One of the few consoles our family owned. It was purchased likely either before or soon after my birth as we purchased the Power Set, which was first retailed in 1989.

The console stayed with us with every move. Despite being only a toddler, I clearly recall my childhood living room - sofa beneath the windows, TV cabinet perpendicular against the wall, and the NES nestled in a nook on the right. After the next move, it made its home in the "doll" room, shifting locations as the furniture seemed to be in perpetual motion. Next, the lower level of the home I grew up in along with everything else that kept young kids engaged with life. And now it rests in an attic, inside a wicker basket alongside its other comrades.

1. > Super Mario Bros.

   One of the first games I ever played. Developing platforming skills at an early age should be an important part of any early childhood development program. I was never particularly great at SMB, and I still struggle with world 8 from time to time.

2. > Metroid

   I distinctly remember picking Metroid out at the K-mart in the Jasper Mall. It wasn't behind one of the acrylic display cases - instead, it was on a freestanding rotating display encased in anti-theft packaging. The box was the yellow variant with art of Samus on the front that released after the Game Boy sequel came out, and not the original gray with 8-bit art.
   
   I don't know why I picked it out, or why my mom or step dad decided to buy it for me - most likely I heard about it through osmosis from my cousins, or saw it in my Game Genie book of codes - my parents approached most video game purchases as a very deliberate, strategic means to placate us, and this one was an impulse purchase.
   
   This game was a real struggle for young me. I never got the hang of navigating the world, and didn't consider actually mapping anything out... just wander around until you saw something familiar. Perhaps at this age, I had come to rely on the advancements in game design aimed at helping the player improve - more info like maps, and item descriptions. I just wasn't quite ready to tackle the task of open exploration. Once I discovered the Justin Bailey password, it was all over - just skip straight to the end and that was good enough for me.

3. > World Class Track Meet

   Ah, the Power Pad™. For you reading this who is not familiar, the Power Pad™ was a soft mat controller for the NES that laid flat on the floor, intended to be played standing, with your feet. In reality, the frequent use of a family of 5 would often leave half of the buttons inoperable, not helped by the frequent practice of using one's fists instead of feet. The game itself was a sports game, but not team sports - individual track meet type sports. 100m sprint, triple jump, etc. That felt so novel to me, as there are very few sports games at that time like this.
   
   I was very into this game - incidentally, perhaps the only form of exercise I got as a kid as well. There is a direct line connecting this game to me getting hooked on Dance Dance Revolution later on in life.

4. > Blades of Steel

   We never owned this title - but rented it a few times from the movie store. I was never very fond of it - both not being interested in hockey or sports in general. It was multiplayer, and was one of the few games I remember playing together with my brother.
   
   It was also the first instance where I realized a difference in playstyle and objectives between the two of us. Much like the real life game of hockey, the goal of Blades of Steel was to score more points than your opponent's team. But unlike other hockey games and much like real life, you could actually have your players fight each other. My brother took every opportunity to fight, aggresively chasing down everyone on my team. I never figured out the controls for the fighting, so invariably, I would lose every time. Not very fun.

5. > Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

   My favorite Zelda game - in no small part due to it being the first I owned and played. The jank controls became second nature to me. I figured out the crouching stab exploit to kill enemies with shields on my own, and memorized where all of the extra lives were (despite getting pretty good at the game, I still needed them).

6. > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

   Classic game. Another one I got pretty good at despite being notoriously difficult. The game was almost certainly bought for my brother, being the big TMNT fan of our family. I would later go on to purchase the sequel for myself (though I never did use the inserted Pizza Hut coupon) after having obsessed over any TMNT beat-em-up that appeared in the arcade.

7. > Mother

   It is inevitable that we talk about the Mother series - otherwise known as Earthbound in the States. Please bear with me, and no cringing until the end.
   
   I played Mother after I had played Earthbound as a kid. This game came out about 8 days after my birth date in Japan. It wouldn't release in the US until brought to the Wii U virtual console in 2015, and then again in 2022 for the Switch's online service. The only way to have played this game is through an emulator - since this is the first time on this page this has been mentioned, with no ounce of sarcasm, let me state clearly that discovering emulators was one of the few things in my childhood that made life feel worth living.
   
   I would revisit this game a few times throughout my life. I replayed it a couple times growing up, then once or twice into adulthood. Most notably, when I was in high school and our old Windows 95 Gateway machine found its way onto a desk in my room, I had put a lightweight NES emulator which to my surprise it was able to handle. I was nearing the end of a playthrough - maybe even in the final Gigue fight - when my mother came into my room and told me my Grandmother had passed away. I handled news like this rather well as a kid - even as an adult too - being an empty emotionless void encased in human flesh, but there is some poetic meaning that this coincided with the end of the game which focuses on heavy themes of death and letting go.
   
   Like most other Earthbound fans, I find Mother enjoyable but not as beloved as its sequels. But the merits of a game are not solely reliant on one's enjoyment, and it remains one of my favorite old school RPGs.

8. > Super Mario Bros. 3

   It's very hard to not love this game. Nintendo delivered a refined, evolved sequel to one of the best selling, most iconic games of all time. At an early age, I formed the association with the Nintendo brand with refinement and improvement through this game. They got me while I was young, I guess.
   
   We didn't own a copy of this game until I had bought one for myself much later on into young adulthood from a second hand store, but we did rent it a few times. I have a distinct memory of playing it while living in between childhood homes in the "doll" room - sitting next to the sliding glass door leading to the back of the house. I don't remember beating it until much later in life.
   
   It's also critical to mention The Wizard (1989), which I only saw for the first time in 4th grade at school - I'm not sure why but the class needed to be distracted with a movie for some reason - maybe a half day or something. Certainly an odd choice, but an experience that stuck with me. If you, dear reader, have not seen this movie - please, go see it now. California. Etc.

