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Post by X-pert74 on Jan 23, 2016 1:10:06 GMT -5
Before I read any replies, I'll first post my history here.
So... I'm not exactly sure what my first experience with video games was. I kinda grew up in a household where practically everyone was either an active gamer, or at least had played maybe a couple arcade games in the '70s/'80s and had a general acceptance of them. From an early age, I remember an NES, a Super NES, an Atari 2600, a Colecovision, and a couple different computers being in my house, so I couldn't begin to say what the first game I played was. During this time (early '90s, as I was born in 1990) was when I got exposed to a lot of various stuff, like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man (funny story about that which I'll get to in a minute), some target-shooting game on the computer, Donkey Kong/Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, Montezuma's Revenge, Frogger, X-COM, Might and Magic, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Missions, Final Fantasy VI, Illusion of Gaia, Pitfall... all sorts of good stuff. (my introduction to Mega Man - when I was a toddler (I don't think I could talk yet), my brother came home one day, as my sister and I were in the room, and he showed up this new game he had just gotten - Mega Man 2. There was some celebration over getting it, and then my brother popped it into the top-loader NES so he could play and we could watch. I still remember the first stage he selected was Flash Man's stage. It was fun to watch initially, but after a long time, I remember getting really, really bored of watching him play Mega Man 2. I remember walking over to the pile of games we had, picking up Metroid, and then walking over near the NES. Neither my brother nor my sister were paying attention, so I went to the NES and yanked the game right out of the system, without even turning it off first. My brother got super pissed and started yelling at me, but then my sister pointed out the Metroid game in my hands, and they figured I was wanting to watch Metroid now, so then after calming down, my brother started playing that some more instead. I still remember that to this day, though it's kind of funny now because today, I love Mega Man and don't care for Metroid at all  ) My favorite Super NES games at the time were the Mega Man games for the system (X, which I owned, and the others which I'd rent frequently but didn't own at the time), and the Donkey Kong Country games, all of which I played as they came out. Later on, in first grade I saw Super Mario 64 at my sister's friend's house, and my mind was blown. I remember trying to control Mario with the d-pad initially. I got stuck at King Bob-omb, and didn't get to play again until much later, when my family eventually got their own N64 in 1998, with 1080 Snowboarding and Yoshi's Story. The N64 became my main system for the next several years, though I also got a Game Boy Pocket, which I had a small handful of games for as a kid. Pretty much just Final Fantasy Adventure, Bomberman GB, and the Pokemon games back then. I loved the N64, and was also an avid Nintendo Power reader back then (as a result, I never learned about Conker's Bad Fur Day until years after the fact). (EDIT: I should mention that from age 8 to around age 11, I was a huge Pokemon fan, and devoured everything Pokemon-related I could, from the anime to the games to the TCG to the toys to the manga to making more than one pokedex out of cardboard... Pokemon was my shit) I remember being excited for the Gamecube initially, but as I learned more about it, it seemed like there were almost no games at launch that interested me at all. I was really excited for Dinosaur Planet on the N64, but lost interest when it was rebranded as a Star Fox game, and I didn't find stuff like Pikmin interesting either. I only got like, maybe five Gamecube games over the course of its lifetime (most of my Gamecube collection today, was gotten years later). I started to feel pretty disillusioned about games, and kinda lost interest in most games from age 12 to age 16 or so. The only games during that time period that I really cared about, aside from occasionally revisiting my favorite NES and Super NES games, were Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Mega Man X7, and the Tony Hawk games on the PS2, up to and including American Wasteland. During my gaming slump, I was mostly focused on either metal music, or wondering if I should come out and transition (long story there!). When news about the Wii came out, and how it would feature motion control and whatnot, my mind was blown. It seemed like such an obvious next step for gaming to take, and for the first time in awhile, I was looking forward to a new thing in gaming. This made me want to start paying more attention to games again. To try and get back into the groove, I had an urge to retry Contra, which I've had since childhood (along with Contra III), but never made serious progress in before. This was the time when I beat both Contra and Contra III without any kind of code, and started to get super into the series, as well as run-and-gun shooters in general. As a result, one of the first