Forums » General Gaming

Gaming History and How Games Changed Your Life

    • 12 posts
    June 23, 2013 7:34 PM EDT

    Hi guys! Welcome to the one and only thread to express your footprint in video games and explain how gaming has changed you! I guess since I'm starting this thread I should talk a little more.

    My first gaming system was the VTech V.Smile. I had played games like Spiderman and others... but I was really young and can't remember much of it. My next system was the original XBox... and my first shooter was Star Wars Battlefront 2. I then went to kindergarten and made a friend. He had games like Grand Theft Auto and SOCOM 3. I liked both of the games, but looking back at it... he was only five or six. SOCOM 3 really got me into military shooters. I started playing games like CoD. I really enjoyed video gaming. One day I was feeling gutsy and asked my parents for Fallout: New Vegas. Welcome to Bethesda. That game sprung me into wonderous things like Skyrim.

    I guess you can say that I wouldn't be who I am today without video games. Nerdy as hell I know... but hey... who cares.

    Please leave comments and tell us all about your gaming history.

    LINKS TO MY FIRST GAMES:

    http://www.amazon.com/VTech-V-Smile-Spiderman-Friends-Challenge/dp/B0009T2CIA/ref=sr_1_3?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1372030201&sr=1-3&keywords=V.Smile+game

    http://www.amazon.com/VTech-V-Smile-Scooby-Funland-Frenzy/dp/B00024GSBE/ref=sr_1_21?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1372030201&sr=1-21&keywords=V.Smile+game

    http://www.amazon.com/Smile-Alphabet-Park-Adventure-Cartridge/dp/B000W2ER4G/ref=sr_1_39?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1372030212&sr=1-39&keywords=V.Smile+game

    • 1913 posts
    June 23, 2013 7:44 PM EDT
    I remember walking downstairs to say hi to my grandparents (i was about 4-5 at the time). i see them plug something into the tv, i had no idea what it was. they turned it on andsuddenly they were playing super mario. they heard me and asked if i wanted to play... and it just grew from there.
    • 409 posts
    June 23, 2013 8:15 PM EDT
    Well I started with the PS2 with games like battlefront two and such, I moved on to the original xbox 360 but 6 months into having it the thing red ringed on me but it was so early in the console's life that when we sent it into them they told us they couldn't do anything. I now have an xbox 360 slim and see the PS4 in my future.
    • 1483 posts
    June 23, 2013 8:18 PM EDT

    My first gaming system was Nintendo Entertainment System. It had Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt on it as well as Galaxian all of which I had a blast to play with my brother. Then we got our first PC, it was Pentium 3 custom tweaked with a recommendations from a relative shop owner. The first game I played on it was Tomb Raider Chronicles. I played it for a VERY long time - being a first game, some puzzles took ages to figure out and execute with awkward key movement. After that, Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age as well as NFS: Porsche Unleashed and Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion occupied most of my gaming time up to the release of Thief: Deadly Shadows. After entering high school I found new friends who played shooters on LAN in an Internet club, most notably Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix. That game brought me into the world of shooters, I even participated in a local tournament for the game! The game that brought me to the world of RPG gaming was Fallout 3. It was awesome - vast expenses, character progression, interactions with other people, free-roam world based on a real DC area occupied me for a VERY long time! After that came Fallout New Vegas, and again many days of my life were sucked into it. Then I learned about Mass Effect 2 winning Best RPG of the year and Ultimate Game of the Year and was astonished that Fallout New Vegas didn't win those. I decided to give it a go, and started from the first Mass Effect. Needless to say I got sucked into story immediately, being a long time sci-fi fan it was a dream come true for me! Hours, days, months went into playing, replaying and preparing my character for ME2, for which the process repeated. I played the series for the last few years, mixing them with another amazing series of Splinter Cell and never tired of them. Skyrim was tried after getting it's Game of the Year award and again I was amazed by Bethesda's ability to create huge worldspaces filled with quests, characters, creatures and beautiful landscapes which I enjoy up to today. Mass Effect 3 was got in the beginning of July 2012, mostly because a lack of money to get it right after release, and subsequent movements to change the endings. I played the game with Extended Cut already installed and loved every bit of it! It was a true culmination of the series! Seeing three awesome games from Bioware, I decided to try their other series project - Dragon Age. Origins was played many times over and over again, and it's really an amazing game with deep lore and interesting characters, something I came to expect from any Bioware game. I didn't play Dragon Age 2, but I might do it, to fill the gap between Origins and upcoming sequel. 

