My Gaming History

Now I know this may seem a little bit niche, but I think the development of gaming habits in a person can be fairly telling. Now to start off, I have to qualify: I gave my parents their first TV after I moved out. Any console games prior to PS2 and Xbox, I played at a friends house, and may not have finished, even if I enjoyed it.

So, lets start with the earliest video games. At my friends house when I was growing up, Rampage, Mario, Duck Hunt, and Battletoads on the NES. We played those quite a bit. I also played Sonic on my friends Game Gear, but I never really got into it. I didn't get to play Nintendo much back then, and we're talking '90-'91ish. I was damn young.

I got a little bit older, and got a game boy, along with Ninja Turtles, Fall of the Foot Clan. I played that one quite a lot, and liked it. I played Tetris, F1, Donkey Kong Land, and Super Mario Land. Super Nintendo was reasonably common at this point, and for that, I played a lot of Super Mario World, mostly.

Well, around this time, my dad had a computer, but it was a Linux box (and this was still early '90s), so the only things I could play were various old arcade games on MAME, Nethack, and Zork. Until I discovered MUD's. I was looking for games for Linux based off of Tolkien's work, and I found a game called The Burning Eye. Instantly hooked. I couldn't possibly remember all my characters, although I do remember sucking at the game at that point.

Somewhere along in there, Pokemon Red and Blue came out in the US. I got Red for my birthday, and played it a TON. Me and all my friends had it, and we did the typical young gamer nerd thing. This part of my life, I played occasional Starfox64 with a friend, Ecco the Dolphin on a borrowed Game Gear, Rampart, Zaxxon, and Rygar (I think I'm getting these names right...) for an old Atari Lynx my dad got me at a church auction. Other than that, still MUDding, and playing Nethack.

Well, as I got a bit older, I stopped sucking so bad at the MUD's, (Burning Eye had renamed to Rebirth of Arda at this point.) At this point, my game boy games of choice were Pokemon Gold, Golden Sun, and Tactics Ogre, the Knight of Lodis. I also finally had a Windows box that I bought with summer job money. I played Alien vs Predator 1 and 2, Age of Empires 2, Quake 3 Arena, Mechwarrior 2 and 3, and Tie Fighter.

Well, I slowly but surely reached 2004, still playing pretty much the same games, although less often, and went to Basic Training. Skip to 2005-2006, while I was in Iraq, I had a laptop, and went back to some old favorites, including Nethack, and some new stuff, like Galactic Civilization 2. I was on one of the better camps, with real electricity, so my Xbox and PS2 were getting love, Kingdom Hearts 2, Magna Carta Tears of Blood, Halo 1 and 2, Forza. Anything.

End of 2006-Early 2007, back Stateside, God of War 2, Tekken 5, Soul Caliber 3, but I wasn't really playing all that often, I was busy with... other pursuits. I didn't really play many games between 2007 and 2009, but in '09, I finally built myself a new PC, and was playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and WoW. WoW did it's thing for a while, then I got Crysis, Killing Floor, AvP 2010, and a few other shooters to break up the WoW monotony.

Once Starcraft 2 came out, I got it, and played a bit, got sidetracked by League of Legends, smashed DA2, shelved Crysis2, and now I mostly just watch competitive SC2 when I'm not casually playing whatever.

Out of all of those, I'd say the most memorable, and my most loved, would be: The Burning Eye/Rebirth of Arda, followed by Nethack, Tie Fighter, Golden Sun, and Starcraft 2. Even though I barely play SC2, and I suck at it, I still love it. The games are fast paced, the casters are entertaining, and the community is excellent. I spend a lot of time over at Teamliquid.net, particularly on the Tech Support board there.

I hope this reminds some of you about all those oldies but goodies, the games that shaped you and your gaming tastes. It's fun to look back on it now, and try to figure out which games developed my gaming interests. I hope this wasn't too excessively long or boring, but for me, it's been a fun trip down memory lane.