9. > Final Fantasy

   Another early game that I've carried with me my whole life. I was first introduced to Final Fantasy by my cousins. They also introduced me to Earthbound, Ragnarok Online, DDR, SMRPG, Diablo 2, and who knows how many other titles. When I say introduce, I mean that they happened to be playing it or reading a strategy guide, or talking about it, and I happened to be nearby. Being the youngest, I was never really embraced; this was not aided by my complete lack of social awareness. Despite this, my cousins had an insanely strong influence over my interests. This is something that's gone unspoken between us - well, basically everything goes unspoken between us as we just never speak, engage on social media or even ask about each other (I assume, at least, that it is mutual). What a shame it is - to seem to have so much in common and yet never take advantage of it.
   
   As far as how this relates to Final Fantasy... on one of our visits, they had brought Final Fantasy with them. I remember them being somewhere around the Sunken Shrine at the time. It didn't really matter so much what the game actually was - the fact that they were playing it intriguied me.
   
   I would go on to play all of the classic Final Fantasy games via Emulator over the course of my childhood. I couldn't get enough of 'em.

10. > Gremlins 2: The New Batch

    Another highlight from the rental store era. Despite demanding near perfect gameplay even in the early levels, I mastered this game. I had seen the movie as a kid, and wasn't particularly enthralled by it, but there was something about the game's charm that stuck with me.
    
    Somewhat recently as of writing this, I had put together a Raspberry Pi emulator box for a non-gamer friend to enjoy some of the classics (namely just the same 3 or 4 games over and over again). I curated a list of games to include for him, this being one of them as he's a big movie and big nostalgia kinda guy. This title happened to come up in the rotation one night when we were hanging out, and my skills were still good enough to impress a drunk adult. I still game over'd on the third stage, but hey, it had been like 25 years!

11. > The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

    My brother had owned Bart vs. The World since I was young. I saw this one on discount at some point, and either had the disposable income or good grace of my parents at the time to buy it. By all means, the Simpsons licensed games from this era (and... every era afterwards) was terrible, but there was something charming about this one to me. I still didn't like it as much as vs. The World, but it was easier and more likely to be completed, so it ended up geting more game time.

12. > Kirby's Adventure

    My brother got this for Christmas one year. It was the year that the Christmas tree had been set up in the lower floor of our house (in a room converted from once being a garrage). I don't remember anything else that happened that year, except for seeing him open that game, and me seeing the box art.
    
    I was familiar with Kirby since we had owned Kirby's Dream Land on Game Boy, but Adventure really stood out to me. It was possibly the first game I set out to truly 100% (thanks in part to the save screen actually displaying completion percentage).

Today, most of my energy is on PC games. There are threads throughout my life that got me to this point - and even to a computer/tech based career - which you might see in some of the games described here.

Our first family computer ran Windows 3.1. A big case of oversized floppy discs which sat next to it served some mysterious purpose foreign to me. But I learned how to turn it on, open programs, and process words. Reversi was always my go-to game.

A story my mom is fond of telling is that in elementary school, at some form of parents night where they were conferencing with my teacher, she asked "okay, which one of you is the computer scientist" - operating under the assumption that I could have only been taught these (extremely simple) things by a professional. Nope. Just the product of a well laid out UI and the combined childhood qualities of curiosity and lack of fear of screwing things up.

The family's second computer, purchased when I was around 7 or so, was a Gateway Windows 95 PC. It sat in the basement, same as the old machine.

1. > Various early-to-mid 80s educational games

   Growing up, I latched on to any opportunity to spend time in front of a computer. The relatively well funded public schools I started off going to had a computer lab - filled around the perimeter with what I am almost certain were IBM PC/XTs or 5150s, and a handful of newer models. The displays for these PCs were monochrome green. Among the games they let us play, one in particular stuck out - it was some sort of language game - either spelling or typing - with a bee theme. There would be a hexagonal honeycomb like graphics with letters in each one. There were other kinds of games, but this one stuck out the most to me.
   
   In first or second grade, I stayed after school somewhat regularly - and one day out of the week, they let us stay in the computer lab. I got a lot of joy out of helping turn on and shut off the PCs, which somehow baffled the teacher.
   
   A core memory is that one day, I was using some form of paint app. I had made a Yin Yang, having learned vaguely what one was from my brother recently. I asked the nearest authority figure if I could print one out, to which she replied "well... what is it that you want to print?" Doing my best to explain that it's a Chinese symbol, and - to my understanding at the time and in less eloquent terms - "represents good and evil", I was not rewarded with permission.

2. > Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1985)

3. > Treasure MathStorm! (1992)

   I've never committed the name of this game to memory (and so now it is written here, and I will never have to). I have very vivid memories of playing this game on a school computer and being absolutely baffled by what the objective was, but feeling an extremely strong urge to try and find it again. The very first part of the game is etched to memory - the way your character skates around on the snow, the little cave at the start. Looking back at game play now... I have no idea how they expected kids to understand the objectives.

4. > Encarta Mindmaze (1993)

   The edutainment fixation continued with a game built in to Microsoft Encarta - a digital encyclopedia which saw plenty of use for school projects - but more use for this built-in game called Mindmaze. You would navigate through different floors of a castle, trying to find the stairs to the next level up and eventually... I dunno... find the queen or something. In order to advance, you would have to answer questions about literature, history, culture... you know, the kind of stuff you'd learn about in an encyclopedia. Needless to say, I was mostly just making multiple choice educated guesses, but maybe subconsciously some of it stuck with me. I knew very well I was out of my depth as a kid.

5. > Myst (1993)

   Here's the big hitter for this era. The first time I saw it played was over the shoulder of one of my cousins. The first time I had actually played it was as a rental - and then later purchase - for the Sega Saturn. Myst was everything I aspired to be. Beautiful, thoughtful, and stays with you long after it's gone. Also, obtuse and doesn't really make sense until several years later.
   
   This game straight up gave child me nightmares. It's so eerie and isolating. Truly existential crisis inducing if you're young and can't comprehend a narrative not explicitly written out in front of you. All you're left to focus on is the soundtrack and weird colored books in that one building.
   
