From the top!

This is going to be a history.



A history of my gaming career.



If I bore you, if games bore you, or if history bores you, skip this post, and go here instead.



Somehow, I managed to talk my parents into getting me a Nintendo for my birthday at some point during my childhood. 6? 7? My mom was dead set against it (for whatever reason, I never really found out why), but my dad seemed to think that it wouldn't do any harm. (Thanks, dad!) This led to many years of me asking for the new console or a new game for most major (and several minor -- ever heard of 'children's day'?) holidays.



My dad had a difficult time setting up the system. In retrospect, I have absolutely no idea what the problem was. You had an RF adapter, it went to the TV, and...that was pretty much it. If you had an antenna, you could hook it in to the back of the adapter - in series!



The first game I really remember owning was Top Gun for the original NES. I remember you had guns...and missiles. For your A and B buttons. That was it. You went up and down, left and right, and shot either bullets or missiles. Let's use this as my baseline gaming experience. (I'm not going to discuss Pong or anything like that. We'll go with Top Gun. Ok? Ok.)



The next big milestone was Zelda. The original. The Golden Game of Goodness. I actually had chicken pox, but I also had Zelda waiting for me at home. Fortuitous. Maybe my immune system and game-center of my brain worked together to make this happen. If so, kudos to them.



Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the main character's name was Link. So I named him Zelda. (Yes, a girl's name. But I was 7 or 8, what did I know?)



For those of you who owned the original Zelda, you'll recognize that naming your character after the game was the secret way to get all of the dungeons to change locations and get weird. Which made it really hard to discuss the game with the only other person in my grade who owned the game.

Once I figured out that I should name Link something that wasn't a frilly girl's name (like Ace. I did Ace a lot. I have no idea why. Probably because it was easy. A, skip, C, skip E. Filling out names and passwords back in the day was really annoying.), the game got fun.



It's dangerous to go alone, take this.



Soon I was shooting swords and catching fairies and upgrading my armor from green cloth to red cloth to white cloth. Because we all know, white shirts do a *much* better job mitigating life-threatening injuries than green shirts.



Also during this particular era, I played/beat Duck Tales a few times.



The next genre of games changed my life. Honestly, I really think my life would've been much different if I had never played Final Fantasy. It taught me about heals and damaging spells, leveling up so you don't die in a dungeon, saving money for that awesome sword, how good pixels should triumph over their evil counterparts, and that my parents were super hyper conservative when it came to anything fantasy related.



Uh oh.



That's right. We were driving somewhere for a family outing of some sort, and I was excitedly rambling on about this game my friend had, and how there was white magic for healing, and black magic (this was my mistake) for damaging, and how red mages could do a little of both, plus stab people...



My parents (dad, this time) heard 'black magic', and forbid me from owning Final Fantasy. I was crushed. No, seriously. I loved that game.



Eventually, they came around. I owned it, and all was right in my gaming world.



Other games in this era: Bubble Bobble (1oo levels...twice? I can't believe I put up with that), Dragon Warrior (first RPG I ever beat. I was shaking and excited afterwards. I got a 'that's nice, dear' from the parents -- they never quite 'got' video games), and Castlevania...oh, and Ninja Gaiden.



Mega Man was another staple. Holy crap, fun games. I started with 2, and played most of the ones through SNES. (Remember the red and blue dots that served as passwords but were really just the ugly hybrid of bingo and Go?)



I'm specifically avoiding talking about Zelda 2, because it sucked.



Moving on. Time for Super Nintendo.



My friend from school got one. With the mario game for it. Oh man, I was so curious. Yoshi? What the...who the...GREEN DINOSAUR THAT EATS THINGS!



I went over to my friend's house after school one day, and his mom answered the door. (This was my first visit). "Hi, is Logan there?" I ask.



"Oh, you must be his friend here to see the nintendo," she surmised.



I took this to be a judgement against my motivations. How dare she assume that I was just there for a video game! (I wasn't, actually. I liked the guy.)



"Um...I'm here to hang out with Logan..."



She laughed and let me in.



He was in the living room playing -- he had a Yoshi. And oh man. The graphics. The *graphics*. I was in awe. We spent hours playing, I went home and promptly asked for a super nintendo for Christmas. (Sorry, folks. I know I made shopping difficult...always asking for the gamer version of tickle-me-elmo. Thanks for always coming through for me, even if you don't quite understand video games.)



Between Mega Man X, Zelda (A Link to the Past), and eventually Super Mario Kart (!!), it was a good time for a good system.



Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III were two of the best games I have ever played. And I've even gone back and played II recently (released as IV for the DS), and it was still great. Nice work, Squaresoft.



It was awesome when Cecil converted from a Dark Knight to a Paladin (even though he looked really gay afterwards) by fighting ... um ... a mirror of sorts. I don't know. It was a spiritual journey. It's best not to question.



One fight after the conversion: "Cecil gained a level. Cecil gained a level. Cecil gained a level. Cecil gained a level. Cecil gained a level."



Guess they couldn't figure out a way to have his Dark Knight level transfer over to New Holy Knight level?



