Greetings Gentlemen,
I was born in the third world country of Papua New Guinea in 1988 to missionary parents from the United States, and as such, my primary language is English.
My first memory of gaming of any kind was on my family's old DOS computer with an amber monochrome CRT Monitor. This was in 1992-1993, when I was ages 4 and 5. Here is an idea of what it looked like:
The only game I really played for any length of time was
Prince of Persia, in glorious orange and black in perpetual slow motion. My older brothers Nate and Josh also had a few other titles:
Alley Cat,
Formula One Grand Prix,
California Games,
Barbarian, a
Frogger Clone, and a Flight Simulator I can't recall the name of.
The Grand Prix game was virtually unplayable on our computer, so we would often bring our games to our Uncle's house to play on a full color monitor at full speed on his faster DOS PC. Other times it would be at our Grandfather's house on his Windows 3.1 PC. On occasion we saw other computer games at friends houses including DOS ports of
Pacman,
Space Invaders,
Centipede, and
Choplifter.
My oldest brother Nate was exposed to console gaming via a friend's Famicom with the following titles:
Double Dragon,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2,
Super Mario Bros,
Duck Hunt, and
DuckTales. At one point we heard of a man in town that had a MegaDrive and Mega CD but we were never permitted the opportunity to try it out.
It was because of this exposure that we purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System (FC) at a Pawn Shop upon returning to the United States in the Summer of '93. Two games came with the system, the
Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt Game Pak, and
Super Mario Bros. 3. In addition, we picked up the NES Zapper (Beam Gun), NES Advantage (ASCII Stick Turbo), and NES Power Glove (PAX Power Glove).
It was already late Summer of '93 and my brothers had already beaten the Super Mario games. I, at age 5, on the other hand was still learning the fundamentals, such as holding the controller still, not looking at the buttons, running and jumping with a decent level of coordination, etc. That holiday we discovered the Super Nintendo (SFC) . For Christmas we pooled our funds to get one with two controllers,
Super Mario World, and a free
Super Mario Collection Game Pak that was mailed to us several weeks later. Josh also picked up a Gameboy with Tetris.
In the Summer of '94 Nate purchased a Super Scope with
Yoshi's Safari, we rented many games along the way but it's mostly a blur in my memory. In September Josh was given Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for his Birthday.
The next purchase was when Nate picked up his Sega Genesis with two controllers and
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for his Birthday in November of '94. I remember playing Turtles in Time in the Arcades that Thanksgiving with 4 players, my dad, my brothers, and myself. A month later Josh and I split the cost to get
Donkey Kong Country for Christmas and Nate picked up
Sonic and Knuckles.
In the Summer of '95 Nate and Josh got a job for a potato farmer and bought
Super Mario Kart,
Sonic the Hedgehog 3,
Sonic the Hedgehog, the
Super Star Wars Trilogy, Disney's The Lion King and Aladdin (the Genesis Shiny version, not the SFC Capcom one) and
Star Fox. I remember seeing the Virtual Boy in stores demoing Red Alarm and finding it quite strange. I recall borrowed Mickey's Magical Quest and Aero the Acrobat from friends for long periods of time. Capcom's Quest left an impression on me, and I was delighted years later when I found out there were two sequels.
During Holiday '95 Nate and Josh bought
Donkey Kong Country 2 while Josh and I got
Yoshi's Island along with a a Super Famicom controller clone. At this point Nate had been saving for the Saturn for over 6 months and still had a ways to go. I remember seeing Tekken on demo in stores and Josh being interested but Nate scoffing at it compared to what he had seen of Virtua Fighter 2.
Right before school got out in Summer of '96 Nate picked up his Saturn, right when many of his friends were buying the cheaper Sony PlayStation. We then drove to the West Coast before returning to New Guinea. At that point Nate picked up BUG! for the Saturn, I got Astal: Shining Crystal Legend for the Saturn, and Josh and I got Super Mario RPG. It was at that point we flew back to New Guinea with our "fleet" of consoles as well as a new Windows 95 PC with the Zodiac Game Pack demo disk.