    OK, so that's my gaming history. I have to say, the gaming had a very big impact on my life and became a large part of it. We still go to play on LAN with my friends at least once a week, and it's always fun. The biggest impact however was left on me by Mass Effect. I was going to pass a very difficult PhD exam on philosophy recently and was extremely nervous and doubtful in my abilities. But before the exam, I just repeated in my mind the quotes of my character in the game, the few ones that I memorized and it gave me the necessary calmness and self-discipline to pass the exam with an excellent mark. Those games will always have a place in my life and I'll always remember them, if only for that.

    • 80 posts
    June 23, 2013 8:27 PM EDT

    It was my mom that got my older brother and I addicted to gaming. My first console was a NES with the original 3 Mario games and the first 2 Legend of Zelda game. Went on to the SNES with the Megaman X games and continuing with mario and zelda games.

    It just goes on from there.

    • 485 posts
    June 23, 2013 10:04 PM EDT

    I still remember the very first game I played. I don't suppose any of you remember this little gem for the NES.

    • 32 posts
    June 24, 2013 12:44 AM EDT
    First console was one of those huge white gameboys and mario land 1&2 were my first games,then i got the Nes and then ps1 is when my gaming really got started with Re2 & 3,crash bandicoot,I blame my older brother he got me addicted to games lol,i went through this faze where i played only WWE games like svr-svr09,then my nephew got me into pokemon so i played red version through black and white versions.and now im playing games like skyrim,state of decay,Cod mw3,mk9,and telltales the walking dead. So yupp im somewhat of a gamer ^_^
    • 111 posts
    June 24, 2013 1:55 AM EDT

    Well I guess Sega MegaDrive really got me into video games. Played Kid Chameleon, Sonic, PGA Golf and a host of others at home and while I was away on business after work in the pub. My first pc was a Compaq 486 DX25 with a massive 4 Mb of memory and a 4x CD ROM drive(after upgrading - fitted into the empty 5.25inch drive slot if memory serves). I remember it cost me £1,400 (about US$2000) at Curry's and I bought it to keep my business records on in 1993 - Operating system? Windows 3.1. Computer games installed included the original Doom, Duke Nukem3D, and Microsoft Golf. The only reason I started into games on a PC was to test my computer's graphics performance. But then the game bug bit and I have been playing computer games on the pc ever since. I have also been involved in game and mod development. Now I run a rather dated Mesh Elite Pro which I had customised in the days before Mesh went bust. System configuration is a socket AM2 +, AMD Quad core Phenom Black 9950,  Gigabyte M68M  S2P Mobo, 8GB DDR2 Dual Channel RAM, and a NVIDIA GTX 550Ti graphics card with 1Gb memory. I am now looking to upgrade to a 650Ti Boost and a bigger PSU (and possibly CPU) to run Witcher3 - sad or what? Oh the cost of this tower system? £1100 originally (since upgraded the GPU, O/S, and RAM) interesting how prices have come down in 20 years but power and performance has exploded to accommodate graphics developments and Microsoft's o/s changes 


    Games now installed? Mass Effect 1 2 & 3, Witcher 1 &2, Dragon Age Origins, DA2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Tomb Raider Underworld, and of course Skyrim. Recently uninstalled Oblivion which in hindsight I think was a mistake


    • 1595 posts
    June 24, 2013 2:35 AM EDT

    You used game character's quotes to help get through a  philosophy exam? I love Mass Effect, which quotes did you think of? I'm guessing it wasn't Wrex's

    I don't think I've ever been a typical gamer as I don't actually but that many games. I tend to go for epic single player games, a trend probably started by Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain which was my first real gaming love.

