My Video Game Resume

I grew up in the town of Brookline MA. The kids in my community had a rare amount of youth sports, playgrounds, parks, and activities to pick from. It was wasted on me though. I had absolutely no interest in sports or anything else outside for the most part.



As a very young kid, I amused myself by coloring, playing with cars and legos and watching TV. Enter the late 80s... I saved my $5 per week allowance and bought myself a Nintendo NES.

I often lament the fact that I was a horrible student from about 5th grade on. It really kind of only dawns on me now that, no freakin wonder...

Anyway, I spent more time playing video games than anything else. At one point, I had well over a hundred NES games. Not bad for a chubby punk with next to no money, huh?

There was never really any one game that held my interest, I played em all! Archon, Chess, Wrestlemania, Super World Runner, Dig Dug II (I never could find Dig Dug 1...) Marble Madness, Dr. Mario, BattleToads, Contra, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Wizards and Warriors, Dragon Warrior, Ikari Warriors... I could go on all day... If you'd like me to, drop a comment, I'll email you with more (I dare you.)

I remember when Street Fighter had nothing to do with that wuss Ryu. I can't help but look at today's game consoles and think "Pff... I only needed two buttons when I was a kid. Up-hill, both ways. " Remember the NES R.O.B.? Or the PowerGlove?? The NES MAX!? Hell yeah.

Anyway, as all great empires the Nintendowent the way of Atlantis, gave way to Supre Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and I ate it up. Same channel, different show.



I kinda stopped at the Super Nintendo and got myself interested in girls. I had a few game systems between 1995 and now... All of them I had maybe four games, and it flopped. Sega Saturn. Sega Dreamcast. A few controllers, but nothing fancy. Never again had anything caught my attention like the NES had.

I still say Final Fantasy (the first one) was the best of them all.

Anyway, fast forward through my lack-luster, passive interest in video games to about 2003. At that time I belonged to a small group of nerds, most of whom got together in Ever Quest some hundred years ago, and together they wandered from game to game. I was sucked into this IRC chatroom (that we all still inhabit today) by my cousin who played EQ with these guys. They eventually dragged me into City of Heroes.

November 2004 struck, and I stopped doing much of anything aside from playing World of Warcraft. I spent my first year or so bouncing around exploring, and a little role playing (shut it.) I had never even level-capped by the first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

The next four years or so I was Guild Leader. We weren't anything incredible, but I made some great friends there. I stepped down as guild leader to help me cut down on the hours I played. I can honestly say, it didn't really work. I started raiding a lot more. I'd frequently stay up until around 3am, just to get up at 5 and haul my ass into Boston where I worked as an I.T. guy. I'd get home, and log in on my work-issued laptop, rinse, repeat.

During the seven or so years that I played World of Warcraft I level capped almost a dozen times on various characters with each new expansion. I met many great real people, saw seven divorces, eleven break-ups, dozens of hook-ups,  five marriages, four babies, two suicides and one drunk driving death. I stopped playing World of Warcraft about seven months ago.

In all honesty, I burnt the hell out on it, because you put in so much time, and you never. beat. the. game. And frankly, all the social interaction really frazzled me.

I got the X box for Christmas for the family. Figured, with the kinect, we'd all be bouncing around having fun, getting exercise, etc... That didn't happen. That's another story though...

Anyway, I was so burnt out on getting gear, crunching numbers, min/maxing, that I couldn't even think about World of Warcraft. I had gotten via gamefly Skyrim Elder Scrolls. I ran around for a minute with a sour face, thinking it was very similar to WoW... And then I picked up a piece of armor and it had stats, and I had to compare it to what I was wearing already... I ejected the disk, stuffed it back into it's envelope and sent it back.

That is my video game career in about as brief a post as I can make. How about you? Do you remember these games I talked about? Any particular favorites?