   Going into adulthood, I absolutely love everything this game series brought to me. The mystery (oh I get it now) of being dropped into an island drives you to explore, search, and put the pieces together. A slightly older version of myself eventually figured this out, and learned how to solve abstract puzzles with only observation and limited information. Also, maybe GameFAQs. I honestly do not remember if I had to look up solutions, or if I managed the whole game solo. As much as I would liked to have been some kind of wunderkind who could handle these high concepts, I wasn't. I was just a kid curious about something I didn't understand, and compelled by some unknown thing inside of me that wanted to know more. Fittingly enough, my instinct was never to engage others in my life to find that unknown either - never once did I ask my stepdad or mom or brother or sister to sit and figure this thing out with me. I did it all alone. Isolated. And with time.

Game Boys were standard issue for me and my brother. I'm not sure if I had my own or if I got a hand-me-down grey brick, but I used the hell out of it. Most of the games certainly were hand-me-downs as well, but luckily my brother had somewhat good taste.

1. > Super Mario Land

   Another console, another Mario game being the first. Fairly sure this came with my brother's Game Boy - or maybe it was Tetris - but either way, another Mario game. I feel like it didn't take long for me to beat it and uncover every path, hidden block, etc., but most of the memories I have about the game was being amazed by its soundtrack. The first level's track will forever be etched in my DNA.

2. > The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

   Second favorite Zelda (til' Breath of the Wild came out and this got bumped down a notch). I played and beat this game a couple times through childhood - basically beating it without any external help. Again, the music was the highlight for me. Tal Tal Heights will forever be a banger. I have a distinct memory of sitting on a couch in a travel agency while my mom talked to - presumably - a travel agent - and getting to the Wind Fish Egg. I NEVER played with sound on in public. Ever. It just wasn't what you were supposed to do. But I couldn't just NOT listen to the wind fish ballad. So I turned it up just a little - only enough so that I could hear it if I put my ear up to the speaker. Magical.

3. > Pokemon Blue

   Also a game influenced by my brother - he wanted to get Pokemon, but with there being two versions, either he wanted them both or my parents saw an opportunity to knock out two birds with one stone. So he got Red, and I got Blue... which suited me just fine - Blue was my favorite color after all.
   
   My childhood experience with Pokemon was rather unspectacular and indistinguishable from any other kid of the era... only I was into games before it was cool! We did the trading card game, we did the movie, we did the whole thing. And it was wonderful. For two or so years, it felt like I had something in common with kids my age, even if I still hadn't mastered the whole being social thing.
   
   When everyone else was moving on from Pokemon fever, I was learning about a NEW Pokemon game that came out in Japan already. A whole new Pokemon! With new Pokemon! And what's more - I can play it before anyone else... thanks to .. yet again my brother (incidentally).
   
   My brother had a friend - whose name I never committed to memory - but I knew that he owned a Virtua Boy, which was his most defining characteristic to me. He may have been a year or so older than my brother - but he was also into these cool nerd things. He gave me a floppy disk with a program on it that he said would allow me to play the brand new Pokemon game. A completly radical ideal - Game Boy games on a computer. I remember putting the floppy in to my home pc and following his instructions to move the files onto my computer... a few files, one of which called No$GB... but nothing I tried would work. I was somewhat desperate... ejecting the floppy, putting it back in, trying anything I could think of to get it to work. Deflated, I eventually forgot about it until one day, I learned how floppy discs work (if the little square is moved over and closes the hole, you can't do anything with the files) and was back in business.
   
   Pokemon Gold. Of course it was in Japanese. And of couse I had no idea how to read anything. But that didn't stop me from doing everything I could (which was basically get to the second town and catch some Hoothoots). This experience only taught me one thing, which was that the Japanese hiragana "no" meant possessive (or "apostrophe S" as I understood it then). I remember telling one other kid about it at the card shop, and just getting nowhere trying to explain it. Too cool for the cool kids as usual.

The Sega Gensis was a real mystery to me as a kid. Having grown up only around Nintendos, and having parents that occasionally referred to any video game as "a nintendo" (yes, I did just do the same thing), I could not understand how there could be such a different console with completely different video games.

My first encounter I remember with a Sega Genesis was at a fire house - either on a school trip, or through my cub scout troup, I found myself in a firehouse. I remember absolutely nothing about it, except for there being a little seating area with a small TV - and hooked up right under it was a Sega Genesis. I likely wandered over there, escaping whatever supervision was available, to plop down and spend any moment I could in rapture.

We never ended up owning a Genesis (skipping instead ahead to the Sega Saturn), so the sheer scarcity of it drew strong interest from young me. The Genesis would continue to pop up from time to time - in the basement of an extended family (which later on would also have a 32x) that we visited only infrequently during holidays, or during a sleepover at a friend's house. My love was solidified with Nick Arcade (the TV show), seeing Sonic and many other Genesis titles being played.

1. > Sonic the Hedgehog 2

   Sonic 2 was my first exposure to this video game character that - weirdly enough - actually had a personality and recognizable features. Sonic was my first real video game obsession. I played lots of Mario, but I never really latched on to him as a character. Mario felt very commonplace. Sonic was novel.
   
   I had the lunchbox. The choice of lunchbox is the strongest indication of a child's interest. It's the closest we had to a ubiquitous coming of age ritual - the first real choice we are given in life - which in turn becomes an expression of ourselves to those around us. It did me no favors in obtaining friends - I was still an introverted kid, and if anyone did like video games or Sonic the Hedgehog, seeing my lunchbox sure wasn't enough to kickstart a strong connection.
   
   The interest ran deep beyond just the lunchbox. Sonic themed Spaghetti-o's became a staple food for me. The Sonic cartoon that came on at unpredictable hours (but usually on Sundays after church) was a persistent [Jaleel] white whale hunt.
   
   As for the game itself... the infrequent availability made the experience of playing it so much stronger, but the game's influence on me paled compared to the impact of Sonic as a cultural icon / brand mascot. I loved playing it when I could - only ever being able to beat it when I slept over at a friend's place (and insisted on playing it), or in my emulation days. But that feeling was eclipsed by re-reading the one of three or so Sonic the Hedgehog comic books I had. I loved the bonus levels but never figured out what made them appear - or even what the point of getting the chaos emeralds was. I liked playing Tails more than Sonic - generally identifying more as a sidekick than hero myself.

