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My Gaming History

Updated 12.03.2006

I was reading Gamespot.com and came across an article (Electric Sibling) that talked about how all the authors childhood memories could be traced back and paired with an equivalent gaming experience. I realized while reading the article that I too have many fond gaming memories that no doubt shaped my life and drove me in the direction of my current personality, hobbies and career. This is an attempt to chronicle them for fun.

(Oldest to Newest)

We may or may not have had Atari games before this one. I was so young I really can't remember. I do remember opening this game on Christmas and being confused why it wasn't a Beta Movie tape. My dad quickly explained how to turn on the Atari, how to load the game, and how to start playing. After that, there was no turning back. You play the character of ET, tasked with moving throughout the forest gathering the pieces for your communicator to call down the mother ship and escape. A simple premise, but amazingly difficult to carry out. I can still remember the supreme feeling of accomplishment I got from completing the quest.

The first time I experienced this game was on my cousin's Atari. After playing it for a weekend straight I had to have it. Only much later did I learn that you could never get to the end. I was a little disappointed but that didn't keep me from trying to beat it for a few more weeks. I just couldn't believe that such a cool game with diverse and practically impossible reflex puzzles had no end.

My cousin upgraded to a ColecoVision system thanks to his diligent paper route. I was introduced to my first simulator. You were the sole captain, navigator and bombardier of a B-17 flying fortress. The graphics were cutting edge for the time and there was something strangely satisfying about dropping bombs on targets from thousands of feet in the air. I was completely in awe.

Anyone that went to public school probably played this title. It was educational and immersive, challenging and rewarding. Only the best kids in class could beat the Oregon Trail and I was proud to be one of them.

Somehow, one of the neighbor kids got a hold of a Commador64 computer. This game was one of the most varied and diverse I had ever experienced. It was like having four separate games rolled into one. First, you had to remove your aircraft from the space station in zero-G. Then, you had to side-scroll your way through enemy defenses. Third you had to lob grenades to get inside the castle. Lastly, you had to battle a robot and disarm a nuclear device. Purely BRILLIANT!

Goonies was a revolutionary concept. You controlled two characters on the board, but only one at a time. You switched between characters by clicking the top joystick buttons. Each level was a puzzle that was only solved by using both characters cooperatively. It was highly challenging and addicting.

And then came Nintendo and gaming was born. What can a person say about Super Mario? It took everything to the next level. It is what convinced you to convince your parents to buy this new crazy thing called a POWER SYSTEM.

For some reason this game just clicked with me. The controls were awesome and the different strategies for attacking and solving each level made the replay value skyrocket. This is possibly the best side scrolling game ever created in my opinion.

This was my introduction to RPGs. I spent a whole day stacking wood so that my dad would buy me this game. Every single grueling minute of hard labor was worth it. The endless character building, the skill attainment, the open-ended strategies, all served to create a thrill not found in other games. I also realized, in the process, how dangerous RPGs can be. I lost 4-5 months of my life on Dragon Warrior.

AAoW was my first introduction to turn based strategy. After picking a terrain and an army, you would use your turns building up and fortifying your positions. At certain times you could choose to engage the enemy. You would pick your strategy and let the armies go at it.

The classic evolution of real-time macro-simulation. When this game was first released, the terrain creator and various building skins were sold separately and I bought them all! I totally remember sitting in my computer chair at 3am falling asleep while my city turns cranked by on "rabbit" speed so that I could get enough money to build a stadium.

If I had to pick one game that turned me into a "gamer" it would be Wing Commander. After I experienced that game, I started my life long quest for better, more powerful computer hardware for the simple goal of game play. It was Wing Commander that convinced me to sell my Dads Tandy 1000 and convince him to upgrade to a 386sx complete with SuperVGA monitor. I think I lost an entire year of my life to Wing Commander. I think I played through the branching story line 4-5 times making sure I hit every mission possible. Quite the experience. Looking back on those days, huddled with my friend Leonard in the basement, him working the keyboard, me piloting the ship. Priceless.

This is the first Real Time strategy game I ever remember playing. It was a simple idea. Build a castle. Defend it against people. There was no real end if I remember correctly. I played it continuously, built numerous castles, flexed my RTS muscles and moved on. Little did I know that my Castles experience with resource gathering, construction, maintenance, and diplomacy would prepare me for the flood of RTS games in the late 90s.

While I had played a few Sierra adventure games prior, Space Quest III cemented in my mind the fact that adventure games were all about the story. Even after moving on to more advanced VGA games, I still found myself going back to SQIII for some nostalgic fixes. Space Quest III was also the first time I remember using the Internet to track down walkthroughs and hints because I got so stuck. It may have even been back in the day when Sierra had a 1-900 number you could call to get automated game hints. I do remember using that a few times.