Holiday '96 Josh picked up
Donkey Kong Country 3 for Nate. Summer of '97 I received
Vectorman for my Birthday, Nate got the N64 with
Super Mario 64. Nate's old friend also got us a bootleg copy of
Quake for our PC, and lent us several great games like
Tetris Attack,
Super Metroid,
Secret of Evermore,
Loony Tunes B-Ball,
Turtles in Time,
A Link to the Past,
Mortal Kombat,
Killer Instinct,Lylat Wars (PAL Star Fox 64),
The Legend of Zelda: The Triforce of the Gods, and
Stunt Race FX.
Spring '98 began with the arrival of
Mario Kart 64 and 3 additional controllers, followed by
Wave Race 64. Somewhere during that time Nate burned out the Nintendo 64 Power Adapter by plugging it into 240 Volt power, and his Saturn mysteriously died not long after. For Christmas '98 then we got him a Saturn Model 2 with a proper Japanese style controller,
NiGHTS: Into Dreams demo,
Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG,
Sonic 3D Blast, and
Sonic R.
Over that year I also borrowed and played several other titles, notably
The Legend of Zelda,
The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventures of Link,
Metroid, a Super Gameboy with The
Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island, and
Contra: Hard Corps.
Spring '99 brought
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the cost shared between Nate and I, as Josh had gotten more into buying music, clothing, etc.
Nate graduated for High School that summer and we flew back to the United States. He was already saving for a Dreamcast, and we all were going through a bit of culture shock and were happy to see the latest and greatest again. I remember seeing Power Stone, Hydro Thunder, 18 Wheeler, Virtua Fighter 3, Sega Rally 2, Soul Calibur, and Sonic Adventure either on display in an Arcade or Dreamcast in stores.
Those were good days, I remember Nate had a subscription to the Official Dreamcast Magazine. That was the beginning of true gaming education for me. It was the first time we had a new demo disk every month, and the first time I was allowed to use the Internet and started looking around for gaming news. I remember discovering emulators such as NESticle, Genecyst, ZSNES, Snes9x, etc. Being an 11 year old, I naturally read sites such as
http://IGN.com, or gaming sites like the long abandoned
http://chocobo.keytech.com . I also remember
http://Sega.com (before it sucked) being great back in the day and I learned a lot from that.
I'll never forget the 6th issue of the Official Dreamcast Magazine that included a fighting game feature that parodied the movie Fight Club. It really inspired me to learn more about games and how they worked, etc.
At that time, the end of '99 into Y2K I bought
Sonic Adventure,
The Legend of Zelda: Mask of Majora,
Super Smash Bros, and
Eternal Arcadia (I nearly bought Grandia 2, after playing it years later I'm glad I got Skies). Nate had gone off to college and left me with his original Dreamcast. He came back with a copy of Quake III Arena, Phantasy Star Online with a demo for Sonic Adventure 2, and a few other demo discs. I also remember renting Shenmue, and Mario Story at that time
I also forgot to mention that back in New Guinea I had gotten into RTSs at the age of 9 and 10. I remember playing Warcraft II,
Red Alert,
Command and Conquer Gold, Warcraft, 7 Kingdoms and eventually
Starcraft.
So when we had come back to the United States I wasn't just looking at console games but also PC games. I remember picking up
Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, and then later
Red Alert 2.
Our family then left Nate in the United States and went back to New Guinea. Right after we got back I was given
Sonic Adventure 2 for my Birthday in Summer of 2000. It was from then on that I'd order games online and have them shipped to Nate, who would then ship them overseas to me. I remember picking up Westwood Studios' Nox and Epic Games' Unreal Tournament, but we never really upgraded our PC after that so I mostly played PC games at my friends house. I remember discovering UFO: Enemy Unknown, and Total Annihilation at a friends house and being completely blown away.
