Unlike most of the people on these boards I've been gaming for a long long time .... remember the BBC, the Vic 20, the sinclar 64? Probably not! I progressed on to the C64, the megadrive (which excluding a couple of games was rather w*nk, Star Command, Streets of Rage and Herzog Zwei FTW!), Amiga, the PC, briefly a Mac (urgh never ever again) and back to the PC.

I have to say I always looked down on consoles. The games I played with people who owned consoles were simply awful (Mario Kart and Sensi Socccer (tho this was out on the amiga too but in college we had a blast with it on the SNES I think it was) 2 big exceptions here). Shallow boring repetitive. I remember showing people civilisation, championship manager, Sim city and they'd be blown away.

Having grown up playing the Bards Tale and the Pool of Radience series and then progressing on to great game like Bladerunner, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planetscape Torment, I was absolutely horrified by "RPG's" like FF. How was this an RPG I asked??? My friend who played FF asked what an RPG was, and I retreated into my console hatred even further.

Sure the PS was good for the odd sports game but that was it. None of the games interested me. Then came the Xbox. Halo, in a word class. Single player was awesome. I'd played shooters on my PC and some were great (Doom, Quake 1/2, UT, Aliens vs Pred) but hardly ever played any multi player. All of a sudden we could have 4 of us playing, we could co op the single campaign. 3 of my friends got xboxes and we were having giant halo tournaments every couple of weeks.

Mature RPG's like Morrowind and KOTOR came out. One of my flat mates who hated computer games became a Morrowind addict. Finally a console that catered to a more PC oriented (and certainly hardcore) audience!

Then I moved to the States (from N Ireland), got married and xbox live became a link back home to my mates back there. Halo 2 nights became a regular with 10-12 of us messing around. Don't get me wrong I still loved my PC. None of these games replaced the strategy games like Civ or total war or Championship (now football) manager but the xbox and its titles had won me over.

Now I'm a firm 360 and PC fan (and just you wait Wii, when I see one I'm getting you too!). I still have some of the old bias. When I see people talking about great RPG's and then listing 4 final fantasy games it still gets my goat. Or talking about an "in depth game" that lasts 20 hrs. But I'm getting there, albeit one game at a time!

EDIT and now, as of May 25th 2007 a Wii!!!