2. > Comix Zone

   This one stuck with me - though I played the PC port more than the Genesis version (it came with my dad's computer). This game stuck with me as a kid - it was hard enough that I had to put in several attempts, improving each time. As a kid, I was forced into finding any quick kills and secret items to actually make it through to the end - not able to brute force my way through on skill alone. I only managed to beat it once or twice as a kid, but I remember feeling extremely accomplished for it.
   
   The art style was unlike any other games at the time. I liked reading comics and the general comic aesthetic as a kid, despite never really having a large comic book library - so there was a natural pull for me. I thought Sketch, the main character, was the absolute paragon of cool design. Pony tail, fingerless gloves, athletic build, pet rat... these were aspirational goals for me, which I would later recognize less as wanting to BE Sketch and more wanting to be WITH Sketch.

The game gear was a gift from my father. He was not into the video games and generally clueless with nerd stuff (outside of Star Trek), so while it's poetic to have one divorced parent be the Sega parent and the other be the Nintendo parent, it couldn't have been intentional.

Unfortunately for him, he picked the losing side. I enjoyed the Game Gear as a kid, filling a gap at least with handheld versions of games I couldn't otherwise access, but it always felt a little lackluster. Maybe being overly concerned on the economy of batteries helped me hone my sense of anxiety around scarcity.

It generally got more play time than the Game Boy, at least when ample power was available. The strongest memories I have are playing it while on Summer vacation with my dad - specifically in the (illegal) back of the pick up truck which had a carpeted bed and cover. No AC or seatbelts, but it was all that could be done to fit us in the same car.

The screen's resolution was what bugged me most as a kid, but what left an even worse impression on me was the audio. I don't pretend to understand how these things work, but there's something on a hardware level that must have made it impossible to make anything on Game Gear sound good.

1. > Sonic the Hedgehog 2

   Talk about a let down. Depsite sharing the same name, this was not the Sonic 2 of my dreams. This version of the game was an 8-bit companion to the real Sonic 2 released on Genesis. It bears no similarities to the Genesis version short of having the same name and characters.
   
   I mostly played this game out of spite. It was tough as shit, slow, and physics that made simple platforming a nightmare. But it was one of only a few games I owned (I think it came with the system), so what else can you do without any other options. This may have been the first game I played that made me start to question a game's quality.

2. > Mega Man

   As much as I have ragged on the Game Gear, this was actually a pretty solid title. Since it was a release later on in the console's life, developers probably had figured out how to work around the hardware limitations.
   
   This game formed the basis of my understanding of the Mega Man series, having never played any of the titles on NES. The stages in this game was an amalgam taken directly from other existing Mega Man titles, making it sort of a greatest hits. For a kind unfamiliar with the series, it was a great introduction as a result. Another game that was hard as hell... we truly did have it tough as kids with some of these games.

3. > Garfield: Caught in the Act

   As a child, I was not immune to licensed tie-in video games. Usually, the obsessions worked the other way around - being obsessed with video game IP cartoons and what not. But this one in particular just happened to hit me from all the right angles. I liked Sunday comics, and Garfield was always my favorite until I learned to appreciate the wit of MUTTS.
   
   I had first read about this game in Boy's Life. I have no idea how these magazines made their way into our house, but I read them all the same. My favorite section of course was the one on video games, and for some reason they seemed to favor talking about licensed titles - this one and Cool Spot stick out in my mind. That impression must have stuck with me, as I undoubtedly picked this one out for myself at one point.
   
   The game wasn't particularly challenging, but had enough secrets hidden around that regular gameplay to keep me engaged. It really had no right being as moderately fun as it was.

I do not remember the origins of the family's third computer very well - but at some point, we made the change from Windows 95 to Windows 98. It could have been the same PC... or it could have been a new one. Either way, this was the era of America Online. Of Neopets. Of AOL keywords and chatrooms. Of never hearing "you've got mail!" when I logged in because what kind of 8 year old gets email?

After this computer, we made a technological leap to a Dell PC with the defining feature of having a very slim tower (much to my regret when the graphics card I convinced my parents to buy me just simply did not fit in the case and had to be returned). PCs were just built differently back then... there were very few games that you couldn't just run without any issue. Without these games being accessible through this run-of-the-mill home PC, I'm certain my life would look very different...

1. > Microsoft Bob (1995)

   While not a game so much as an experiment in radically rethinking the casual computer user experience, me and my siblings put in a lot of time messing around with this application. Instead of a computer desktop as we understand it today - with icons and a start menu and task bar - Microsoft Bob placed you in a virtual house, with rooms you designed with various familiar items - calendars, computers, magazines, TVs, doors that lead to other rooms - which were all representations of the applications. Click on the calendar and that's exactly what you'd get. There were games embeded as well, none of which are particularly memorable to me now.

2. > Curse of Monkey Island (1997)

3. > Diablo 2

   The first Blizzard game I became hooked on. Diablo 2 was one of my first foray into an online, grown up game space. I never ventured very far away in my character choices from paladin or sorceress when playing. Eventually, I found a rhythm in continuously running magic find runs - while also being completely clueless to what actual items were good in the game worth keeping. Still, I was having a blast. The grind felt like it was working towards some kind of purpose. The repetition, very soothing. The limits were only your own reaction time, critical thinking in navigating the maps, and how fast you could click. I took an approach of optimizing every little thing about my game play - something I never felt compelled to do before - much in the same way that someone doing data entry would be thinking about the most efficient way to tackle their repetitive tasks.

4. > Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos (2002)

   Starcraft (my brother's copy), Diablo, then Warcraft. Thus was I carried through the pipeline of Blizzard games, like many other PC gamers at the time. I loved the campaign, and didn't engage much with the game beyond that until The Frozen Throne expansion came out...
   
