The Journey Begins - Game Biography
Originally Written: July 19th, 2020 / Completed July 4th, 2024
Well.. I've finally done it. I enrolled back into school. I sure hope I made the right decision. Let me explain my whole backstory. This will be a very image heavy post so get ready! I am about to chronical every gaming memory I have to demonstrate how ingrained video games are in my DNA.
Growing up, my dad never slowed down in getting me into new games. At some point when I was a kid my dad got me an original Gameboy. I took that thing EVERYWHERE. Some notable games I remember playing were Megaman 3, Ghostbusters (which wasn’t what I thought it was going to be as a kid), Start Wars, Links Awakening, Metroid 2, Mario Land 2, and of course Pokemon Red. When I was a kid, these were games that I played all the time. They hold the biggest memories for me. I actually lost my Gameboy while playing Pokemon red under the seat of my dads car, and couldn’t finish it until years later. Better late than never though I suppose. When I was just a little kid, I actually remember taking my Gameboy in the bathtub with me. Needless to say, it stopped working. My dad took it apart and somehow fixed it. The Gameboy was a tank. Thanks Nintendo!
Eventually my parents divorced, and I spent time at both households. My dads house, and my mom’s apartment. When she met her husband at the time, he lived in the same apartment complex and had a son about the same age as me. His name was Anthony and he eventually became my step brother. We would spend a lot of time playing Super Mario Brothers and duck hunt together. Wishing each others player would die so we could have a turn at the game.
In 1990, that was a great year. That was the year for Christmas that Dan, my mothers husband, had wrapped under the tree a brand new Super Nintendo for us kids. I remember how excited we were as we opened it up. We had tons of games for it too. Super Mario World of course, Super Star Wars are the two games I remember us getting for Christmas. We of courses later got all the classics like Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid. We also got a few weird titles like Mario is Missing (which we never played), and various looney toons games. Too many games to list here. But that was a great Christmas.
This love of video games kept growing as I got older. I remember my dad getting the 3DO and playing Escape from Monster Manor, and I remember the first time I played the Playstation 1 too, I played Crash Bandicoot and I also got a chance to play Wrestlemania the arcade game. I also have distant memories playing resident evil as well, but I don’t think I got very far because it was too hard for me at the time.
The game love didn’t stop there however. I remember that for my 9th birthday (1996), I got one of the coolest game consoles. The Nintendo Virtual Boy. Now.. Before you start hating on it.. I’ll be the one to standup and defend that thing with all my heart. I thought that the Virtual boy was so amazing. It was 3D gaming! I didn’t even care that the graphics were all red. To me, it felt more high tech honestly. I spent hours playing 3 of my favorite games on the console. I remember playing Teleroboxer, Wario Land, and Mario Tennis. I never suffered from any sort of headaches, the only thing I suffered from was a low stock of batteries.
How can anyone talk about the Nintendo 64 without listing a thousand games that they've played and loved on it. This was the first system I think that was cross household. My mother and her husband both had this console, as well as my dad. So I played a lot of games for this system. Some of my favorites being Diddy Kong Racing, Mario 64, Ocarina of time, you know.. all the classics. The first game I think I had ever completely finished (a rare feat even today) Was for the Nintendo 64. It was Shadows of the Empire. I have very vivid memories playing this game by myself in my dads bedroom while he was at work.
During Christmas of 1997 I remember that my dad had to move in with my grandma. He was having a house built, and that’s just the way it worked out. I remember very clearly, feeling very sneaky, because under the Christmas tree.. The wrapping paper was a cheaper quality.. And you could sort of see right through it. That was the year I remember getting the Sega Nomad. It’s hard to find any real good pictures of the device today, because I guess it didn’t sell very well. But what was cool was that you could play any Sega Genesis game on the go. (except Decap Attack!!) My dad had a Game Gear that I played for a little bit, but I don’t really have any memories of it . But the nomad was all mine. I played Ghostbusters for so many hours on that thing. Also the Nomad didn’t have a reset button… You cant imagine how I felt playing xmen and getting to the part where you need to press the reset button.. and trust me when I say, moving the power button really fast to off then back to on isnt the same as pressing the reset button! The worst part about the device was the battery life. It took 6 AA batteries, and you were lucky if you got 3 hours of play time. You could use the genesis power adaptor, but unfortunately, my devices power port was defective/damaged, and it never worked reliably. It also had a player 2 port on it that you could plug a genesis controller in, and play games 2 player. It had an AV out, but while I was at my moms, I never had a dedicated TV I could use, so me and my step brother Anthony played World of Illusion for hours cramming ourselves together to see the nomads screen.
