I probably played my first video-game, Toejam & Earl on the Sega Megadrive when I was about 4.  What is probably most alarming about my early years as a gamer is the absence of Nintendo. The first Nintendo console I owned was a Gamecube, which I bought on the cheap many years after it was released. I was barely aware that Mario existed until I was a teenager and my friend introduced me to him. To be honest, I remain unconvinced by Mario and the like, apart from the Paper Mario games, which are awesome.

I remember being rubbish at Megadrive games, and like many other young gamers I became very accustomed to playing through ‘Greenhill Zone’ over and over again. It was when my older brother got a Playstation for Christmas that I began gaming properly. I became enamoured with the fantastic but obscure Herc’s Adventures, an over-head action-adventure game in which the player takes on the role of Jason, Hercules or Atlanta. I remember it being full of charm and charisma as you embarked on a whistle stop tour of Ancient Greece, encountering gods and mythological creatures along the way. My recollection of playing through the colourful game, with its cartoonish and humorous visual design, is a nostalgia fuelled haze. Unlike many of the games that were important to me as a child, I’ve never had a chance to revisit Herc’s Adventures, so if anyone can make my dream come true by showing me a way to play the game now, I’d be forever appreciative.

Due to the fact that the Playstation was my brother’s and not mine, I remember often watching him play through games rather than playing through them myself. I watched him play through the first Metal Gear Solid game in its entirety, as well as the first two Resident Evil games, sometimes reading aloud to him from the walkthroughs. At the time, MGS1 and Resi 1 & 2 seemed like incredible challenges, so it was not until a couple of years later that I actually sat-through the games myself. Whilst my brother was playing MGS, I was playing the Crash Bandicoot series, originally developed by ‘Naughty Dog’ of Uncharted fame. I look back fondly on my time playing as the marsupial mask enthusiast, bouncing from platform to platform in awkward, early 3D. I played through the sequels with unbridled glee before moving on to more mature, complex games. Incidentally, I recently purchased the first Crash Bandicoot game from the Playstation Network, only to be disappointed by the controller-snapping frustration of the poor platform-based gameplay. A valuable lesson reader: nostalgia lies!.. (most of the time).

Eventually, I bought Baldur’s Gate for my Windows 95 PC. I consider this to be the turning-point in my life as a gamer. This was the first game I can remember that completely enthralled me in the way that the clock often skipped from being 1 in the afternoon to 1 in the morning in the blink of an eye. I had played Diablo 1 on the PlayStation (obscure or what!) and I actually went into my local game shop with my mum looking for Diablo 2. They didn’t have it. I was devastated. The cashier recommended that as a substitute I should buy this computer game called Baldur’s Gate. I reluctantly took it home, thinking that it wouldn’t stand up to Diablo 2. What I got was one of the best and most in-depth RPGs of all time. I played through the game so many times over the 3 or 4 years following my purchase of it, and I’d be frightened to see how many hundreds of hours I’ve spent on it over the years. By the way, Baldur’s Gate is available on gog.com, so you should probably buy it right now, this instant. I purchased it last year and I enjoyed it just as thoroughly as I did as a wide-eyed child. Sometimes, nostalgia can be well founded!

Baldur’s Gate acted as a gateway game for me and RPGs soon became my favourite genre. I played through countless RPGs throughout this period of my life, including Sacred, Lionheart, and Neverwinter Nights. I barely touched a console for years until my brother and I were bought a Playstation 2 to share at. I remember playing through Final Fantasy X (the pinnacle of the series in my opinion) and being blown away by it, only to be crushed with disappointment by the sequel. I still consider the tenth instalment in the FF series to be one of my favourite games of all time, with top-notch graphics and charismatic characters. Tidus’ epic journey across Spira is emotional and exciting, and with well-implemented turn-based combat, I loved every second of gameplay. I can’t wait for the game to be re-vamped and released on the PS-Vita.

So that’s the story of how I became the gamer I am today. Video games have played an important and influential part in my life, and I count some of the experiences I’ve had sat in front of a screen as some of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, however tragic that may sound. Wait, I forgot to tell you about all the time I spent playing Brian Lara’s Cricket! Ah well, that’ll have to wait till some other time…

© 2013 – 2014, zero1gaming.com. All rights reserved. On republishing this article your must provide a link to this original post