Wii games I found myself really wanting was Metal Slug Anthology (most of which I'd played previously in arcades, so I already knew they were good). I got my Wii in 2007, with that, Twilight Princess, and Wii Play, followed shortly after by Super Paper Mario. Aside from Metal Slug though, the first Wii game I ended up absolutely loving was Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. I'd previously had no interest in mature-rated games before; when I was a kid, I remember thinking how stupid mature games like Resident Evil were, and how games like Mario and Mega Man were automatically better because of whatever bullshit I could think of (I was such an insufferable blind ignorant fangirl). I heard people on the Wii General board at IGN though talk about how great RE4 was, and how the Wii version would just be $30 at launch, so I decided to take a chance on it. I ended up loving it, and I now consider it one of my absolute favorite games. It was a first for me in many ways; it was the first horror game I'd ever gotten into, as well as the first mature-rated game I'd ever gotten into. From there, I decided I wanted to check out more shooters, more horror games, more mature-rated games in general... RE4 was a big deal for me, and got me interested in checking out a bunch of stuff I previously didn't give a chance. Since around 2007, I've been a very avid gamer. I currently own all of last generation's consoles and handhelds, though I have yet to get anything from this gneration outside of my gaming PC (though I plan on getting a New 3DS soon). I've played various 360 and PS3 games I love, as well as great Wii games, and I also got a gaming PC in 2012, so that got me into checking out stuff on Steam and GOG and the like. The first thing that really got me interested in PC gaming though, was playing the original Fallout. My dad played it when I was a kid, and when I asked him about it in summer 2011, he said he thought it was a terrible game, and that I could have his copy for free. I went on to give it a try, loved it, and eventually played through the rest of the series. I really lucked out there I'd say Fallout, and the X-COM series (I gave UFO Defense a new try in late 2011, shortly before the reboot's announcement in 2012), are the primary games responsible for getting me into PC gaming. Beyond that... I'm not sure what else to say. I hated first-person games for a long time, even though I had some fun with Goldeneye multiplayer with my brother and sister as a kid. I did play through the original Half-Life on PC in... 2008 I think? or 2009? Sometime around then, and I thought it was good, but not good enough to make me reconsider my thoughts on FPSes as a whole. It wasn't until I played Duke Nukem 3D on Xbox Live Arcade in 2011, that I thought "Wow, this is really awesome", and from there I went on to play Doom (I'd previously only played the shareware back in high school), Doom II, and various other games, so now I like FPSes. Mass Effect was the first western RPG I got into, and while I went through a slump of not really being interested in JRPGs for a few years, I got back into them again just last year, with both Trails in the Sky games. I guess that's a good place to leave off. There are a lot of other important games and series for me, like No More Heroes (which ignited my interest in quirky games), and I've gone through periods of disliking something, then loving it (I didn't like the Metal Gear series initially, which I first tried via MGS2, but years later I finally got into the series by playing them all in release order, starting with the MSX Metal Gear). All in all, I'm happy I'm where I am today. I've still got a lot of stuff left to check out, but I'm always up for trying new things, and I think I have a pretty balanced experience with gaming in general. |
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Post by caoslayer on Jan 23, 2016 3:09:29 GMT -5
Let me see... My introduction to videogames were arcade machines. I felt fascination for those before I could reach them without a chair, one of my first memories about games was doing that, being lifted to a chair and behold Ghost and Goblins attract mode. For a long time I was more a watcher than a player, arcade games that age were hard. The only gaming thing I had in home was some forgetable handheld led games like playing baseball or handling a boat. When I asked for a console I got an Atari 2600 that included about 100 games for christmas I remember still today, waking up and seeing it hooked to the tv with a F1 game rolling, this one www.onlinemania.org/atari2600/enduro/2.jpgI had lots of fun playing with my brother and the town´s friends that bring me to say that my gaming live was always split between week days and weekends being the weekends in my town were all my consoles were, my parents didn`t allowed me to have consoles in the city because something like "games distracting from school". So I ended watching and playing arcade and pc games on week days and consoles on weekend. The highlights of my 2600 age were: Boxing. www.google.es/search?q=atari+2600+f1&biw=1366&bih=606&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiautWnsr_KAhXJBBoKHcxCA6sQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=boxing+2600&imgrc=RF7tGQ-sXez6BM%3AWester: www.google.es/search?q=atari+2600+f1&biw=1366&bih=606&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiautWnsr_KAhXJBBoKHcxCA6sQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=atari+2600+wester&imgrc=dAULMi712ASIxM%3AAnd this as the best game on the system: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YxKf8D7w8UMuch later I started buying early game magazine and droll with the SEGA Megadrive, so I got a NES. My first memory about the game was a rented cart that started like this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9NK7ZZdbr0 , that first chord looks like the game had a sound bug but also became the sound of awesome. The defining factor in this age was renting games, I almost had a new game every weekend and so I got to try an amazing ammount of games, my owned games were in the single digits or low doubles. My most loved game in the system was Star Wars and regard it as the most perfect kind of game ever because it had everything, each level was a different genre, with the adventure exploration of tatooine searching for items and people, the space flight simulator on the falcon cockpit, the straight up arcade action in the death star and finally the shot em up of the death star. I also started my love with action rpgs with Zelda II, Zelda and Willow in this weird order. I never was able to find the third temple on Zelda II and traded it for Ninja Turtles 2 arcade. I have yet to finish Zelda II since I refuse to look it up in a guide and is funny because I have ending owning it back in several ways. Later I wanted very bad a SNES but no more console at home until the ps2, I skipped who whole generations on their time. So I moved to PC gaming where I could do piracy at my heart contempt since I had no incomming. I started with a 386DX, I got the extra mile to pick it with a good sound card and boy was worth it. It was the era of graphic adventures so I played every single of them I could get my hands on. All of lucas, some sierra (little more than Larry and Space Quest V) and Sherlock Holmes, the case of the serrated scapel. I also enjoyed very much Flashback as the best thing ever. About this time we also had summer time near a guy who owned an Amiga and a helluva of games. Was thanks to him that I meet DOOOM... and Knights of Xentar. This was the floppy disk era, I remember not so fondly to need to use up to 30 game disks to play things like Alone in the Dark 3. There also were some very cheap game collections and got into my collection things like Isthar 2, fuck skyrim, I already did my huge open world adventuring 20 years ago. Two years later, well in I got a Pentium 150 and started the CD era. The improvement was vast, I funnily enough both bought and piraced more games and got a cd burner so I could get my hands in even more games, this was already middle high school and got to enjoy things like Diablo, Commandos and Command and Conquer. For RPGs my highline always will be Lands of lore and the ravenloft games. And this is for now. I have things to do, will go on rambling later. PD: I love you Shadowcaster and very sorry for not saying nothing about you. |
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Post by kaoru on Jan 23, 2016 12:12:52 GMT -5
I started out with a Game Boy and Master System, not quite sure which one I had first. I'm inclined to say GB, but maybe that was my sister's I played for a while before having my own? Anyways, never had too many games on either one, especially the Master System. Mostly played Mario land, Kirby's Dream Land and Link's Awakening on the GB, and one of the Alex Kidd and Donald games on the MS. Later I upgraded to an SNES and fell in love with RPGs. Pretty much played what everyone and their dog played: Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore and Terranimga. Lots and lots of Sim City, Theme Park and Harvest Moon, too.
Went from the SNES to the N64, thinking that'd be where the games are at naturally, but got rid of the thing pretty quickly and kinda fell out of gaming for a while. Getting Pokemon for the GB and a PlayStation with Breath of Fire III made me get back in. Naturally, there was a lot of Final Fantasy and other RPGs to be had, now that they came strongly as never to Europe. PS2 and the DS were amazing, too. Then I got a Wii, and there are some games I like on it (would get it again for the Endless Oceans alone, really), but I'm still not so sure about that generation. I got some stuff I really wanted to play on the PS3, but for example never felt the need to get one on my own to play whenevever fancying them, instead just borrowing a friend's one for them. Same with the PSP. The 3DS is pretty neat so far, too, but the current consoles still don't appeal to me that much. I guess its also a side reaction to getting older plus having a shit ton of older games in the backlog to begin with.
Oh yeah, never was a big PC gamer initially. Having some Sim City and Civilization and Caesar on there, but nothing much else. But in the more recent years I played a lot more. Even having only a laptop to play on, there's a whole bunch to get around to that's a bit older or not that demanding to begin with.
