Category: Gaming

(Originally Posted Jan 2018)

First thing’s first an apology; because if you were born before the year 1995 then the start of this story will probably make you feel old, and I am very sorry for that, now on with the story.

So I was born in 1999 (told you), so I didn’t grow up with any of the ‘classic’ consoles, like the SNES or Sega Mega-Drive(Genesis), we did have a Playstation 1 in my house, but I very rarely played it and don’t have any memories other than “it exists”, so I don’t really count it.

My first proper gaming experience came when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when my mum gave me her old Game Boy, along with a handful of games. It was at this point where I had my first encounter with that one character ever person on the planet knows, Mario. I played Super Mario Land, which was released exclusively for the Game Boy, and unfortunately…I didn’t really like it. I remember struggling with it a lot and never really getting very far, so I gave up on it after a while, however I did enjoy my time with Mario’s yellow-clad counterpart, Wario.

There were two games centered around Wario that I loved playing, and they were: Wario Land; and Wario Blast. I was drawn to Wario Land because of how creative it looked, obviously with being 5 years older than Super Mario Land, it graphically looked more impressive, and I loved the designs of all the enemies and I was always excited when I got to a boss to see what weird thing I’d be facing next, (even if the final boss was rather disappointing). Wario Blast I loved even more, it’s basically just a regular Bomberman game, except it had Wario in it. I think I liked it because despite being a game about blowing each other up the tone was very light and bouncy, so of course when you’re a child that’s exactly the kind of thing to keep you hooked; and I played this game a lot, there’s a reason I can still hum the music to every level in the game.

Around this time I would also watch my dad while he played games on our PC, and there are two games I remember watching him play. The first one I’m not going to talk about right now, because I will be talking about it at length in a post next week. But the other one, was this cool new game, that you may have heard of called: Assassin’s Creed. Now I didn’t get to play it at the time, because I was only 7 or 8 and there’s no way my mum was letting me touch it, so we’ll come back to it that, but I was given a Nintendo DS for my birthday that year.

Now, the Nintendo DS, may be my favourite console I’ve ever played (keep in mind, I’m yet to own a Switch). Partly because I’ve spent countless hours on it in my life, but mostly because it introduced me to two of my favourite gaming franchises I’ve ever played. Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon.

So you may have noticed from the header image on this site, I like Pokemon…..I REALLY like Pokemon guys, I have enough Pokemon stories to last a whole year, so here today I’m just going to talk about how I first found the franchise. Now, I was a very fickle child, if any of my friends tried to tell me I should watch or play something, I would just decide I hated it and refuse to even try it; I honestly think this is why I’ve never become a fan of superhero films. Now Pokemon fell into one of those categories, until one day, when I was round a friend’s house, and they got their DS out, put in a copy of Pokemon Platinum and I watched him play it; and I fell in love. As soon as I got home, I begged my mum to buy it for me, and I got my wish, I got my own copy of Pokemon Platinum, and I’ve never looked back since.

As for Sonic, there were two Sonic games I own on the DS, one is Sonic Rush Adventure which is a more traditional 2D Sonic game, mixed with some of the more modern mechanics and I had loads of fun with it. But my favourite Sonic game of the DS, was actually a completely different genre, and it was called Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood which, yes, is perhaps one of the most generic names I’ve ever heard ever, but I was a child I didn’t care. The game was essentially an RPG focused around a fairly simple turn-based combat system, but the main appeal I found was exploring all of the different areas. It’s not exactly The Witcher, and you would probably be right in saying that I’ve been blinded by nostalgia but every now and then, when I’m bored I’ll go back to it and have some fun.

Things would then stay that way until the end of 2010, when the Xbox Kinect was released. Earlier that year, my mum had been invited to an event where we got to experiment with the 3 motion control based consoles, the Nintendo Wii; Playstation Move; and Xbox Kinect, and my mum decided that she wanted and Xbox Kinect, which of course also meant we got an Xbox 360. We would turn the Kinect on from time to time when we had family round and it was a lot of fun. But in terms of day-to-day, my dad bought a whole bunch of games to play on the Xbox 360 and I was a few years older now, so I would play some of these games aswell. During that time it was mostly just Assassin’s Creed, but at the end of 2011, I found a game which began to turn me into the gamer I am today….Skyrim.

Yes, it’s the game that’s been coming out seemingly twice a year for the past 6 years, but this is when it was brand new, and while I have plenty of experiences in that game, which I’m sure I will talk about at some point; but the biggest role it played, was how it opened my eyes to the world of PC Gaming.

It was around this time that I found Youtube, and the site itself had started to become the giant it is today, and the things I would watch more than anything else, were shows that featured the best Skyrim mods. As an 12/13-year-old, seeing all of these weird and wacky things being inserted into what, at the time, what my favourite game was awesome, and I wanted to do it for myself, but how? That’s when I found out, you had to be on the PC. So, for my birthday that year I asked for the PC version of Skyrim, I got it and installed it, and this would be my first encounter with the reason Valve don’t make video games anymore, Steam.

Over the next couple of years I would slowly break fully into the online gaming community, I found Youtube channels such as Nerd³ and TotalBiscuit and through recommendations from people such as them my Steam Library would slowly grow from the few games I had back in 2012, to the hundreds I have now. With all of these games, I can’t talk about all of them, but intend to talk about some of them in a post next week.

And there you have it, that’s the story of how I became the gamer I am today, and only one question remains to be answered: Why do I prefer video games to other type of media? And while I could go extremely deep with that question, I think the real answer is just that I’m a very hands-on sort of person, I’ve always been a kinetic learner, and I don’t have that long of an attention span; hence why most movies bore me to tears, I just can’t focus for that long. But video games (or the good ones at least) keep me doing things, and so I stay focused much longer. I find exploring a virtual world so much for fun than just watching someone else explore in a film, or just having it my head while reading a book. So that’s the main reason why I think video games are the best type of media.

Well that’s it! This ended up being a lot longer than I had planned, so if you bothered to read the whole thing, thank you very much! And if you just skipped to the end, then thank you for coming! I’m going to have a similar post going up at the same time tomorrow about why I’m a pro-wrestling fan so make sure you come back for that!

Until then, make sure you share this around on your social media’s, you can follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo if you want to stay up to date and read nonsense about my life and I hope to see you again!