Share your complete gaming history.

[paperchema]

My first system was a GBA SP. I played mostly bad licensed games, untranslated games and sometimes something cool (Sword of Mana, A Link to the Past). My first game was Rayman 3, which was actually good.

Afterwards, having been converted to the Nintendo fangroup, I asked for a Gamecube instead of the PS2, the console everyone in Spain had. Why did I chose the least popular console in Spain? No idea. I think it was playing Pokemon Colosseum in a demo stand, or maybe the Nintendo brand or the price. Regardless, I enjoyed my time with the GC. I played Pokemon, Zelda, Smash Bros and what became my favorite game ever: Paper Mario THPD.

Then, I moved to the Wii and DS. Amazing times.

My first non-Nintendo console was a PSP Slim. Easily my favorite console ever. I've had such wonderful time playing games likes Persona 3, Tactics Ogre, Star Ocean, MGS...

I only got a PS3 years after it launched. Good console, but it has ended overshadowed by the virtues of PC gaming.

Nowadays, my gaming is limited to PSP, 3DS, Wii U and Mac.

[wyrdwad]

Jan 25, 2016 9:10:36 GMT -5 Exhuminator said:

Jan 25, 2016 4:36:32 GMT -5 wyrdwad said:

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.

I think I would've flipped for original Phantasy Star if I'd played it back then, but my brother skipped the Master System -- only exposure I ever had to it was when he bought a Power Base Converter several years later, but the only games I ever played on it were Outrun and Alex Kidd in Miracle World... and at the time, I didn't actually know those were from a different system. I thought they were just special Genesis games you could only play using this special add-on peripheral gimmick. I didn't even notice the difference in graphics and sound levels!

-Tom

[Exhuminator]

Fantasy Zone II on Master System could easily have been mistaken for a Genesis game.

To stay on topic my gaming history obviously includes the Master System. I had one years before I got a NES. I have no regrets.

[16bitter]

Early 90's, grew up with the NES, Intellivision and eventually the Sega Genesis. These were all my dad's consoles, but they eventually became mine over the years. We also had IBM PC's, but they were hand-me-downs from my uncle, so I was always a few years behind on that front. I played Wolf3D in '94 (could collect but couldn't fire the gatling gun or it'd crash back to DOS!), Doom in like '97, StarCraft/Diablo/Descent in like '01. All these years later I'm still not quite on the cutting edge of PC games, but I've been playing catch-up. Back on the console side, I got a Playstation in like '95-96 and a PS2 in '01, pretty much cementing me with Sony consoles. Never got into handhelds, presumably because of the small screens.

Got out of gaming around '06 when my PS2 stopped reading DVDs and other life interests took hold. I did get a slim later in the year to finish some of the stuff I'd started (San Andreas, God of War, Timesplitters Future Perfect), but was too broke in college to bother getting into the next gen and follow new releases. I did discover emulation at around this time and caught up with a lot of classics I never got the chance to play the first time around. Otherwise, lots of memorable non-gaming adventures from this period.

Finally picked up a PS3 in '12 and also got into buying old games again, picking up my first SNES and Dreamcast around this time period as well as adding to the earlier consoles I'd never parted with. Went totally nutso by around '14-'15, getting back into gaming in a big way, collecting a huge PS2/PS3 library, a brand new PS4, upgrading my PC, and buying my first Xbox (360 slim), not to mention starting forum accounts on a few websites (particularly this one!), which I'd never done before thanks to limited internet access. Also discovered Steam/GoG in the last year or so and acquired a quick backlog of like 200 games.

Now I'm just finding the time to try out all this cool stuff!

PS. At some point I borrowed a friend's N64 and about a dozen games. It's been like ten years (he knows I have it, we keep in touch), but he's never asked for it back, so it's still lying around here in the same condition he lent it to me in.

[personman]

Interesting thread for sure. Hopefully I don't go too overboard with this.

I think my very first encounter with a game was actually some random Atari game. I remember it being some sort of side scrolling shooter that moves very fast and had destructible terrain I believe. I've never been able to find info on any such game so I have no idea if I'm remembering it right or my memory is blending it with something else. Much as I'm ashamed to say it I have a hard time separating reality with my dreams and wild imagination back then. Anyways, the system and the games belonged to my step brother and with him absent I decided to try and figure out how to turn the thing on when I was like, 4 or so is kind of funny to me. Besides that most of my time with games was simply watching my brother play them since he'd never let me touch them.

My first console was a NES with a handful of games I picked out at a now long gone used game store chain called Gamers (might have been an Arizona thing, not sure) and from what I remember those games where Blaster Master, Megaman 2, Startropics, Xevious, the usual Mario and Duck hunt, and Tetris since that was a favorite of my Mother's. The first one I tried out was Blaster Master so I consider it my first true game. I'd be set with the NES for a good while getting more notable games for it like Kirbys Adventure and other classics and of course unremarkable junk like a hori shooter with graphics that belonged on an Atari system. Can't even remember the name of it is was so dull.

Eventually I got to upgrade by receiving my brothers SNES when he wanted a Playstation in the worst way. And yes, it was one of the those systems that had the decaying plastic and looked all brown and nasty, ha. Held onto it for far longer and discovered my love for scrolling shooters with the likes of Gradius III and Darius Twin but in general I had a blast with the SNES and I can barely remember all the titles I enjoy on that thing. Thank goodness for Backloggery, ha. Especially notable was Starfox which cemented my love for fighter craft, both real and fictional, and due to the characters I quickly grew a fascination for animals in general and began studying about my favorite species all the time. I started to develop creative ability and yes, thanks to that game and watching the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons I ended up getting into character design and... yes they were cartoony anthromorphic animals. Thankfully if there is one thing I'm grateful for my strict christian upbringing is it kept me from going down THAT path. Thankfully I grew out of all that in general. I guess I just go into all that it illustrate how big an influence gaming has had on my life, cheesy as that sounds.