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Post by wyldesyde on Jan 23, 2016 12:38:18 GMT -5
I'm not sure when mine started exactly. I was young , early to mid 80's playing my older brothers coleco vision. Only game I seem to remember playing often is Pitfall. It wasn't until Christmas 1988, when my same older brother bought us a NES bundle with Super Mario Bros/Duckhunt and The Legend Of Zelda! After this, we rented or bought many great games (Castlevania 1-3, Mega Man 1-3, Super Mario Bros 2 & 3, Friday the 13th, Jaws, Bubble bobble, Contra, Metroid....the list goes on!) Some good, some truly bad. In 1991 we got a SNES and I spent many hours playing A Link to the Past, Street Fighter 2, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Mortal kombat, The Madden Nfl games while I watched my brother play the Final Fantasy games and Shadow run. It was around 1994 I stopped playing games and was distracted by other hobbies. In 1997 we rented a N64 along with 2 games. Turok and Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire. We opted instead to buy a Playstation. Based largely on the commercials we had seen for Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7. I was away at college however and it wasn't until I returned for winter Break that I was able to delve into out game library me brother had amassed while I was away. I spent many winter nights playing Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil! On occasion I'd return home for the weekend and we'd rent games like Symphony of the night, Reaident Evil 2, Medevil, Galerians, among others. With the exception of Galerians, we eventually bought them all! Since that winter, I have been an avid gamer and I haven't looked back since.  |
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Post by dire51 on Jan 23, 2016 13:57:04 GMT -5
I was waiting for you to link that. Seemed the right thread to do so in... |
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Post by neozeedeater on Jan 23, 2016 15:21:10 GMT -5
I was born in 1975 and started playing games a few years later. Arcade machines were everywhere in the Pac-Man fever early '80s: laundromats, food courts, corner stores, etc.. I would play computer action games on my uncle's Apple II and text-based stuff at the Arts, Sciences & Technology Centre downtown. Neighbourhood kids had consoles like Atari and Intellivision and portables like Game & Watch and Mattel sports.
The first game machine I owned was a second hand VIC-20. I was playing Serpentine on a black and white TV on my birthday in 1983 and had several more games by Christmas. The Vic eventually ended up being sold for more than it was worth and that allowed me to upgrade to a C64. I ended up pirating hundreds of games for it and it greatly expanded my appreciation for various genres.
I think I realized I was more into gaming than most other kids when I was going around the arcades trying to memorize the company names and copyright years on the machines.
I was already a Nintendo fan before the NES arrived. Circa 1984 Nintendo of Canada HQ was affixed to a Chuck E. Cheese's they owned in Vancouver's suburb of Burnaby and they made sure to have almost all the Nintendo arcade games.
A few years later I had my trinity of game systems: the C64, NES, and SMS (and InTV for discontinued stuff). My parents thought it was overkill to have so many machines. As a teenager I would get paid to babysit and play games with my cousins. That would fund a lot of my 8/16-bit gaming.
And by then I was reading several gaming mags trying to follow the industry closely. And one local store had Japanese imports. I had them modify my Genesis and bought many Mega Drive and Game Boy games there.
The mid-late '90s college years dramatically changed the way I looked at gaming history. Books like Game Over and Phoenix appeared and then with free AOL trials, the internet provided a wealth of knowledge and emulation. Ebay opened the door to importing European games I had only seen in magazines years earlier.
And everything since then has been a continuation of trying to experience as many great games as possible. I have frequented message boards since the late '90s to talk about new and old games.
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Post by elektrolurch on Jan 24, 2016 5:58:56 GMT -5
It has been really fascinating to see where all you people are coming from historically. So many different,cool biographies.
It made me think though. Something I already thought of. The 80ies and 90ies were technologically way more fast moving than everything after 2000. I mean think about it. In 1990, 8 bit computers and consoles were still around besides the early 16 bit machines. compare this landscape to 10 years later. Now compare 2000 to 2010. See what I mean?
Not only technologically, but also gameplaywise, we went from 2D platformers and shmups and early 3D experiments to fully realized interactive 3D worlds with different elements like puzzles or rpg stuff within 10 years. From 2000 to 2010, I don't see as big a change in design philosophy and mechanics,at least not in the triple A industry.I mean esp. with FPS, stuff like regenerating health or highly scripted events started to pop up in the early 2000s....
I think the only real change in design comes from indie games these days. I mean think of minecraft.....Now the change in the gaming industry doesn't come from the big guys anymore.....