    It wasn't until Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire that the console rpg really got into it's stride and I was so busy with those two that I neglected Morrowind when it came out, a decision I now regret. I got Oblivion pretty much straight after its release and lost god knows how many hours of my life in that game.

    Needless to say, when I heard about Mass Effect I waited for it eagerly, enjoyed it so much that it became my favourite game next to KotOR and Oblivion.

    The first Assassin's Creed was right uo my street but I don't think the sequels came close to the excitement the original had.

    My 360 broke and I brought a PS3 and was happy with that for a couple of years. Fallout 3 was my favourite game at that time but the dlc debacle and not being able to buy it for ages made me switch back to Xbox, although by then I had lost interest in the game.

    Red Dead Redemption was my next big love and also the game that validated my decision to switch to the 360. Around about this time, games were being developed for xbox and ported over to Sony's machine as a slightly inferior product.

    At present, it is the current trend that PS4 is where all the love is but I worry that we may see a similar thing in the next generation. Is the architecture of the two consoles similar enough that we won't see history repeating?

    • 33 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:51 AM EDT

    It all began, when I was four or five and my father *technically step father, but what I know of my BioFather is that he was a dick so...* plugged in a Playstation Console (PS2) and started playing GTA: San Andreas, needless to say I was beating those hookers nine ways to sunday almost immediately.

    As of that moment my love of games began.

    From there on, I started playing other games such as spiderman and shrek, and monsters INC., as well as lilo and stitch.

    After that, when I first got my PS3, nigh on five years ago now, I first got games such as ratchet and clank (I will never forgive myself for scratching that disk)

    My true introduction to RPGs was at the start of 2012 *voice goes nostalgic* when I was looking through my fathers game shelves (For PC) and found The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I must have put in a few hundred hours before I learnt that there was another game in the series skyrim, and both games came out on consoles, so I brought skyrim, and never looked back (well... I did when I learnt that mods existed, a few months ago, wish I used them when I had access to my fathers come )

    • 1483 posts
    June 24, 2013 8:03 AM EDT

    Surprisingly it was one of Wrex's  When you’re young, you go looking for every fight you can. You get older, you realize that the best fights find you.

    I also used one of Shepard's: You can’t predict how people will act. But you can control how you’ll respond. In the end, that’s what really matters.

    Most helped me in a preparation for the exam though. All the epic speeches were really motivational. If you haven't seen it you should check out Genol3oost channel on YouTube. It has amazing tribute videos to Mass Effect.

    • 111 posts
    June 24, 2013 9:08 AM EDT

    Sorry windows 3.1 was NOT an operating system. MSDOS 5 ran the machine and windows was the GUI which was pretty undemanding resource wise in those days. Games like Frontier Elite - my first Open world (sorry Universe) in those days ran under MS DOS 5 or higher and there were not that many windows based word processors or databases. The first windows operating system was Win95 which claimed to be 32 bit (but it wasn't truly most of the code was 16bit) but that really did trigger a huge gaming change. Old DOS games which would blow windows 3.x up could be run within win95. Generally WIN95 as an o/s was a bit NAF but win98 was an available beta upgrade from 3.1 in late 1997 was terrific for gamers and business software users opening up internet speeds (the software included Internet Explorer)and facilitating faster multiplay and internet access. X Wing v Tie Fighter released 1997 struggled  graphically on mid range and slower machines) However Quake II, (ID Software)Tomb Raider2, Grand Theft Auto, Castelvania, Hexen II and MDK were all WIN 95 optimised and loads of fun

    • 40 posts
    June 24, 2013 10:26 AM EDT

    Orginally, I bought games for my kids. I bought an Atari and an Intellevision. On Atari I had games like River Raid and on Intellevision I played Dungeons and Dragons. Since I played the paper version in college I thought it would be cool to play in person. Turns out it wasn't all that exciting. The goal was to kill the little red thing that resembled a dragon.