   And here, my dear reader, is where I must highlight where I was in life playing both this and Diablo 2. These games defined my Summers. Specifically, Summers spent through court mandated visitation with my dad. For three-or-so months, my summer was a couple hundred miles away from my home and only a computer to keep me company. In early years, summer visitation was spent playing through the entire backlog of SNES games (at least, when it was my turn in the sibling computer access rotation). At this point, I was mostly alone, or my brother had no interest in spending time on the computer (aside from the usual teenage urges - stories for another time/platform), and so I was free to exist solely within them.
   
   It was here that I learned to explore all the creativity of user-created content that were Warcraft 3 custom maps. These are game modes and scenarios that real life, amateur game hobbiests created to play with others. At their most basic forms, they would be regular maps to play the usual RTS Warcraft 3 as made by the game developers - but very few maps were made with this in mind. Most custom maps were completely different games entirely, just using Warcraft 3's assets and game engine. I was amazed by what people could create - completely new genres were invented in this space - battleships, "strife", tower defense - some of which came from the traditions in Starcraft - but the biggest one of all was DotA All Stars.
   
   I would play endless games of DotA, only really being good with a small number of characters (mostly Techies, some Siren or Slardar). It felt good to win - it felt bad to suffer at the endless toxicity that was this game's budding community. Forever in the background of these matches would be the usual arguments and drama that my dad always managed to conjure. Escapism at its finest.

5. > World of Warcraft (2004) part 1

   There is so much that can be said about WoW. This game, like Earthbound, defined a significant portion of my young adulthood - not because of its themes, or the story - but because of how I decided to engage with it. I started playing right when it was released - not without a high degree of persuading my mother to upkeep a monthly fee (who also would only have an account made and share credit card info over the phone with the Blizzard customer service reps) - and before it became a pop culture phenomenon of its own.
   
   I went hard. It was all I played when I came home from school, and even the only game I wanted to play. An aboslute miracle it ran on our family computer at the time. It also solidified the social trajectory I was in during high school - which is one void of a social life. I never saw this as much as a trade off - being the archetypical nerdy kid, my social circle didn't extend beyond my other nerd friends until I "blossomed late" in senior year.
   
   My first character was a Tauren Warrior (for the horde), deciding Warrior because I thought it would be the least commonly played class, and I wanted if nothing else to be in demand. Early on, I met 2 other players (in The Barrens), and got along well enough that we ended up making a guild - this being much before anyone was aware of how such online groups would go on to function... we were just some guys having fun playing a video game together. <Bloodrock Assassins> was the name of our guild - a name I came up with because I misremembered the name of the Orc clan Blackrock. One more piece of evidence showing the recurring theme of almost getting things right.
   
   Eventually, coordinated group activity became the aparent proper way to play the game, and we all disbursed to join "real guilds". I joined one, guild name deliberately withheld, that I ended up sticking with for about 5 years, through the "golden years" of WoW.
   
   It was also around this time I started to understand what sexuality was, and why mine was falling outside of the bell curve. I started coming out to people in WoW years before I came out in real life - for the usual practical reasons you can imagine living in semi-rural Alabama. To put it bluntly, being gay on the Internet was... actually pretty rad. The ratio of homophobia on the internet was far less than in real life, so certainly a net gain - and more importantly, the social context here - World of Warcraft - is one in which I was on top. Whether or not I was actually the best warrior, did the most damage, accomplish the most things, etc. was irrelevant. I FELT that way. If someone was an asshole, that didn't matter to me, because I could easily out DPS them, or beat them in a duel, or in any number of other metrics be better than the assholes.
   
   That feeling extended to almost every one I played with. Everyone except my own guildmates. Most of them were adults or young adults, most of which were generally liberal and accepting, but certainly not everyone. So it was not the greatest experience sticking with a group of people that you got along with except when such topics came up in order to "play the game the right way". To me, it felt like being stuck in a toxic relationship - some combination of codependency and domestic abuse. I'm being somewhat hyperbolic here, but since I don't have a therapist, you get to fill that role instead.

Another purchase from my dad. This one was for all us kids. This was our first real, modern game console we owned - so far beyond the capabilities of anything we had owned before. Games look like they looked like in the arcades!

This was a Christmas gift, but it wasn't given to us wrapped under the tree. Instead, all 3 of us were instructed to open a gift at the same time. My sister opened Daytona USA, my brother Cyber Speedway and me Clockwork Knight. It was obvious to me, but my brother and sister had to deliver the news of "oh, but, we don't own this console". And my dad, perpetually with a shit-eating face (yes it extended beyond the grin), told us to look behind our stockings, 'cause he saw Santa stash something back there. Lo and behold, Sega Saturn set up for use.

This of course was very on brand for my dad. Always a trickster. And it just felt bad. I felt like I was lied to or tricked or something. I was not very good at being the butt of a joke.

1. > Clockwork Knight

   Of the three initial games, this was the one I put the most time into. This game was dripping with Japanese weirdness that I caught on to pretty early. While my education on platforming games was still a work in progress at this point, I was able to navigate it pretty skillfully. This game had a toybox theme, ironically coming out as the same time as Toy Story, both doubling up on some of the same tropes.
   
   I remember beating this game and just feeling disappointed. It felt too short (it certainly wasn't by any measure), and moreover left the story on one giant cliffhanger that you just KNEW there was more to after you beat the last boss. I learned later there was a sequel... that of course we never bought or rented, so I had to wait until adulthood to experience it.

2. > Cyberia

   I have NO idea how we came into possession of this game. It's absolutely not the kind of thing I would have bought, and it doesn't exactly seem like my brother's aesthetic either. But... it just was always around, and it was a game I'd visit very sporadically. In short, the game just kinda spooked me out as a kid.
   
   There wasn't a whole lot of explaining itself - either in story or even what buttons did what. This game was in the vein of "movie games" that seemed popular at the time, mostly done in FMV but this one was fully animated... the focus was on immersion, narrative, and spectacle... all things I would come to enjoy as an adult, but didn't grasp well as a kid. I was definitely out of my element trying to play this. I do remember being extremely bored by the shooting parts of the game (which I had to play time and time again to reprogress to the puzzles I constantly died on). The odd, haunting world and obtuse puzzles is what kept me coming back.
   
