Evolution of a Gamer

I am 30 years old; this in itself is not a magnificent achievement, but the fact that my entire life that I can remember has literally been defined by video games. Now while I have not spent every moment from the time I was say 6 years old to the present playing video I can admit that a good amount of that time was spent in front of a TV screen enjoying the stories and movements of tiny pixilated characters. Getting lost in a different world that was so much different of my own, dreading when my parents said that it was time to turn that machine off and I had to leave that world and go back to chores and homework.

Starting with an original Nintendo and Super Mario with his pal Luigi stomping goombas and smashing blocks, moving onto The Legend of Zelda mastering the boomerang and trying to put together that tri-force all while wearing that odd green hat as Link. Falling in love with my first sports game, Bases Loaded Baseball where you had a save code for every game you played in a season (imagine spiral notebooks full of codes for this one game!) and knowing if you beaned certain players they would charge the mound and get kicked out of the game! All of a sudden a new option arose, the Sega Genesis! A sleek black console with something different about the controller; a third button! That button opened up all new possibilities and changed game play. Altered Beast, Street Fighter II, and a new game that just about sent parents everywhere into insanity, Mortal Kombat were all enhanced by the addition of this third button that opened up new moves and a better experience. These two systems were my first real adventure into the world of gaming and it would consume parts of my life.

Next this grey box with purple buttons that had infinite possibilities. The Super Nintendo and their addition of not only a fourth button but two bumper buttons added even more user control over the gaming experience. All of a sudden Donkey Kong and his new little buddy Diddy could be launched out of barrels and would zoom around on mine carts that provided hours of fun. Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat got better and you could do more with each character that made the gaming experience much more fun. Nintendo did not wait very long to introduce a new system that would change my gaming life with the Nintendo 64. The one game that would consume hours of my time on this system was GoldenEye 007. Not just the single player story mode that made you feel like you were really James Bond fighting the bad guys and getting the girl; this game was all about the multiplayer feature. You could play with 3 other people and fight to the death with sniper rifles, proximity mines, and of course the one shot one kill golden gun. While other games had multiplayer features this was the game my brothers, friends, and I could get together and spend endless hours having fun.

Nintendo would reenter my life again in the form of a handheld device called the GameBoy. Now I could game anywhere I wanted and this fact is beyond awesome. Nintendo would advance and enhance their GameBoy franchise with the GameBoy Advance and GameBoy Color that would making the portable gaming experience even more enjoyable. My GameBoy color given to me by my grandmother survived my deployment to Iraq and provided me with a much needed escape during some downtime.

Oh the original Xbox! Now there are four buttons, two bumpers, two triggers, two 360 degree sticks, and a D-pad! Gamer control was now in full effect. The Xbox would change the console world with the addition of online gaming. I however did not really take full advantage of this online option and choose to play either solo or with friends on the same console just like with systems of the past. Just like my GameBoy and Xbox found a way into the tent I was sleeping in while in Iraq and my platoon mates polished off a ton of Madden seasons and created some outlandish players. On the home front the Madden addiction continued with my best friends and we had Halo wars in our apartment that would get quite heated.

My introduction into online console gaming came via the Xbox 360, one of my best friends, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. This opened up a whole new world of gaming for me. I could connect with my friends after I moved to a new state and I could meet new people and t provided for a much more fun gaming experience. Madden got better, I picked up FIFA again, Call of Duty of course, and other games that I probably would not have played had it not been for the online option. The Xbox 360 is by far my favorite system with the game options and online game play that just appeal to me as a gamer.

Nintendo once again reentered my life with a new console the Wii. The Wii was fun for me for about a month and then I found myself on the Wii shop option buying old original Nintendo games to relive the beginning of my gaming experience. The Wii had its moments, but not enough to keep my hooked long enough to consider it a true part of my gaming life.

I am fully aware that I have not listed every game known to man, every feature or addition, or have I listed every system because honestly I have not played them all or they just did not do it for me as a gamer. My 30 years of life have been defined by the evolution of gaming. New technologies in the gaming industry coincided with new technologies in the real world; new TVs made the gaming experience more realistic, the addition of DVDs and Blu Ray that could be played on consoles made them multipurpose and part of the family unit as a whole. The best part about the gaming experience is that it is completely individual. My gaming experience is something completely different that the person reading this right now, but we all have something in common…we love games and they are undoubtedly part of our lives.