In a good place. Part 1.5 — A Brief History of my Gaming Escapades.
Before we continue, I want to go over my history of gaming.
My first memory of gaming was at day care, with duck hunt on the SNES. I specifically remember the gun attachment! I don’t recall gaming much for the following years, since my parents didn’t own any old consoles or computers yet.
Fast forward a few more years. I had a bunch of friends in middle school, and one who lived right next door to me: John. Every day after school we’d get off at the same bus stop and walk home together, talking about various gaming topics. He had his own desktop, and I’d come over to his house frequently to hang out, play games with him, and even just watch him play. John introduced me to Diablo 2, and showed me his programs that duped items and did various other cool things. Since then, we’ve been good friends. Him, myself, and our other good friends started to play games together.. a lot. I recall one of our other friends, Nhat, suggesting a program called Ventrilo, but I needed a microphone to use it and chat with them. A light bulb shattered in my head and I then went over to our unused karaoke machine and unplugged the miniature microphone from it. I put it in my backpack and took it to school the next day, asking if that microphone would be sufficient. It was. I used a karaoke microphone for ventrilo for months.
Note: When I look back at internet capabilities, I remember dial-up with a bittersweet feeling. On one hand, it was terribly slow and a pain in the ass. On the other hand, it allowed me to mess with John in a game of Gunbound by threatening to call his house phone and disconnect him from the match. I have not changed much since then.
I was very limited to what I could play due to having to use my parents’ low quality computers. Then, on one fabled Christmas Eve, my dad got me my very own laptop. (yes, Christmas Eve. I think he was too excited to wait and gave it to me early. I remember going to Church that evening for a Christmas service and telling everyone “I got a laptop!!!”) That laptop was another catalyst, I believe, for where I currently am in life.
The first major foray into gaming that I recall is Runescape. The one and only. I played that game a ton for a few years. God, it was so good. My friends and I would play for hours on end, deep into the night, on Runescape and Ventrilo, just having an amazing time.
Note: The key members of our core gaming group were myself, John, and Nhat. (Nhat and John were both my best friends from Middle School ‘til many years past High School. Our friendship lasted with no issues even though I changed school districts and had to go to High School away from them. Unfortunately, a year and a half or so ago, we grew apart, partly due to my own issues but mainly due to me moving away. I believe they are still good friends. I should really rekindle that relationship, they’re both great guys.) Trying to think of an analogy for our core, I immediately come up with The Three Musketeers. Other friends that we had would join our “group” but eventually become disinterested in the game we were on and leave, or just slowly play with us less and less. However, as friends came and went, our three-man core remained solid. We would play a game a ton, lose interest, and move on. It was so fun, and I’d never trade those years for the world.
As time passed, the gaming interests we had as a core shifted. We left Runescape and moved onto Ragnarok Online. We only played on popular private servers (because screw paying for the official servers). I have a lot of fond memories over our few year stint in Ragnarok Online. I even played it a little bit into High School, while John and Nhat generally quit it overall.. because we were also too busy playing World of Warcraft together. That brings me back up to where we left off.
(Note added later: Oh.. yeah, I forgot that I also got an Xbox at some point during middle school, and an Xbox 360, but console gaming wasn’t too significant in my life. I’m sure I’ll touch on the console aspect in an upcoming post. #pcmasterrace)
To be continued.