But of course I still loved the game of Starfox itself, and I still consider it a classic today. But when its sequel came around for the 64 I just HAD to have a system of my own. Around November I was surprised with a exactly what I desired for my good performance in school and it completely lived up to my hopes. Thankfully there were a good number of other titles that made a 64 worth owning but since it was the first console I owned that was current gen I was shocked with just how much games cost for the thing and the titles I had were few. As such I go pretty burned out on the ones I owned though there was one exception: Donkey Kong 64. Yeah, you heard me I absolutely loved that game and still look back on it fondly. When I was almost never getting any new games I had that title to keep me busy for an entire year. It also developed my enjoyment for more open world games. Around this time I also saved up for a Game Boy Pocket and started slowly getting into handheld games with my first game being Donkey Kong Land (bleh). It wouldn't really be till the GBA that I'd really go crazy with handhelds.

Much as I enjoyed my 64 there were few games coming out for it that were catching my interest and it just seemed like all the interesting stuff was on the Playstation. After some bargaining and a lot of work around the house I was given one for Christmas with a couple titles, namely Ape Escape and Spyro the Dragon. I actually wouldn't appreciate the Playstation's library like I do today till a fair bit later on but at the time I was happy to have some games that just seemed to feel more challenging and refreshing at the time. Besides that it also allowed me to keep up with the Megaman series which I was a die hard fan for. The Playstation titles may be some of my least favorite titles these days but back then it was like catching up with a friend I thought I lost. Otherwise I upgraded my GBP to a GBC just to get Megaman Xtreme. I still think that isn't too bad of a port either.

As you can see I was pretty much raised with Nintendo consoles. I can guarantee that was due to the fact that Nintendo tended to have more family friendly software. I bet Sega of America's obnoxious ad campaigns probably spooked my parents on top of it. But that still didn't stop me from being fascinated by 'the other side' as I thought of it. Mostly due to the Sonic the Hedgehog series which appealed to me for a myriad of reasons. So when the Dreamcast came out and I saw Sonic Adventure at a demo station I wanted a Dreamcast in the worst way. Did a bunch of saving up from chores and secured a system for myself after what seemed like an eternity along with a couple games besides Sonic Adventure, most notably Toy Commander (my favorite DC game). Crazy as it sounds I had a ton of fun with SA even though I recognized it was a bit mediocre. I think just after having all this wonder with the Sonic series for so long I was just glad to experience it in some shape or form at long last. Since the Dreamcast was pretty much a port destination for a ton of arcade games though I ended up getting into the idea of playing for score, mostly thanks to Crazy Taxi and Mars Matrix. Truth is though it wasn't my favorite console and I don't really look back at most of the games with a ton of reverence. However, I'm fond of the system because it was the main system I was playing while my family was prepping to finally move out of the shit hole that was central Pheonix, so that time was rather exciting for me and the Dreamcast helps me remember that feeling of finally just, breaking free of some emotional bondage and junk.

About a month before we actually made the move I got the money for a GBA with Chu-Chu Rocket as my first game. Not sure why I bought that when I had the same game on Dreamcast but needless to say I spent more time playing Metroid 2 more than anything. Still it was significant because once I got a GBA I started to just adore handheld games and played them constantly. For me the GBA was like a SNES I could take everywhere and it had some amazing games I don't think I could truly count all the time I spent playing. The Megaman Battle Network and Zero series, Boktai 1 & 2, The two Klonoa games, Iridion 2, Advance Wars and of course the three Castlevania games (well, Harmony of Dissonance was boring but at least serviceable). Loved it all, as far as I'm concerned its the best handheld library there is. I know the original Gameboy had more unique interesting games but I just never encountered them myself so I'll still hold the GBA above all them. Well alright, the DS is about equal to it.

A short few months of living in a then rather rural Peoria we befriended another family who had a Genesis they didn't really want anymore. I wanted more Sonic after the time I spent with Adventure and took it off there hands. I played the heck out of Sonic 2 and this marks when I started to take an interest in vintage gaming. It was really exciting for me to finally see 'the other side' when I was growing up and while I never got a huge wealth of games for Genesis and to this day I've still neglected the library too much, I enjoyed finally having a Genesis of my own. After this through the coming years I would go out of my way to start collecting vintage consoles, from the Sega Saturn, all the variants of the Genesis (Yes, even the Nomad and CDX) the Neo Geo Pocket Color and I tracked down the redesigns of the SNES and NES. Eventually all the clutter got ridiculous and once I had that many systems I knew of emulators so I sold most of it off to members of this forums so they could actually be enjoyed. That and I needed to pay for car repairs.

So I had a pretty sizable collection going, but the simple truth was I had beaten every game I own (if only Backloggery existed then, ha) and I wanted the next big Nintendo console: The Gamecube. It was too new for refurbished consoles to be in abundance and I didn't want to wait till Christmas so I decided to do the unthinkable and take nearly my whole collection and trade it in for a used Gamecube. I really feel bad for the poor Funcoland employee that was working that day. But I did it and was able to buy a used Gamecube and a copy of Pikmin. To be honest I'm not too terribly warm to the Gamecube but all that trade in was definitely worth it since it eventually allowed me to play Metroid Prime and F-Zero GX which are two of my favorite games ever.

