I’ve never been good with introductions but here we go. Hello world, my name is Ethan and I want to talk about video games and stuff. I guess I should start with a little bit about me and how I got into all of this.
I remember when I was about 4 years old, me and my two older brothers would go to our uncle’s place to be babysat. Both of our parents had jobs so on weekends mostly we had to come over to my aunt and uncles home. I remember one day as a kid walking around the dining room and into the living room and my brothers and cousins were doing something my young 4 year old self had never seen before.
I stood in front of a portal to a world that would change my life, and a melody I will never forget. The song was the Prelude to Final Fantasy on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Fitting this was the first ever video game memory I ever had as it really was a prelude to a world of gaming that would be life changing.
Final Fantasy is an RPG and it looked quite complicated for young 4 year old Ethan with all the numbers and whatnot the game uses. I remember we had a poster that had all the bad guys you would run into Final Fantasy, kind of like a wiki but in poster/instruction book form. I always looked at this poster and just let my imagination take its course. It was at this moment the older boys took out Final Fantasy and ended up putting in another game, a game more my speed and was more cool looking at the time. The next game that would grace my eyes was Super Mario Bros. 3. I was mesmerized by such a strange toy that everyone was playing. It was then I was asked to give it a try, and the legend of my gaming life was born.
So how did I do? Awful. I had no idea what I was doing and had issues finding out what 9+10 was at the time, let alone comprehending something like Super Mario Bros. 3. There’s a likely chance I saw a video game before this moment but this is my earliest memory of such an event.
It was later I remembered we had a video game system of our own at our house. However the game I remember most was not a red plumber collecting coins and going down pipes. This game was much faster, more attitude and made you play as a blue little hedgehog you might have heard of. The game was Sonic The Hedgehog 2 on the SEGA Genesis. I would always watch my older brother play the game as I always inspired to be as good as he was (as all little brothers do for their bigger older siblings).
About 5 minutes from our home was a small little mom and pop video store. There we could also rent video games. What they mostly had was SEGA Genesis games so I got my fair share of learning different kinds of games and different gaming titles. Anything from Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and Street Fighter 2, to some stinkers such as USA Basketball. That might be a story for another day. The grocery store that was oddly enough across the street from the video store mostly had a selection of Super Nintendo Games, we never had a Super Nintendo in our home. Yes you can say we were a “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” household. I always saw so many cool titles such as Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars, and Donkey Kong Country. I always envy those who had a SNES, but I still loved my SEGA Genesis and to this day still love the system.
What was cool about the video store was you could rent game systems outright. So anytime we would have a long weekend off school and if dad was feeling up for it, we would rent a system rather it would be the Super Nintendo, or later with the Sony PlayStation. Needless to say, any kind of game we wanted to play we had access to, well not at all times since we rented games but we have options… As long as my grades were up and I was not an annoying brat and/or got grounded.
When I was about 6 years old our parents gave us on Christmas morning of the Nintendo 64. I remember the first two games we got for it were Diddy Kong Racing, and Bomberman 64. Two games I’d love to talk about in the future. This was the point I really started to play games on my own and kind of develop myself as a gamer and not on the shadow of my older brother. So if this site blog journal thing becomes something, expect lots of stuff from the Nintendo 64 era.
Fast forward into 2020, it was the peak of the COVID pandemic and I was looking for work and stuck with hardly anything to do I decided I wanted to create something. PlayerPandemonium was original a podcast under the same name where I would talk about video games. I made a couple of dozen of them and they were ok, until I ended up finding work and feel less and less inspired to keep going. I did try to come back a few times but nothing stuck. Things are easier when you have time. I also somewhat started a blog under the same name, but again I could never be consistent with it. I made 2–3 posts about NEW Pokémon Snap, The End of Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the 2006 Sonic E3 Press Conference. Maybe I’ll revisit those along with some of the podcast episodes I did for this thing if it takes off. There were a few older podcast episodes that I would love to revisit and make in a blog/journal format. Not copy paste of course but see it like a video game port or remake to a different system.
Part of me fears the same will happen here but I’m not going to focus more on being episodic and spend more time just writing and getting ideas and things I want to say down on paper. Don’t worry about numbers and view counts and all that stuff. I guess you can say this is a reboot of sorts. A resurrections of what I want to do, and that’s getting ideas I have and talk about the video game things I want to talk about. After all, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
I don’t want to give away a whole life’s story here but this is pretty much how things started with me and video games and where I am now with trying to create something new and exciting. I got so many stories and ideas that I want to put on paper and I hope that’s possible here. Just something to get pen on paper.
Another thing with it is in a way of documentation. I always fear that if I don’t get things out such as ideas or content, that things I do will be forgotten in time, so one reason why I want to make this a thing is to write these ideas down on paper. If I’m going to type this stuff out, might as well have it where others read it too. I’ve been told I’m really good at writing, it’s just not something I would like to do 24/7 and I tend to only like to write if it’s about a topic I’m passionate about.
Anyway, that’s pretty much the just of it. I plan on using this site as a diary, blog, journal, thing about video games. Heck, maybe I’ll branch out into other medias like 90s cartoons or something, but let’s focus on the foundation that I want to do before getting spoiled on possibilities.
I really hope this is the start of something magical, or it turns into another thing I only update every 3 months. Hoping for the former.
Anyway I guess the only thing to do now is press the start button.
-P.P.