During Christmas 1998, my dad was still living my with grandparents and we were having our Christmas there. My dad loved Christmas. It was his favorite holiday. I felt like it was the one time of year he would introduce all of us kids to the newest and hottest toys. Every year, he would get us things we had never even heard of before, but somehow it always ended up being the coolest thing we had ever seen. In 1998, for Christmas, my dad got me the Game Boy Color. Along with the only game I can remember him getting me. Turok 2 Seeks of Evil, the gameboy Camera, the gameboy printer. I know that over time I would play some other really great games like Super Mario Bros Deluxe, and Links Awakening DX.
I don’t remember the exact timing of the this memory but I’m thinking it was sometime in 1999. I have a great memory with my first experience playing the Neo-Geo. My dad loved it so much. He always loved to talk up the cool aspects of the consoles he got. While the NeoGeo was released many years earlier this was my first time experiencing it. The house was freshly built and there wasn’t a lot of things there yet, I remember the smell of fresh paint. I actually remember now playing WWF on the Gameboy color! Crazy memory! But that’s not the main memory.. I played for the first time.. King of the Monsters!! I LOVE that game. There was so many great games to play. Of course my dads favorite game was Magician Lord so we played that a bunch too!
Later in the year the Dreamcast came out and of course my dad got one. I remember thinking how cool the VMU was and how with Sonic Adventure you could take your chow with you. (I was a 90’s kid.. everyone loves virtual pets) What really was a blast though was Soul Calibur. I had never played a game like that before and it was really rare back in those days to see a game running at 60 frames per second. It gave a really fluid look to the graphics that I’d never seen before. I of course also had the please of playing games like Crazy Taxi and everyone’s favorite The House of the Dead 2 with the light gun. It’s such a shame about Sega because that console was a lot of fun and really a technical marvel.
It was around this time, where my brother Eric and I started getting creative ideas for games and movies. This due in part to my dad giving us a computer in our shared room at his house. We had access to a huge library of games to play and software to use. I dabbled in all sorts of games but one of the first games I ever completed was Star Wars - The Phantom Menace. 3D Games were sort of new at the time so it was a large undertaking for a 12 year old kid. One of my favorite games of all time come from this time period. Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of heaven. Even right now, looking at screen shots for this game.. Make me want to stop writing and go play it. Maybe I will.. No I can’t! It is one of the first game I ever played, where the world felt "alive" and things you did in the game had consequences. Kill innocents? They fight back? You kill them too? You get caught and you'll go to jail. It was the first game I'd ever played with a reputation system. There was some voiced dialog and it was just the coolest game I'd ever played. Its still completely playable today. I don’t think I’ve ever completed it. I’ve restarted the game at least 20 times and stopped before the ending. Maybe it’s because I never want it to end… Aside from seeing how great games could be aside from their 2D counter parts. My dad also got Eric and I the Lego Movie Studio kit. We spent a lot of time making funny little stop motion movies, adding in sound effects and dialog. It was a blast.
Around that same time, I cant remember how we got into it. But my brother and I started using a program on the computer called Klick and Play. This right here.. Is where it all started. Klik and Play was an instant game creator. It was scripting free, a totally visual editor. You had lots of components and premade assets. You could set paths for characters, control physics, screen transitions, music, everything. It was all done through this thing called the "step-through-editor." You would let the game run, and if an object collided with another.. The game would pause, and a prompt would popup on the screen and say something like "Prince_Character - COLLIDED WITH - monster_01" and there would be a visual guide on what is supposed to happen at that point. You could play a sound effect and destroy the character, or you could subtract a life point. You could really customize the game the way you wanted without the need to code. At that time, I had no idea what coding was. This was a super fun and easy way to create little games and my brother and I spent a ton of time making and playing them.
