Discourse: Love

[modeps]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/discourse.jpg

In honor of this faux holiday, I thought we'd discuss our love of games. How did it start? Where did you two meet? Any rough patches? I want details!

For me, it started on the ATARI 400. My dad introduced us at a fairly young age hoping I'd do more with this 'computer' than just play games. While that little computer would later lead to a career, at the time I just wanted to play Miner 2049er (the first game I remember ever really enjoying completely).

The only rough spot in my relationship with games came recently when I just about swore them off due to lack of time and that I felt there's nothing really productive going on during the time I'm playing. That thought has since passed though, and as I'm sure many of you have seen, I'm addicted to reading news about games.

[lost]

At the age of 6 I asked my parents for a computer for my birthday.

They got me a MegaDrive (read Genesis) instead and my disappointment was quickly overturned by how awesome Sonic 2 was.

[Emabulator]

I got stated on Pong and became a game junkie by the time I got Coleco's Telstar Arcade (http://www.pong-story.com/coleco_arcade.htm). I've been a fan of racing games/sims ever since then.

[Orz]

It was a lowly Vic-20, which soon was traded in for the king of all computer gaming, the Commodore 64. Console-wise, I dearly loved my first Sega Master System, despite being only 1 of maybe 3 people in town who owned one. That love progressed to the sublime Sega Genesis a few years thereafter. It would be a few years before I realized how silly system partisanship was, and discover the fabulous Nintendo catalogue.

[Judas]

Miner 2049. I loved that when I had my atari too. I dare say it felt like the first mario game, before mario ever existed. Here, I thought I was one of the only people to have ever played that game. Sweet. That going back quite some time to the early days.

[modeps]

Miner 2049. I loved that when I had my atari too. I dare say it felt like the first mario game, before mario ever existed. Here, I thought I was one of the only people to have ever played that game. Sweet. That going back quite some time to the early days.

Oh, I played it alright... and it's not as well known sequel Bounty Bob Strikes Back.

[Syl]

I suppose i'm younger than anyone else in this thread. While my first game experience was the NES, the first console I ever owned was the SNES. I remember writing down my high scores for starfox and mario and trying to beat them; I used to have to get to bed really early at night, which meant I had to turn off the super nintendo. I remember setting my alarm clock to wake me up an hour or two before i had to be at elementary school so I could play my SNES before i went to school.

I've been a nintendo fan since then; my first non-nintendo console being a PS2 (and quickly amassing a backlog of PS1 games) and since then i've transitioned more and more to PC gaming. Nintendo is still where my heart lies; Miyamoto and EAD have created more of my favorite game than any other developer on the planet.

Also this:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v404/Sylaran/syltattoo.jpg
I got this when I made it to my first E3 (2005, only two months after I turned 18 and I also missed my highschool graduation for it). I've been following every single step of the game industry for about 8 years now...

[atariv8]

Parents couldn't afford an Atari 2600 so they got a me a Pong knock off instead which really didn't do it for me. I don't think gaming really took hold until the Atari went to $50 and I played Adventure on it. Although I loved River Raid, Mega Force and Wizard of Wor, it was Star Raiders with the add on pad that really opened my eyes to what gaming could be. Of course the Commodore 64 put cupid's arrow right through my heart and there was no going back after that.

Of course in my day there was steal real arcades thta kept me stealing quarters out of my mom's purse to run down to the local Pic Wic (convenient store) to play Pac Man, my first real cabinet love.

[murpes]

I was in junior high during the Atari 2600 and the arcade craze of the 80s. Even though I went to a very small rural school, we somehow managed (probably through a grant of some sort) to have a decent-sized computer lab, stimulating my interest in computers early on. I also loved Dungeons and Dragons. All these things just sorta blended together.

In high school and and college I became very serious about athletics and probably would have drifted away from video games, like many of my friends did. But I went to a university that was fairly technologically progressive (James Madison), even offering high-speed internet to off-campus students, a kind of DSL, twister-pair copper variation the college worked out with the local phone company. This kept my love of tech maintained throughout a liberal arts degree.

When Doom came out, that changed everything, igniting passion for gaming that has run strong ever since. The MANY revolutionary aspects of that game as well documented, and they all seemed interesting to and affected me. Especially networked deathmatch; we'd set up coax-based networks at home, a fairly uncommon occurrence in the mid-90s.

[WpnX]

I wanted a Nintendo, back when the company name was synonymous with their flagship console, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Instead I got a TurboGrafix 16, which to those who are unfamiliar, was the Atari Jaguar of the 8/16 bit era. That being said, the TG16 had it's moments. Bonk's Adventure was a particularly good side-scroller, and games such as Bomberman, Splatterhouse and JJ and Jeff certainly kept things interesting.

