A Boy and His Blog or: Why I Like Gaming

Almost as far back as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by videogames. One of my earliest memories is going with my dad to Sears to stand in line to pick up a Magnovox Odyssey2. We had some good times playing such time honored classics like KC Munchkin, Alien Invaders Plus!, UFO, and Baseball. Sure, all of those games were bad knockoffs of more popular games (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroids), but they planted the seed for my future enjoyment of videogames. A couple years later, a friend of mine got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. After playing the Odyssey2 for so long, this thing completely blew my mind. Odyssey2 games were fun, but most of the action took place on one fixed screen. The 2600, on the other hand, had games like Pitfall!, Atlantis, and Pole Position which had graphics that scrolled across multiple screens. It had ports of actual arcade games! I begged my parents for one, but I never got one. Not a big deal, it just gave me an excuse to go play at my friend’s house more.

 

Years later, I remember seeing an ad for The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and I was just awestruck. I remember it being the most amazing game I had ever seen. There was this crazy commercial for it that got me facinated with Octoroks, Tektites, and Leevers. My friend with the 2600 upgraded to the NES, and we spent countless hours playing Contra, Gradius, Zelda, and Metroid. For that reason, the Konomi code will be emblazoned on my brain until the day I die. I never got a NES myself when I was a kid – my parents had trouble locating one for my birthday so they got me a Sega Master System instead. I was initially disappointed, but soon I grew to love it. The graphics and sound were superior to what the NES could pump out, and it had its fair share of great games. Golvelius made a good Zelda replacement; Space Harrier is still one of my favorite games of all time; Shinobi was even better than the arcade; and the original Phantasy Star proved to me that the story in an RPG video game could be every bit as intricate and involving as a science fiction novel.

My mother went back to school to get her teaching degree when I was in middle school, so I would often wait for her to pick me after school at the nearby arcade. Thus began my quest to become good at videogames - because being good in an arcade means bragging rights in addition to more game play for you quarter. I got so good at the classic staples (Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, the arcade version of Super Mario Bros.) that I could play for two hours with a dollar. I wish that I still had reflexes like I did back in the day. In high school, I had a buddy of mine that would go with me to the local Putt-Putt place on Saturdays. They always had a deal where you’d get 20 tokens and a game of Putt-Putt for $5. We would try to get through Golden Axe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Final Fight, and Smash TV serially all off of the same 20 tokens. We never quite pulled it off (Smash TV always was the breaking point – it was too fucking hard), but we always had a blast trying.

By the time I was in high school, I was usually earning enough money to drop on the latest consoles. I had a Genesis and then later a Super Nintendo. I remember Mortal Kombat II dropping for the SNES when I was in college – we had many drunken tournaments seeing who could pull off the most Fatalities, Babalities, and Friendships from memory. I kind of drifted away from console games while in college; I mainly got into PC multiplayer gaming. Doom hit my freshman year, and playing that against a friend over a modem was freakin’ cool at the time. We had the most fun with a game called Rise of Triad – the “Ludicrous Gibs” in that game kept us in stitches.

I picked console gaming back up during the tail end of my time at college. Things were slowing down a bit, I was getting nervous about entering the “real world”, and I had some cash from an internship I was doing, so I picked up a Playstation. I remember picking up Final Fantasy VII right before final exams and spending WAY more time playing that than studying. For some reason I found the adventures of Cloud to be more entertaining than studying for my Human Factors Engineering exam.

Over the years since I’ve picked up just about every major console that’s been released – N64, then the Dreamcast (man, I wished that one would have succeeded), a PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and now a 360. Although most games that I’ve played since college don’t seem to leave the same impression on me as they did when I was a kid, there are a few exceptions. Beyond Good & Evil, Ninja Gaiden (Xbox), Resident Evil 4, a few of the Shin Megami Tensei games, and the Prince of Persia games all struck a chord with me the same way games did when I was a kid.

Well, I just realized that none of this actually tells you why I enjoy gaming. I see gaming the same way a lot of people see books or movies – it’s an escape from reality, a way that you can explore an alternate universe and do things you could never do in real life. I remember the games of the past stretching my imagination in ways that no other medium (besides books) could. The graphics were crude and basically just placeholders for the alternate world – my imagination had to fill in the gaps between what the creator had envisioned and what was technologically possible. Games today are much more technologically impressive, so pushing my imagination isn’t the main draw today. But Oblivion lets me explore the nooks and crannies of a huge medieval-like world; Saints Row lets me create mayhem in the streets and protect (or blow away) pimps; and Dead Rising lets me take on an oppressive zombie hoard in a way too realistic mall. Gaming is a great way to escape from the pressures of real life and associate with some like minded friends. Books can accomplish the same thing (and I still do enjoy reading), but I prefer my entertainment to be more vivid, visceral, and interactive – gaming gives me that.