WHEN DID YOU FIGURED IT OUT THAT YOU WERE A GAMER?

Probably when I played Breath of Fire IV. It was the first game that made me spend hours in front of the TV actually paying attention to what I was doing (different from the button smashers that I'd played before). It was love at first play, and I've been a RPG aficcionado ever since.

I drew platforming levels in kindergarten. So that might be where it started. Or I made a Nintendo magazine in third grade with some buddies. So that might count as being all good and proper gamer. Or I got my first tabletop RPG in fourth grade so that might be where I became a gamer.

Various levels of gamer. But I guess I've always liked games.

I knew I was a gamer when I realized that I wasn't particularly bothered by the fact that I would lose my soul to Satan if I played Dungeons & Dragons.

author=pianotm
I knew I was a gamer when I realized that I wasn't particularly bothered by the fact that I would lose my soul to Satan if I played Dungeons & Dragons.

Oh, that's why I was never able to get into D&D; it wasn't the paper busywork, I've just got no soul to sell.

Clearly I sold it to something before that, like Pokemon or Final Fantasy IX.

I was born a gamer, I will die a gamer, and only my controllers will mourn me.

author=Ilan14

author=pianotm
I knew I was a gamer when I realized that I wasn't particularly bothered by the fact that I would lose my soul to Satan if I played Dungeons & Dragons.

Wait, WHAT?

Ah, you were never exposed the fundie Christian part of American culture, I see. Well, like TurkeyDawg said, there was this whole craze in the 80s where people thought that kids playing D & D were performing ritual sacrifices, worshiping the devil and all that bullshit.

What happened? Some kid went nuts and killed his friend. Some fucking activist attorneys blamed it on D & D and the rest is history. Then Columbine got shot up, and some fucking activist attorney's blamed video games. There was this one case where a kid killed his sister. The prosecutor blamed (this is no shit) Final Fantasy VII, feeling that RPGs were designed to train children to be soulless assassins in the clutches of Satan.

Around 1994 or 1995, when I was five years old, is when I got started, playing games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 at my cousin's home.

In particular, the Sonic games are pretty much what got me into gaming. Not only did I like the games, I just liked the character. He was my favorite color (blue) and had that cool attitude that I kind of wanted to aspire to. I would also envision myself going as fast as Sonic whenever I had a run at P.E.

My parents adamantly believed that buying a gaming console would ruin my development, so the only games I could play were on the PC or the Gameboy, the latter was actually given to me on accident in this regard. Even though I could never own an SNES or a Genesis, that actually didn't stop me from becoming obsessed with games.

I had a lot of "activity center" games on the PC that I enjoyed, and to fulfill my craving for Sonic, I had the Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD, 3D Blast AND Sonic R PC ports to play with.

On my good 'ol Gameboy brick, I commonly played Tetris, Donkey Kong, Kirby's Dreamland, LoZ: Link's Awakening, and Pokemon Blue. Speaking of Pokemon, I got as crazed with that game as any other kid back in 1998. It was the first game I played that actually rewarded playing with friends, though I remember it being tough to find someone with the Red version so I could trade. I also got Yellow and Gold versions soon afterwards, and those were a blast. I was apparently one of the few kids at my school who knew that you could obtain 16 badges in Gold, and I even learned the cloning glitch to get copies of my Pokemans, but I think it messed up my game later on.

It was only until my 10th birthday when my parents decided the time was right to get me an actual home console. Despite the Gamecube and other next-gen consoles being well on their way to arrival, I got a PSone. I didn't complain, though, especially when I could play games like the Spyro trilogy, Megaman 8, and Crash Team Racing.

By then, I was pretty much solidified as a gamer, being a fan of games and even influencing what I draw. I even attempted making spritesheets for a game that I wanted to make, but I didn't have the know-how to do so back then.

author=pianotm
Ah, you were never exposed the fundie Christian part of American culture, I see. Well, like TurkeyDawg said, there was this whole craze in the 80s where people thought that kids playing D & D were performing ritual sacrifices, worshiping the devil and all that bullshit.