   I absolutely never beat this game, but gave it several attempts over the Saturn's life span. Ultimately, my lack of patience to reprogress after death was my weakness here.

3. > Bug!

   Really loved this as a kid. It was funny, new, and weird as hell. Unfortunately, also very janky or possibly haunted. I figured out cheat codes to levitate and boundary break once, but every time I booted the game up, those cheats would randomly activate. Maybe our Saturn just had some bad RAM (it DID ask us to set the date/time every we powered it up after all).
   
   I ended up seeking out the sequel - Bug Too! - at some point as a kid once it became apparent that the Saturn was not a commercial success and prices went down to kid friendly levels.

4. > Earthworm Jim 2

   Writing these thoughts, I keep coming back to the same word when talking about these Saturn games, and that's "weird". There's very few other adjectives that fit better to describe this one.
   
   I played the hell out of this one, partially fueled from seeing my cousins play the SNES version once, and partially because we had a PC demo of the first game on my dad's computer. While much more forgiving than the first game in the series, this one still ate up a lot of hours.
   
   What stuck with me as with many others who enjoyed this game was the music. Very few games did what this one did - which is adapt existing music - classical music or other recognizable tunes. I loved it with Looney Tunes, and I loved it here.
   
   In the mid 2000s, a touring concert event called Video Games Live! would start touring around the US, organized mostly by the composer of Earthworm Jim's soundtrack [who unfortunately turned into a jerkwad later in life]. It was exactly as you'd think it would be - a concert for solely video game music. It's something I told my mom about, and she snagged two tickets as it was touring through Birmingham some time when I was in high school (I remember, having purchased the EJ2 soundtrack on CD and it living in my car's CD player for as long as I owned it).
   
   Even in an environment surrounded by nerds, I still felt uncomfortable and unable to relate to anyone around me. But I enjoyed it all the same. I had a constant, surreal feeling listening to the music - the most intense frission (which I now have the vocabulary to understand) I had ever experienced.

5. > Sonic R

   Another game (not all that weird) that stuck with me as an underrated gem from the Saturn. Again, repeating themes - the soundtrack is what everyone remembers and what stuck with me the most.
   
   This was just good ol' fun for me as a kid. Sonic was my favorite, and racing was an obvious fit for a character whose defining characteristic was his speed. Even though my save file seemed to get deleted constantly, I enjoyed collecting all the unlockables time and time again.

And now we've reached peak adolescent nostalgia. When I was about 9 or 10 or so, I was at a close friend's birthday party at Pizza Time (which as it turned out was a pizza restaurant). I had little to no experience with socializing with kids - having just changed schools recently, I didn't know too many kids, but I had met the birthday boy's sister (4 or 5 years older than us), and having a sister around that age, it's the only group I felt I could manage to handle.

So at one point, I gravitated towards the table her and her friends were sitting at, and for some reason, thought the right thing to do at the moment was to entertain them with a silly dance. The dance was something close to what you'd see in an old movie with tap dancing - legs back, leaned forward with swaying arms while sort of jogging in place. I got as far as the legs back part and either misjudged the table's height or the floor's slipperiness and smacked my chin on the table. Blood and panicked parents aplenty.

How does this relate to the 1991 16-bit Nintendo console? Fast forward to my pediatrician's office. I was not upset or crying or distressed - embarrassment was my primary emotion. They needed to put some stitches in it, and to keep me mentally in a good spot, my mom encouraged me to "think of the thing I wanted most in the world, and imagine getting it". This was not a tactic she'd ever employed before. Wishes and desires were generally limited to birthdays, Christmas or the occasional dinner decision. I wasn't a kid who often wanted things. But this was what she had pulled out in an effort to keep me consoled.

In case it wasn't obvious, an SNES was the only thing that came to mind. Never told anyone that at the time. And I never ended up getting one either. But once I discovered emulation, that was more than enough for me. I later went on to purchase an SNES on the cheap from a local comic/hobby shop as I was heading off to college (good ol' young disposable income).

1. > Super Mario World

   The classic. This was almost certainly one of the first games I downloaded once I figured out how emulators work. It only felt natural - gotta play the next mainline mario game.
   
   I have distinct memories of watching others play this game or finding it out in the wild. The strongest of these was at one of my brother's friend's house when we lived with our grandparents. I remember that they lived up on a hill on the other side of the highway from us. I vividly recall the room - very clearly set up as a kids playroom. The only thing I remember from playing it then was being stuck on the "transfer lives between player 1 and player 2" menu in the overworld.

2. > Zelda: A Link to the Past

   This game, I experienced almost entirely in my Neighbor's basement. Our neighbor Mary owned an SNES, and the game I always found some excuse to come over and play.
   
   She was diabetic. I didn't know what this meant at the time; just that that was the word for it, and that she had to prick her finger all the time with some sort of machine and was always concerned about eating. Her family had moved here from Kentucky - very evident from the University of Kentucky flag they always flew outside and focus on basketball over football like most other folks back home. My brother, sister and I would on occasion go over to visit, and I always tried to worm my way into playing her SNES.
   
   The strongest memory I have is going through the dark world and realizing that, very thematic to the creepy and otherworldly setting, the trees had eyes, and that those eyes followed you as you walked by them. I mentioned this to my brother and Mary and they just could not believe I said something so stupid and unbelievable for what I thought was an interesting observation. Similarly with Super Mario World, I noticed one day that the music changed when you got on Yoshi (bongos are added on top of the soundtrack), and showed them, only to be told they just couldn't hear the difference.
   
   I'm fairly sure I managed to beat the game over many, many play sessions at their house - at least on one occasion doing it without Mary around, asking her step dad if I could come in and play it. I don't know what he thought of me, but I guess it took a village.