Right about this time my family finally got a computer in the house in 2002. Seriously. That was exciting enough and I had a bunch of fun reading all about the Sonic series on an old fansite called Sonic HQ. But I discovered something else on there. No, not porn, there was an in depth article about content that was cut out of the Genesis games and they mentioned getting this information through hacking roms and using emulators. I wondered what this devilry was and looked it up. Lo and behold I found it was possible to play vintage games on your computer for free! It was too good to be true but sure enough I downloaded some files from a website called Edge Emulation and booted up that strange Megaman 9 game I kept hearing mumbling about. It was the most amazing thing to me and through this I would go on to discover some many games I missed over the years or desperately wanted but could never find. At long last I could play Megaman X3 to completion! I could play Blaster Master again! And I could finally realize my love for scrolling shooters again with the likes of the Star Solider series and Space Megaforce! It was a pretty crazy moment for me, going from getting one or two games a year to having tons, for free.

Strangely I actually cannot remember how I got it but I was able to buy a PS2 about a year after of owning my Gamecube. Not sure where I got the money, gift from relatives I think? Anyways I liked the Playstation a lot, especially for the 2 Megaman Legends games and at first I simply used my PS2 for playing PS1 games. But eventually I started exploring proper PS2 games and lo and behold I found my new favorite console. It started with Jak 2 actually which I still say has an excellent bland of open world and action platforming. Then Ratchet & Clank Going Commando which is still one of the best action platformers ever in my mind, Ace Combat 4 reignited my love for aircraft and actually inspired me to take up creative writing again and of course I started to get into jrpgs after enjoying Skies of Arcadia Legends and thoroughly enjoyed Wild Arms 3. I could go on but the PS2 was host to so many excellent titles (freaking Ace Combat 5!)it has just barely less wealth to me than the SNES. Besides my GBA and eventually DS I would pretty much neglect all my other consoles in favor of my PS2, ha.

So while I was away from my PS2 I was playing my DS. There I played a ton of handhelds games extensively and actually started analyzing them and such. I also began to participate in forums as well, making an ass out of myself at Edge Emulation and skipping around and learning how to behave till I wound up at site called Nintelligent. There I would actually do little mini reviews for games I beat on their forums kinda like I do here. Well it so happens that they needed a writer for a handheld review column. I gladly accept when they asked me and then I tried my best to be a gaming critic. It was a fun little time for me even if I look back on it with a bit of embarrassment, heh. Eventually I didn't have the time to keep up with highschool going into chaos and I stepped down but on a whole it was a good experience for me and made me appreciate games more even if I was way too critical of things. Too bad about how that website went down though, the community became a war zone.

After a time I bought a 360 for Lost Planet which ended up being a huge disappointment. But thankfully the Xbox games I wanted to play at the time were compatible so I felt owning the console was worth it, plus I learned about Mass Effect. But in that time I reconnected with my high school friends and they were all into online gaming, namely World of Warcraft. I was skeptical of it but I wanted to play with my friends again and decided to dive in mid way through the Burning Crusade expansion. Through my time with it I ended up finally grasping the concept of min max and just playing games much more smart than I typically did. Plus, you know I just played Wow I hell of a lot. Mostly enjoyed it all too and even after most of my friends stopped playing I loved treating it as a open world rpg and competing for performance in dungeons and kitting myself out with gear. I even got into organized raiding and met many good people as well through a guild. I certainly don't brag about my time playing wow or other MMOs in general but unlike most I don't regret it. Besides, it served as my gateway into PC gaming as a whole and I'm pretty happy with that.

But also right about the time I started playing WoW I also... found HG101 through the Pheonix Wright article Disco put a link to in a news update on Castlevania Dungeon and I've been visiting the site nearly daily ever since. I mention it because thanks to this site I've taken a different appreciation of games I didn't have before and have learned about a ton of interesting games and just history I never would have found otherwise. And it still serves that purpose perfectly! Also I used to have a habit of disappearing from what ever forum I was browsing at the time and finding anew one (long story) but this one once I signed up for it, I stayed at for the most part.

So that went way longer than it should have, ha. But I guess that about wraps it up. Gaming is my main hobby and has left a huge impact on my life.

[Colonel Kurtz]

I don’t understand why nobody posted here. Come on guise!

[excelsior]

Alright I'll go for the abridged version though.

My Dad made Speccy games on the side, put me and my brother in front of them early. My Sister was older and made her pocket money by 'burning' his games onto cheap often faulty blank tapes to send to disappointed customers. The ones that didn't run were the lucky ones honestly, except for in cases where the games were so bad it's good (seriously he'd do the game in an evening and draw a line under it). Anyway, us bratty kids wanted more and as Dad was away working long hours placated us with NES, Atari ST and SNES. SNES was the bigger hit where we would play a good number of games through buying, renting, trading etc we were pretty into it as a hobby here. 

After SNES the 3D graphics of N64 etc put me off at the time so we still picked the consoles up and a game here and there were only passively into games for a long while. We picked up a launch Gamecube cheap as chips and a few games but didn't really play too much. I was more interested in other hobbies and more ermm... social things in my late teens. 

