Personal Gaming history
Me

My name is Gunther and below you find my personal gaming history.

Oric

The first computer coming into my family home was an Oric 1. My oldest brother Werner bought it and me and my two brothers (Erwin and Werner) played several games on it. I remember I liked to play Mr Wimpy.
Later he also bought the newer Oric Atmos.

Ormatu / Atari 2600

The first actual game computer we got was an Ormatu Video Spelcomputer (Arcadia 2001 clone). There was a horse game on it I recall. My friend had the Atari 2600 with several games.
A friend of my older brother lent us his Atari 2600. We played Pac-Man, Asteroids and Combat endlessly. We had a special unheated room at the back of our house where we sat (with several big spiders).

Handhelds & Tabletops

After that the first handheld game we got was Bandai - Cross Highway which we played a lot. Quite a frustrating game. All is slow for about 20 minutes and than suddenly (I think when you reach 6000) all hell brakes loose and you die in 20 seconds.
Later Nintendo Game & Watch Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong II entered out house and those had great designs. Nintendo started to make name.



Handhelds we had:

  • Cross Highway
  • Donkey Kong
  • Donkey Kong II
  • Donkey Kong 3 (two-player)
  • Snoopy Tennis (borrowed from same friend that lent us the Atari 2600)
  • The Smurfs
Tabletops we had:
  • Frogger
  • Zaxxon

Commodore 64

I bought a C64 because a friend John of mine bought one and showed me how much fun it was. We also both started coding this machine in assembly. Some half finished games and some demos.

The games I played most:



Commodore Amiga

I moved from the C64 to the Amiga 500 because of the processing power and better graphics.

The games I played most:

  • Barbarian
  • Defender Of The Crown
  • Emerald Mine II
  • Ghouls N Ghosts
  • International Karate +
  • Leisure Suit Larry
  • Lemmings
  • Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge
  • Marble Madness
  • Mega-Lo-Mania
  • Silk Worm IV (also known as SWIV)
  • Sim City
  • Stunt Car Racer
  • Turrican

Nice detail is that a cable could be made to play "Stunt Car Racer" with two computers against each other. This cable was connected to each parallel port of both AMIGAs. I made it just for fun. Note this was before google and internet.

When I started programming demos the first ones for under my own "scene" name GMS. After two DSE-CREW asked me to code demos for them in exchange for receiving games because they had a good "swapper".
After writing three demos/intros for the DSE-CREW I switched to another group called MANOWAR. Reason was because I knew more people in that group and I was not the only coder (programmer) anymore.
When I left MANOWAR because we split up due to college, I made one more Demo with a friend at that time which called himself KGB.

Demos I made ordened by group and chronilogical order:

Group: GMS
Demo 1: Moving Rasters
Demo 2: Kawasaki Demo

Group: DSE-CREW
Demo 3: Hero Demo
Demo 4: Dual Scroll
Demo 5: Sineline

Group: MANOWAR
Demo 6: Roundabout
Demo 7: Bongo Night
Demo 8: Multi Scroller
Demo 9: Trailer
Demo 10: Black/White
Demo 11: Logo Trace
Demo 12: Big Bobs
Demo 13: Manoracer
Demo 14: TopScroll
Demo 15: SineScroll
Demo 16: Corvette
Demo 17: Roundabout 2
MegaDemo: Manowar Mega Demo 1

Group: GMS&KGB
Demo 18: Moire-Move

All demos can be downloaded on the following disks:
GMS demos disk 1
GMS demos disk 2
GMS demos disk 3
GMS demos disk 4
Manowar Mega Demo 1 disk

Besides writing Demos I also owned a BBS at that time for Amiga software called GMS-BBS. This never became very big but it was fun. I used Ami-Express as BBS software. This BBS ran on a Amiga 2000 with external 170 MB 5.25 inch HD.

Sony PlayStation 2

After my study I picked up playing computer games again Thanks to a friend Erwin II who advised me Gran Turismo 3.
Since this friend had the same name as my brother we called him Erwin II.

The games I played most:

  • Buzz! - The Music Quiz
  • Conflict - Desert Storm
  • Destroy All Humans!
  • Dynasty Warriors 2
  • Dynasty Warriors 3
  • Dynasty Warriors 4
  • Freedom Fighters
  • Gran Turismo 3 - A-spec
  • Gran Turismo 4 - Prologue
  • Grand Theft Auto III
  • Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas
  • Grand Theft Auto - Vice City
  • Guitar Hero
  • Headhunter
  • Need for Speed - Most Wanted
  • Serious Sam - Next Encounter
  • SSX
  • Star Wars - Battlefront
  • Star Wars - The Clone Wars
  • Stubbs The Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse
  • Stuntman
  • Tekken 4
  • The Getaway
  • The Lord Of The Rings - The Two Towers
  • The Mark Of Kri
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
  • Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
  • Tourist Trophy - The Real Riding Simulator


PC (Windows)

PC games were never my thing. I preferred playing on a machine build just to play games. On TV with a joystick is better in my opinion.

The games I played (among a few other obviously):

  • Colin McRae Rally 2.0
  • Leisure Suit Larry - Love For Sail!
  • World Of Warcraft (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game)

Minecraft (Nintendo Switch/ Sony PS4/PS5)

Minecraft world I made with my daughter Olivia. Here are the worlds we created:
Minecraft worlds

Movie

I wanted to create a movie of my favorite game.
Movie

Emulation

Playing games was not enough. Knowing what basic engine was used at that time interested me as well.
Sean Riddle helped me with the initial information. I also first used his SVG files and later the ones by mame. Combining those SVG files with available unit case and background images made the images complete.
Started with the Sharp SM510 MCU. Documentation I found is pretty bad but once you get the cryptic way of documenting, things start to fall into place.
After having the SM510 working, the SM511 and SM512 were much easier. SM5A I could not find a lot of documentation about.
I browsed GitHub (especially Mame sources) for SM5A to learn this MCU.