besides playing around with a commodore computer when i was very young, i remember playing games on early (unknown brand) computers when i was in 1st grade. but my first major gaming experience was the original NES. for a very long time that’s all i played and cared about. eventually throw in some apple II’s, IBM PS/2’s, and a tandy here or there. but the majority of my gaming childhood revolved around the NES (i had a gameboy as well). i can’t recall when i moved on to the super nintendo…probably sometime in 1991. and here’s the weird thing…i was such a nintendo fanboy and when i finally got the SNES it didn’t wow me that much. it’s like i was bored of it. partially because kids are fickle, but i think mostly because i started to get into PC gaming in ’92 or ’93. the PC was a whole nother animal and it was more exciting to me at the time. so i’m pretty sure i only had super mario world with my SNES and eventually sold the system.

here’s a snippet that i wrote some time ago about how i felt when i played Doom on the PC for the first time. an experience that truly blew my mind at the time:
“…wolfenstein-3D was pre-loaded on the PC, which too was something that really stunned me as something amazing. at that point i guess the most advanced graphics i had seen were the super nintendo’s. later on, one of my dad’s friends walked me through using PKUNZIP over the phone and i unzipped Doom on a set of disks the person had given me. i’m not sure where he had gotten the disks, but it was a full copy and it seemed months ahead of Doom becoming a buzz word. when i first loaded it i had another of those feelings that this was something really incredible and that i was glad to be in the right place at the right time to witness gaming history.”

at some point during those years my parents bought me a sega genesis. the notion to do so came out of nowhere. i had a lot of fun with it because it was something different to me. so by ’94 i was probably playing genesis and PC games on my 486. then donkey kong country came out for the SNES and i was wow’d by its pseudo 3d graphics. the latest and greatest graphics always caught my attention back then. so then i suddenly wanted an SNES again and eventually got one. this time around i was all in on the SNES again and ended up getting several great games such as final fantasy 3, secret of mana, and ogre battle. by the time i sold my 2nd SNES i got a decent deal of money for it because of all the rare square and enix games i had. i sold the genesis sometime before that.

i rented a nintendo64 from blockbuster when it came out. visually i was impressed by it at the time. however, its graphics definitely did not hold up to the test of time. i had fun playing the n64, but never bought one because i knew that square wasn’t going to release any cartridge games. prior to this i rented the nintendo virtual boy as well. despite being a ridiculous apparatus it had some good games that were fun. the device was impractical though and probably should have been nothing more than a tech demo. approximately around this same time my dad picked up an atari 2600 from a garage sale or flea market. i used to play it occasionally for its novelty value. i didn’t grow up playing the 2600 so it wasn’t near and dear to me.

eventually got a playstation1 sometime after that specifically for playing square games such as final fantasy 7. well i got it and thought it was kind of cool, but then ended up losing interest again like i did the first time when i had an SNES. i think what contributed to my lack of interest was ff7 not being anything like final fantasy 3 was on the SNES. i really liked final fantasy tactics though. anyways, i ended up neglecting the PS1 and eventually gave it away. i focused exclusively on playing PC games after that.

fast forward to 2003 and i was wow’d by playing halo1 at a friend’s house. so i ended up getting the original xbox. then in 2010 i ended up getting a nintendo wii. nowadays i don’t really focus on playing games on any particular platform. smartphone, console, pc…doesn’t matter to me. they all have their strengths and weaknesses. i plan on getting an xbox 360 probably within a year. mostly because i miss playing the halo games.