Final Fantasy III -- The mech units walking through the snow in the opening credits. I got the game for Christmas, and I was playing in the basement under a blanket next to a space heater (it was a different time! we weren't scared to death of space heaters!) and I was so excited that I sprinted upstairs to drag my parents down to show them how awesome the snow pixels were. Also, it was a fun game. Aside from having to use an equipment slot on sprint boots so that walking around didn't take forever and a day.



And Chrono Trigger. Frog's theme song. I don't even need to say more, if you've played it.



(And The Secret of Mana. I had a friend that lost one of the three characters because it *melted*. It was turned into a snowman by some random ice monster. And he saved the game afterwards. So the character still had dialogue, but couldn't fight or do anything. I think he beat the game with the main character and the girl...sans 3rd guy)



It's important to note that I was a Nintendo kid. I didn't have a Sega (my wife did), but I did enjoy Sonic when I had a chance to play it.



Nintendo 64:



Mario in 3 dimensions for the first time. Yet another Zelda game. This console was a huge step past SNES, but for some reason, the games weren't very memorable for me. Probably due to the lack of Final Fantasy-esque type games.



Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun playing Mario Kart 64 and things like that, but it lacked (what I would consider) a killer game.



Playstation fixed that.



Final Fantasy VII. This game was amazing. I rented it. There was a slight problem, though. I also had to rent a Playstation to play it. Ok, that's fine.

Except that the console didn't come with a memory card. WTF is a memory card? Why can't I save directly to...oh. CD. Crap.


So, I left the Playstation on all weekend. And my friends and I played all weekend. Except we couldn't save. So if we died, we lost and had to start over (this did happen).


We actually made it to the end of Disc 1, I think.


Needless to say, FFVII and Playstation were on my Christmas list.


Thank you, Cloud, for being so entertaining. And Ifrit, the first summon.


The story for Gamecube is similar to those from N64. Metroid was awesome. Still no real epic games.



PC Gaming:



Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III, Heroes of Might and Magic II, III, Diablo I, II



(Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard, 3dO, 3dO, Blizzard, Blizzard...)



Warcraft was my introduction to RTS -- and I think it was for most of the people of my generation. It never became my favorite genre, but I really did enjoy playing through the campaigns. Command and Conquer and Red Alert were both great games to play with and against friends.



Like building resource silos all the way into their base so you could construct tesla coils next to their barracks...and then send in Yaks for the kill! (Best name for an airplane ever.)



Xbox:

I went out on Black Friday. When the Xbox was released.

I purchased one with the 'emergency' credit card my parents gave me. I brought it back to the house. I said 'um...I bought my Christmas present. I can take it back if you want, but they had one, and I wanted to make sure I got it'.

It came with Halo. That was really the first FPS I enjoyed, and I enjoyed it to death. To the point where I was playing it through on Legendary. (That is/was/always will be hard). I didn't actually MAKE it through. But the point is, I liked it enough to try (and die a billion times. Curse you, The Flood!)



Current Generation:



This brings us to (basically) the current generation of games.


I played FF:XI for a while. It was difficult to get into a group as my favorite class (dragoon), so I gave up and went for one of the most desired, but least fun to play (bard) just so I could level.


It was work. The I realized, "Hey, this is work. And they aren't paying me for it! Screw that!" So I quit.


Then World of Warcraft came along. It was revolutionary. It was like Diablo mixed with FF:XI, with a generous helping of Warcraft lore.

I loved it. I leveled to 60 on my rogue, who was an enchanter. Because I thought enchanting would be cool. (Incorrect)


40 man raids. Random AFKs, facepulls, guild drama, loot arguments, etc. If you did them, you don't need an explanation, and if you didn't, no explanation will adequately convey the frustration of dealing with that stuff.


The best part of original WoW incarnation? PvP. I leveled a mage after seeing a friend of mine play his, and he became my main. I hit the rank of Commander (Alliance side -- Lieutenant General for Horde) and bought myself the cool black cat officer's mount. (Saved meself 500 gold, I did.)


3 or 4 people in the group I ran with ended up hitting the top PvP rank. That was a freaking accomplishment back in the day. But we had Arathi Basin down. If we didn't 5 cap, our team leader was pissed. Good times.

A special message to all of the horde side from that time (before and during patch 1.12) - I'm sorry for all of the times I frost nova'd you right outside of the tunnel to our base, as our flag carrier was about to cap. I didn't realize that you were, in fact, the cooler faction, and if I had it to do over again, I'd burn that little gnome to a crisp.



Present Day Games:



Borderlands is the best mix of FPS and RPG I've ever played. The berserker is hilarious. BWAHAHAHAHHAHA! *deep breath* AHHHH!!! AHHAHAHAHAHHH!!!!! RAAWWWWRRR!!!!


And so on for about 30 seconds. While punching things in the face. Like dive bombing birds. So great.


Fable 3: I didn't beat this yet, and I probably won't for a long time. I have other games to play, and I watched my wife do it...so that will just have to do for now.


Starcraft 2: Protoss should be my race. They should. It fits my play style so much better. But I know Terran well enough that I'm sticking with that until I get back up into the Platinum bracket.

WoW: Cataclysm...will get its own, more detailed post.