I started at age 5. Christmas, I opened a present and got a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Yellow. My brother had Pokemon Blue already, so we got started competing, as brothers always do. I trained Pokemon, learned what "recoil" meant (as well as many other words), and soon rivaled my brother who is six years older than me. We had some great battles, and got pretty close to completing the Blue version Pokedex together. Then came the Super Nintendo. The Ninja Turtles fighting game, Super Mario World, and Mario Bros. 3, just to name a few. I had that console at my grandparents' house in another state, so I played every summer when I went to visit but that was all. It was me and Game Boy.
Over time, I got the Game Boy Advance, again much later than friends at school. By then, I had played Pokemon Silver and Crystal (my brother had Gold version), and gotten an N64. Games were good, I had friends to invite over and play coop of versus, and I was still learning. At a much later Christmas, I got the Gamecube. My father had bought a PS2 and some military games, which he never touched, so my brother played them and I watched (my brother would never let me play the games, since he said it wasn't for kids, but he never stopped me from watching, probably to shut me up). Metal Gear was one of my favorite games to watch him play, and to this day I have never seen anyone flow through Metal Gear games as well as he does. He would hide, see where every enemy was and how they moved, then all at once he'd be off and the room would be clear five minutes later with no alarms. My life was well split now between PlayStation and GameCube.
Several years after this, my brother and I made a friend down the street. We often sparred outside with wooden swords and other fake weapons, and one day this kid just rode his bike out of the sunset and asked to join us. He was a bit timid, and not very courageous at the time, but we trained him to fight like us and even showed him some martial arts from our classes together. We soon found out he had an Xbox and the Halo games, as well as Morrowind and some others. Now we had all the consoles, but we never said one was better than the other. Each game was separate to us, with it's own story, style of graphics, gameplay, and control.
Years later, my brother joined the US Navy and went away, leaving me and our friend to play on these old consoles. The rivalries I had always had with my older brother I now introduced to our friend, who was four years younger than me. Together we had many great battles, playing Pokemon Ruby (me) and Emerald (him), as well as staying up til 4am at his house, playing Halo 2 and eating Double Stuf Oreos! Things changed when he got the Xbox 360. Now we not only had all my consoles at my house, the old ones, but we had the newer ones at his. I got a Nintendo DS, and eventually my own Xbox 360 Elite. Still, we played the Gamecube and PS2, loving our old games and rivalries. I never gave too much thought to Xbox Live, though I did have it and played with a few people here and there. I had Ace Combat 6, Halo 3, and a bunch of other cool games from the time. The only time I ever played Call Of Duty, was number 2 for the PS2. I've since played the coop with friends at their houses, but the multiplayer community continues to push me away from the series. The games are good, but it is the people in matches that I don't need in my life.
Now I have Super Street Fighter IV: AE, Space Marine, Halo Reach, Skyrim, Tenchu Z (used to play Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven on the PS2 with my brother and friend), and a score of other games. I have a Wii I don't use often anymore since no one lives close enough to play coop with and the online lags. The Wii was a favorite of mine because of the cool controls and new takes on old games. Metroid Prime on the Gamecube was a big part of my childhood, so #3 was like a dream come true. I never got a PS3 due to the huge price tag (as I said, I was lucky to get a 360) and due to the fact that most of my favorite game series were over with. I continue to love all my consoles, even my PSP which I use more for music than gaming anymore, and respect those with the PS3 I could never have. The only thing to ever make me get a PS3, save up that much money, would be Zone Of The Enders 3, Rengoku 3 (Rengoku is a series on the PSP with mentions a few years ago of a console port), or some other old franchise only on PS3.
Video games have taught me to love fantasy, have given me knowledge of words and concepts I would otherwise have overlooked, and entertained me and my friends all my life. I love anime as well, and the concepts from all the anime, books, and games I've experienced have made me who I am. No console is "better" than another, it is all based on preference. Seeing console wars is like listening to elitist anime fans who think that raw is best and any dubbed anime is worthless. I watch anime in Japanese with subtitles, as I'm still learning, and some anime (DBZ, FMA, so on) are just better in English to me. Games can be good the same way. So what if Minecraft's basic graphics are 16x16 blocks? It's a very fun game, especially on servers with friends (I host a private survival server, and sometimes all my friends log on to a public server to start factions and have the thrill of PvP). So what if some games have epic graphics if the story is terrible or the gameplay sucks (as I suspect Star Wars 1313 will be (sorry, but I'm on the Battle Front boat))? It all boils down to what you love and what you want. I, personally, would rather watch sports than play. Instead, I practice forms of martial arts (Tang Soo Do, 6 years, Shi To Ru, 2 years, Aikido, just started) and write in my spare time (three books, two ideas).
Video games were important to make me me, and should be treated with respect. Too much video games can detach you from reality and things you need to be doing in the real world. Too little video games can leave you stressed and depressed. Video game stories can have huge impacts on your way of thinking, can motivate you to do amazing and impossible things, and can give you wisdom for future use. I play online for the thrill of battle. I don't care if I win or lose as long as it was a good fight, and you can ask the people of DragonBall: Raging Blast 2 for proof. I never got the highest rank, and I'm moderate on the leaderboards, but I have fun fighting my friends and I have a rival to beat someday. He wins, but it's always close, and that's all it takes to keep me laughing and trying harder to win.
If you already love video games, always remember to respect the game and it's players, whether you like it or them or not. If you're into games, but only here and there, be smart and keep a look out for the little games you may not hear about, as those will make your experiences broader than the mainstream stuff. If you hate video games, perhaps you're looking at the surface to hard and not seeing the trees for the forest. Games come in all types, styles, and genres, so no single game can be the best. Sure, there are bad games, (DMC2, Sonic '06, to name a few), but overall gaming is good.
If you want to see me online, just look for Max7238 as always. It's my name everywhere, though in some places I have been known as Sito7238, Zero2935, and on Runescape as rampart7238 (max7238 lost password, so I picked a word at random and added my numbers).
See you all later, and good luck in future battles.
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