3. > Shadowrun

   This was a game I didn't play until I found emulation, but once I did, I was so very enraptured by it. It's a gritty, cyberpunk mixed with D&D style fantasy characters, based on the table top RPG of the same name. The version on SNES was a recreation of the feel of the role playing game, with a narrative that was pretty straight forward, but confusing and certainly not easy for beginners to navigate. However, having found GameFAQs by now, I had all the resources I needed to get the most out of it.
   
   It didn't occur to me until later on in life, but I had actually played the TTRPG with my cousins one summer. I never truly grasped the concept of role playing in this sense (I just knew about numbers, combat and choosing perks for my character), but was brought along all the same. I'm sure I was a terrible detriment to the experience.
   
   I didn't truly connect that experience with playing this game, but enjoyed it all the same. I felt very gripped by the setting and how creatively different it was from any other piece of fiction I had experienced. Out of all the games I've written about here, this is the one I most want to revisit at time of writing.

4. > Donkey Kong Country

   Our neighbors on the other side of the road and up the hill also owned an SNES. They had a few titles that I remember - uniracers and DKC being the two most memorable. I didn't get to know the family all that well - just that on occasion I was brought along with my brother and sister, and again found my way in front of video games.
   
   We didn't visit all that often, but I distinctly remember playing a lot of DKC over there one day, and for some reason, this one Ritz Bits sandwich cracker commercial with "Sing, Sing, Sing" as the jingle.
   
   The SNES was set up in the kid's bedroom. You had to sit on the bed to play, with the TV uncomfortably close to the bed. This was a foreign concept, and almost felt forbidden at the time... video games in bed.

5. > Earthbound

   The first time I was exposed to Earthbound was through my cousin reading the strategy guide in a car trip going to... somewhere. It didn't matter where we were going - there was something video game related near me, and that's where my attention went.
   
   I didn't play Earthbound until I found emulation. The first time I played it, it was obvious how starkly different it was from everything else. It had a style to it - a clever language unlike any other games before it. Playing it, I experienced one of the first time I really stopped focusing on progress and instead just naturally enjoyed the game - run around, explore, talk to NPCs, call mom...
   
   While I absolutely love the game, it's hard to fully embrace it. It feels like there's such a stereotype - not necessarily a stigma but something like a stigma - about Earthbound being your "favorite game". So I keep it at an arm's length. Despite maining Ness in every Smash Bros. And cosplaying as Ness frequently. And having made several Earthbound related cross-stitch pieces...

6. > Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

   We have arrived at my actual favorite SNES game. There's just something about this game that makes it perfect. An engaging combat system, characters you already know in completely different situations than normal, plenty of memorable moments...
   
   Yet again, I played this for the first time at my cousin's place. Specifically, in my older cousin's room, secluded. I was absolutely entranced. Words really can't express the joy it gave me as a kid.

7. > Kirby Super Star

   Another game first exposed to by my cousins. I remember playing this at their house on a couple of our infrequent visits - probably around when I was a pre-teen. Being a little older, and owing to the fact that there is a super easy pick-up-and-play 2nd player mode, I actually managed to get some hands on time with this one.
   
   I went on to purchase my own SNES when I went off to college. This was the first and only game I explicitly sought out a copy. Bought one on eBay for what had to have been something like $15. Way cheaper than you could get any sort of popular retro game these days.

While the Nintendo 64 was the definitive console of my generation, I never really felt all that attached to it as a platform. I was much more interested in the SNES, especially since all the games could just be emulated - an endless supply! Meanwhile, it's either waiting for xmas or getting lucky with what's available to rent at Blockbuster.

I have the standard memories of Goldeneye with friends and family, Mario Kart, Smash Bros. etc. But none of it really felt all that personal. Games on the N64 felt just so... common? Gaming was becoming more mainstream. It was no longer this niche I failed to connect with anyone about. But with the 64, it felt empty. No one really felt like they were a "gamer" like I was. So while we cold talk about Super Mario 64 or Star Fox, I felt so completely over it. A weird mix of superiority and a desire to distance myself. I haven't figured out where that's coming from yet.

1. > Mischief Makers

   This game was weird as hell. I wasn't all that into anime, but the gameplay was just so engaging. It was difficult in a not-impossible sort of way, and I think I enjoyed it mostly because it tested an abnormal combination of skills that most games didn't.
   
   This game was a frequent rental from Blockbuster. I have one very vivid memory of renting it once during the "summer of hell" as I call it. My mom denies this ever happening, but one summer, she switched into a very serious and strict parenting approach. Each of us had regulated schedules. Bed times, mandatory reading time, and house work time. It felt... completely unlike her. To this day, I have no idea what inspired it, but it was definitely not the lifestyle for me. I was allowed an hour of video game time. I remember the house being so very quiet as I played, alone, in a mostly dark room. To me, it was so silly to have paid for a game rental, and then explicitly limited game time. We're on a clock here! We gotta beat it! And I gotta get all the yellow gems! And clear every stage at the higest rank! I got things to do, and only 3-5 days to do it in.

2. > Quest 64

   Another weird one... and also vaguely anime-ish. I guess I had a type at this time in my life.
   
   Standard fantasy adventure type affair. Little boy, out to save the world, etc. etc. And it was hard, especially if you spent all your spell points into air (worthless). But I managed to beat it... maybe the second time I got around to renting it. It always felt half completed - that there was more game to this game, just... on the cutting room floor somewhere.

3. > NFL Blitz 2000

   I did not care for football. Begrudgingly, I accompanied a friend to an Alabama game when I was young. The part I was looking forward to the most was getting one of those giant pretzels with mustard. And the marching band. Either fortunately or unfortunately, his family was quite well off - so there was a whole talegating experience, getting pulled to the stadium in a wagon... it was a whole ordeal and I had no idea what was going on around me.
   
   Fast forward to this game. Arcade style football - completely unrealistic but also kinda just fun to play. It was a go-to multiplayer experience for me and my brothers, but I was never the one who got to choose the game... and holy hell did I hate it. They would win every time. They ran the option every time. And I had no real concepts of the fundamentals of the game to know what I was doing. I just wanted to play and enjoy it, but it was never enjoyable losing to them time after time.