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Post by cambertian on Jan 24, 2016 10:02:29 GMT -5
I think the only real change in design comes from indie games these days. I mean think of minecraft.....Now the change in the gaming industry doesn't come from the big guys anymore..... Because the big guys used to be as small as the small guys. It took a lot less people (and money) to make a huge technological leap compared to today. Look at the two Johns and crew (id Software). |
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Post by Scylla on Jan 24, 2016 12:50:14 GMT -5
It made me think though. Something I already thought of. The 80ies and 90ies were technologically way more fast moving than everything after 2000. I mean think about it. In 1990, 8 bit computers and consoles were still around besides the early 16 bit machines. compare this landscape to 10 years later. Now compare 2000 to 2010. See what I mean? Not only technologically, but also gameplaywise, we went from 2D platformers and shmups and early 3D experiments to fully realized interactive 3D worlds with different elements like puzzles or rpg stuff within 10 years. From 2000 to 2010, I don't see as big a change in design philosophy and mechanics,at least not in the triple A industry.I mean esp. with FPS, stuff like regenerating health or highly scripted events started to pop up in the early 2000s.... I think the only real change in design comes from indie games these days. I mean think of minecraft.....Now the change in the gaming industry doesn't come from the big guys anymore..... That's partially why, for my history, I didn't feel it was really worth going into anything past 2000. I mean, a big part of it is that I've been an adult since 2000, so I don't have that childhood nostalgia that makes experiences seem magical that younger gamers may have for post-2000 games, but also I was pretty well-experienced in gaming by that point. For something to be a new experience with impact for me, it has to be GENUINELY new, not just an illusion of newness that a child has from never experiencing anything of its type before, even though plenty of content of that kind had existed for years. Post-2000 gaming has mostly been just keep on keeping on. No massive leaps in technology (in the same sort of way as 80-90 or 90-00 compared to, say, 06-16) and genres have been slowly evolving but not much in the way of introducing entirely new genres or drastic changes like transitioning genres from 2D to 3D was. For me personally, I'd say the most significant thing about post-2000 gaming is the ease at which imports could be acquired. Unless you were REALLY in the know, had a lot of money to blow, and/or the good fortune of a local independent game store that happened to carry them, importing was mostly a no-go prior to 2000. When I had read about Japan-exclusive games in Nintendo Power in the mid-90s, like in the Epic Center section, the games they were talking about sounded amazing, but they also seemed completely unobtainable to me (not even considering the language barrier and all). But when my eyes were opened to retro collecting, local stores offered a lot, but online shopping was also essential to me, and it wasn't long before I realized that I could not only acquire those old, not-forgotten US releases online but also the Japanese releases too. This changed my collection and gaming in a huge way. When I scan my collection today, there are countless Japanese games (also a handful of imports from other parts of the world), and not just games but imported game merchandise of all kinds: soundtracks, art books, figures, manga, you name it. I have access to so many products that just plain don't exist in the US, and they're not even difficult to obtain or particularly expensive. This is the most wonderful thing about 21st century gaming to me. |
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Post by elektrolurch on Jan 24, 2016 16:32:52 GMT -5
For me personally, I'd say the most significant thing about post-2000 gaming is the ease at which imports could be acquired. Unless you were REALLY in the know, had a lot of money to blow, and/or the good fortune of a local independent game store that happened to carry them, importing was mostly a no-go prior to 2000. When I had read about Japan-exclusive games in Nintendo Power in the mid-90s, like in the Epic Center section, the games they were talking about sounded amazing, but they also seemed completely unobtainable to me (not even considering the language barrier and all). But when my eyes were opened to retro collecting, local stores offered a lot, but online shopping was also essential to me, and it wasn't long before I realized that I could not only acquire those old, not-forgotten US releases online but also the Japanese releases too. This changed my collection and gaming in a huge way. When I scan my collection today, there are countless Japanese games (also a handful of imports from other parts of the world), and not just games but imported game merchandise of all kinds: soundtracks, art books, figures, manga, you name it. I have access to so many products that just plain don't exist in the US, and they're not even difficult to obtain or particularly expensive. This is the most wonderful thing about 21st century gaming to me. For me, the most drastical change the last years has been digital distribution, which makes games commercially viable and possible which simply where to risky at a time when you had to put them on a physical CD or DVD in a box and had to get them to store shelves. I mean stuff like Goat Simulator, Minecraft, or heck even now highly acclaimed Indie gems like VVVV or Shovel Knight Adventures wouldn't be there without GOG, steam or Desura........ |
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Post by vetus on Jan 24, 2016 17:28:27 GMT -5
