Saturday, September 20, 2008

My Gaming History Part 1 : The Early Days

So I figure if I want to become a journalist/writer (just one of my passions/goals) someday I need to stretch my skills and start dusting off all those memories that are just sitting there. Something you might not know about me is I have a horrible memory. I feel like Wolverine sometimes because new memories are constantly covering up old ones and my mind is always brooding about everything from what to eat next to "holy shit I could SO be leveling right now" while at my in-laws. So lucky for you, I won't have too many details, its more like a timeline overview? I don't know but lets jump in shall we?

Growing up, I had 2 older brothers who had the NES. I played games like Rygar and Mario Bros. without really knowing what I was playing. We loved FF1 even though we played the intro like 50 times and never really sat to play through the end. Eventually I got older and demanded a SNES from my mother. My father loved spoiling us so we always got what we wanted. And when I say "we" I mean my younger brother and I. Rick and I are 2 years apart and we grew up being really close. We did everything together. We watched wrestling together, we played sports together, I defended him against the neighborhood bullies, we played in the dirt with G.I. Joes, hell we even slept together. We've both been pretty damn close till it came to girls in middle school, but that's a whole other story, back to games.

The SNES took up maybe like 30% of our time. We played big titles like Super Metroid, Super Mario World and rare gems like Out of This World and E.V.O. Being young, our schedule consisted of going to school, coming back and playing with all the neighborhood kids. It's literally almost a sandlot story we had going down here where I live in South Texas. All the kids had different personalities, ranging from the fat kid everyone made fun of to the wuss who never fought back and even laughed when he was the one being made fun of. So with all these friends and sports being the serving of the day everyday we never really sat down and made gaming a lifestyle, like it is now. But we played anyways. I remember waiting outside of Toys R' Us to buy Super Mario Kart even. All these events take place from 1984 to 1994.

Eventually Sony came out with...The PlayStation. It was 1996 and we had just come back from living in Chicago for a year. My dad couldn't resist our pleas, and the PS1 was ours. The first two games we bought were Battle Arena Toshinden and Rayman. We were totally digging all the games. Tekken was great, and Resident Evil scared the shit out of us. Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey introduced us to story elements in games and Final Fantasy 7 made us cry (and fuck anyone who has something to that about it). It was a magical time for gaming. As the games matured, so did we. I feel like we grew up along side them, and in a way, we did. I didn't really get to play the Atari since it came out before I was born obviously, but I bought one at a garage sale in Chicago for 100 bucks, complete with over 50 games, sweet deal at the time. Anyway, FF7, really hit big with us. So did Metal Gear Solid. I'm talking about waking each other up at 6 in the morning to play games together (he always watched and read the strategy guides while I played, talk about a co-pilot haha). We were 90's kids. We watched Power Rangers, All That, Saved By the Bell, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...good times. Now I feel like I'm game-dropping a bit but how do you establish geek cred without representing?

So there's the first part to my little overview. Part two will cover the awkward teenage years and adolescence where girl trouble reigned supreme and gaming introduces a new platform.

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