Well I'm not going to go into detail about stuff all about me, instead I wrote a huge ass bio on my interest in video games, pretty much the reason why I am here. It's pretty detailed and really long but it's the most accurate one I have ever typed. It mainly just goes over the highlight games that I found the most impactful, so if you have the interest to explore my gaming interest to what it is today, then by all means read on!

Though I own far more PC titles than all of my console games combined. I have been a console gamer longer than in PC. In truth, I'm pretty split between console and PC gaming, there's just so much to love for both.

I believe I started gaming when I was 5 years old, which was the year 1987. We had an Atari system where Centipede/Millipede and Missile Command were my favorites, but they didn't totally dominate my life, that came a year later. My parents bought a NES for me and my brothers in 1988, which shaped my lifestyle forever. We never owned that many games, but we did rent a ton of games, so we nearly got to try everything. The games that were keepers for us were Blaster Master, all 3 of Super Mario Bros. games, Contra, Kirby's Dreamland, and Double Dragon. My 2 brothers (Patrick and Nick) and I probably loved playing platform shooters the most, like Contra, if co-op was available then it was even better. Games like Jackal and Life Force got the most play time, and we were more fond of Zelda 2 than the original. These games are not apart of my collection because we don't own them anymore, either my parents sold them or my older brother Patrick keeps them with him, I don't remember or know.

Now onto my favorite era of gaming. My Dad blessed us on one christmas day with the greatest gift he could ever bestow on us, the Super Nintendo, which I think was in 1992. If the NES thought it saw enough use out of us, that was nothing compared to our SNES. The first game we owned was Street Fighter 2, and to us, the arcade translation looked 100% perfect. Guile became my best friend, though my brothers usually owned me with either Ken or Ryu. We still rented just as much as we did when we had the NES, probably more actually. We were still action junkies and didn't quite get into RPG niche yet, but later these games were what split me and my brother's gaming tastes apart forever. We played a lot of fighters or brawlers like Final Fight, Knights of the Round, and Super Double Dragon. Super Contra was also a big winner with Smash TV. However what really impacted us and changed us was Zelda: A Link to the Past. All three of us were incredibly immersed into it like nothing ever before it, we found just about every little quirky trick and detail in every corner of it, it was quite a landmark experience for all of us. After that my younger brother Nick started venturing into more RPG/adventure titles. Games like Chrono Trigger and the Illusion of Gaia hooked him immediately. I enjoyed them but was taken back my the intimidating game lengths. I still craved the action. Numerous titles satisfied me, but the ones that really stood out were Star Fox and Super Mario Kart. Also this became a time where my super-nerd Star Wars fixation sparked on, so the Super Star Wars trilogy became apart of my gaming religion. Patrick was turning more and more into a sports guru, so he played many football, basketball, hockey, and soccer video games. The only one I cared about was the almighty gem of them all, NHL '94, the best hockey video game ever. I'm not a big sports fanatic myself but this hockey title held up to Blades of Steel and took it beyond, my brother loved it above anything else, but I came to acknowledge it's greatness much later. A little after the time we got the SNES, I got a Genesis for my birthday, I also ended up getting a 32X and a Sega CD, but the only thing worth mentioning for all of that is Sewer Sharks for its cheesy live action graphics, the Star Wars arcade game, and Virtua Fighter.