My first touch with video games was at mid '80s (I was born in 1983) during a family trip on a ship with an arcade cabinet that had a space shooter (I don't remember which one, I was a little kid). I was so charmed and fascinated that I felt like it was something came from the space (no pun intended, seriously). Much later when I was at kindergarten (or early classes of elementary school), my first own video games were handheld LCD games and Atari 2600 with many build-in games since they were cheap. My parents always hated video games (they still do), so never managed to make them buy me an NES with Super Mario Bros or later a Game Boy. And it wasn't money issues since even poorer families would gladly buy a Game Boy, an NES or a Master System for their kids (Master System back then was more popular in Europe than NES). That's why my only way to play Game Boy was with my cousin's Game Boy she would often lend me since she quickly fed up with it. And then with the Game Boy I got from my sister's boyfriend (now her husband) that wasn't playing video games (his father was a taxi driver and a customer forgot it at his taxi). I was never a spoiled kid, yet I still have a grudge against my parents for not buying me a freaking Game Boy just because they hated video games. It was Christmas of 1995 (I was in mid or late elementary school) when me with my little brother finally made our parents buying us a SNES with Donkey Kong Country 2. It was one of the happiest memories of my life. And months later I got Donkey Kong Country 1 as a birthday present. I realized it was second-handed since it was without its box but I didn't cared as long as I could play this gem that it's my No1 favorite video game till now. In 1996 or 1997 was when I learned about the existence of a professional magazine dedicated to video game consoles from my cousin's friend which was older than me and a big geek (most magazines in Greece before Playstation 1 era were dedicated to video games general and mostly to computer games) which was none other than Gamepro. It was then that I started being knowledgeable about video games instead of relying at advertisements and amateurish reviews in children's magazines (like Disney's ones). Kinda lazy to write the rest of my gaming history till now but here are some of the most important parts: - My fondest memories were with arcades, Game Boy, Playstation 1 and small video games stores where you could play by paying per hour. Not because I loved them but also because thanks of them I could easily socialize with other people to share our passion for video games. And for a shy kid like me, it was a big thing. Also this is the best answer to everyone that claimed video games makes kids anti-social. - Grandia 1 was the reason I made the best friend in my life named Steve during college and we're still close friends. Here's how we met: in a greek, anime forum I said that Grandia 1 is my favorite rpg. Steve was so passionate to find another greek person to love Grandia 1 that much (he was going high school back then) that after some messages we exchanged we soon met up in real life. And this is how our friendship began. In the progress through anime meetings many other people joined my social circle along with Steve. Some people stayed till now, some other not (but still we stay in touch with some of them thanks to Facebook). Anime and video games are that united us but we also spend time for other stuff as like like going together on cinema, on vacations, for food and beer and so on. - When I started junior high school, I lost my interest for video games for some period. The main reason was my new "friends" that weren't playing video games anymore because they thought they were stuff for kids. Also because it was that period on my puberty where I felt I should grow up from my kiddies hobbies like video games and comics. That phase didn't last for more than a few months but still I feel ashamed about it. Not because of my pride as a gamer but because I tried to be something else that wasn't me for the sake of socializing. And that's thanks to another friend I made which was more into geek stuff (video games, sci-fi movies, cartoon movies and so on) and less into "cool" stuff (like popular teenagers' bands and movies for both boys and girls). The summary of my gaming history till now goes like this: - From my childhood till now, I have been more of an arcade and console gamer and less a computer gamer (PC gaming mostly includes indie games and emulators). - Nintendo has been my No1 favorite company from NES era till now with Super Mario Bros 1 being my starter point which I still enjoy as much as I was enjoying it when a little kid. The only difference is now I am more skillful at this game. Hahaha! - Even though I always preferred Nintendo over other companies, I was never into console wars and same goes for almost all my friends and people I knew. I was like "Any console is fine, as long as it has awesome games.". That's why I was always making fun of Atari since they never made anything special after Atari 2600. And I still make fun of Atari and claim how overrated is Atari 2600 since it hasn't aged as well as some people want to remember. Yeah, Atari 2600 was the pioneer of console gaming, Atari 2600 gave us nice memories...but that's it. After Atari 2600, the company made better job at home computers. Sorry for my Atari hating on a thread like that. - Regardless the time I spend on video games, I will never stop them even when I get old. |
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Post by Ryzuki on Jan 24, 2016 23:44:08 GMT -5
It took me nearly two hours to read all this; I almost don't even feel like posting mine now...but I will try my best anyway. XD My memory ain't perfect, and I feel I should mention now that I was a very sheltered kid so many things were unknown to me until I became an adult. Also good thinking with the summary at the bottom Vetus, I think we should all do that incase someone doesn't wanna spend their whole day reading through this book/thread.
Anyway, I've literally been gaming longer than I can remember. My parents have a vcr tape that shows me playing Banjo-Kazooie at age 4, so somewhere around there?
I was the third born out of six. My parents don't game very much, but my siblings and I all do, so we've had an SENS and N64 since...forever. I have very very fond memories of Star Fox 64, Paper Mario, Pokemon Stadium, (the ring announcers voice is still stuck in my head) Super Mario RPG, Kirby Super Star Saga and Mario All-Stars. We had quite a few other games, but those were the ones that really stick out in my memory. When I turned 6, my grandparents gave me a Game Boy Color along with Frogger, and my parents gave me Pokemon Gold, which takes up 99% of my entire 6 year old youth and then some...oddly enough I never beat it though. I remember getting 7 gym badges but didn't know where the 8th was and grew tired of wandering aimlessly.
