About Me

Hello all,

So you want to know more about me?  I'm afraid there isn't all that much to say, but I will provide you with some background to my enthusiasm about gaming if you insist.

I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember.  I still have an old memory from a night when I was maybe 3, or even younger.  I woke up and couldn't sleep, so my parents let me on the old Windows 95 computer and played some silly kids game.  I don't remember what it was, but I remember I had fun.

As I was growing up, I used to play a lot of those old Humongous Entertainment games, like Putt Putt and Freddi Fish, as well as Lego Island and some racing games.  Even to this day I hold those games in my heart, but what truly got me into gaming was an old family friend who gave us their old and kinda broken Nintendo 64 when I was 13.  It came with a few games, one of them being The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Getting murdered by chickens

Now here is a funny story.  When I was younger, probably around 7 or something, I played an Ocarina of Time demo in Toys R Us.  I somehow happened to find the chickens (Also known as Cuccos) in the game and proceeded to chop them with a fully charged spin attack.  As all Zelda fans would know, the chickens got angry and proceeded to attack me.  Needless to say, being new to games like that, I died quickly, but I was determined to find them again and get revenge.  Sadly, I had to leave before I could exact my revenge upon them.  But, as fate would have it, years later, here was the game I had been playing.  Now was my chance to kill the chickens!

I'll be honest.  At the time I thought the art style looked silly, and I just wasn't very interested in the game overall, but I continued playing to finally exact revenge upon the chickens.  But slowly and surely, I fell in love with the land of Hyrule.  I had never played a game with such depth, and such a masterfully crafted storyline, and such endearing characters.  It was my first true gaming experience, and I was relishing every moment of it.

After playing this game, my love of gaming was forever solidified.  I saw that gaming wasn't just something silly, but something wonderful and artistic that invoked powerful emotions and encouraged critical thinking to overcome obstacles.  Gaming wasn't stagnant like other entertainment medias.  Here, the worlds were always alive, and you could play them in any way you liked.

Jump a few years forward.  I was 18 I believe, and I had just bought my first laptop.  For the past few years I had been playing games on the N64, Gamecube, and the lackluster family computer.  Games such as Age of Empires 2, Starcraft, Runescape, and Super Smash Bros. Melee had become a part of my life, but now I was ready for more gaming.  Having a low budget, I started off my gaming with the most obvious choice of Team Fortress 2.  Slowly I worked into other games, like Portal and Half Life, but perhaps the two that struck me most powerfully were the Mass Effect games and the first Bioshock.

Mass Effect went more into character development and player choice, and I developed attachments to the characters.  A character death in the Mass Effect games would seriously affect me for a couple days.  It even delved into some deeper ideas, such as whether a robot could ever gain sentience.

Bioshock though went where no game I had ever played had gone before.  Bioshock delved deep into the human psyche.  It talked about the importance of morals and government to humankind as a whole.  The twist at the end was purely mind-blowing; an ending which could only have been accomplished in a video game.

In recent years, I have dabbled with game engines and computer science, but I cannot seem to gain momentum on any projects.  I just don't seem to have the resources to make my ideas come to life.  I've always dreamed of designing a game and implementing it.  Maybe one day I will be able to do so, but for now, I am running a humble blog about gaming!

So there you have it!  My gaming life story!

If you would like to share your own story of how you got into gaming, please leave a comment in the section below!

Game on!