Once upon a time a long time ago, I was introduced to videogames via the Atari 2600. The only game we had was Combat. It was awesome. My brothers and I became so good at it that we would hold competitions for money. It was of course unfair since we had the ability to play all the time when the other kids did not. The favorite mode was bank shots. There was so much fun to be had blasting a tank after a series of ricochets. After our time with the 2600, came the Sega Master System. 
 
The SMS offered up some very entertaining times with the likes of Action Fighter, Kenseiden and Black Belt. However, NES envy kicked in and after getting that system there was no looking back. By the time an NES reached our household it was already a couple of years into its run so there was just a ridiculous amount of choice. Super Mario Bros. alone entertained us for years. Mike Tyson's Punch Out caused many controllers to be broken when trying to knock out Tyson, but I eventually did it and did it consistently. I was probably the first person in my hometown to have achieved this feat. Games like Blaster Master and The Legend of Zelda made it obvious to me that video games would be here to stay and not only that, I believed that they would eventually be as important as all the other forms of entertainment we enjoy, like music, movies and TV. Needless to say, all of this happened.  
 
When the 16-bit era hit, I had a Sega Genesis. The next-gen commercials got to me. I didn't particularly enjoy Altered Beast, but I later enjoyed Strider, Golden Axe, Sonic and many others. However, My Genesis became buried in dust after getting an SNES. There was no reason to own any other system when the SNES was available. It did everything better than the Sega Genesis. The only thing that could have been better was Sega developing for Nintendo at the time. A friend of mine got a TG-16. Poor bastard got it because he probably thought he was being different. Keith Courage sucked camel hoof. Legendary Axe was OK. The only standouts were Bonk's Adventure and Ninja Spirit. Other than that, there was pinball. 
 
The Sega CD came along and I was able to play it via a friend and it did suck, save for Sonic CD and Snatcher. The NEO-GEO was literally unjustifiable to me and still is. I don't get how a controller could be $200 and I still don't. I don't get how a game could be $200 and I still don't. Not to mention the price of the system itself. Yet, some guy I knew from school had one and four of those controllers, Super 8 Man, Nam '75, Magician Lord and King of The Fighters. WTF?! The only game I actually liked was Magician Lord. Anyway, I was happy to see it fail. Imagine the type of precedent that could have been set by its success? We'd be paying for games with body parts and mortgages by now. But we're not so Yaaaay! And then along came the PlayStation. I spent a few paychecks on that system and games. Twisted Metal, Warhawk, Battle Arena Toshinden, Loaded, and NBA Jam were my first games on the system. As you can already know, the PSX got better and better and better... and better still. I opted to skip the Saturn because everything I wanted to play there, was on PSX, until the Dreamcast was released anyway. 
 
The Dreamcast was awesome and should have been around longer. It changed things for me. I was finally able to see how cool online play could be on a console with Unreal. I played Unreal on dial up and it was the most awesome thing I'd ever done playing videogames at that point. When that system went away, I began to notice how fickle the industry had become since gaming became more and more entrenched in mainstream society. And just like that, the DC was gone. The system that made that happen, the PS2, made it rather easy to swallow the DC death pill. The XBox just reinforced the notion that games were going to be a cultural standard worldwide. 
 
And now videogames are just as important artistically as they are entertaining. So much so that much of modern technological advances were made possible by the existence of videogames.
 
Congratulations Videogames!