We were a strict Nintendo family, so I don't know how, why or when we got a PS2, but I remember my 7 year old self being very very happy when I got Kingdom Hearts for Christmas. Along with that, we had a few odd games including a Scooby-doo platformer, and a really odd game where you played as this kid riding a scooter or skateboard and rode around in a sandbox type world which had a spooky goosebumps theme complete with green backgrounds and ghosts, and you had to collect cd discs for some reason? I also became a huge fan of the Sly and Jak&Daxter series when they came out.
Eventually around 2003 I think? my two older siblings and I all got a GBA of our own which I allowed me to become a Pokemon fan yet again when I was gifted both Pokemon Ruby, and later Sapphire and Emerald even later. I probably have have more GBA games than any other save for the DS. I also remember playing my first RPG since the SNES: Mario & Luigi Super Star Saga.
We got the Gamecube shortly after it's release from our parents on Christmas day packaged along with Animal Crossing and Luigi's mansion. My mother took a liking to the former, and my father the latter, that was my first time seeing my parents get into a game since the SNES era, and we all had a blast playing those games along with many other later gamecube games up until the Wii came out, and we still played Gamecube games. Hell, I'd still play Custom Robo if I had anyone to join me.
Eventually the DS came to be, but money was tight so my parents couldn't afford one. I remember my cousin had one and I was very envious. Around 2006 I think I finally got one, as did my older brother, since out birthday is only a week apart, we had the same party with the same gifts, and honestly we were just amazed about the wireless connection. We didn't have games yet, but we had fun with Pictochat for some time. (I miss Pictochat) I've greatly enjoyed the DS from that day until present day, I still have DS games to finish and some I still want to buy at some point.
Not too long after, my family got a Wii and that was when I looked though the shop channel and discovered the existence of the Commodore 64, Turbografx-16 and the Neo-Geo. To this day, I don't believe I've ever played any games from those systems. However the Wii shop Channel helped open my eyes to how much I was missing out on, and while I loved the Wii and many of the games on it, I wanted to experience what the other consoles had to offer.
About five years ago or so, my older brother and I took small jobs wherever we could doing favors for people or helping adults with their own jobs and having them pay us a small sum. Together we were able to buy a 360. I told him not to, but he bought one used from gamestop, and big surpirse...! it didn't work. We returned it and got another, it didn't have the freakin' power cord, so we returned it and got one that did, it also didn't work. He finally got smart and figured we should just buy a new one. And with that, we discovered Gears of War and spent countless hours playing co-op modes, and I was able to play Fallout 3, which I spent well over 1000 hours with and still play it today.
AS I said, we were a Nintendo family so I didn't know much about what was on the Xbox aside from Halo, which I had no interest in. I saw someone in the comments section of X-play mention "BlazBlue" (duhn duhn duhn!) which led me to looking up the review for it and that's when I discovered anime games, which blew my mind in the best way. I tried it and it threw me for a loop. I wasn't very experienced with fighting games and I spent two hours trying to beat the boss in Arcade mode, but after forcing so much of my time into it, it eventually clicked for me and I started playing more fighting games, until eventually practically all I played was fighting games. I sucked at them, but I loved them. I had my first online experience with BlazBlue and became addicted to the rush that the fights gave me. I was like a drug, I hated it, I wanted to stop, but I loved the rush of a close game and winning gave me the greatest pleasure.
It was there I met Jason X. We helped each other get achievements and small talked a bit. I mentioned gamefaqs to him, and he suggested I try here, which has lead me to discover many games I might not have otherwise. It was because of this forum that I started playing Persona 4, which made me the SMT fanboy I am today.
Lastly, about four years ago, my sister got married to a pc gamer. I knew of steam and many PC games, but never played most since the family PC was an old hunk of junk that could maybe handle an SNES game at best. He introduced my brother and I to StarCraft II and spent many months kicking our asses without telling us how to do anything, until we found some time to play solo and found our own skills, which began a 3 way competition that got really intense really fast. It was fun while it lasted, but eventually I had to stop playing and haven't gone back. I may give it another try some day. I've also played several MMOs in the past, but They're only slightly fun because of the social side of it. Playing solo is the most boring thing one can do, so I didn't see the point in paying a monthly fee for that. -_-
Summary:
Sheltered kid grew up with Nintendo, somehow got to play a PS2 becoming a Kingdom Hearts fanboy, stuck with Nintendo until around 2011 when I got a 360, became a fighter addict, joined HG101 and became a JRPG addict. Currently switching between RPGs and Fighting games.
