Social networking, Sonic and my youth.

So social networking is all the rage these days- facebook, myspace, bebo and so forth are all worth stupid amounts of money and used by stupid amounts of people. I put my hands up, I love playing scrabulous on facebook and it is a great way to keep in contact with people as well as finding people you haven't seen in donkey's years. However, even more fun than any of that is finding ancient console games that you haven't played since you were 11. Like Sonic! Anyone with a facebook account can play it here. Anyone without a facebook account can play it here. It reminded me of Saturday afternoons spent in Perth walking from the Scottish Power shop to John Menzies to CA Games in the hope that one of their console advertisement games would be available to play. Scottish Power had Sonic, John Menzies had F-Zero and CA Games had the holy grail of SNES gaming, Street Fighter II Turbo- imported from America! I remember watching a Street Fighter II tournament of all the supposedly best gamers in Perth in this crammed little shop and being quite jealous that I wasn't involved. In saying that these guys were in their twenties and clearly total geeks so in retrospect there's not so much jealousy going on now. I do still love Street Fighter II though- I think it's unmatched in terms of one on one fighting games. That's not bad going for a game that's about 14 years old or so. Or I've just not gotten over it. So, in honour of my misspent youth (and not so youthful) game playing, my favourite games in no particular order are:

1. Street Fighter Two Turbo (SNES)
2. Goldeneye (N64- is there a more fun four player game?)
3. Championship Manager (PC/Mac- I've lost months of my life to this)
4. Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (XBox- probably my favourite football game)
5. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation- so good!)
6. Mario Kart (SNES- Best. Driving. Game. Ever.)
7. Final Fight (SNES- although a poor relation to the arcade version that allowed you to play Guy)
8. Smackdown (Playstation- Royal Rumble option was AMAZING!)
9. Tetris (Gameboy- everyone's favourite right?)
10. Urban Strike (Sega Mega Drive- how much fun was it flying about Washington?)

Man, why can't there be one system that plays all the old console games you love with interchangeable joypads? Now THAT I would buy.