I am a Gameaholic

TL;DR My name is Angela, and I'm a gameaholic.

It all started in the living room of my childhood home.  I'm 31 and have scrambled memories so your guess is better than mine for years and such.

We had a variety of boardgames; anything from the Game of Life to Candy Land.  My parents, brother and I would play together, but sometimes it was just down to us kids.  I even played by myself, trying to better my game or even invent my own games.

Then I got into console gaming.  I can't quite remember my first console game.  I think it was an Atari at home.  I remember something to do with a side scroller spaceship shooting game.  And then there were the neighbors who seemed to have everything a kid could want, including a Nintendo.  I remember the first time I played Super Mario Bros.  My brother and the neighbor kids were all huddled around me teaching me how to play.  It was fucking hard.  I kept mixing up what all the buttons did.

I'll take a moment and point out that nobody bitched at me for playing video games because of my gender.

My dad would take us kids to this  arcade gaming place and, well, yeah, that was always the highlight of the week/month.  I think I liked the shooter games the best.  I never was very much into Pinball but have mad respect to the people who rock it.

Eventually we got a Nintendo at the house.  We had Super Mario Bros. with that running game and the running pad and Duck Hunt, all in the same cartridge.  It was fun trying to play other games with the running pad but ultimately we were too lazy to make much of it.  We picked up some sort of burger making game that drove me up the wall.  I don't think I ever got past the 3rd level.

Somewhere in here handheld gaming entered my life.  I got a battery operated game that I absolutely loved.  I think it came from the Goodwill.  You had to move your little man around this system of pipes to make sure the water flow ended up where it needed to go.  Good times.

In elementary school I always took the first available chance to play on the old as fuck computers.  The Oregon Trail, of course, and this other one I'll never remember the name of.  It was some sort of adventure.  There was also a fishing game.

At some point my grandparents got a Super Nintendo and one of the highlights of going over there, as an introvert, was hiding in the back room to play Mario.  Oh, do you remember something called Virtual Boy? I think that's what it's called.  I never had one, never knew anybody that had one.  I saw it once in a store and that was that.  Whatever happened to that and why hasn't something similar resurfaced?

It was middle or high school when an acquaintance loaned me his Gameboy with a Pokemon and a Kirby game.  This was probably quite amazing to me at a time.  A portable, handheld gaming device with cartridges like the console games? Fuck yes.

Fun fact: I'm playing Lucky Slots on Facebook while I'm typing this up.  I don't even like gambling or casino games.  Why am I paying this game?

My brother somehow ended up with our first household PC.  It was old as fuck.  I still don't understand what the hell was going on.  I tried to play games on it but it was difficult to work with.  We played Solitair without a mouse.   ... yeah.

And then my brother got a Sega Genesis.  There was a cool ninja game.  And then, oh my god, the Sega Channel! Mo' fu' SEGA CHANNEL.  You hooked your cable (remember cable TV?) into this big cartridge thing that fit into you Sega Genesis just like a regular cartridge.  And then you get to play I think 50 games a month as much as you wanted.  No more running off to the video store to rent games, nosiree.

The selection changed up each month but there were constants.  The best days, or weekends, were when my brother was away so I could mooch to my heart's content.  My dad and I played this western shooter game together and we got so good at it, because all the targets had the same patterns of movement/appearing that we eventually had the whole god damn game memorized.  I also played a lot of Sonic, Vectorman, RPGs...

Oh, the hours we put into Dr Mario and Tetris.  My parents were wizzes at Tetris and my mom dominated Dr Mario like a fucking pro.

We got a new PC at some point and our PC gaming was mostly limited to demos and whatever came with it.  What I really remember was playing The Dagger of Aman Ra with my mom.  It was really fun but pretty tricky.  We actually called a hotline for tips a couple times.  We made it to the end of the game but didn't technically pass it.  Sadface.

And oh the hours put into the new Nintendo 64 when it came out! Especially the weeks and months put into Mario 64.  I loved watching my mom play it for the first time.  We joked that she made Mario walk like a drunken Soldier.  This was, after all, the first time we had all played something like that.  And then there was Waverunner, Torik(?), Excite Bike (!!!), Goldeneye, some sort of Star Wars... those were good gaming days.

We got another PC at one point, maybe it was mine? And the highlight of that one was Myst.  I bought it with money a relative game me after I had a surgery.  Myst is a great game for recovery.

Eventually I discovered the Playstation and Final Fantasy with all those fancy graphics and Resident Evil which still scares me too much to play.  This was through friends.  I've never had the luxery of personally owning a Playstation of any sort.