4. > Glover

   And now we stop on a bad one. Glover, by all measures, is not a good game. The controls are difficult, the stages are difficult, and the programming lends itself to falling through stages randomly, glitching through terrain, and legitimately getting stuck without a way to progress the game.
   
   This did not stop me from playing and enjoying it though. This may have been the most informative "this is bad, but that's okay and you can still enjoy things that are bad" experience I had growing up. Without a large library of games to choose from, you could only play what you had. So you sure as hell got every drop of enjoyment out of them.
   
   I still defend this little title to this day. It's always such an easy target to call a game bad because, well, it's difficult to play and likely unintended programming mistakes make it even harder. But what's there to gain from evaluating things? Does it poison the well outright by calling something bad? Does it imply inherit judgement for anyone else who has a different opinion? If you enjoy something that is bad, does that make it not bad? Questions to which I may never find the answers.

Senior year, before moving off to college, I had saved up enough money for my own gaming PC. I told people at the time that I had built it, but in reality, it was an iBuyPower machine that I had read about in an ad in PC Gamer. I wouldn't actually build my first PC until... well... maybe buy me a drink and I'll tell you that story.

Once it became apparent that the way I would be starting adulthood is by moving to a state 1,000 miles away with no job, it made no sense to bring any games or a computer capable of handling games along to distract me. My faithful machine was left behind with my parents, and along with me was a small netbook that could only handle the essentials of internet browsing, word processing... and a little bit of emulation. About three years later, I built a PC using the money from my first ever bonus from work. It was certainly not a substantial amount - needing to be supplemented to afford a real machine - but it was a sign from the universe that I could finally return to my old hobby in ernest.

1. > World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (2010) part 2

   Despite being perpetually glued to my computer, stuck in World of Warcraft, time continued forward in real life. I transitioned from high school to college and still maintained a 2-3 night-a-week raiding schedule, extending the trend of a light social calendar into higher education.
   
   With college came the opportunity to come out in real life. That's just what you do when you're gay and young... hold it in, because it's not like there's anything you can do about it at that age, until you hit college; then find the gay campus group and start having opinions about things. Those opinions eventually goaded me into rethinking my toxic relationship with the guild I was in. I happened upon finding out about the "gay server" - aptly named Proudmoore. I sent out some guild applications and hopped on the first group that accepted me - <Sparkle Magic> - coincidentally named after a fictional dance troup in the movie Donnie Darko... or, at least close to the name, or what one might think their name was if misremembered.
   
   It was everything I could have imagined. Being exposed to actual real life practicing homosexuals and adjacents instead of solely relying on the battered, backwards, self-hating breed that the South tends to produce, affected me in ways I cannot imagine. Not to say every queer from the South fits in such category, or that we held the monopoly on the archetype, but such was my experience.
   
   One year, the guild decided it made sense somehow to all travel to Blizzcon (the annual convention run by Blizzard - the makers of the game) to meet up, cavort, and do all the usual stuff gay nerds do when they meet. Conveniently enough, I had very recently turned 21, and could finally play with the big boys. I was lucky to snag a ticket and turn in game friends into real life friends. Unfortunately, most of these friendships did not last. I more-or-less was stepping into a world where folks had already known each other for years. It's hard to compete for another's emotional investment when the odds are stacked against you like this, and even harder when you end up fading away from the game a year after then. Still, the trip brought many great memories were made - participating in a round of jaeger shots, then taking everyone else's jaeger who didn't want them, then losing the California Pizza Kitchen pasta I was holding on to in the bathroom sink. Oh, and the actual convention too... getting to playtest the new expansion, diablo 3, etc. Good times.
   
   My time with the game reached an apparent end as study abroad took me to Japan, and then upon returning, pressures of real life kept me from re-engaging in the same patterns I had before (planning my schedule around raiding several nights a week), and so I didn't resubscribe once I was stateside, instead sticking to more casual, finite games like League of Legends or Smite.
   
   This story has a happy ending, however. Even though I was estranged from every group I used to play with (except for still remaining Battle.net friends with some people from my first "real guild"), in 2019, I resubscribed and played casually. WoW Classic was launched, and I met new friends, had new adventures in the old world, complete with the same flaws and toxic patterns that defined my early WoW days. After that burned out within a year, I swore off of it until 2022 when the urge hit again. I found an amazing group of players - level headed, skilled and actually good people - to play through the Dragonflight expansion with. Shoutouts to <Spatula City>. I'm off WoW as of writing this, so if these folks are the epitaph on my WoW career - well I guess I'm dying happy.
   
   The reality for me is that WoW was an addiction, and if I ever play casually again, it won't really be "casual" by most definitions. At least 20 hours during the week and all day on the weekends feels like a normal amount of playtime for me. Any way you look at that, it is not healthy. And I knew this - I was fully cognizant of my behaviors then and now. And I do not regret it. It is an addiction, but one I either view candidly or have convinced myself is not a problem. Which... is undoubtedly something an addict would say, making it impossible for me to view my relationship with WoW with any degree of impartiality.

2. > Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringer (2019)

   Up until this point, my experience with this game was limited to trying to sign up for the game's beta test when I was studying abroad in Japan. I had no means to actually play it while over there (a small netbook was my only companion). I didn't get into the beta, and soon enough, it was forgotten.
   
   Fast forward to 2020 - Covid strikes, and WoW classic has become a burden. At the insistence of an old high school friend, and not being quite satisfied with one MMORPG already having consumed my life, I jumped into the deep end yet again.
   
   Despite being the same genre, I soon learned that these games were very different. FFXIV had many more appealing activities beyond WoW's "get to the end and schedule 6 hours a week to raid" pattern that dominated almost 8 years of my life. I didn't feel pressured to rush straight through to the end game. I could explore the world and the many years of content at my leisure, and even without having to find a "guild" no less. It was like learning to love again.
   
   To cut to the end - I'm still playing this game on and off in the same way... no pressure, no schedule, no toxic codependent relationships. Just a video game that's there for me to enjoy.