“Oh, so if I jump off that bridge I’ll die.”
I remember thinking something like that when I played Mario on the NES. It was probably the first video game I had ever played. I wasn’t any good.
So it’s a good thing that the NES was a home entertainment system that didn’t eat quarters. Otherwise, I’d have been broke. And maybe I would have broken the console after I took out my frustration on it. That console was sure was lucky.
After the NES, I dabbled in classic computer games like Wolfenstein and Doom. Blasting bad guys and bad creatures was a great way to kill time. And I think I was pretty good at them too. But I never fell in love with games at this point. It was probably because there were too many high energy hobbies to occupy me as a kid. Maybe I preferred to play video games with friends too.
I loved and played the hell out of Golden Eye on N64 with everyone I could find. Yet, the game I couldn’t stop playing, because of all its options in single player and multiplayer, was Perfect Dark. I spent so much time playing Perfect Dark with friends that I mastered it. Then, gaming was one of my major hobbies.
I partly expected a new Perfect Dark for GameCube. But I was disappointed when Microsoft bought the game’s developer, Rare. I enjoyed the GameCube for a while, especially Smash Brothers and other games, but I never really fell in love with the system.
I knew Perfect Dark Zero, a sequel to the N64 game, was on Xbox 360. I bought an Xbox 360 thinking that, even if Zero wasn’t as good as the original game, I could still play Halo 3.
I don’t remember a thing about Perfect Dark Zero, but I fell in love with Halo 3. That was partly because I had always loved Halo: I enjoyed playing it at a friend’s house in high school. Probably the highlight of the Xbox 360, for me, was 2007 when I got the Orange Box, Halo 3 and Mass Effect.
After that, I never lost interest in video games again. My love only grew.
Did you ever lose interest in video games? Who or what renewed your interest and why?