Soon after was the first time I had played a pen and paper RPG a friend of mine had written himself using Lego pieces as avatars. It actually grew to be pretty complex and years later when I finally played a few traditional pen and paper RPGs I was pretty underwhelmed. The same friend also introduced me to Deus Ex, Fallout, and Arcanum: of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, some of the best games I've ever played. He also showed me System Shock, and Starsiege: Tribes.
Back at my house I was surviving on the Dreamcast games I had but was trying to save for a new system. I was torn between the Xbox and the GameCube. Most of my friends wanted Xboxs and Halo. I was more interested in the Xbox as a successor to the Dreamcast with most of the Dreamcast sequels such as Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Shenmue 2, Crazy Taxi 3, etc. as well as new titles like Gun Valkyrie.
Ultimately though I could only buy one system and my love for Nintendo franchises won out. I had a pretty poor choice of titles I had shipped over with the system, including
Phantasy Star Online: Episode I & II which I chose,
Starfox Adventures which I had a choice out of 3 that were on discount ( I could have instead gotten Metroid Prime or Biohazard 0. In hindsight I still think my choices where pretty limited), and
SSX Tricky (which I did not choose but came free with the system)
I did soon after, however pick up some excellent titles, including
Super Smash Bros. DX,
The Legend of Zelda: Baton of Wind,
Soul Calibur II,
Viewtiful Joe, and finally in January 2005, my first online preorder, Biohazard 4.
During those years I got pretty into emulation, mostly Super Famicom Japanese turn-based strategy games, but really anything that was recommended to me that I could get my hands on I would try. I began to build my own little library and game history compiled from different sources and would hand it out to my friends at school on CDs to check out at home. I often would read news and new articles on
http://rpgone.emuxhaven.net/ -- a video game translation group site
http://agtp.romhack.net/ -- ditto
http://dejap.eludevisibility.org/ -- ditto
http://www.fantasyanime.com/ -- a video game news site
http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/ -- a video game developer tool site
http://www.neillcorlett.com/ -- a music plugin site with articles and translations
http://www.pbernert.com/ -- a playstation plugin libary
http://www.caitsith2.net/ -- a video game music library
http://www.zophar.net/ -- An emulator, music, SRAM, etc. library, news site, and forum
http://snesmusic.org/v2/ -- a video game music library
http://www.htloz.net/ -- a Zelda specific fan site
http://www.racketboy.com/ a Sega enthusiast store, news site, and Trading and Discussion forum
In New Guinea we still had to connect to the Internet via 56k dial-up modem, but in spite of that I started to get interested into MAME, and larger ROM downloads. This cost me a lot with my parents, but being a teenager I could afford it by doing odd jobs for people around the neighborhood (being a foreigner, I couldn't get a real job).
I also tried to branch out a bit and broaden my horizons by ordering
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, and
SSX On Tour. Soon after my family and I returned to the United States the Summer after my 11th Grade year. At that time we passed through Singapore and Japan and I got to go to an arcade in Narita Japan before we completed the final leg of our journey and it was a pretty incredible experience.
I remember seeing House of the Dead 4 cabs, King of Fighters, Tekken, Taiko Master (4 I believe), GuitarFreaks and DrumMania V2, Beatmania, and many more which I can't remember. This was a particularly interesting experience because I saw the DS Lite, and Guitar games before they really became super popular in the United States.
I knew that the heart of gaming was in Japan from reading up on Nintendo and Sega, and from all the fan translated Super Famicom games I played, but actually
being in Japan cemented that reality for me.
