In this case... video games.
Given that I am in my forties at the time of writing this, you can probably guess that I go back a good way with games. Aside from the few attempts at playing the old coin-op arcade games like "Pac-Man", "Space Invaders", and "Defender" in the arcades, I began playing on the second generation consoles. My first was the Atari 2600, but I also owned the ColecoVision and got to play on the Intellivision some as well. To be fair, I played most of the games that I played in the arcade on the console with the equal amount of "relative ineptness" though I will say that I think I was rather good at "Defender" and "Star Raiders" on the Atari 2600.
To be honest, I barely noticed the "video game crash of 1983" on any sort of personal level. I simply didn't have the "die hard interest" in video games that I gained a lot later own in life. After my parents divorced and my mom remarried, I got a Commodore 64 from my mom and step-dad which was pretty my introduction to "home computer gaming" and in general learning to use a computer. And by that point, the whole "video game crash" had came and went for me. Interestingly enough, I used my Commodore 64 as much as a "word processor" as I did a gaming computer. (A trend with me and computers that would for a number of years.) Not long after I got that Commodore 64, I got the original 8-bit Nintendo console and was back to doing MOST of my gaming on console.
For the most part, my interest in gaming has always largely been stuff in the RPG and Adventure genres and in puzzle games with a few noted exceptions. I never got too much into sports games largely because I was never very good in sports. (A fact that a couple of my cousins never let me forget back then and to some extent don't now.) The one exception on the "sports games" was pro-wrestling games. I usually did have decent at most of them. Oddly enough, I generally suck at fighting games due to never remembering all the moveset stuff.
I've pretty much owned consoles in all the older generations of consoles or had access to playing them. until the seventh generation of gaming consoles. On the other hand, my gaming on the PC was largely limited to whatever games I could bum off my step-dad (who was an avid PC gamer at one point and he still plays but not like he once did) which were some of the early first person shooter games. I also had access to a lot of educational games from my aunt when I was at her house (because she was an "educator" for a number of years). I also remember playing games like "Sim City", and games that I probably shouldn't have been playing like "Leisure Suit Larry" and the "Police Quest" franchise. (Side note: I wish the Police Quest franchise would be revitalized somehow.)
By time I was done with college in 1999, I was still primarily gaming on console. This was largely due to being able to take my Playstation or my N64 back and forth between home and college. By the end of college there was one PC game that came out which was among my favorite for a number of years: The Sims. I guess I should do a post at some point about what has become my love-hate relationship with The Sims franchise. The other game that I really got into on the PC for a bit shortly after this was a short lived game called "Freedom Force" (and its sequel Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich). Though to be honest, I always preferred the Sims though that is no longer the case.
The Playstation 2 and the Xbox came out the year after I graduated college. For the most part, I played on the Playstation 2 as far as console though I would switch to Xbox a bit later. I did a LOT of video game renting back when Blockbuster was a thing. Especially on the Xbox since I started out renting the console from Blockbuster as well on several occasions. I did manage to discover "Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" on the Xbox which has both become a key part of my current love of gaming and become my favorite game franchises.
Despite all of this, my interest in gaming really quieted down by the mid 2000s. There are reasons for this, some serious and some joking, which I will probably cover in another blog post. By the time I went off to The Art Institute for my second degree, the extent of my interest in gaming was mostly "The Sims" and a few other random things here and there like whatever WWE game was out at the time. I remember not being able to play Sims 2 when it came out because I didn't have a computer that could run it. And honestly, I couldn't tell what console I had by that point. I remember playing a few things here and there on the Xbox and the Playstation 2 but couldn't tell you if I was playing on my on console or someone else's console. When I got to the Art Institute in 2005, I got rid of my old PC all together and was mostly on my Mac though I had a PC laptop at the time that didn't handle games for the most part. I got to play Sims 2 on the Mac but didn't get any of the expansions to it. I had a few other Mac games as well. (Think it was literally like 3 or 4 games I had on the Mac in the entire time I owned it..)
After my grandmother died, she left me some money which I used to get an Xbox 360 (among a few other things). Why did I get an Xbox 360? Simple: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was going to be Xbox 360 before it was going to be on Playstation 3. An entire year earlier in fact. I still preferred renting games over buying them though I bought a few games initially. Though by time I graduated from The Art Institute at the end of 2007, I had gotten rid of my Xbox. 360. There's a lot of reasons for this which I won't get into as to why but it seemed necessary at the time.
I didn't own another console till 2010. In 2009, when I had my double hernia surgery, my buddy Daniel lent me his Xbox 360 (as he was playing his Game Cube) to play while I recovered from surgery. I rented both of the Godfather games and one of the WWE games to play during this time. He also lent me his console just after I was hospitalized in October of 2009 as well. In 2010, I got a used Xbox 360 and I've been loyal to Xbox for the most part since then even though I play more on PC at the moment.
My return to doing any sort of "PC Gaming" was quite recent in fact: November 2016. The biggest reason for my getting a new PC was that my old Mac was basically on its last legs and Apple swapped from using the "Power PC" processor to an "Intel processor" which basically meant that my old Mac G5 couldn't run any newer software. I had a Mac Book (another item I got with part of the money that my grandmother left me) for a while also which started having issues in 2015. Coupled with my growing interest in trying to do some sort of streaming on Twitch, it made sense to look into getting a PC. Funny side note, for the longest time, I thought Steam was a game pirating platform like Napster or Limewire. I kept getting asked if I had a steam account and I kept scoffing at it because I didn't know what Steam was in relation to computer gaming.
As a side note, I had an Xbox One until a few months after I got my PC. I've joking said that a certain voice actress talked me into selling my console to get a new game for which she was doing some voice work. To be honest though, I sold my Xbox One so I could afford both all the Sims 4 DLC that I had come out to that point and get Mass Effect Andromeda was a bonus that I had not planned to get but did because of that actress. Having said that, I will be getting another Xbox One sooner or later. There are a handful of games that I have found I prefer on console over PC. [Edit, 12/2022, I have an Xbox Series X now.]
Alright. Enough rambling about all that. I was working on stuff for my Twitch channel and getting sidetracked with a but of nostalgia and memories about my history gaming. So... I wanted to make sure things were documented here. Anyone who knows me that well knows that I am bad for going off on random tangents. It has gotten worse since I have gotten older.
That's it for now, I guess. There will be another blog at some point regarding my favorite games, genres and franchises. [Edit 12/2002: Had some stuff here but moving it to a different post.]
Until next time... Cheers.
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