There was also a minor craze in the 90's that Pokemon was actually encouraging kids to worship demonic creatures or some shit like that. It was a big deal for me, though, because my mother and I actually believed it and got rid of all the games, movies, and merchandise from my home.

Oh Pokemon Gold and Blue... How I'll miss you. T_T

For those saying that they had experiences where their parents banned Pokemon from their households - thus was the case for me too. But I wasn't particularly sad about it, mostly coz my parents are amazing people and they love me so much. But they were also Christians (as am I right now) who were God-fearing and didn't really want "Psychic Pokemon" to invade the home. Right now I look back and think it was more than a bit of an overreaction, but I appreciate that my parents looked out for me. I wasn't allowed to watch The Simpsons either (well, from about ages 5 to 15) because there was a lot of arguing and violence amongst the family members and Mum and Dad didn't want me and my sister and brother exposed to that.

Looking back, I would not do the same things to my children (hopefully not, history has a way of repeating itself I guess), but I will say that later on they loosened up and I'm still in a happy household. Their parenting made me what I am today.

~~~

Anyway, back to the gaming thing. I guess I knew I was a gamer when I got glandular fever and had this big lump on the side of my neck. I played Sonic 2 on the SEGA Mega Drive all day. And I mean, all day. My mum used to cry on my bed because I was so sick. I also got this fighting game called "Ballz" which I really liked too (what I'd give to play that game again!). I clocked Sonic 2 multiple times (a rare achievement for a 5-6 year old) and throughout my school history, me and my best friend were enamoured with any games we could get. We played the trial version of Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings quite a lot in primary school. I invented my own little RPG when my dad was sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, and me and my sister would play it while he worked (he worked even though he didn't need to, he was quite a stubborn man and didn't want to seem like he was a liability to the family, even though he was so sick). Me and my best friend used to play Jazz Jackrabbit on DOS. We also played Liero, which was a form of Worms but in real-time, but that was probably mostly in high school.

There was the Tony Hawk's Skateboarding series, which is a staple in my video gaming "career". It actually has a really good balance of everything good in terms of gameplay... a really nice balance of difficulty and interesting mechanics - even if it isn't all that realistic! It probably started to decline post-American Wasteland though.

I played Pokemon, mostly Yellow, Gold, Trading Card Game, and Ruby on various emulators. Yes, I stole the games. Or rather, my best friend taught me how to steal them. Back then I didn't even know it was illegal to do that. Well, maybe when I played Ruby I knew. But recently I've gone clean. Hopefully that makes me a good person again, even though I'm probably not.

I played some MMOs for a while too. Runescape was one of the biggies. Then Flyff. Then... well... Minecraft. That lasted about 2-3 years, even into my uni years. I like to think that I discovered Minecraft quite early (I bought it when it was in alpha). When I first played it, I thought - this game has so much freedom that hasn't been present in previous games - why is it not more popular? Little did I know it would blow up like it is now.

I used to be a mod for a classic server way back when. It was a lot different to the servers we have now... you didn't have to collect materials to build things, they just gave you unlimited blocks. It emphasized on huge pieces of art, like robots and huge citadels and cathedrals or what have you. Once it switched to survival being the main component, builds got way less creative and I quit. But that was also after I failed quite a few subjects in uni.

I started using RPG Maker 2003 a while ago, but was crap at it. Nothing much has changed, except I have gone through the makers - XP, VX, VX Ace. VX Ace is my favourite because it has plug-in scripts which make it way easier for me to seem like I'm a good game creator when I'm not.

So that's about it. That's the story of me as a gamer. Would I change much? Not really. It's intrinsically connected to me as a person. Though if you took the game away from me, I might be a different person. Perhaps even less intelligent (not meaning to brag, but I think that video games stimulate the mind wonderfully - that and Chess). I am merely grateful that I live in a time period where these systems and technology exist, otherwise someone like me would probably be in the tier of weakling, untalented nobody. But now I guess I'm somebody - coz I make games.

LOOOOl that's so cheesy, anyway... out!