I remember what started me down the path of gaming; Double Dragon with my Dad while we were visiting my uncle. We had so much fun, that my Dad bought me an NES a few months later for Christmas, forever stapling me within the realm of gaming.
My love affair with games
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 On 02/25/2013 at 12:32 PM by Ranger1 See More From This User » |
I've thought a lot about what was the actual catalyst for my ending up a gamer. I did play Pong, my uncle and aunt got one as either a wedding present or a Christmas present from someone and they had it set up on an old black and white TV in the spare room at their first house. It was fun and exciting, for about 15 minutes. And then I'd wander off and either play cards with them or go do outdoorsy stuff. So it definitely wasn't Pong.
Then, when I was ten, we went on vacation with my mom's boyfriend. We were staying in some cute little cabin on the coast of Maine before we moved here and he and I went for a walk to get away from my annoying little sister. She was three and extremely ADHD and he and I had had enough of being cooped up with her in a two-room cabin. On our walk, we came across an arcade and wandered in. Ulrich (my mom's boyfriend) gave me a couple of bucks and he and I played a couple of games of pinball. We also discovered a couple of arcade cabinets, one of which was Asteroids. I came from a very small, former mill town in western New Hampshire and I'd never seen an arcade video game before. Ulrich and I played as many games as we had quarters left before heading back to the cabin and the rest of the family. I wasn't very good at Asteroids, but I sure had fun. Ulrich managed to get his name on the high scores list. We went back again before vacation was over, and Asteroids got several more plays. I think that may have begun my fascination with video games.
We moved to Norway that fall, and Ulrich and my mom got married. He did a lot of work from home, back before it was common to have a home office if you didn't run your business out of your home. We had Breakout on the computer (I think it may have been the only game we had), and I got very good at it. Later, when we moved back to the States, he once again set up shop in our living room. He needed to finish a project and borrowed an Apple II from a friend. The friend brought games with it that he thought we kids would enjoy. I was 13 and my sister was 6 at this point. Applepanic was the game that he thought my sister would enjoy, and she did, for the five minutes she could manage to concentrate on anything. I liked it ok. It was a fun little arcade game where your little guy ran around being chased by killer apples, butterflies, and probably other things that I never got good enough to have come chase me. He had a mallet, and the point of the game was to break holes in the floor to trap the apples (and other things) and then hammer them through to make them disappear. Or at least I think that was what happened. It's been at least 25 years since I played that game. The game that Bob brought for me was the original Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord. I was hooked. I loved being able to create my own characters, play around with the classes to see what worked the best with my party of six, and explore the dungeon for loot and monster slaying. I was heartbroken when we had to return the Apple II a few months later. After having had that experience, my friends' Ataris just didn't cut it for me.
A couple of years later, Ulrich started his own business out of our home and we acquired an IBM clone (now known as a PC) of our very own. Ulrich used to get a catalog for software, and they had a games section. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that Wizardry was listed in there. It was $70, though, and I was 15 and getting a monthly allowance (my parents believed in teaching us how to budget early). It took several months of setting aside a little bit at a time, but I was able to hand Ulrich $70 in cash and he ordered the game for me. Then came the 4-6 week waiting period. I think the UPS guy was getting a little sick of me by the time my game finally arrived. Wizardry was my way of staying sane during the years of hell that most people call high school. I wasn't one of the popular kids, but I also wasn't one of the ones being picked on constantly, either. I kind of just did my own thing, and that included reading science fiction and fantasy, collecting comic books, and playing computer games. I even got my uncle Richard hooked on Wizardry. He had his own save disks for when he'd come to visit and he'd spend his nights at our house dungeon-crawling and collecting loot. I started writing short stories to give my characters back stories, because it just seemed like they needed them. Some I'd hand in for class writing assignments, but most just lived in a notebook at home for my own pleasure.
I gave up PC gaming after I headed off to college. I didn't have the money to invest in my own computer, especially as I was footing the bill for school myself. After college, well, let's just say that seasonal park rangers will never get rich and leave it at that. I ended up becoming a console gamer when I got a Genesis around Christmas of 1994. I like the simplicity of putting the game in and just playing (unless it's a PS3 or 360 game, then I sit and stew during the inevitable updates). I also started gaming a lot with my brother on his NES and SNES when I'd move back in with my grandparents in the winters after being laid off. Racing games, adventure games, arcade games, they were all good. If there was co-op, we'd play co-op, if they were single player, we'd either take turns or work together to solve puzzles.
I loved my Genesis, so many great games, and at the time, the graphics were so cool. It was my only console until after the PS2 came out. I don't really have an off switch when it comes to gaming, and I realized that about myself. I resisted getting a PS1 because I knew what would happen. I used to lie and tell people it was because I wasn't interested, the camera movement made me nauseous, etc. My boyfriend's little brother got a PS2 for Christmas in 2003 and he gave us the old, beat-up original Playstation that had originally belonged to middle brother Matt. By the end of summer of 2005, I had acquired a GBA SP, a PS2, an Xbox, and a Game Cube. I blame it all on that PS1 and the wonderful RPGs that I discovered for it.
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