Your history with video games

[arcaneguyver]

Lessee...

Fascinated with video games since youth (always played Ms Pac Man & Centipede at the laundromat). I had to make do with shitty Tiger Electronics handhelds for the longest time, until finally my parents got me a Gameboy. This was a godsend for busrides to school, linking systems together & all that. The NES was next, and I was obsessed with Super Mario Bros, learning that game forwards and back. All my friends had the system and a ton of games, so we lent & traded often. Coop was king, especially with Konami games like TMNT2, Jackal, and Super C.

I at some point managed to get my parents to give me an allowance, and saved that up to buy a Sega Genesis. I was suckered in with the advertising, and Sonic was pretty much the only reason I bought it. The controller never felt particularly good to me, and most of the games I rented for it were underwhelming. Still, I was a fierce console warrior in the lunchroom, and blast processing was way better than those slow games on that new Nintendo system...

...that I ended up buying and loving. Final Fantasy 6...well, 3 in the US...singlehandedly won me over. You could fight dinosaurs with magic and a chainsaw! This ended up being my favorite system of all time, filled with classics that mostly age well.

The next part is a blur. One of my friends temporarily had a Sega CD - it sucked - and then a 32x - it didn't even work and was returned the same day. That may have been the reason he got a PSX rather than a Saturn. Either way, I didn't pay any attention to these fugly 3D games until he got Resident Evil. Holy crap, that game creeped the hell out of us. That may have been the reason I started saving up for a PSX, going so far as to buy a beat up copy of Tekken 2 from a video rental in preperation for after Christmas, at which point I determined I'd have enough cash for a system, maybe a game if anyone gifted me money. The parents surprised the hell out of me with a PSX on Christmas; that was a glorious day, the day I went to I think Walmart and bought a ton of great games (Final Fantasy 7, Tomb Raider 2, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, etc) with the money I had saved. And good God, I think every game company brought their A game to this sytem. Square, Konami, Capcom...unbelievable.

I didn't care about the N64 and its relatively small library of $70 games (PSX titles were like $20-50!), and I prefered the crisp look of PSX to the murky mess that N64 seemed to have. But...Mario 64 looked fun. Goldeneye was certainly fun. And then Ocarina of Time landed, and God this game looks dumb, wierd, and I need it right now. N64 didn't hold my interest like the previous two Nintendo systems, but it had its moments.

Dreamcast...after the last three systems / add-ons crashed and burned, I refused to get hype for it. But Soul Calibur was fun and pretty, despite the awful controller. And Sonic Adventure looked so good! I ended up buying a crazy bundle for like $40, knowing full well it was doomed.

My trusty old PSX was running a bit ragged, and I heard tales of how anime on DVD was vastly superior to VHS, so I waited in line overnight to get PS2. Now that was a system that just kept on giving. Even if I somehow couldn't find a PS2 game worth playing (mostly the first year, once I finally tired of Tekken Tag & later Twisted Metal Black), there were tons of PS1 games I could play.

Xbox was a tough sell, because damn those original controllers were awful. But they got replaced with better ones, and as someone without a good PC this was a good way to play stuff like Morrowind. And oh yeah, dat Halo. Daisychaining systems across three apartments was a defining college moment for me.

I skipped Xbox 360 and PS3 initially because the focus of my geekitude was focused like a laser on D&D 3e for a few years. I degraded to casual status during this period, and none of the games really sparked any interest. Strangely, getting a girlfriend brought me back to gaming, as she was constantly talking about Skyrim at the time. I ended up proposing to her with that music playing in the background (we fit it into the wedding, too). But yeah, bought a PS3, and was impressed with the controller, the connectivity of it all, and though it seemed JRPGs died during that gen, there were plenty of cool new games to play. And just as I'm playing catchup with 7th gen, PS4 is announced.

Oh yeah, got a Wii at some point in there. Hated most of the games, loved others. Mostly I got it to review video games for a website, but New Super Mario was great.

Tl;Dr: life ks too short to read meandering reminiscing of a silly hobby, kudos.