In the first few months I was back in the United States I didn't have many friends. This led to me spending more time on Arcade research, as well as participating on some forums. Forums I used to lurk on from week to week I now posted several times a day, like
http://romhacking.net -- a miscellaneous hacking library, news site, and forum
http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB3/ -- An emulator developer forum
I also started to visit
http://assemblergames.com -- a video game collector's Trading and Discussion forum
http://acmlm.kafuka.org/board/ -- a hacking forum (before it went to shit)
http://smwcentral.net/ -- a Super Mario World specific hacking forum
http://mamedev.com -- a MAME development and news site
http://www.shmups.com/ -- An STG discussion forum
http://forum.metroid2002.com/ -- a Metroid forum
http://forums.grandbell.net/ -- a Fire Emblem forum
http://www.smashboards.com/ -- a Super Smash Bros. forum
http://www.neo-geo.com/ -- a Neo Geo Trading and Discussion forum
http://ocremix.org/ -- a video game re-mix library and news site
http://www.zreomusic.com/ -- a Zelda re-mix library site
http://www.sonic-cult.org/index2.php -- a Sonic, Sega, and other news site
http://www.sonicretro.org/ -- a Sonic fan, and hacking site
http://board.byuu.org -- a Super Famicom emulation development forum
and a few others.
I got really into the ROM hacking scene, though I never did any work myself. In recent years I've discovered:
http://shoryuken.com/forum/ -- a FTG news site and forum
http://sdtekken.com/ -- a FTG news and information site
http://virtuafighter.com/ -- a Virtua Fighter news site and forum
http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/ -- An arcade Trading and Discussion forum
http://gamesx.com/ -- a console and PC enhancement site and forum
http://nfggames.com/games/ -- a game news site and forum
http://nfgcontrols.com/ -- a controller specific news site and forum
http://vgm.hcs64.com/ -- a video game music library and forum
http://arc-nova.org/ -- a video game music library
http://tasvideos.org/ -- a tool assisted speedrun library, news site, and forum
and now this site.
Since we've grown my my brother Josh is no longer anything than a casual gamer, if that. Nate, while he still keeps up with game news doesn't seem to play much of anything anymore. More over, He doesn't seem to have any interest to dig deeper into games like I'm trying to pursue arcade gaming etc. No, he's content with just the regular game news. His interests now lie more in computer software, and film than games these days.
You can find the shorter version of growing up with games from his perspective which touches mostly on Sonic, Sega, the Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast here.
Nate's Thoughts
Since I bought my Gamecube, I've acquired a PS2 Slim with boot disk, Wii, PSP, Xbox 360 Slim, and hopefully soon to be a DSi XL and PS3 Slim. I also have a Naomi 1 board, Hikaru, Choplifter, Soul Edge, Soul Calibur, and CPS2 Board. I'd like to pick up a G-Net and Neo Geo soon. We shall see.
I'd also like to eventually get an MSX2, Amiga, PC-88, X68000, BeBox, Apple2, and a Mac. but who knows how long that would take. Then there are handhelds... so much to do and so little time. In any case I need to play games more and build my skill level, I would like to perform a few modifications on my existing consoles though, get a few more monitors, maybe a projector and some professional video capture equipment. An XRGB3 might be nice also but I prefer to run my games on as native a format as possible, such as a 15khz RGB CRT display (I have two as of now).
About 6 months ago I got a Sega Mark III with Doki Doki Penguin, Wonder Boy, Zippy Race, and Girl's Garden and it really broadened my appreciation for older titles. I've had a Famicom Twin for awhile but only a few days ago got one with a working disk drive and was really impressed by Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally, truly a precursor to Super Mario Kart. I'd like to eventually get an original Pong, Atari 2600, and work my way on up.
Probably some of the most memorable games in my past have been Super Mario Bros. 3, Evermore, Mickey's Magical Quest, Astal: Shining Crystal Legend, Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG, Final Fantasy V, Starcraft, Deus Ex, Arcanum of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, Mario Story, Smash Bros. DX, Eternal Arcadia etc.
In the last year I've become a collector of many arcade sticks, PCBs, home theater equipment, 15khz CRTs, video game consoles etc.
I found this site 2 days ago and liked the kind of content I found here and saw that you're already affiliated with some of the other sites that I frequent so it seemed like a natural fit. Glad to be here.