This was my first exposure to real-time multiplayer gaming. Galactic Empire was a "door" game that operated on a dialup BBS. The BBS I used had five phone lines meaning you could be playing the game with 1-4 people in real time! You were flying your ship, they were flying their ship. The object was to take over the galaxy... trade... make war... It was all done with ASCII text, but that didn't stop it from being an amazing gaming experience. The BBS actually made you pay for time to play the game (in addition to the free 60 minutes they gave you per day) and I shelled out BIG! The most memorable part was mapping commands to the F-keys... F5 was "scan sector" and since that was the only way to "see" where you were going or where the enemy was you were continuously slamming it! I also remember spending $300 to upgrade our modem from 1200 baud to 9600 baud to gain a tactical advantage over the other players... with a faster screen draw for the sector scan you could hit them with your mines easier. I remember so many people complaining to the SysOp that it wasn't fair the Markelz family had a faster modem. It eventually started an arms race and we were all using 14,400 before the fad was over.

LOD was a "door" game that operated on a dialup BBS. The object was to build up your character in RPG style and venture into the nuclear wastelands (all represented in ANSI graphics) to complete quests. At the same time, other players are building their characters and trying to complete the same quests before you. Only one person could play at a time for 30 minutes a day so it made sense to be strategic and use your time wisely. I was so impressed with it that I decided to build my very own BBS (Z-Street BBS) running TriBBS Software to host it for local kids in my town. This game taught me alot about the online world in the early 90s. I had wild success with it and can only thank the creators of this game. The excitement I found running the BBS spurred me on into my computer career. Of that I have no doubt.

This game invented the first-person-shooter (FPS). I mean, it didn't invent it, there were others of course, but this took it to the next level and spawned an entire genre of gaming. I vividly remember taking turns playing this game with friends in my basement. The lights off, the sound cranking. It was an experience.

When I was a Junior in highschool, my town finally got a decent arcade. It was called the "Fun House" and soon became a popular hangout for me and my friends. One of the first games we got involved with was NBA JAM. The four-player action was intense and, after it was ported to Super Nintendo, many an hour was spent rallying the SNES 4x adapter. A friend of mine actually stole the adapater from a local audio/video store because he wanted to play 4x NBA JAM so badly. Craziness!

Full Throttle revived Adventure gaming for me. For awhile I was trapped in a world of FPS and simulators. LucasArts stepped in there with an engaging story, riveting characters and some of the first use of 3D and animated graphics in adventure gaming.

When I was in Junior High, I played the Battletech RPG. I probably never played "real" Battletech. We sort of made up the rules as we went. It was fun though, building Mechs, characters and having little battles with the figurines. Being in college and buying my first Pentium computer, I was finally able pilot an actual Battlemech. I was able to go online and engage in war with dozens of other Mechwarrior pilots. The childhood dream was fulfilled.

By this time the Internet was in full force. Half-life and it's Team Fortress Quake knockoff took online gaming, for me, to the next level. Sitting on a college LAN, I spent many a late night hour shouting down the hall to my gaming friends as we rallied the online world with rocket launchers and shotguns.

After a long hiatus from gaming, I was thrown back into the fray with RtCW. It had been awhile since I experienced the rush of a good FPS environment. Along with my rekindled passion for gaming, I found myself sucked into the Chicago LAN party scene.

Back when I was younger, maybe junior high, I remember sitting around with my computer buddy Leonard discussing what we thought would be the ultimate computer game. In our minds it would have to be a persistent 24 hour world where the battle was always raging. You could choose to be anything you wanted... fly aircraft, drive tanks, be a foot soldier, a medic, a transport driver, etc. It would be hundreds of people fighting hundreds of other people from all over the world. That is what PlanetSide is. It is the realization of a childhood dream and my first step into Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooters (MMOFPS). It is, in one word, amazing.

Truth be told, I didn't really like the first Halo... not because it wasn't a good game, but because I just wasn't comfortable with using an Xbox controller for first person shooters. Halo 2 was the game that finally gave me a reason to learn how to use the controller better and open up the entire world of console FPS games. Aside from the awesome multiplayer gameplay, this Halo 2 does everything right. It makes it easy to find and join games, it eliminated the lobby system, it created RSS feeds so you can publish your results, and it saves a "log" of your game so you can review your performance online. Halo 2 will probably be called the first time an Xbox Live game that was done right.

I was never a big racing game fan until I played this sucker. The sense of speed pulled me in and the arcade drivability of the cars kept me entertained for hours. I rarely find the time to finish a game all the way though. Not so with Burnout 3. I spent 37 hours beating all the tracks and crash intersections. This game marks a turning point in my appreciation of racing titles.

I was never a big RPG fan until I gave Oblivion a try. I rented it because everyone was raving and I needed to see what all the fuss was. Needless to say, it quickly became my favorite game on Microsoft's new Xbox 360 platform and opened me to a whole new genre of gaming. The world of Cyrodyll was amazing to explore and there were surprises around every corner. I found myself a little sad when I finally finished the game. Luckily there were expansion packs and downloadable content that kept me coming back!

More to come as my gaming life unfolds...

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