Since gaming was still in my scope I caught onto the Wii marketing early on of course pulling in lapsed players was a big part of the PR. It worked for me the big draw being the VC and looking back at the idea of playing all those glorious SNES games again. Around this time I picked up a stack of Cube games in the wait and I remember discovering Paper Mario 2 when I had a bad flue bug. As a lowly European this was my first chance to delve into a JRPG and I had such a great time with it I've been chasing after replicating it since - I look at being sick now as an opportunity to binge a nice JRPG. Anyway the Wii eventually landed and I was loving it and the VC library, reacquainting with old faves, finding new ones. I did realise the limitations of licensing and that there were certain games would never come to such a service which pushed me towards having more of a collectors mentality and returning to pick up original oldies. One of the hidden gems I discovered on the VC was the PC Engine library so I picked up a Turbo Duo RX and started on those.

Over the course of the Wii lifecycle videogaming had become my main hobby again. The scope of my interest was largely defined over those Wii years, since I remain mostly interested in JRPG's, Nintendo games and some quirky Japanese titles. I didn't find too much to love on the XBox and Playstation side of things, though later I would start looking into the PS1 and PS2 back catalogues at least - those long game droughts pushed me to look elsewhere. 

Nowadays I'm pretty much in the same place, although with the Switch surprising me with how much support it's gotten I really don't look at the other companies again. I actually picked up a PS4 on Switch launch day as a secondary system to play what doesn't come to Switch and it's largely lived in it's box. I still enjoy my PS2 and am having a bit of a renewed love affair with my PC Engine. And of course somewhere along the line I discovered the hidden gem of this forum which has given me an outlet to discuss my hobby, my passions and my gripes with at least partially like minded people. Currently I'm struggling to keep my head above water with the backlog I amassed in my earlier collecting days. One day I'll cross off all those JRPG's.

[spanky]

Oooo, I love being self indulgent.

One of my earliest memories, if not the earliest one, is me playing Super Mario Bros. at my grandmother's house. My uncle, who still lived there had bought one. I was completely mesmerized by it. My parents thought this was pretty cute and decided to run out and get one for our house. This was around 1987 or 1988 and I was 3 or 4 years old. I was hooked instantly. The great thing about the NES was that it was so popular, there was a universality to it. My parents played games, as well as my aunts and uncles and all my cousins. I LOVED going to family events for this reason. Almost every kid played it and we all played similar games, which fueled countless playground rumors. It gave everything you played such an air of mystery.

Time passed, and my family lost interest in the NES and my parents realized my love for the system was quickly turning into an obsession. One that would probably stunt my physical and social development (they weren't wrong!). When other kids got in trouble, they'd be grounded. I'd have my Nintendo taken away.

When the SNES came out, of course I had to have it. I was 8 and didn't really believe in Santa Claus anymore but I still decided to hedge my bets and ask him for a SNES. My parents didn't care for my Nintendo obsession at this point, but I was a well behaved kid who got good grades so they came through and on Christmas morning 1992 I unwrapped a SNES with Super Mario World. If you could bottle the joy I felt that day, you could cure any number of social ills. Definitely a childhood high point. The SNES is probably my favorite game system but it's very close with the NES.

At this point, Nintendo finally had competition. The SNES vs. Genesis rivalry was real shit in grade school. Kids huddled around lunch tables to argue the merits of their chosen system. There was something really exciting about it. The downside to all this is that my gaming experiences were far less universal now - we were all playing different games. I was a bit older now and was able to ride my bike to the rental store or the grocery where I could read magazines off the rack. As a result, I consumed an incredible amount of  variety of video games and media during this era. It seemed like every week there was something new at the rental store worth playing, and magazines ballooned up to 300-400 pages at certain times of the year. And I read them all cover to cover!

My neighbor was a Genesis kid and even a dyed in the wool fanboy like myself could admit Sonic was actually pretty fun and that Gunstar Heroes was amazing. Still, I took great satisfaction during 1994 when the SNES really began to pull ahead. Games like Super Metroid and a superior port of Mortal Kombat II really showed off what the SNES could do. When I got that Nintendo Power Donkey Kong Country preview VHS I was completely blew away a knew that was the shot that was going to deceisively end the "war." I didn't own a Genesis or thoroughly explore it's library until years later but I've come to really enjoy and respect it.

I was late to the SNES RPG train for a number of reasons but when I discovered them I became completely addicted, which was great because for the next gen I stayed with my Nintendo loyalty and went with the N64. This system had it's moments but overall it was a colossal disappointment for me. Nintendo was just more than Mario and Zelda. It was also Mega Man and Street Fighter. It was fighting games and RPGs. These sorts of games were poorly represented on the system. Something like Goemon's Great Adventure or Ogre Battle 64 felt like an oasis in the desert. 

Sometime in the 8th grade I was reminiscing about the NES with a friend of mine, and I realized the games he had fond nostalgic memories for were games I had never even played. I realized there was an entire galaxy of NES games I had never played and it motivated me to track down an old NES(mine had broken years before) and start collecting games which were dirt cheap at this time. I could probably write a short novel on my collecting days but I'll probably just stop here and said I really enjoyed this era of NES collecting. NO ONE wanted these games and you could get them for cheap or free. Tracking down old games turned my love of video games into something resembling a real hobby.

From here on out, things get a little more standardized and boring. I was playing almost exclusively retro games at this point but I did pick up a Dreamcast after being wowed by the sprite orgy that is Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. I loved my Dreamcast quite a bit but it didn't read games very well. It gave me fits.

