10 Things I Love: Video Games

I logged into my WordPress dashboard the other day and realized I was only ten entries away from my 1,000th blog. I’ve been busy with life and haven’t had the motivation to post lately, even so much as letting the fifth anniversary of the website come and go without a mention.

Since 10 is such an easy number to work into blog entries, I thought I’d do a “10 Things” list, but break it into ten separate entries with more content than a typical top ten list does.

The topics discussed are in no particular order, except for the 1000th entry.

10 Things I Love: VIDEO GAMES

It’s no surprise to people who know me and for the regular readers of this website that I’m a big fan of video games.

It all started when I was a small child and my granddad let me play his Colecovision for the first time. Playing with those blocky characters and obnoxious tweets and chirps that passed for video game sound effects opened me up to a whole other world that I had never seen before.

My next great adventure in video games came with the release of the most perfect toy in the world for a boy in 1988: The Nintendo Entertainment System. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have one myself, but luckily I had a friend who was terrible at it and asked me to beat Legend of Zelda while he watched. I was over at his house every weekend for like two months exploring the first version of Hyrule, occasionally breaking to jump on Koopas dressed like an Italian plumber.

If the Colecovision was my gateway drug into video games, then Nintendo was the crack that got me hooked for a lifetime. The addiction only got worse as I grew older.

THE ARCADES
As the years passed and arcades began dwindling down to mostly movie theaters and an occasional mall (as the early 80′s arcade craze had come and gone), a few revolutionary titles started popping up that took my interest.

One of these was a game that has no equal: Street Fighter II Turbo Edition.

This simple 2D side scrolling fighter game lured a whole new generation of teenagers back to the arcades, myself included. My previous arcade game experience only really included the original sit-down-in-it Star Wars game, the Simpsons game, and of course the classics like Galaga and Pac-Man. Street Fighter II blew me away though. It wasn’t just that you could play with your friends in the game, it was the fact that you could KICK THEIR ASSES in it.

Later Mortal Kombat would come and kick all our asses bloodily, and the Street Fighter series went from sequel to sequel to eventually fighting the entire Marvel Universe and SF parent company Capcom’s entire character library. Arcade fighters have all but disappeared nowadays as the home consoles are easier and cheaper to develop for, but you can still find them hidden in corners of places, begging for your quarters.

THE PC YEARS
The very first REAL PC Video Game I played (read: not Solitaire) is one that would have made my Mother very angry if she knew I was playing it (at 13): Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. The very adult-oriented game only accepted text input commands like “LOOK IN SINK” “GET DIAMOND RING”, or “TALK TO HOOKER” “WEAR CONDOM” “HAVE SEX WITH HOOKER”. (Seriously, if you didn’t wear the condom, you died immediately afterwards as the hooker endlessly smoked her 8-bit cigarette.)

I followed it up with less risque fare from the fledgling Sierra Industries: Space Quest, Kings Quest, Quest for Glory, etc. As the genre grew popular and people actually became interested in playing computer games, along came other classics like LucasArts Maniac Mansion (and the awesome sequel, Day of the Tentacle), and Escape from Monkey Island, all using the same text-based input and eventually using that newfangled mouse device people liked so much.

I also played the original Wolfenstein 3D, the precursor to DOOM, QUAKE, Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, etc. Quake was amazing in that it was the first FPS to allow multiplayer right out of the box, albeit only over my 9600 baud modem. Yes, I’m name dropping the l33t early 90s tech. Maybe I’ll talk about my ZIP drive later.

Real Time Strategy came into play with Warcraft and Command and Conquer, titles that still are producing quality games today and eventually leading to my current obsessions: MMO’s.

THE MMO’S
Most people know of Ultima Online or Everquest as their first MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), but I started with possibly the worst one I could have chosen, but was blinded by the belief that the franchise wouldn’t let me down: Star Wars Galaxies.

It was.. disappointing. After barely a month playing I quit the game and discontinued my account, believing I was signing off of MMO’s for ever. I eventually heard of a new one that included one of my other loves: Comics. That game was City of Heroes.

I played CoH for about eight months, never quite reaching the max level (which was 40 at the time), but through the game I forged some far away friendships that I would never have had the opportunity to in the past with other games. Eventually I and most of my other CoH mates moved over to the current giant elephant in the room: World of Warcraft.

No need to go into WoW as I’ve discussed it several times on this site already and pretty much everyone knows what it is at this point. I have tried other MMO games since, including City of Villains, the follow-up/expansion to CoH, Dungeons & Dragons Online (OMG SUXX0R), Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeon Runners, Guild Wars, Tabular Rasa, Fly For Fun, MapleStory, and a couple others not worth mentioning.

CONSOLES
I have a love/hate relationship with consoles. Since I’m such a hardcore PC gamer, i’m always reticent to thrown money on a $300-400 console that is planned to be obsolete in 2-3 years, if not less when I already have a computer more than capable of playing many of the same games. The need has grown even less over the years as computer graphics have gotten better and better.

I have owned a few consoles over the years. The first being the Sega Genesis, which I (foolishly) traded my friend the whole original Weapon X saga in Marvel Comics Presents for it. That saga is worth about four times today what the Genesis was brand new when released. I had Altered Beast, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Kid Chameleon (with its maddening 99 levels of nonsense).

I was able to finagle myself an XBOX when it came out and was actually quite pleased with it for a few years until I finally sold it to a video game shop. I even bought a refurbished PS2 just to play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, then returned both when I finished. I absolutely hate Playstation and their ridiculously expensive peripherals that are required to play games (read: Memory card) but don’t come included with the system.

PS3 and XBOX360 dropped and I could care less. I would only want the XBOX360 just for the media-center capabilities of it, but the PS3 is a glorified BlueRay marketing device with a dwindling catalog of stale video games.

However when I caught wind of the Nintendo Wii, I became a rabid fanboy to which I still am a legion of today. Not only was it moderately priced, but the games are actually FUN on it and encouraged me to do more than move my thumbs (and throw the controller across the room in frustration). Guitar Hero III, Super Mario Galaxy, and Smash Brothers Brawl all reinforced the absolute FUN of the system.

THE FUTURE
Who knows? With strange and new titles like Spore coming out, as well as rumors of Blizzard’s new MMO and Starcraft II, the future of video games is only getting more and more integrated into daily life for a lot of people. Either they’re grinding to level whatever in their MMO, outracing their opponents on Mario Kart, sticking a plasma grenade to your friends head in Halo 3, or even attending a concert in Second Life, people of all ages are beginning to enjoy video games in many forms.

For me, I’ll be right there playing whatever new time sucking game comes out next until I am old and my grandchildren have beaten me ruthlessly in Unreal Live Tournament 2060.