I was recently thinking about video games and which ones had been most influential on my gaming preferences, and I wondered to myself, "How did you ever get started playing video games anyway?" Well, it has been so long it's hard to remember, but in an effort to build conversation and inform my readers I'm going to explain the origins or my love/obsession with video games.

Well, I normally do a good job with dates, but this goes all the way back to Windows 3.1 days. My Dad had a computer he had gotten for work. Of course, just like today, the computer came bundled with some simple games. One was SkiFree. If you have never played this game it consists of skiing down a hill in a variety of different modes. However, once you finished the game did not end and you could continue to ski until eventually being caught and eaten by the snow monster.

The other game that came preinstalled was Chip's Challenge. This game was incredibly hard and involved puzzle solving similar to what you see in most Zelda games, only there are more enemies, you have no sword and you die in one hit. The game was seemingly endless, but my siblings and I had a lot of fun trying to complete all of the stages. I think eventually we were able to, but I can't remember.

There was actually a third game that we played that I believe my Dad actually bought for us. It was based of the Rescue Rangers TV show and it was for MS-DOS. I spent a lot of time rebooting the computer in DOS and using the command prompt to launch the game. I didn't know it then, but this was complex nerdy stuff that helped incline me toward tech products for the rest of my life.

The first console I ever owned was actually a Super Nintendo. I think My Dad bought it to free up his computer for work. We got it for Christmas and it must have been right after the launch in 1991 or 1992 because I remember not being able to read the text in Super Mario World. I actually hadn't asked for a Super Nintendo and wouldn't have known what it was had we not received one. We had never played an original Nintendo so this was all new. Needless to say, we were very excited. The Super Nintendo totally blew away our previous video game experience, but back then it was the simple gameplay that sold me (the graphics helped though I'm sure). My older Brother and I went on to play Super Mario World Pretty extensively. We were even able to complete all the levels and get a star next to our game save.

Odd thing though, after having a lot of fun on Super Mario World, we didn't get very many Super Nintendo games at first. In hindsight this is probably because of the high price of Super Nintendo games, but we didn't know that at the time. Instead, my Mom, a rummage sale addict, managed to find us an old Atari 2600 system. We wouldn't find games often time for less the $1 per cartridge. There was one particular game on the Atari I really liked. It was a two player game where each player was a cowboy and the objective was to be the first to shoot your oponnent. We also played the horrible ET game. I actually never understood what that game was about until I saw a video on the worst video games of all time. They explained that you were trying to get out of holes. That helped a lot because I had no idea what the objective was. We got a lot of other games for the Atari, but for the most part none of them were notable. Eventually we were able to find Super Nintendo games at rummage sales, at that ended our Atari experiences.

Sometime later we went on to get a Sega Genesis. I don't know what compelled my parents to buy that for us, but we were very excited. It wasn't something we got for our birthday or Christmas. In some ways that made it more special; we definitely weren't expecting it. We continued to expand our gaming options too. We even got an original Nintendo some time later. In fact. we got pretty much every major system released, either as a gift, or by saving up money to buy it. We still played computer games, but my Dad continued to only use the computers he got free from work. Needless to say these weren't up to date with the latest games. Consequently, my whole family gravitated more toward console games.

As a child, I always felt like my parents were frustrated with my siblings and I playing video games, but looking back they really helped push us towards them. That Super Nintendo purchase was probably the biggest push toward gaming and without it I would probably be a very different person. I have really fond memories of gaming as a young child and I wouldn't really want to change any of that. So anyway, thats how I got started playing video games.

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