Got a Gamecube for Christmas the year it came out. I enjoyed my time with it but I have no great love for the GC outside of Zelda Four Swords and Resident Evil IV. Had a girlfriend during this era who was really into gaming. She dumped me about the time I tried getting her into 16-bit RPGS lol

I had zero interest in the PS2 but sitting around with a group of friends passing the controller back and forth while trying to cause as much destruction in GTA III changed my mind. Plus it was nice to have a DVD player. I ended up liking the PS2 quite a bit but a good chunk of my collection is compilations of retro games. There's tons of highly regarded PS2 games I've never touched.

Smash Bros Brawl convinced me to get a Wii - fell into the hype for that game and realized I don't really care for Smash in the first place. It was nice to play a new Punch Out!! though and the Virtual Console was cool if underutilized.

Next I got an Xbox 360, played a lot CoD, which isn't exactly my favorite game but almost everyone I knew IRL played it. Acquired tons of games via sales and XBL Gold giveaways. This introduced a new problem I still have today. Digital distribution has made building up a huge collection of games easy and cheap - but I just don't have the time to play them all nowadays.

Breath of the Wild convinced me to buy a Switch on day 1. I've really enjoyed the Switch. It's a great way for playing Nintendo stuff, retro games and the occasional oddball indie title that grabs my interest. It's easily my favorite Nintendo console since the SNES.

I have a PS4 and have put a lot of hours into it, mostly fighting games but those raise my blood pressure something awful. I'll occasionally try to play some AAA 100 hour+ open world game and they just bore me to tears now.

Whew. With time being at a premium nowadays (work, wife, 2 kids, other interests and responsibilities), my gaming time is pretty much later in the evening or in the wee hours of the morning. I find a surprising amount of time for it though. My four year old has mild interest in video games and his favorite game is Pac-Man. He's really terrible at them though, I'm pretty sure I had beaten Super Mario Bros at the same age. Maybe he will be an athlete instead 

Had a lot of fun writing this, and I didn't even get around to my experience with portables, arcades and PC games!

[Snake]

May 2, 2022 16:55:38 GMT -5 Colonel Kurtz said:

I don’t understand why nobody posted here. Come on guise!

Easy, because this is my first time seeing this thread. It's been cool reading through some veteran HG101ers histories. It's nice to be able to relate to everyone who's been gaming lifelong, constantly and consistenly.

My step into gaming started when I was either 5 or 6. Mum worked for Mattel toys. On one hand, I got plenty of He-man and Jayce the Wheeled Warrior figures. Unfortunately, a lot of that was lost, between moving homes. On the other hand, she had an Intellivision-II and a whole library of games. Some of it... actually most of those games went over my head. I was left to figure out how to play these games on my own. Obviously games like Blackjack and Roulette made no sense to a kid with no concept of gambling. But the 3 games that grabbed me were Shark! Shark!, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and Kool-Aid Man. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was my first taste of "survival horror." It always freaked me out to wander through the mountain, and hear that loud, slithering sound of a pixelated monster ready to pounce and kill you. I was glued to the system. On my birthdays, I would basically ignore all my mom's friends and guests, and play the Intellivision through the day.

A few years later, I would visit my dad at his shop. My parents were divorced as far as I can remember. For Christmas, he got me an NES, with ROB, Gyromite, Duck Hunt, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Super Mario Bros. Again, I was glued to the screen. I was too young, too dumb to really know how to get through any of these games. But they kept me busy. In those days, nearly all my friends and classmates had an NES. So it was always fun to visit friends, and play what games they had. I was exposed to so many games this way. I have very clear, distinct memories of where I was and whose house I was able to play Castlevania, Mega Man, Metal Gear, Pro Wrestling, Ikari Warriors, and so forth. It was really common to just trade and borrow games. Or go to the local video store and rent a game for 3 days. Most of the time, I'd go to my neighbor's house (my best friend during elementary school.  He had a waterbed, around the time that he had just got Rush'n Attack and Tiger Heli), and spend half the day trying to beat Castlevania II or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That's really the staple of my childhood. Because of the limited days with the game, I remember playing feverishly to beat each game, when possible. Some were very doable, like Shadowgate and Wizards & Warriors.  Battletoads was one we didn't get too far in.

On a trip to Las Vegas, I also have distinct memories of being left at the arcades with a $5 bill. Feed it into the quarter machine, and have a heavy pocket full of quarters where it'd weigh my shorts down. I remember being at The Stardust, and playing Karate Champ, The Goonies, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Popeye, and Pacman.

During summer breaks in elementary school, I would spend 2 or 3 months in Thailand, with my brother. My brother is older, and we were separated with him living in Bangkok for the first 10 years of his life.  As you can imagine, a flight from LAX to BKK is very LONG for a kid.  I would always have a bag stuffed with Nintendo Power and Game Pro mags, so I'd have something to look at and read on a travel that typically takes 24 ~ 28 hours of travel time.

Living in Bangkok was my exposure to the Family Computer/Famicom. My brother didn't have a Famicom. Instead, my dad bought an NES Action set to gift to him when we visited, and we would play on that all summer. To play Famicom games, there would be small local game shops. Either by the street side or at the shopping malls, if you can imagine rows of TV's with Famicoms. You'd pick which Famicom cartridge you'd want to play for the next hour through a glass display case. Wonderful games! Stuff like Macross, Konami Wai Wai World, Gradius 2. Games that would never see the light of day in the US. On one trip, we had a long layover at Narita airport. Dad actually let us pick some games, to take, even though we didn't have a Famicom. Dragon Ball 3, Captain Tsubasa 2:Super Striker, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Akumajo Densetsu (Castlevania 3). I lost Rescue Rangers... makes me a bit sad. I wonder where it disappeared to. I wish I had kept better care of the other games, complete-in-box, but I still have the cartridges. In order to play them, we'd have to find a specialty shop in Bangkok that sold a special "Bee convertor." It was a Famicom-to-NES adapter connector, with the Hudson Bee logo on it. One time during vacation, my brother and dad, and cousins would take a trip to Phuket. I skipped out on their trip to stay home, and play Rock Man 2 (rented from the game store around the corner).  My cousins in Bangkok finally got a Famicom... and Super Mario Bros. 3!  I spent a whole week with them, dedicated to taking the game down. And it's a whole lot freakin' tougher when you shrink immediately to mini-Mario with one hit.  

