Hmm... What to say on the subject of video games...
I started playing them in Christmas 1980. My initial favorites were Combat & Defender, and I remember the release of Yar's Revenge and Mrs. Pacman. Mrs. Pacman was the first game I ever managed to "Flip" the score on. Back then games usually had no ending, they just kept getting harder and faster. "Flipping" meant your score got so high the game didn't have enough digits to show it, so it went back to zero on the display. My Mrs. Pacman games generally ended when my bladder insisted I set the joystick down (or else).
My first arcade addiction came years later in 1987 when I had my first job (paper route) and hence had quarters. I could beat Double Dragon on a quarter.
November 1989 brought me my Nintendo, which still runs. Zelda and Super Mario Brothers were my favorites for years.
Street Fighter 2 (1991) came next. I specialized in Blanka and Chun-Li. I clearly remember the sense of pride I had when my opponents would line up for "next" behind whomever I was playing and noone bothered to stand behind me.
Around that same time I began my love affair with RPGs. Final Fantasy and Wizardry started it all. I can't tell you how many times I've beaten FF1, but I can tell you that my roomate and I had a character on Wizardry who was level 1400 (that's one thousand four hundred). For some perspective, we could beat the game with a team at level 13( that's thirteen)
FF3 (FF6 in Japan) and Zelda: Link to the Past stepped gaming up to an entirely new level. To this day I believe those two games represent the biggest jump in game quality ever.
By the time I graduated highschool in 1994 I had the money to buy lots of games, and the Super Nintendo kept me quite happy with RPG's until FF7 made me buy a Playstation more than a year ahead of time in anticipation of it's release. It was worth the wait.
I wasn't too impressed with PC gaming until Baldur's Gate hooked me. After that Fallout 2 made me a believer.
I speant three years immersed in Final Fantasy Online, where my little Mithra named Rainswept eventually became known to hundreds of other players as among the elite and powerful. I had to stop playing eventually due to the time nescessary to keep up with FFXI, but even today I still miss it.
So I've gone from 2bit games made in 1977 to online sensations where I sometimes led teams of 60 real life players in three hour long strategic online battles. I've gone on vacations when I carried computer printouts of strategy guides to become a better player while i was away. I have to buy special peices of hardware in order to hook up all my working game systems to the TV in my home office.
I suppose you could call me a gamer.
I believe it's time for mankind to set aside the crutch of religion and embrace morality born of reason and truth. Those crutches have long since proven treacherous when the ground gets slippery.
I have forsaken the holy FSM
