As a 31 year old gamer growing up in New Zealand, I first started gaming on the Sega Master System when I was around 7 years old. Pretty sure the Mega Drive was out at around that time, but we were a bit poor. 3 had three games: Alex Kidd in Miracle World (built-in to the Sega Master System 2), Choplifter and another I can't remember for the life of me. Afterwards, we finally got a Mega Drive 2, but since games were expensive, I pretty much played what whatever games we rented from the video shop. There were some classics (Sonic series, Streets of Rage 2, Golden Axe) and a lot of stinkers that I still played the hell out of anyways (Ex-Mutants, Action 52, Eternal Champions). Like a lot of gamers from this period, I hold this era in extremely high regard.

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A few years later, I experienced my first gaming obsession: the JRPG. Namely FF7. After this, JRPGs would (and still do) take up a vast majority of my gaming time and become a huge passion of mine. And due to the popularity of FF7, developers took notice and churned out JRPG's like crazy. It was a great time to be a fan. I had to play them all, but being in New Zealand, we actually missed out on a few of the good ones, since they didn't get PAL releases. Sure, we still got masterpieces like Star Ocean: The Second Story, Wild Arms and Suikoden 2. But we missed out on others like Xenogears, Valkyrie Profile and Dragon Quest 7. This was made even more disappointing by the fact that rubbish like Shadow Madness, Granstream Saga and Technomage reached our shores. Thankfully, this is a lot less of a problem nowadays.

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My second gaming obsession came around during the "hot JRPG era": the music game. While sitting on the PC one day, I came across something called Diet Diet Reduplication. You may recognize the acronym. This was some sort of Dance Dance Revolution emulator that contained all of the songs from 1st, 2nd and 3rd mix. I've no idea what compelled me to download it, since I had no idea what DDR even was at that stage, but I did and was immediately hooked. I was just playing using the keyboard, but it was amazing. I loved the cheesy techno music, and the simplistic idea of pressing buttons to music was immensely satisfying.

 

Eventually I had to try the real thing, so it was off to the arcade to give it a shot. I fell in love with the game all over again. Sure, I was terrible, but I met a girl (I was amazed by her skill at the game) and we actually ended up dating. She showed me the ropes and I eventually got pretty good. So good, in fact, that I decided to compete in the country's first ever DDR tournament, which was actually filmed and broadcast on a local TV channel. I wasn't sure how well I would do, but after much perseverance, I made it to the semi final. My opponent? My girlfriend. This was a lose-lose situation for me. Not knowing what to do in this situation (this was my first proper girlfriend, after all), I consulted her. She said "Just play.". So I did. And beat her. I felt terrible, but she was great about it. Anyways, I came third in the tournament over all and won a Discman. The girlfriend and me broke up shortly afterwards. I don't think it had anything to do with the tournament, but who knows.I continued to compete in DDR tournaments, but never won one. I had one in the bag, but was cheated out of the win by my friend and rival. Bastard.

 

I expanded my horizons and started getting into other music games like Beatmania IIDX, Pop n' Music and (shudder) Para Para Paradise. Pretty much anything from Konami's Bemani division. I made a lot of friends during this time who I had met at the arcade and had similar interests to my own, but sadly that scene died a long time ago. I still play music games now, but mainly just at home. I have a decent IIDX/DDR setup, and I also got into Rock Band, which I've gotten fairly decent at. Like a lot of things, I tend to go through phases where I'll play these games religiously. Currently, they're in the gathering dust phase. Still, it's nice to know that they are there for when I do eventually get the urge.

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2005 came, and with it, so did my newest gaming obsession: World of Warcraft. I'd never played an MMO before, but after watching the trailer, I just had to give it a shot. I had no idea what I was in for. Everything about it was revolutionary to me. The world itself was incredible. Whenever I would log in, it felt like I was taking a vacation. A home away from home. It was just so huge, vast and beautiful. I started a Gnome Warrior. Warrior because I had a fondness for melee characters based on my experience in Diablo 1&2. Gnome because I just loved the idea of playing a tiny character with a huge sword. I played everyday, discovered what being truly addicted to a game was all about and I loved it. I got him all the way to level 54 (it was somewhat of a big deal at the time), but then inexplicably lost interest. I think the combo of playing on a crappy computer with the worlds worst internet while also being miles away from WoW servers in the US got to me. Playing a Warrior was also getting sort of boring for me. I sold my account and moved on. 

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As I would find out many times later on in life, when it comes to WoW, you always come back. Only months later, I was getting the urge to play again. I'd sold my account, so if I was going to get back into it, I'd have to start from scratch. The prospect was daunting, considering the amount of time I had spent on the game the last time. But the urge was too strong, and I purchased a fresh copy of WoW. Armed with better internet (but the same computer), I was motivated to see more of Azeroth than I ever had before. I stuck with the Gnome, but this time I chose a mage. A frost mage. Slowing enemies and killing them from a distance turned out to be so much more fun than whacking things in the face until they died. Of course, this probably had something to do with the whacky balance of classes when it came to Vanilla WoW, but I digress. This time, I joined something called a guild, which had other players in it. This improved my experience ten-fold. We ran dungeons together. We tried raids and became the worlds worst raiding guild. But more importantly, we were a team. I got to know a lot of people in our crappy raiding guild. I considered them friends, even though they were on the other side of the world. It was great just logging on and shooting the shit with them, while they made fun of my accent. I started talking to a girl from the US and things got pretty serious. To the point where I was in the early stages of moving to the US.

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Eventually though, as the months and years passed, things went the way of the DDR scene. A lot of my online friends stopped playing the game. People moved onto different things. I lost touch with a lot of them and stopped talking to that girl from the US. I didn't stop playing though. I was there for every expansion launch. I'd put too much time into the game to just quit altogether. Sure, I would take a few months off here and there, but I would always be back. Things were never as good as the Vanilla days with the crappy raiding guild though. The people that left weren't coming back. However, the actual game itself got better. Nostalgia can sometimes tell me otherwise, but it's a fact.

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Things stayed pretty consistent with gaming after that. No new gaming obsessions have popped up, and at this stage of my life, I'm not sure that any more will. I've continued to play a healthy mixture of WoW, music game and JRPG's with other genres sprinkled throughout. Oh, and surprisingly, that girl from the US came back into my life. One day, out of the blue, she sent me an email to see how things were going. We've been married for nearly two years now and I'm living in the US. Yep, we're one of those WoW couples.

 

In typing all of this, I realize how much gaming has shaped my life. What was going to be a quick "About Me" section has turned into something more akin to a life story. Gaming has brought me joy and frustration. It's brought me satisfaction and sadness. It's brought me friendship and love. But most importantly, it's given me something to be passionate about. I'll likely be gaming until I die.

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TL,DR: Gaming is good. I like it a lot.

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