When I was in high school a friend introduced me to Magic: The Gathering.  I won my first game and I very much loved the idea.  I was allowed to keep the deck I won with but I didn't get to play much after that for a long while.  A friend online ended up sending me a big box of cards since she stopped playing.  I was horrible at making my own decks so they were largely ignored.

I met my first boyfriend and we both got Gameboy Colors.  Mine was a purplish color.  This was my first Gameboy.  We both got Pokemon.  I think I got Emerald because that is my birthstone and I like green.  The boyfriend accidentially ran his through the washer so I bought him a new one just so we could "play together" but we could never get our Gameboys to talk to each other.

I eventually, as an adult, lived with a BFF who had a Playstation 2 and we ran that thing into the ground.  Mostly it was GTA and Final Fantasy games.  I ended up with a pretty good gaming PC and loved a variety of games.  One was American McGee's Alice.  I had the   Sim game and all of its expansions.And then that PC died and that was not even remotely cool.  It was like cutting off a finger or three.

I was gifted a much less powerful laptop but I was sorta able to play my Sims so that placated me, if a little.

We got an Eyetoy at once point and DDR.  I never was able to get an Eyetoy game but loved the everliving shit out of DDR.

It retrospect, it was probably around this time that gaming became very important to me.  It was as important to me as music, writing and art.  If I went without for too long, I'd go a little stir crazy and that was never good.

Then I got a Gameboy Advanced SP and eventually graduated to a Nintendo DS.  I absolutely loved Pokemon Pearl on the Nintendo DS.  There was a smattering of other games on these Nintendo handheld devices, such as the Sims and Harry Potter, Elite Beat Agents, Scribblenaut.  And, oh my fucking god, Mario Party.

In one of my millions of moves as an adult, I lost the charger to my Nintendo DS and couldn't afford a new one.  I didn't know anybody was a DS so that didn't help.  Then I got in a situation where I need money for food and clothes so I sold it.  All of my games are lost somewhere save for Scribblenauts.  I miss my Pokemon Pearl.

Ever since hopping on Facebook, I've played those stupid fucking Zynga games.  They fill in the void when I'm without all of my possessions and have no other way to game.  This happens off and on.  You can tell I'm without a proper gaming outlet when you see me posting requests for fucking plants to build something in Farmville.  I don't take those games seriously at all and they annoy me because the only way to advance is to wait several hours and or have a lot of friends who play the same game.  When I play a game, I want to get into it.  I'm all about the immersion.

I always have some sort of games on whatever phone I own at the time and I have even tried gaming on my Kindle.  I've tried to keep it game-free, but it's difficult.  What I'm trying to say here is: I try to game on any kind of electronic device handed to me.

I started going regularly for several months with an ex to a gaming group.  We're talking board games here.  It was my first time playing board games (and card games) since I was a wee lass.  I fell in love with several games there while admiring the ones that were a little too hard to learn in just a few hours time.  Carcasonne and Dominion are a few top favorites.  Later on I started collecting the Killer Bunnies games which I love to itty bitty bits.

I was also reintroduced to Magic: The Gathering and got into it pretty hard and heavy.  We seem to be on a bit of a break from it but I have a couple pretty good decks, a playmat (so nice to have!) and I'm almost always up for a round or two.  I would love to own Dominion and a couple expansions.

Last year I got an iPad 2 and did all sorts of gaming on there.  I tried out so many damn games.  I even had fun with a couple MMOs.

A year or two ago I gained a nice gaming computer and I was introduced to Steam.  In the last few months I've been quite hooked to League of Legends.  I have 80 or so games on Steam but that computer is currently in Louisiana while I'm in California.  

I have a Nintendo 3DS on the way with Pokemon Soul Silver.  I bought it whilst drunk and thinking it was the Latest & Greatest in Pokemon when I actually ment to get Black or White.  Oops.

The 3DS should have never been bought but it was out of desperation.  I feel limbless right now.  When I don't have proper outlets for gaming I grow despondent.  I know how pathetic that sounds, but I am a gamer.  After writing all of this, I think it's safe to say I'm a hardcore gamer.  Any platform, any device, almost any genre.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is... I'm a gameaholic.  If I had it my way, I'd have all the consoles and hundreds of games in an ultimate gaming environment   

Anyway, I'm sure I'm missing some games mentions here, probably a platform or two, but I'll be sure to come back an edit as I remember stuff.

I am sincerely interested in other people's gaming histories.  So plz to be sharing too?