I remember being really envious of my older friends. One friend, Mark, got a Sega Genesis, with Altered Beast, Revenge of Shinobi, and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Another, Gunn, was old enough to drive, and work a job. He saved up for a Turbografx-16 and CD, with Fighting Street and Ys Book 1 and 2 being among the jewels in his collection. Locally, there was a game called "Video Depot." They had VHS rentals in the first half of the store, and sell imported games in the latter half. The shop owner/shop keeper was a older guy with a mustache and a mullet, smelling of cigarettes. It was here where my friends would give us money to pick up games for them. Batman for Mega Drive, and The Ninja Warriors for PC-Engine. I remember the Genesis having to be modified to fit the Mega Drive cartridge, so the shopkeep get a pair of plyers and proceeds to tear out and maul the ends of the cartridge slot.

Mark was a hardcore gaming kindred spirit. It was through him that I got to experience Ranma 1/2 and Final Fantasy V. I'd spend weekends at his place, trying to navigate FF V blindly, without a lick of Japanese knowledge. A lot of time, a lot hours, a lot of mindless grinding. But we finally beat it. Concurrently at that time, Mark had a high school friend that loaned him a TurboDuo, with a slew of PC-Engine CD imports. He actually lent the whole system to me (without his friend's knowledge). I took extra good care of it. It was because of Mark, I got to play and beat Dracula X:Rondo of Blood, Ys, Final Zone 2. Unfortunately, Mark passed away last year in 2021 in November. He made a name for himself as "Cannaconfucius" on Instagram. I still have his Sega Genesis and his Final Fantasy V cartridge. We have a lot of crazy memories outside of gaming, but a lot of my favorites ones was really gamer focused. Even for PC games, he lent me King's Quest V and VI, Leisure Suit Larry 6, even an American FMV dating sim called "Man Enough."



Gunn would loan me a lot of stuff too, though Full Throttle particularly stands out.



If not console gaming, we'd go to pool halls that doubled as arcades on the weekends.

I'll leave it up to this point for now.

[spanky]

May 3, 2022 19:40:33 GMT -5 Snake said:

Oh man, me too. My mother would throw out the boxes and manuals as soon as I dropped my guard. It was just packaging to her. It took me until the N64 era to wise up and start hiding them. I was always a bit jealous of Genesis kids because their games (at least for most of the system's life) came in these sturdy hard plastic boxes. NO ONE threw those out, and they look great!

*EDIT* Not sure why it's not displaying your text, but I was quoting your comment about you wishing you had taken better care of your games complete in box.

[Snake]

May 4, 2022 7:03:00 GMT -5 spanky said:

May 3, 2022 19:40:33 GMT -5 Snake said:

Oh man, me too. My mother would throw out the boxes and manuals as soon as I dropped my guard. It was just packaging to her. It took me until the N64 era to wise up and start hiding them. I was always a bit jealous of Genesis kids because their games (at least for most of the system's life) came in these sturdy hard plastic boxes. NO ONE threw those out, and they look great!

*EDIT* Not sure why it's not displaying your text, but I was quoting your comment about you wishing you had taken better care of your games complete in box.

I feel your pain.  It kind of hurt to have lost all the Intellivision games.  Mum didn't value them at all.  I was mostly careless with NES games, up to a certain time.  For Dragon Warrior 3, I would lend it to one of my neighbors... which included the thick instruction booklet that was very much a guidebook.  I would have the game complete-in-box, aside from the instructions.  The booklet was either mauled or completely lost.  For SNES games, I just don't have my SNES Box.  I still have Actraiser complete-in-box, with a beat-up map.  I actually pinned the map up to the wall, so there's holes in it.  But Final Fantasy II (IV), I lost all traces of it.  Don't know where the box went, no idea who took the game.  And yet I have nearly everything else in my SNES collection.

[dsparil]

I kept all my PC game boxes flattened in my closet so they didn't take up too much space. My dad was always trying to throw them out and that was the compromise. The only game I have sealed is Amerzone which I bought for practically nothing on some vacation which resulted in it getting put in some weird place when we got back. It goes for a whopping $20 now.

For me, my family immigrated to the US as refugees from the Soviet Union so we came with basically nothing. At some point we did get a super basic DOS computer with a big stack of 5¼" shareware floppies that my parents still have. My dad had been a scientist and had worked with computers and thought that it was important that we have one even though it would have been a huge expense; as a side note, it's basically 100% likely he played the original text-based Tetris. The very low cost of the shareware model also must have been appealing. The shareware episode was usually the best one anyway.

I’m pretty sure we got our first CD-ROM drive in 1993. At this point, our situation was less shaky and I think my parents were looking more at the educational aspects since I remember we got Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego Deluxe with it. Of course we also got a CD with some new shareware games on it soon after, and also one that just had Doom. I think the very first boxed non-educational game we got was The Ultimate Doom.

