Aaaaand relax! That was the month that was, and what a bloody month! What started off as a seemingly inocuous task to create and design a character from a given decade turned into a foray into the world of games design, an experience I do not wish to repeat!!
Oh yes, it was all so lovely and fluffy in the beginning! A trip down memory lane. A visit to my old stomping ground. I couldn't believe my luck when of all the decades I could have been given (namely the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's 60's or 70's, not the 80's, the 80's were different, the 80's were special, no-one got the 80's!) I got the 90's! I mean, how hard could it be to find out stuff about the 90's, I was there! It was my time!
I was at secondary school from 1990 to 1995. So my early teens, my formative years were in the first part of the 90's. In the second part of the 90's, 1996 to 2000 I was 16 to 21. It really was a decade of two halves for me. The culture and world events that took place in the 90's were really real for me. The music and the fashion that we were researching was my music and my fashion. I loved Oasis. I wore 'grunge.' I wanted to be Gwen Stefani. They were good times, although you never really realise it at the time! All we had to worry about was school, seeing our friends and occasionally, homework. And we had a laugh. Looking back it seems like all we did was laugh! And there was lots to laugh at, our teachers were like caricatures of teachers, the science teacher with the comb over, the French teacher with sweaty 'pits, the very odd sports teachers of dubious gender!
And we used to ridicule them mercilessly, not to their faces of course, we weren't the 'bad' kids.
But we did discover drink, (and boys!) in about year 9, aged about 14. We had friends with 'decks' and there wasn't a week went by when someone wasn't having a house party and we'd get dropped off by our 'unsuspecting' parents for 'sleepovers' at some other 'liberal' parent's house with ruck sacks and coat sleeves clinking and bulging with drink! However, somehow we left school with good grades at the end of it.
There was a long hot summer the year we left school, and I'm not looking back through rose-tinted specs, it really was the best summer ever! We sunbathed all day with the tunes blasting out on the radio. The parties continued and we gave some consideration to what we were going to do next. Not too much of course!!
Aged 17 I started working in my Uncle's pub, 'The Whitehouse.' It was the place to be at the time, one of the busiest pubs in town, my best friend worked there as well and we were right in the thick of it. At that age it was a fun place to be, we used to get to jump the queue to get into Buskers and get in for free, of course, living that lifestyle was not conducive to operating in a normal fashion and it was all consuming. Further education went out the window and sixth form got shelved. It's only taken me 16 years to get back on track, but I don't regret a second of it; learning to drive, leaving home, moving in with my first proper boyfriend and working in Majorca with my best mates for a year all followed before the 90's were out.
As for the games design bit, remember that before I started remeniscing? I get it. I get why it was useful, I think we worked well as a team, and credit is due to each and every team member for their individual input, I let the team down as Project Leader with my poor time management and wish we could have executed our concept better, perhaps the team was handicapped due to the 2 old people (sorry Alex!) with their inability to grasp basic Photoshop, but I still think our concept was a good one if not a moralistic one! Who are any of us to judge!!? I know myself, what I have learnt and what I would do differently were I to do it again. But I can honestly say, it is not games design that gets my juices flowing! So just as this project is put to bed, it is time to put the 90's to bed. I look back on it fondly, it made me who I am, but it's time to look the future and all it has to offer. Bring it on!!!
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