A high point also includes Final Lap Twin, which has the unique distinction of being one of the first racing JRPG's. Yep, it was like Outrun with an overworld, password save system, random encounters and part upgrades. I believe there was a similar JRPG system built into a tennis game my buddy had.

The low point was the pack-in game, Keith Courage in Alpha Zone. In the context of gaming love, this was like that girl who kept sleeping with your friends, while stringing you along enough to give you hope that maybe she would completely change and be your doting girlfriend. This game had one hard boss, at the end of level 4. If you can beat this monstrosity, it was smooth sailing until level 8, where you fight a stronger pallet swap of the same boss. I never beat level 8, but have it on good authority that it was the final level.

After that, I was given a 386, where I played mostly Wing Commander and Lands of Lore, both great games at the time. Doom Shareware was also a popular choice. This was upgraded to a 486 DX2 at some point, and a CD ROM drive was added. Dad also sprung for a 1MB ATI RAGE 3D, which ran Quake competently. This partially made up for him getting me a TG16 rather than an NES.

Eventually, we upgraded to a Pentium 166 Mhz, and I became addicted to Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. My clan, the JKWSN (Jedi Knights Who Say Ni), were a force to be reckoned with. I was so damned good at that game, pretty much reminiscent of today's Halo 3 pre-teens who have little else to do but sit around after school and become really good at shooting things. In retrospect, I was part of the problem.

So I guess you would say that the TG16 started my love for gaming, but it was really the PC which guided me through those formative years.

[Methos]

My first real gaming experience was King's Quest for the PC back in 1984. Before that time I had played a few title, but nothing I can remember even came close to the awesomeness of Sir Graham. King's Quest was my first real game. After that I bought anything Sierra released.

Console-wise, it was the Atari 2600. Adventure, Pitfall! (1 and 2) and the arcade classics (except Pac-Man; seriously, does anyone remember how crappy that port was? ) were all played. After the video-game crash of 83-84, most games I bought were cheap and shitty. I did by the Atari 7800 (backwards compatibility FTW!), but was unimpressed. Eventually the NES came and consoles were back for me.

[Jetherik]

Temple of Apshi - tape driven dungeon crawl - was hooked even though I never did get far on it. Then Pong and Atari... PC games were what I played for a long time and never got into consoles. Dark Lands was a great RPG. After a lot of lost time instead of writing time, and family, I cut back dramatically. Plus, got bored because it just seemed to be the same story with better graphics. EQ arrived and that became dangerous. Played with friends for years. Went to WoW and really addicted. But, reality rears its ugly head with jobs, family, etc. So I had to quit cold turkey for while. Then Gothic showed up and that got me back into playing more but on a more managable level. Started playing CoH with friends and do that once a week with them. Now, lack of time, money needs to go toward family things, that I just stick with a few new games a year (unless Go Gamer has a great sale) that I buy, and then a few games given for Christmas and Birthday. I have always enjoyed reading about them.

[Morpheus]

My first big gaming memory was with Action Quake. I started playing it with my big brothers and their friends and soon got my friends hooked on it as well. I've been a gamer since then and still are and will hopefully be in the future as well.

Also, some game from the Commodore 64, where you are a wolf and has to eat chickens, seem to stir in my mynd. It was a side-scrolling platformer. Anybody remember this game?

[pwnophobia]

I can remember playing a Lemonade game on an old apple we had and then the Flintstones game on my NES. After that my video gaming library grew as my parents had enough money to buy me the next gen console.

[Ulysses]

Been a PC gamer since I was, hm, 11 or so. When we got our 386 and I'd spend as much time as I could playing Gunship 2000, and F-19 Stealth Fighter. Heh, was so into those games, re-read the manuals and all their goodies about NATO and Warsaw Pact armies.

On my third PC, a P3 800, that's when I played some of the best games ever though. Civ 2, Grim Fandango (well ok, almost every LucasArts game :P), Rogue Spear, Ghost Recon, lots of others. Haven't played any of that quality since those days though, sadly.

[heyitsjohn]

I used to have to get to bed really early at night, which meant I had to turn off the super nintendo. I remember setting my alarm clock to wake me up an hour or two before i had to be at elementary school so I could play my SNES before i went to school.


Ha, this reminds me of when animal crossing first came out. My sister, my cousin (who was living with us temporarily) and I were all addicted to the game. It was downright ugly. We would fight over who got to play and had to set up hourly time blocks for each person way in advance, cycling the times each day so that each person wouldn't pillage our town for all it was worth in their hour every day.