When I turned 14, I finally got my own console. All the consoles up to this point belonged to my dad. But it was my 14th birthday, my dad and grandpa took me to an electronic store. I think it was Circuit City. They told me that they were getting me my birthday present. I can’t remember specifically how I knew about the PlayStation 2 (Most likely a recommendation from my dad) but that’s what we were going there for. When we got there, they also offered to buy me my own TV! I also begged for a flatscreen.. When I was younger I thought a flat screen was a super thin tv but it actually was just what its name implies, a tv with the screen that was flat. I was living at my mothers house and didn’t have my own game setup. I shared a room with my step brother Anthony. I had SO many games I loved. There are a few series that I fell in love with. My best memories come from 3 specific series. Time Splitters 2, and Castlevania Lament of Innocence, and Spider-Man 2. I didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid because I didn’t have a job! What’s really cool is that I remember being the PS2 the first console that I really got “social” with. I remember not having many games but I remember borrowing games from friends and trading them. That’s actually how I first played Spider-Man 2. It’s been such a long time that I don’t remember how I got some of the games I actually spent time playing. I remember playing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with my friend James a lot too. I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the consoles more flagship games like Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. It’s funny how much of a gamer was dad was that when my entire extended family went to the beach for the 4th of July my dad brought a PS2 and while my cousins were being loud at the pool and on the beach we were hanging out inside the hotel playing Man Hunt!
In 2001, for Christmas, my dad got me the Game Boy Advance. Along with the only game I can remember him getting me. Metroid Fusion. At first I remember feeling the Gameboy Advances shape was a little bit weird, but I really grew to like it. My dad also got one for himself so it was pretty fun to borrow each others games and take them when we went somewhere. It was a really fun memory. Interestingly enough, there were a lot of amazing games on the Gameboy advanced that I simply missed out on. I never played Zelda Minish Cap, any of the Castlevania games. I would play some of those amazing games later on the DS, but more on that later.
A short time later (can’t remember exactly when) my dad picked up a GameCube. I remember thinking that the console looked silly. Maybe beacuse I was some angsty teeenager or maybe because I felt the PS2 was “cooler” I’m not sure why, but I didn’t really get into the game library of the GameCube until much much later. I remember very few details on which games he got. The launch titles were slim pickings so I think we had Luigi’s Mansion. Eventually I remember seeing the staples like Mario Sunshine and Metroid Prime. But other than that, I don’t have too many fond memories of it.
When I was in highschool, my gaming roots continued to grow. In a strange way though. I became fascinated with programming my own games on the TI-83 family of calculators. I never knew how to make graphics move on the calculator so most of my games were text based or they used code to draw lines and points in 1 of the 10 slots available for plotting graphs. I wish I still had some of those games. One of my favorites was I made a Windows operating system clone complete with start screen, loading animations and even a few small programs you could run. Not only did I enjoy making games, I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to play games on the calculator either. This was of course more fun because you were supposed to be learning in class not playing games... that made it more exciting!
I graduated high school in 2005 and a lot of my time around then was focused on the band I was in and getting my first job. I know the timeline is a little bit out of order here as far as release dates for consoles and the order I got them but stick with me! I ended up working at Bose Corporation in March of 2006 where I met Nat. He was a really nice guy and was retired miliary. I don’t remember how it all happened but he took me to the military base where I bought myself an Xbox 360! I was so excited. What’s super weird is that I don’t even remember what games I got! I know that I had for the Xbox 360 I had Gears of War, Dead Space, and even bought Joust from the Xbox Marketplace! I know that it was MUCH later, but I also wanted to throw out there that when I met my wife (then girlfriend) we bonded over playing Minecraft local couch co-op in 2012 while making late night food runs to Sonic and to 711 convenient store for candy and snacks.