This wasn't the entire history of course, but I feel I've entered more info than anyone will bother reading anyway, and I got the important bits in at least.
This was a good thread idea. I think it's good to have an idea where our fellow members came from, and hope to see more in the future.
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Post by wyrdwad on Jan 25, 2016 4:36:32 GMT -5
I was pretty fortunate, as I was born in 1979 and got to grow up in the '80s and early '90s, *and* I have a brother who's nearly 9 years older than me and who was also really into video games as a kid... so one of my earliest memories is hanging out with my brother in his bedroom at around age 3 and playing Astrosmash on his Intellivision. That is, I think, the first video game I ever played. My brother had all the systems you can imagine, as we were always kind of spoiled as kids -- so I grew up with an Atari 2600, an Intellivision, a Colecovision, a TI computer, and even a Vectrex. I remember some of my favorite games were Pigs In Space, Jungle Hunt, Adventure, and Pitfall 2 on the Atari 2600, Night Stalker on the Intellivision, Venture, Smurf Rescue, and Cabbage Patch Kids on the Colecovision, and Spike, Web Wars, HyperChase, Clean Sweep, Star Trek, and Cosmic Chasm on the Vectrex (I spent a lot of time playing Vectrex!). Eventually, I wound up getting an NES (the first video game system I could call my own!), my father got a Commodore 64 for work (and later a DOS PC), and my brother continued his gaming evolution with a Sega Genesis. Of these, I spent the least time with the Commodore (honestly, I can't even recall if it *was* a Commodore or an Atari computer, I just remember I was addicted to a game on it called Agent USA), and the most with my NES -- though I also played a ton of Genesis games, and got really addicted to Castle of Illusion, Toejam & Earl, Sonic 1 and 2, Comix Zone, and Phantasy Star 2 (which may have been my first RPG, though I also might have played Sword of Vermilion on Genesis or Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, or Ultima: Exodus on NES before it -- I really can't recall). I recall I got the NES pretty late -- 1987, I think it was -- and aside from the pack-in games of Gyromite and Duck Hunt (yep, got a light gun + robot model!), my first third-party title for it -- and the first NES game I played -- was Castlevania. Which impressed the CRAP out of me back then, as you might imagine! Eventually, I got a Game Boy, though I didn't really take to it -- virtually every game I played on it felt like a lesser version of an NES title, and while I did spend a good deal of time with Super Mario Land, Tetris, and Final Fantasy Legend, I ultimately decided to sell it in favor of buying a Game Gear instead... because COLOR!!  The Game Gear wound up impressing me even less, though, so for me, handheld gaming just... never really caught on. Ultimately, I got a SNES and an N64, and eventually a PS1 for Final Fantasy VII (and the PS1 was a *huge* success with me, ultimately causing me to jump ship with Nintendo and become almost exclusively a Sony fanboy for most of the late '90s and 2000s), but just ignored handheld gaming altogether for nearly a decade. I didn't get back into it until after college when I moved to Japan for the JET Programme, where I wound up buying a WonderSwan Color, and then eventually a GBA for Metroid Fusion (which I literally only ever used to play Metroid Fusion, as I wound up buying a Game Boy Player for my GameCube to play Zero Mission!). Didn't get back into handheld gaming to any great extent, though, until the PSP came along -- and to date, the PSP remains my favorite handheld, and one of my favorite gaming systems of all time. I prefer it even to the Vita, as I find it more comfortable to use, more open with its file system, and more convenient with its built-in TV-out capabilities. (The 3DS has been giving it a run for its money, though, to be sure!) Nowadays, I'm a Metroidvania-obsessed gaming hipster who plays almost exclusively PC indies and old-school MSX and MSX2 titles. I don't own a single next-gen system yet -- my living room has a PS3, Wii, Japanese PS2, and MSX2+ hooked up right now, and my briefcase full of handheld systems contains a PSP, a Vita, and two 3DSes (one American, one Japanese). -Tom |
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Post by vetus on Jan 25, 2016 9:01:20 GMT -5
I am jealous of people that have photos and/or videos from their childhood playing video games. Although my father is from this kind of fathers that record many stuff with with camera, he never recorded me even once with me playing video games.
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Post by Exhuminator on Jan 25, 2016 9:10:36 GMT -5
I was born in 1979 Phantasy Star 2 (which may have been my first RPG I don't own a single next-gen system yet We have all these things in common. Although my first JRPG was the original Phantasy Star. It blew my mind in 1988 and totally ruined console JRPGs for me until the SNES came along. |
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