Theres a lot of old timers around here, I'm pretty surprised. My first gaming experience was the donkey kong arcade game - so old that Mario didn't exist yet, he was referred to as "Jump man." My dad had the huge arcade housing thing, we still have it. After that I got a SNES and the rest is history. However, It wasn't until my first computer (a Mac) that my true addiction to gaming began. A-10 Tank Killer, Doom, Descent. Those were the days. Too young to take the time to read the instruction for A-10, so I memorized the take off procedures by trial and error, learned how to attack and generally screw around, and never could figure out how to land. Those were the days

[rpgedgar]

When I was about 5 I had a choice between a NES or my own swing-set for the backyard. I chose the NES and haven't looked back since.

[Evil Avatar]

My first console was Pong. :D My family had the old style 'Pong only' console back when it was first released.

After that I had an Intellivision (played the hell out of Tron) and then a Commodore 64. After I graduated high school I really fell away from console systems and games. The old Amiga games were great, but the cost of the system was out of the reach of an 18 year old who was living on his own and the early 286 and 386 games weren't worth the cost of those computers either.

That created a huge gap where I really didn't play games -- including the games on the early NES and SNES systems. Then came the 486 which had an explosion of PC gaming goodness including the classic Ultima 7. That cemented in my love affair with games. While the N64 and Playstation were starting to get not just popular -- they were starting to get huge and dominate gaming -- I didn't see any reason to move in that direction because I had the greatest gift to gaming of all time...

The 3dfx Voodoo 1. With your 3dfx Voodoo 1 you got the 3dfx version of Mechwarrior 2 and over time you also got OpenGL Quake and Quakeworld. What did the Playstation 1 have that compared to the OpenGL or Glide games? Nothing.

I didn't even look at a console system again until Grand Theft Auto 3 came out on the Playstation 2 -- and like a lot of people I purchased the PS2 just to play GTA3. GTA3 was really the title that spelled out the end of PC gaming. For the first time there was a game on a console that you couldn't get on the PC and it was a game whose graphics rivaled those of 3d accelerated PC games.

And while a generation of people were busy growing up on Playstation 2 games, the PC game market had become 'Is this the Patch that adds the fun?' and 'Release now and patch later.' which is what killed off PC gaming for me and resulted in the situation we have now where console games are the dominant form of gaming (not even WoW can touch some of the numbers of best selling console titles) and the PC gaming shelf at Gamestop has less than a dozen titles. (And most of those are MMORPG's.)

The systems may have changed, but it was 3dfx and id Software's Quake 1 that made me a gamer for life.

[Virtuoso]

My dad picked up a Super Nintendo for me and my brother, although I think it was more for him then it was for us. My and the bro played through Super Mario Brothers end-to-end, getting all the secrets, for days.

If only we had more experiences like that, maybe he wouldn't have turned into a meth head.

[EL CABONG]

Atari 2600,Arcades and Chucky Cheese. I have been playing games since I was 3. 27 years later I am still playing.

[Virtuoso]

Atari 2600,Arcades and Chucky Cheese. I have been playing games since I was 3. 27 years later I am still playing.

Oh, I forgot about Chucky Cheese. I definitely played games there before the SNES.

[ColtAlley]

I was one of the PSOne babies. Grew up on loving the survival horror titles like Dino Crisis and Resident Evil.

[saulob]

I started with arcade games, after the Ninja Turtles arcade game success I won one NES with the game.... amazing times. Amazinggggggggg....

(...) I'm addicted to reading news about games.

Me and you both... everyday I came here to read news about games, here and here only. I only go to other sites for the reviews/trailers. But news, here.

I read everything, even consoles, games that I will (probably) never play :)

[saulob]

This game changed my world

http://www.mobygames.com/game/nes/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-ii-the-arcade-game/screenshots/gameShotId,41350/

:)

[FreezaSama]

When I was 4 or 5, the family got an Atari 2600. The first games I remember playing where River Raid, Chopper Command, and this Racing game called Enduro.

[zeonxavier]

After limited exposure to Atari and NES games, my family finally received a NES of our own. (thanks, grandma!) I played the heck out of Mario Bros. and Zelda, but received few other games except one or two as gifts every year. This trend continued through the SNES and N64 generations. Mario Kart was the highlight for me and my siblings for both systems. I also spent a good amount of time with my old Game Boy, and enjoyed it for all it was worth.

I got to dabble a bit with a 486 DX80 and played some shareware DOOM, Descent, and X-Wing, but that was about the extent of it until I got a budget PC of my own as I left for college. At college one of my best friends was a certified gamer with a N64, PSX, a Saturn, and attended the opening launch night of the Dreamcast, which he also purchased. I credit him with my renewed interest in gaming and introducing me to anime.

After that I scoured pawn shops for worthy used games, and purchased a PS2 and a Dreamcast of my own. Later came my own Gamecube and X-Box, with a decent selection of games for each system.

These days I have a Wii and a PC, along with a DS and PSP. I'm always considering getting a 360 or a PS3, but have so far held off the urges. I seem pretty content with the portables and my PC for the most part.