Video Games, Pt. I

            I’m not exaggerating when I say that playing video games is one of my earliest memories. Gameboy, Nintendo, Playstation, PC, Xbox, Call of Duty, Mario, Mortal Combat, Resident Evil, Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Need for Speed, Forza, and all the rest. I’ve owned them, sold them, played them, bought them, and borrowed them. The first system I can remember owning was the classic Nintendo 64. I kept it out in my sunroom and I would wake up at dawn, sneak past my snoozing brother, and brave the cold to be the first one to play. I loved playing that thing as a kid. I remember I only had like six games and I would just replay them constantly and sometimes I would never even make any progress, but I’d keep playing because it was still awesome. I would never buy new games for it either; I would always just rent Super Smash Brothers from Blockbuster and beat it like ten times before I returned it. Later in my childhood, I would get a PlayStation 1. It sucked. I traded it in. Then I got a Playstation 2 and my journey into serious gaming began. The first two games I had for it was Tony Hawk’s ProSkater 2 and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. Those two games took endless hours of my invaluable time, but oh my god they were fun. I think I bought all the Tony Hawk games, they’re so nasty. Then I got an Xbox for Christmas, I remember seeing them in the cases at Sears and standing their endlessly playing the free demo, I was mesmerized. I spent days playing the Star Wars: Battlefronts and the first Call of Duty on my Xbox. Then I was introduced to Halo: Combat Evolved. I asked my mom first if I could buy it, but she said no because of the M rating it has. So I asked my Dad and he bought it for me. Thanks dad. Halo was unlike anything I had ever played before. It was so intense I was too scared to get past level six. I didn’t go back and beat the game until I was fourteen, well after I had beaten Halo 2 and owned an Xbox 360, but that is a story for another time. In 2006 Xbox 360 came out, I didn’t have one until 2007. Part two picks up from there.