I seen this video today and it reminded me about how much of a pain in the ass gaming used to be. Even though it was a pain in the ass, most gamers would have had it no other way.
I can remember shooting that damn dog on Duck Hunt and I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever done. The first system I ever played was not mine, but my cousins. It was an original NES. I remember it was such a pain in the ass to get the thing to even load a game up. When you got it all to work thought it was something special. Then it happened. I weaseled in while my cousin was away from the house and I played Mario for the first time. I could not believe how amazing it was. At this point I knew that I really loved it, but the term gamer had not been introduced to me yet. Then I remember the movie Wizard. At the end when they make it to the tournament and there it was. The Super Nintendo.
When I first seen it in the movie I thought it was fake. I did not think something could be so real looking. So from that point on all of my allowance was being saved I would have a Super Nintendo. The Christmas came. What did I find under the tree? That’s right a Super Nintendo. As I opened the box I seen the controller and I was amazed I had never seen anything like it. I played that Super Nintendo like a child on a mission. Then the obsession started. I wanted all the game systems. Then the war started.
Nintendo had created the best system ever. The Nintendo64. The problem was all of my faithful Nintendo cohorts kept talking about this Sony PlayStation. A game system that used disk? I thought I would pass. Then I played it. The music was real. The graphics where real. Gaming was becoming something, well real. So there I was. I had the two best systems on the market until I hear of these new systems coming out. The Ps2 and the GameCube. At this point these game systems that I had became so addicted to where becoming very pricey. So i got a job at a local electronics retailer. This place was like a gold mine. They allowed me to get these systems and take them home and they took a garnishment out of my check every week. It was worth it. They closed eventually due to slow sales. It sucked, but I had no idea how much until a little announcement from Microsoft.
So then it happened. I bought myself a big black box. I dropped everything else for a long while. I gave the DreamCast a shot and it never caught on with me. That original xbxo is when I became a serious gamer. Then 2005 rolled around. The 360 was born. I bought my first 360 17 days after launch. That 360 was the reason for me getting a HD television as well as playing games online. After that the rest is pretty much history.
It’s amazing how one video can make me think about the last 20 years.