I think around 1995 was when I first started to really get non-shareware games outside of gifts. There was a discount store nearby with a really good selection of remaindered games. It was very heavy on Activision, Microprose and Sir-Tech games, and it was all very cheap at around $5. They must have had a relationship with a local distributor that dealt with those companies because it was very lopsided. On occasion there’d be a stray new release with a damaged box and some really junky games they must have picked up for pennies.

In ’98, I started getting PC game magazines, first CGW in January and then also PC Gamer in May and actively was finding out what was coming out. That was really the peak for PC gaming for me, but it was a standout year in general. December ’97 was the highest page count for CGW (506 pages!) and I think PC Gamer so I had just missed it, but the ’98 issues were still pretty thick and just under those highs. It’s harder to get page counts for PCG, but CGW started a real downward slide in ’99. Setting aside the January ’99 issue which still got a bit of a Christmas bump, the next longest issue was about the previous year’s shortest at about 250. The slide wasn’t so sharp after that, but it never stopped. I can’t remember exact when I stopped getting CGW, it was some time in 2005, and some of those issues were barely over 100 pages. I don’t remember when I stopped getting PCG, but it was a lot earlier.

I’d put 2001 as a real turning point year not specifically because of the Xbox, but as a sign that the writing was on the wall for PC exclusives. Stores were limiting the amount of stock they kept, a lot of the traditional publishers were either focusing more on consoles or imploding for a variety of reasons. I was working at this point, and I do remember buying parts here and there, but I was also busy with school and sort of losing interest in PC gaming. I could put in a long rant about how terrible Oblivion was which was a big factor in me completely losing interest especially how much worse it was than Morrowind in every regard which was already so much worse in gameplay than Daggerfall. The other one was Dreamfall which was such absolute trash compared to The Longest Journey which really sealed it. The last new PC game I ever bought was the adventure game Keepsake not much later in 2006. After this point, I dumped Windows entirely and only used Linux because of work after dual booting for a while. Then I got a MacBook because it was frustrating having to deal with non-open source drivers for some of my hardware, and I really needed a Unix-based OS. That's a whole parallel history too, but also less game focused.

I’ll save the console side for later since this is already so long.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

I have the opposite with boxes. I have a whole bunch of GBA and SNES boxes folded away somewhere but I don't think I'll ever display them. Even if I did, I don't buy second-hand games with boxes so I would be a mismatch of boxed and non-boxed games. So in a way I kinda wish I got rid of them back in the day because now I just keep them stored away only to look at them once every decade.

[spanky]

🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 Loose boxes can be sold at a premium nowadays. I sold a lot of a dozen or so N64 and GBA boxes for 50 bucks a few years back.

[Apollo Chungus]

I kinda wanna write something, and I even attempted it last night, but I kept getting caught up in tangents in trying to be comprehensive. So I'm gonna try split significant events to specific years. Let's see if that works.

2000 - Earliest memory of playing video games, with my sister as we duked it out in the Rampage Ruins level from Crash Team Racing. Got the PSOne redesign of the original PlayStation (much smaller, rounded look), and I believe CTR came with it. With three siblings who also liked playing games to some degree, we got plenty of games which resulted in a mix of classics (CTR, Spyro 2/3, Driver, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater), cult gems (Vagrant Story, Toy Story 2, MediEvil), and rando games (Jonah Lomu Rugby, one of the old Spec Ops games, Populus: THE BEGINNING). We also rented games from XtraVision on the regular; I think one of them was the port of Final Fantasy VI as I strongly recall the opening sequence of mechs marching in a snowstorm and fighting off massive electric snails in a cave.

2000-2003 - As well as the PSOne, we also had an Apple or Windows computer with a surprisingly amount of early 90s computer classics like Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM II, The Incredible Machine, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, and Another World (though I don't remember playing this at all). We had a Game Boy Advance, and a handful of games - we had a fair few games including Tennis, Tomb Raider, the GBA remake of Donkey Kong Country, and one of the naff Shrek fighters. On that note, plenty of licensed games including many Disney platformers on the PSOne, the GBA version of Spider-Man 2 and the Diablo-inspired Lord of the Rings games. This was all we had for four years.

In terms of retro gaming, I went to a friend's house once in 2003, where we played a couple of games on the Mega Drive and SNES he had up in his parents' room. I recall playing the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game on the SNES, Sonic 3D Blast: Flickies' Island, and I think(?) Donkey Kong Country 3. I also found out that before I can remember, we had a SEGA Mega Drive which has long since been packed away in the attic. The only thing I could find as proof was a Sonic 2 cartridge that sat in their bedroom for years. No idea where that's gone to.

2004 - Got a new console for Christmas. We asked for a PlayStation 2, but those weren't available at the time due to a massive blockage in the Suez Canal which prevented Sony from delivering PS2s to Europe (that was the route they used). So my parents got us an original Xbox, along with copies of The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. Around this time, I'd become a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog thanks to the (not very good) Sonic X show, though that wouldn't have much impact on what I could play until...

2005 - Started getting Sonic games, mainly with Heroes and the Mega Collection Plus compilation that not only included the Mega Drive games but half of the Game Gear titles. I was also excited for the release of Shadow the Hedgehog, which I played a butt-ton of. In general, I started becoming a fan of Japanese-developed games, which I'd never properly played up to this point. This was especially kicked off by the Dead or Alive games, and a demo disc from the UK Official Xbox Magazine that included demos for Ninja Gaiden, Shenmue II, and Jet Set Radio Future among others (I eventually bought those three games. However, the Xbox console started going to pot after a while, and it developed a notorious wheeze when even trying to boot games up. It was pretty wretched, so I didn't play it as much as I wanted to.

