Long-time gamer here, started back in the late 80s with a NES, Mario 1-2-3 (all of which I finished), Zelda (which I never finished!), Double Dragon 2 (awesome final boss music), Faxanadu (odd, weird and wonderful, also never finished), Megaman 2 (never finished), TMNT (never finished), Castlevania (never finished…what the hell, I had many games I never finished!). Also playing with my cousins who had Nintendo World Cup, don’t believe I’ve laughed so hard with anything (perhaps Pictionary!), we used to strategically buy (=ask our parents to buy) games so there’s no overlap and we can exchange.
Then it was SNES time, another awesome machine! Super Mario World + Yoshi’s Island, Castlevania 4, Zelda 3, Donkey Kong, NBA Jam…probably had many games I can come up with but let’s focus on some serious gems of the history of gaming.
- Street Fighter 2, Mario Kart, Bomberman 1-4 - what can be said about these, we spent countless hours playing each other, honing our skills. Me and my cousin once went to a competition in mid 2000s and basically wiped the floor with the competition, him on Mario Kart, me on Street Fighter
- Super Metroid…visual storytelling, atmosphere, pacing off the charts
- Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3, Secret of Mana, absolute gems of JRPGs. Final Fantasy 3 had such depth of systems, I really believe these early days of figuring things out in the game benefit me to this day. Plus these games taught me English.
Then it was PC time, carrying on to this day, let’s see…
- Baldur’s Gate 1-2 (none of that Larian crap!)
- Ripper, Black Dahlia, Myst, Riven
- Dungeon Keeper 1&2 (awesome!)
- Daggerfall and Morrowind, how could I forget
- Starcraft, Warcraft
- LAN parties of Counter Strike, getting lost in internet cafes for 24-48 straight hours fuelled just with coffee a d cigarettes.
- Some early foray in MMORPGs: Ultima Online, Lineage 2 (crap but insanely addictive) and then the landmark: World of Warcraft.
For years I was trying to explain to my wife, who doesn’t get gaming, that I’d give a kidney and a testicle to relive playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for the first time. That’s before Classic. Having played the shit out of Warcraft 3, walking into WoW for the first time back in 2004 was an experience close to, if not better than, sex. Having bonded withe the characters of Warcraft 3, being IN Warcraft 3 was just orgasmic.
And that was just the beginning. In fact my lasting feeling of this game was “this is just the beginning”. Hour after hour, day after day, each and every moment was “I am having the BEST TIME OF MY (gaming) LIFE”. It’s incredible that in 2+ years of literally playing 8+ hours a day I never got bored, I always wanted more. It’s a small miracle my most active WoW playing coincided with doing a PhD, guess when you’re 20-something you have endless energy. Anyway, played the hell out of WoW + TBC + WotLK, fully hardcore raiding+PvPing then finally had enough.*
Then there was a lull of sorts around gaming, I played a few games here, mostly Minecraft, and there but nothing I went crazy about until Witcher 3. A game so good, with so much love poured into it by the developers that it was palpable - these people in Poland know games and love RPGs. I’d say after WoW that’s my favourite adult game ever. To this day I maintain that the story of the Hearts of Stone expansion of the Witcher 3 is possibly the best story ever told in a game.
Then came another revelation, tried a series I ignored for years: Dark Souls! Again, not everyone’s cup of tea, but damn these developers from Japan decided to stomp their foot down and say “We’ll make a game like WE like it, and screw you if you don’t, git gud” 
So yeah, anyone here dare say they’re a gamers? Anyone here who was shaped, educated, trained, and formed long-lasting friendships through games? Funnily enough, my dad hated my gaming, he also hated my listening of heavy metal. Thought it’s a phase I’d grow out of. Well, 30 years has to be more than a phase!
*Until…“you think you do, but you don’t”…If anyone here knows WoW they’ll know what I refer to. Our prayers were answered, Blizzard decided to give us what we wanted, the liquid cocaine that was the OG WoW, #nochanges, warts and broken specs and pompyro mages and 3-minute rogues and all. Vanilla WoW was BACK. I told my wife “you know how I’ve been saying I’d give a kidney and a testicle to play this again, well I won’t have to, it’s coming officially back!”. She laughed it off, thinking that she knew what serious gaming was because I played 4-5 straight hours of Witcher 3 on a Saturday night. I said “What you saw so far was rookie numbers, amateur shit, NOW you’ll see what real addiction gaming is like”. And WoW Classic was glorious. The game was solved, but even so people made stories, again. Different stories. If anything it was more of a role-playing game than the first time ‘round. This was those of us, no longer teenagers and 20-somethings, who came back to it, this time with serious jobs, families and responsibilities. I played the hell out of that too, we had 2 raid nights and I’d schedule meetings with US clients around my raiding, and not the other way around, to not disrupt my gaming. Door was locked, phone was off. Played this for two years and then didn’t carry on to the expansions. The magic was still there but also gone. Incidentally Blizzard got revitalised by what they thought we didn’t want. It turns out it was a case of “you think you don’t, but you do!”, WoW Classic and its children are cash cows of an epic scale. Even the expression “epic” fuckin’ comes from WoW!
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