As a couple years went by and our ravaging thirst for more SNES games was still fed through more rentals, but then in 1994, Patrick got a Compaq (I don't remember the specs). On this Compaq he played a game. A game nothing we seen before, a game called Command & Conquer, it was our first experience to an RTS. Once again I had fun with it a little while, but then there was something about it that couldnt keep me hooked on it for long enough, but my other two brothers ate it right up. A couple months later however, the PC gaming world, still small and growing, took hold of me and was never let go. Patrick found another game which was Dark Forces, now I witnessed Doom every now and again at a buddies house and it awe struck each time, but Dark Forces became the first FPS I played and was addicted to, I must have played through it 5 times, the same amount of times Nick beat C&C. I think on the Christmas of 96' was when both me and Nick each got our computers, probably the most expensive Christmas ever for my Dad, but one of our best . Each of us even got one game with it, Nick got Red Alert, I got the Lucasarts Star Wars collectors pack, which came with Dark Forces and *enter holy chorus* Tie Fighter!! Patrick had Tie Fighter, but the bastard wouldnt let me play because he was so busy with it, but now my time has finally come. Tie Fighter pretty much represented the next landmark experience for me, all the big bold descriptions on the back of the box acclaiming it to experience the Star Wars space battles couldn't come closer to the truth, if anything, that was a under statement. The edition I got wasnt the floppies that it had been released in previously, it was a CD with all of the campaign expansions, so I got to play it all, from the Tie Advanced fighters to the Tie Defenders, and it was the most glorious moments of my life. After that, I could easily identify and name every ship in the Star Wars movies. Nerdy? Yes, but it was worth the price of being knocked down the social ladder.

After we each had our own PCs, Nick & I continued to play and like our own games, though Nick was immersed far more easily than I was at some points. His first experience of online gaming was Quake 2, mine was X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, though he played countless hours of Quake while I was into X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter for only a little while. The breakthrough of online gaming for me was after Nick was through with Quake 2, which was amazing because I never knew a person could spend that many hours playing, and he got Half-Life for his birthday. Of course, TFC finally exploded into the mutiplayer scene and I was fully participating in that. The various classes and team strategy was just unreal coupled with the fact the live players were also taking on clever roles. Nick loved it too, but when CS made its depute, he switched over to that and has been lost in it many years since.

I think after that point, gaming couldn't compare to anything after since. We did buy a PSX and a Saturn but not until a year or two after its release in 95', I can't quite remember, but I think it was 97 when we bought them. Though these consoles were very good, and we found much entertainment in both, it still didnt beat our SNES. Out of all our rental ventures, the games that enthralled us the most were Resident Evil, Twisted Metal 1 & 2, Loaded, and Nick & Patrick totally loved the Final Fantasies for it. I was the only one who really liked the Saturn. The Panzer Dragoon games blew me away, and I spent a lot of hours playing Virtua Fighter 2 and numerious Capcom fighters, from Street Fighter to X-Men: Children of the Atom, which I still own today. Metal Gear Solid was another milestone in my game playing experience. It was the first game to pull me in through its story, characters, and voice acting instead of its visuals and gameplay, which both still kicked ass. It was really a thing of beauty, and I also discovered that I love stealth action. As for the N64, we weren't too big on it. It was big with my friends as we played lots of games of Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros. We didnt think it offered much as far as really solid single player games go, aside from the Zelda games of course.

Well that pretty much sums up my history of gaming, I still do a lot of gaming on both PC and console platforms. After my big gaming sessions with Tie Fighter and Dark Forces, I also played a lot of Magic Carpet with my old 386/Super VGA computer. Then on my pentium 166 and then upgraded to 450 mhz, I played many adventure games like the Broken Sword games and those few LA games I have mentioned before. Because of my glorious Tie Fighter play sessions, I also got hooked on many other space sims, my favs: Freespace 1 & 2 and X-Wing Alliance. Also my first RPG that I played was the first Fallout, then came Fallout 2. After that computer, I got a Dell which was 1 Ghz, 256 Ram, and a damn good Geforce 2, this is when I played the awesomeness that was Deus Ex and I will never forget it. The one I use today is the one I built last summer. As for the current generation of consoles I did own a Xbox with Halo and Splinter Cell, but I sold it to Gpw. I currently own a Gamecube, Gameboy Advanced SP, and a PS2 and I'm pretty happy with what each has to offer so far. The games I own for each can be found here with all of the other games I currently own.

Well thats it, and thanks for taking the time to read all of it.