Games
As many of you who knows me will know gaming is a very big hobby of mine. I guess my fascination with games begin when I was young, my grandpa used to have a Nintendo sitting in the corner on the top floor of our apartment. The Nintendo sits on a little wooden table, and we used to sit on little stools watching my grandpa play Mario. When we were a little bit older we started joining him in playing games.
Then my dad invested in a SEGA. I remember countless nights sitting on my parents bed, watching my dad playing driving game (which he never manage to finish) while munching on cheeseball. Or many weekends spent on the very SEGA watching my cousin William and Emily playing co-op Sonic, racing to the finish line.
I guess the first game I ever played by myself was princess maker II, I don't know how many hours I spent on in, trying to get all sort of different endings. Then a long came my first RPG game on the computer "pal", and I was forever hooked. For the first time, I experienced gaming like never before, not only was the game about 'completing' or 'killing that monster', it had the most captivating story that went a long with it. Since then, there were many years of playing 'incomplete' games, which were the unfortunate result of buying 'jumbo' game discs, where the seller try to copy as many games into the disc as possible and due to many problems (possibly due to the incapability of our computer), the games either doesn't play at all or would suddenly freeze at certain point in the game and that was that.
And then.. came along PlayStation. I am not sure how I manage to convince my mum to get me one, no doubt my dad had a say in it too. In the first few months of getting the ps, it didin't gain much popularity in our house, because my poor mum who knows nothing about games made the purchase for us, and no doubt the shop keeper took advantage of her lack of knowledge and recommended a bunch of very old or poor selling games. Things of course changed after dad and I went back to Taiwan and bought a handful of games. That was the first time I was introduced to Final Fantasy. I still remember when the store manager recommended it to me, he said it was very popular. I didn't think much of it at the time except noting that the game was 4 cds long, and the drawing on the front cover was very good, A LOT better than anything I have seen so far.
Then that summer I think my life changed, who knew anyone could get hooked on a RPG game when it's in a language that he/she didn't understand... but I did. I had pages of print outs of translations, guides, and many many hours of running trying to figure out where I was suppose to go. That was definately a turning point, because for the first time, I start to anticipate the moment dad would go upstairs to sleep freeing up the TV, because only then can i start playing. For the first time I start sleeping late from time to time because of gaming (usually because I couldn't find a save point), and probably it is around that time ppl in the family start saying things like "omg you are playing games again?!?!" for the first time I was labelled as 'gaming geek' in the family. LOL luckily due to long game release time between each game title that I am interested in, I manage to keep big rpgs in summer holidays only which definately kept my grades at bay. FF8 in summer 1998/99, ff9 in 99/01, chrono cross in 00/01 so on and then on my ps2 which I spent my entire year's savings on, Kingdom heart, ffx, ffx-2, ffxii and KH2.
So you can imagine my shock, after having to defend playing games for 10 years now, to see my entire family (aunties/mum/cousins) all started playing game that I play on facebook. Not only do they play, they are playing a lot harder than
I am.
Life has a funny way of turning things around...
Either that or facebook games has a way of reaching out into the public...
Or perhaps I prefer to think that the era of gaming has finally reached the general public, and we, previous being branded as gaming geeks were just the trendsetters, the pioneers of entertainment of tomorrow. or maybe not :P
Then my dad invested in a SEGA. I remember countless nights sitting on my parents bed, watching my dad playing driving game (which he never manage to finish) while munching on cheeseball. Or many weekends spent on the very SEGA watching my cousin William and Emily playing co-op Sonic, racing to the finish line.
I guess the first game I ever played by myself was princess maker II, I don't know how many hours I spent on in, trying to get all sort of different endings. Then a long came my first RPG game on the computer "pal", and I was forever hooked. For the first time, I experienced gaming like never before, not only was the game about 'completing' or 'killing that monster', it had the most captivating story that went a long with it. Since then, there were many years of playing 'incomplete' games, which were the unfortunate result of buying 'jumbo' game discs, where the seller try to copy as many games into the disc as possible and due to many problems (possibly due to the incapability of our computer), the games either doesn't play at all or would suddenly freeze at certain point in the game and that was that.
And then.. came along PlayStation. I am not sure how I manage to convince my mum to get me one, no doubt my dad had a say in it too. In the first few months of getting the ps, it didin't gain much popularity in our house, because my poor mum who knows nothing about games made the purchase for us, and no doubt the shop keeper took advantage of her lack of knowledge and recommended a bunch of very old or poor selling games. Things of course changed after dad and I went back to Taiwan and bought a handful of games. That was the first time I was introduced to Final Fantasy. I still remember when the store manager recommended it to me, he said it was very popular. I didn't think much of it at the time except noting that the game was 4 cds long, and the drawing on the front cover was very good, A LOT better than anything I have seen so far.
Then that summer I think my life changed, who knew anyone could get hooked on a RPG game when it's in a language that he/she didn't understand... but I did. I had pages of print outs of translations, guides, and many many hours of running trying to figure out where I was suppose to go. That was definately a turning point, because for the first time, I start to anticipate the moment dad would go upstairs to sleep freeing up the TV, because only then can i start playing. For the first time I start sleeping late from time to time because of gaming (usually because I couldn't find a save point), and probably it is around that time ppl in the family start saying things like "omg you are playing games again?!?!" for the first time I was labelled as 'gaming geek' in the family. LOL luckily due to long game release time between each game title that I am interested in, I manage to keep big rpgs in summer holidays only which definately kept my grades at bay. FF8 in summer 1998/99, ff9 in 99/01, chrono cross in 00/01 so on and then on my ps2 which I spent my entire year's savings on, Kingdom heart, ffx, ffx-2, ffxii and KH2.
So you can imagine my shock, after having to defend playing games for 10 years now, to see my entire family (aunties/mum/cousins) all started playing game that I play on facebook. Not only do they play, they are playing a lot harder than
I am.
Life has a funny way of turning things around...
Either that or facebook games has a way of reaching out into the public...
Or perhaps I prefer to think that the era of gaming has finally reached the general public, and we, previous being branded as gaming geeks were just the trendsetters, the pioneers of entertainment of tomorrow. or maybe not :P
Labels: Random thoughts
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