2006 - Got two new consoles. The first was a Nintendo GameCube from my cousin, who was about to move out from his house. It was a Mario Kart: Double Dash bundle, which included the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition disc as a bonus. This featured the two NES Zelda games and Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask, making it my introduction to the series. It also came with Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2, along with some other games I can't recall. At some point, I bought Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, as well as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle from my local XtraVision. (That copy of SA2 was the last GameCube game sold in that shop) I spent a lot of summer the next year playing SA2 to getting Chaos Drives to feed and raise the Chao.

The second console we got was an Xbox 360, which I wanted to get so I could play Sonic 2006. I somehow convinced my family that we all chip together to buy the console, and we got a bundle that came with Sonic 2006, Project Gotham Racing 3, a collection of Xbox Live Arcade games and demos, and Ninety Nine Nights of all games. I played Sonic 2006 loads, and loved it dearly.

2007 - Don't remember a lot about this year in terms of gaming, other than playing a good few Xbox and 360 games (thank god for backwards compatibility). My brothers were excited as heck for Halo 3, as they had become Halo fans in the meantime, and it fulfilled their expectations something fierce. We also got a laptop from an acquaintance, but it ran pretty damn poorly and we didn't play much on it. I faintly remember trying out Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and C&C: Renegade, but that's it.

2008 - Got another console, which was just as well seeing as our Xbox 360 suffered from a Red Ring of Death. It was a PlayStation 2 from my sister's then-boyfriend, and I got to work looking for all the cool games people adored on the system. I got Ratchet & Clank, Kingdom Hearts I and II (a series I became interested in after spending hours reading a friend's official guidebook for KHII), Final Fantasy X, Sly 2: Band of Thieves, and a few other games. I fell in love with Kingdom Hearts II in particular, despite the issues I had trying to beat it. My copy didn't work completely - it got as far as the final boss, but wouldn't work any further. I got a second disc, but that would often fail to load after playing a cutscene. I tried one more disc, and it finally worked. I even played the game three or four more times on it in the years since!

I also got Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3, which isn't pretty interesting but did kick off my interest in Dragon Ball with extra games like the Budokai Tenkaichi contributing to it. Eventually, I started reading the manga and that interest would develop into a fandom that's lasted 14 years.

We eventually got the 360 mended, and I was looking forward to Sonic Unleashed. However, it was a very hard game and I couldn't make it past the first boss. Frustrated with no alternatives on making any progress, I traded it in a few days later. I wouldn't have the chance to play it properly for a decade.

One game I got was Guitar Hero III, and I mention this because I became acquaintances with the guy who sold it to me at GameStop. We'd chat for a bit whenever I came in, and he'd recommend games I could try out. I mainly bring this up because when one of my brothers started going out with his girlfriend in 2010 (they're living together now), it turns out that the GameStop guy was her dad. Life is full of lovely coincidences!

2009 - Not an especially notable year beyond getting more cool games like Rayman Revolution, Ape Escape 3, and various other things. I got the Sonic Gems Collection compilation on the PS2, which featured Sonic R and CD along with the other six Game Gear titles not featured in Mega Collection Plus. I played a lot of Sonic R and spent ages looking through the big gallery featuring renders, concept art and loads of great "Sonic the Screensaver" pics. My brothers started using Xbox Live a lot, as we only got the internet last year. One of them turned every profile on the console into an Xbox Live account so he could use the free month of Live Gold to play Halo 3's multiplayer. He turned my profile into an account and asked me what I wanted to call it. I was big into Father Ted and Dragon Ball Z at the time, so I made up a name that referenced both series, and one I'm still using to this day - FrDougal9000.

2010 - Kinda a big year in a bunch of ways, as far as gaming is concerned. For a start, we got a new computer, which allowed us to use emulators. I started messing around with Mega Drive, SNES, GBA and even a handful of N64 games on it. This was something of a genesis in my interest in retro gaming, though what really kicked it off was my decision to get a new PSOne and a GBA.

Our old ones had stopped working a long time ago and I found myself feeling very nostalgic for those systems, mainly because I'd started watching retro game reviews by a guy on YouTube who went by the name of gexup. A retro game shop had opened up in town, so I got a PSOne (with a copy of Spyro the Dragon), and later a GBA (with a copy of the Donkey Kong Country remake). I got into playing the PS1 loads, and while I didn't do much with the GBA, it did lead to me getting a copy of Link's Awakening: a game I'm really fond of despite never managing to beat it over the course of twelve years.

The Xbox 360 died for good, and it would be many, many months before we got a new one, so I dived even further into playing the PlayStation consoles and retro games. I also got a PSP, which had some decent games like Daxter, MediEvil: Resurrection, and the SEGA Mega Drive Collection. However, the battery fucked up at some point and doesn't work without being plugged in at all times, so I never really touched it afterwards.

I got into making video game reviews for YouTube, which was its own kettle of fish in terms of influencing how I played and looked at games. They're not great reviews, but they did eventually result in a confidence in my ability to write that resulted in me eventually covering games for Hardcore Gaming 101, among many other things.

2011 - This'll be the last year I cover for now, as this has gone on for much longer than I suspected. Continued playing games for reviews, and was chuffed to find that Sonic Generations was an enjoyable romp that I could actually beat (despite the final boss being goddamn wretched). Not much else that comes to mind right now.