So I have never really played a Nintendo game.
I was born in 1987, my first console was a SNES. Well, it was my dad's console, but it introduced me to video games. I never got into in a big way, I mean, I was only 4 in 1991 when dad bought the SNES from one of his graduating students (he was a high school chemistry teacher) who didn't want the distraction in college. The console came with an old Madden game, and Super Mario World. It was the first and only Nintendo game I finished and the only one I ever really played. I had a bunch of games by 1996, but never touched JRPGS. My dad and I played a lot of Madden 94, and I remember really enjoying a specific Spider-Man game.
I played a bunch of fighting games and didn't really know what I was doing or how to play. This is also kind of funny, because I haven't touched a fighting game since the '90s. I beat Street Fighter II playing the CPU and thought I knew how to play, but I was a dumb kid who didn't know anything. I also played Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, and a Power Rangers fighting game. Now, I can beat the Power Rangers game in around 15 minutes, but who cares? This game was awesome, and I always loved the Mega-Zords and giant mechs.
I sort of stopped playing console games in the late '90s when I was around 12 years old. My dad got a half decent PC and I started down the PC gaming path. I really started to understand and appreciate games at this point in my life. It started with DOOM. It was so raw, and violent and my fundamentalist christian parents hated it. So I had to play it. I would sneak into the office after my parents went to bed to play the first couple levels of DOOM (the freeware version) over and over. Then I got my hands on Half-Life. It took me months to beat, and I adored poking in every corner and just exploring a game for the first time. Its funny, because I replayed Half-life in steam and I took me 10 hours. But as a kid, that game felt enormous and I thought I would never end (in a good way). I played Metal Gear Solid on PC around 1999. I fell in love with that game, the story, the characters. It felt so cinematic, it had a political message, i felt like an adult for playing it (Kojimas potty humor aside). Also, MGS taught me to sneak first and shoot later, and was really my first stealth game. Then there was Max Payne. Again, I loved the story, the bullet time, the writing. My friends in middle school would quote Max Payne, and even more so Max Payne 2 in 2003. I also played a bunch of Diablo II and Starcraft at this time, too.
Also, around this time I got my first taste of multiplayer FPS as well. I played the shit out of Quake III Arena. The fast pace was intoxicating. My friends and I played on the same server every night for at least a year. I cursed my 56k modem nightly and envied the kids who had cable or DSL connections. I only ever played CTF, but man, I still have those 4 maps memorized like the back of my hand. I played more quake 3 than just about any other game and I don't think anything has come close (although Titanfall scratched that itch for a couple months). I don't really play competitive games these days, with a wife and two kids, but man, Quake III Arena is really a special game.
So I stopped gaming in high school save the occasional Diablo II character. I got serious about playing guitar and trying to impress girls and didn't game until college. But my freshmen year my room mate had an OG Xbox and GTA: Vice City. I spent a couple drunk nights just driving around the open world, attracting the police and trying to escape. It was a total blast. I went to Wal-Mart, bought San Andreas for PC (my shitty dell laptop was the only gaming platform I had at the time) and lost hours of my life to Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas. I had no idea what a frame rate was, I think it ran at around 20 fps, but I didn't care. I remember one day I literally when to class for 2 hours, and spent every other minute of the day playing GTA: San Andreas for 13 straight hours. In fact, open world games are still my favorite genre to this day, so GTA:SA was probably the most influential game in my life. I loved the goofy story, the writing, the characters, and especially the freedom. No other game has recaptured the magic the was GTA:SA did. Some games have come close, like (surprise) Saint's Row 2 (and 3 and 4) but nothing to the same obsessive degree that GTA:SA did.
So I bought a PS2 in college and played everything I could get my hands on. Stand out titles were Persona 3, GTA: San Andreas, Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 3, Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War 2, and Final Fantasy 12. As a poor man, in 2010, I sold my PS2 and bought a PS3. This generation of consoles blew my mind. I will never forget buying my first HD TV, picking up uncharted 2, and just being amazed by the level of detail in the levels. I thought the writing and acting was incredible. I loved the fun story, and interestingly, I was really into story driven games at this point, which helped me delve into new genres, most importantly RPGs. I took off work to play Mass Effect 2 when it launched on PS3 January 18th of 2011. I played ME2 for hundreds of hours. I bought Dragon Age Origins on PS3, arguably the worst version, and loved it even more than ME2. At this point I mostly played open world games, wRPGs, and shooters. In 2011 I spent a ton of money on games and played for hours and hours. This is what I played in 2011: Portal 2, Crysis 2, Infamous 2, Uncharted 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, DARK SOULS, Catherine, Shadows of the Damned, Resistance 3, Batman Arkham City, Dead Space 2, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 2, Saint's Row 3, and probably more I am forgetting. It was a hell of a year.
So, January of 2012 my best friend ruined me. And no, I didn't start playing Nintendo games at this point. My best friend built a PC in 2011 for Battlefield 3. He needed to get rid of his old video card, a GTX 285, and sold it to me for cheap. See, I had Starcraft II, but it ran horribly on my cheap Asus pre-built office machine, so after throwing the new GPU in I could play on mostly high settings and was really enjoying myself. But there was a PC exclusive (at the time) that I always wanted to try, but never had a machine to run it. I bought The Witcher 2 and this game blew me away to the same degree as Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2, and even GTA: San Andreas. But more importantly, this was the first step in me abandoning consoles altogether. I sold my PS3 in 2012 for $150 of steam credit and haven't looked back. Now, four years later, I have 190 games on steam and haven't really missed the consoles too much. Bloodborne almost had me wanting a PS4, but I couldn't justify the cost at the time. But regardless, I have never really touched Nintendo, not since the 1990's and I feel like I am missing something.
So tell me, should I buy a CRT TV and some old consoles and give it a go? What do you guys think?
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