller” was a hot term when I was growing up, and PlayStation hit the jackpot. Years of dedication to SEGA, wiped away by a cheeky rental from Blockbuster, one day with Ridge Racer… and an unsent order form for a SEGA Saturn that’s probably still sitting at the bottom of a drawer.
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