Well, I write to introduce myself to those who accidentally stumble upon this blog. I am neither talented nor am I special, but if I can call myself anything, it's extremely lucky. Lucky in a few senses, one that I live in a time where creativity is at an all-time competitive high. I can only imagine how life would've been even a few decades ago, but technology has allowed innovation to reach new levels that we could've only dream of in the past. I'm also lucky in another sense, that my personal fortunes are more than average, and that I've lived a relatively comfortable life. Perhaps this isn't really luck, but if I was to think in my typical pessimistic self, I could've ended up in a way worse situation. I could've been sheltered in my childhood, hidden away, never to dream as I do today. Fortunately that never happened...

Video games have always been a passion for me, ever since my parents bought an SNES in the early 90s. Even then it was never really something I got into, it was something to do on rainy days, long summer vacations when the parents were gone off to work, or when my friends had gone away. I sometimes think that I was the last of a generation of children where there was open expectation that we stayed outside after school, ate dinner, and then watched TV at night. Of course it's a generalization, I know some parents still teach their children to live like that. However, it's always fun to imagine that we're part of something bigger than we are in reality, and so I do romanticize that I was the last of a dying breed.

Anyways, like I said, I wasn't a hardcore gamer when I was young. However, by the time I was 13 we had a couple systems---a Sega Genesis, an SNES, an N64, a Gameboy, Game Gear, and a PSX. Half the systems are now broken and the controllers in worse condition, but I had fun playing each one out. Gaming at this point for me was strictly casual. Games were a means to keep myself occupied with something, similar to cartoons without a distinct linear plot. There was never a need to complete them, because that would require effort. If I applied too much effort to match the increasing difficulty, then the game no longer became the source of instant entertainment that I wanted. So the I would just play another game instead and avoid any frustration in mastering any specific game. I can think of many games that I never beat but owned as a child...Animaniacs, Desert Strike, Golden Axe, Space Harrier, and so on. Perhaps these games were just too difficult to beat for their time, or perhaps games as a whole have become easier to appeal to a larger audience, these things I can't really say for sure. However, I do know that personally I never really attempted to beat them either.

For most hardcore gamers, I wonder if they share the same feeling as me when I say that there was a game(s) that changed them from casual to hardcore. Games that are so fun that they create an insatiable appetite for similar games or more games in general. The turning points for me had to be Civilization, Final Fantasy VII, Goldeneye 64, and Starcraft. Final Fantasy VII got me into the whole RPG genre, which I am still fanatically faithful to this day. Great games like Digital Devil Saga, Suikoden, and Tales of the Abyss are in my opinion, offshoots of my original interest in Final Fantasy VII. Civilization got me into strategy games like Europa Universalis II, Hearts of Iron, and Victoria, and helped me springboard to Stacraft later. Of course, Starcraft made me love real-time strategy games, such as Age of the Empires, Total Annihilation, and Warcraft III. Finally, there's Goldeneye 64. I can say that I played that game to death, although probably not as much as Civilization and Starcraft, but at least a couple thousand hours at least. It really got me into FPS games, which definitely got me into the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor series. These games I can see today as being the foundation of the genres of games that I enjoy today. So from being a child who played occasionally, I'm now--whether I can proudly say it or not, a hardcore gamer.

So to this day, I still play generally at least 20 hours a week playing video games. Most of it is clumped during the weekend, but that is because I have some intense classwork on the weekdays. Anyways, I can conclude by saying that I like all games, as long as they operate logically and properly (essentially bug-free), but of course some games as better made than others. Genres that I usually have an attachment to are RPGs, FPSs, strategy games (RTS and turn), some action-adventure, and fighting games. It is my intent to catalogue and write about as many of the games that I play/beat so that I can recollect on them in the future.