This was also when I really started to enjoy portable gaming. Not even on the go but laying in bed or sitting on the couch at my grandmas house. I had a Nintendo DS that I can’t remember where I got it. It must have been a Christmas gift from my dad due to the release date. I had a lot of games for that system. Some of the more notable titles I remember: Super Mario 64DS, New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart DS, Mario & Luigi Partners in Time, Mario & Luigi, Bowsers Inside Story, Chrono Trigger DS, Tetris DS (one of my favorites) and Nintendogs.
My first real experience with a Castlevania game was Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and to this day it’s one of the games I come back to over and over. The other games were novel experiences and great RPGs. One thing you can always say about Nintendo is that the first party games are always fun.
In the same spirit of the DS I decided to actually go out an buy myself the PSP. This was touted as the “high-tech” answer to the Nintendo DS as the games were on a disc! I bought this at Circuit City with the first credit card I ever got the Circuit City store card. I had some great games on the thing too which was fun. Some of them were duds but some were pretty fun even if just for a small experience. A few notable games I had on this console were WTF (Work Time Fun) a horrible little time waster which had an interesting concept, Mega Man, and Mega Man X, DC Super Hero’s and Family Guy.
Around that same time I also managed to pickup a Playstation 3 for $599!! Which I had to originally return because it was too expensive for me at the time. I ended up with the 80gb and a bunch of awesome games. These games ranged in variety. Some notable titles I remember playing were Resistance Fall of Man, Dragon Age Origins, Resident Evil 5 and of course the ultimate game..one that would spawn one of my favorite game series of all time… Demon’s Souls. I could talk forever about the souls series of games, but this blog is about consoles and my gaming history. Maybe I’ll write up something about the souls series in another blog post.
Details from here are a little sparse because as time goes on, I was able to buy my own games, trade them in, get new ones. So some of those long lasting imprinting memories I made when gaming was limited to me aren’t as magical. Don’t get me wrong! I continue to this day to be amazed and wowed by so many games out there. I have lots of other amazing memories of all the consoles and handhelds I’ve bough from the time this story ends up to today. Before I end this whole life story of gaming up I want to end on one of my best gaming memories. The time I got the Wii.
Wii Retail Packaging
I don’t remember at what point I decided to attempt such a crazy thing as getting a Wii. I’m thinking this was in 2007 because It was shortly after they launched and they were sold out literally everywhere. I went on a crusade to sit outside of Kmart all night long to get one. My brother Eric decided to join me on the quest. At the time my tiny coupe car actually supported DVD playback on the nav system so I took a season Everybody Loves Raymond with me. We got some Taco Bell and from about 8pm we sat and watched the show, talked and ate awesome food all night. It started to rain but it didn’t stop our fun. We just ate more snacks we picked up and watched TV as the hours passed. When the daylight started showing up we got out of the car as we saw other people pull up in their cars. We were 3rd in line for the Wii. We were SO lucky. The store only got in 4 units!! I bought the unit for $250 and got out of there as fast as I could. Needless to say I needed to sleep a good chunk of the day to recover but being young has it’s advantages. I didn’t need too much recovery time. I LOVED the Wii.
There were so many amazing games on there. When I picked up my console the only game that seemed interesting outside of the quintessential Wii Sports was Trauma Center Second Opinion. (one of my favorite games) I was also SUPER excited to dive into the Nintendo e-shop. I could listen to that theme song forever.
The console would go on to be one of my favorite ways to play games for quite a while included amazing games like the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Metroid Other M, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart Wii, Super Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4 with motion controls and so many other amazing games that came out after.
Time would pass on and I would (as you’d expect) get every new console that would come out as I was growing up. I love games so much. They give us some unique experiences and make us feel things you can’t get from other forms of media. They challenge us, they humble us and the connect us to other people and ways of thinking. I know this was a long read. My history with games is super lengthy but it’s one of the biggest reasons I’m so passionate about them! I hope you had fun reading this and maybe going back down memory lane with a few of the game images provided.