    Later, I bought a Nintendo and got into the Final Fantasy series. At this point my children began to complain about getting video games for Christmas. Odd children if you ask me.

    Then it was on to a game for my PC called Stone Keep. Not the best graphics but very fun. From there it was on to Everquest.

    Then PS 3 and Oblivion and now Skyrim on PS3 and PC.

    I can't possibly list all the games we have owned over the years or all the games I have beta tested. But it has been fun and my main source of entertainment for a long time now.

    How has this changed my life? Well I have had many things happen in my life that would have been very difficult to deal with but thanks for immersive video games I was able to forget even for just a little while my problems. So I think it has helped me to cope in the worst of times and have fun in the best of times.

    • 952 posts
    June 24, 2013 11:46 AM EDT

    It all started a long while ago, the first game I remember playing was some old Test Drive game on teh windows 95. I started playing other games as well mainly DOS games since we didn't use to have many games. Then I started playing NFS Porsche which I am sure of since I was so young. I played NFS Porsche and more DOS games untill I remember playing Morrowind which was amazing since it was the first of it's kind and after that I think I started playing NFS Underground and GTA Vice City. So basically I used to play mainly racing games and open world games. I still play the open world games mainly RPG's and crime themed games but I do not play racing games anymore. I do play a few FPS games and Strategy games though. I got into strategy games not because of the immensly popular Age of Empire or Empire Earth games but because of Medieval 2: Total War which is still an amazing game for it's age. I've played on PC all that time. I also got a Gameboy Advanced back in the day but all I used it for was Pokemon, Megaman and Castlevania.

    • 1595 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:39 PM EDT

     Can't believe you used a Wrex line! I remember that Shepard quote; Garrus' Loyalty Mission wasn't it? It's a throwaway line but actually quite profound when given thought.

    I'll check out that link. Who doesn't love Mass Effect tribute videos, especially if they involve Shepard acting like a dick!

    • 1595 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:40 PM EDT

    Down with COD

    • 1483 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:45 PM EDT

    I thought to use one of his "eat them" quotes, but decided against it  They might've got the wrong idea 

    • 80 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:46 PM EDT

    While COD has nothing but foul mouth 5 year olds, it's always nice when you completely demolish them after their 5 minute bragging during the load screens.

    I haven't played a COD game for awhile though; stopped at around MW2's time.

    • 952 posts
    June 24, 2013 4:58 PM EDT

    If you dislike COD for being too arcadish I can recommend some realistic shooters to you. I love the ones where one bullet from a rifle kills you, unless it hits your legs or arms, in that case you start to bleed badly and you need to get to cover to bandage it soon or you die, if you run out of bandages, you also die.

    • 271 posts
    June 24, 2013 5:03 PM EDT
    And that kind of heavenly games is...?
    • 952 posts
    June 24, 2013 5:25 PM EDT

    Red Orchestra 2 Heroes of Stalingrad/Rising Storm for PC. I haven't seen this video myself yet but I know that Sidestrafe makes good videos. If you're worried your PC can't handle it you can just set everything to low and it will look like a console game and even your granny's PC can run it. It has lots of servers and players, and it's only 17€ on Steam for the multiplayer of both Heroes of Stalingrad and Rising Storm.

    • 209 posts
    July 2, 2013 6:29 AM EDT

    Yep I can vouch for both sidestrafe and this game. This along with arma are the only solely fps I play

    • 209 posts
    July 2, 2013 6:30 AM EDT

    I will always remember walking into my living room to see a Sega Megadrive set up and my Dad playing a Helicopter game, the name escapes me but from there it just developed.

    • 49 posts
    July 2, 2013 7:01 AM EDT

    My Grandfather gave me a gameboy color. I have it ever since...

    • 209 posts
    July 2, 2013 7:05 AM EDT

    I still have mine ! Me and my cousin both got one on the same christmas and sat anti-socially in the corner of the garden playing Pokemon.