First of all I would like to apolagize for my writing, it's been quite some time since I wrote in English, and in fact that is one of this blog's purpose but more on that later.

So let's start my blog presentation with the basics:

• who am I
• what can you find in this blog
• the purpose of this blog

Who am I?

My name is João, I'm a Portuguese gamer born in 1984 that had a fake NES as my first console. Since I can remember I love games, I can't quite explain what it facinated me most as a kid, if it was the technology behind the games and consoles or if it was the games itself, the visuals and the idea that I could control something on my TV.

My first recollection of playing a video game was playing Spectrum in a friends house, her father had one and in the summer we spent a lot of time playing it, or at least trying to, I still remember the 30 minutes loadings and the problems with the game cassettes. She also had a pc and I remember playing a Carmen Sandiego game and especially playing Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle, dispite not knowing how to read English.

I said that my first console was a fake NES but in reality I had another console that my dad bought for himself in Spain before I was born and in my early years that was the gaming I did in my house (I don't remember what console that was but I will find it in the attic and post images of it in a later post). My dad only bought me the fake NES (let's call it fNES for short, and it seams apropriate to me that the "f" for fake is in lower case) when all my friends alredy had a Sega MegaDrive (or Genesis) and SNES. My dad dind't like that I played video games and in fact I had to beg that he bought me one for months. He finally gave in and bought me and my older brother the fNES (I will also find it in the attic and post images later) as our christmas present of that year. I confess that we tricked our dad a little, since the fNES came with a 500 Game cartriged we said that we would never ask for a game, ever!

From that fNES I remember playing a LOT of Contra with my brother, I bought other games of course but I can't remember any of them right now. I intend to do post for every console and then I will show the all the games that I have. I also had access to other consoles mainly through friends, so I can say I experienced and played a little bit of everything like Sega Master System, Sega Saturn, SNES and Nintendo 64.

I can say that I played a lot of Sega MegaDrive (or Genesis) since my closest friend at the time had one and when his older brother wasn't at home and we weren't palying soccer we spent our time playing Mortal Kombat II, Fifa Soccer 95 and Streets of Rage.

Years passed and one christmas my dad gave my my first REAL console a Playstation whit one game, Ridge Racer. Unfortunately I ruined my dad's surprised by discovering the present before christmas, to be fair I was teasing me that he alredy had bought my present and that I would never guess what it was. Well dad I didn't had to guess, I found it for myself. Days after christmas me and my older brother bought a game with our money, christmas money is good, and we bought Air Combat. It was with the Playstation that I found that I liked games more then I could imagine and it was then that I understand why did I like playing games, it's the story. The game that made me realise this was Metal Gear Solid, I boiught the game not knowing what it really was I just wanted tho shoot some dudes. What MGS gave me was more then I can explain, I just barely remember the feeling. It was special, the characters, the nonsens story, the action, everything was awesome. It is the first game I played start to finished and I still can remember it took me 15 hours to do it. I played some much of that game that the cd became so used that when I lent it to a friend he couldn't pass the torture scene.

Another game that had a huge impact on me and on my lyfe as a gamer as Final Fantasy VIII, it was the first JRPG that I played and it was the game that broke my Playstation. I had little to none experience with RPG's and even less so with JRPG's, I remember watching a friend playing Zelda on a NES or SNES and playing Heroes of Might and Magic on a pc of a friend. I can say I wasn't prepared for that game and the emotions that came with it, but first I think I should tell you the story behind the purchased of it because I fell that it was the moment made me a real gamer.

It was christmas, again, and my dad dind't know what to give me, I asked for a game more specifically I asked for Fifa 99. At the time I wasn't playing that much I didn't had lot of games I could turn to and no money to buy some, my dad still dind't liked that I played games so he dind't give me any or give me money to buy them ( I mean even if I did some chores if the money was going to a game he dind't give me any). So I started to distance myself from gaming and at the time was only trying to get a game I could play with my friends when they went to my house. Luckly for me my dad didn't had time to purched the game for himself so he gave me the money and sent me and my older brother to the store to get my christmas present.

So my dad droped us at the store, at the time we didn't had a game's only store in town so we went to the our kind of "Wal-Mart", and in the games section of it he found Fifa right next to Final Fantasy VIII. I picked up Fifa but for some reason I looked to Final Fantasy and picked up also, I had read in a magazine that the game was good and had good reviews. Not knowing anything about it I looked at the back of the box in search for more information. It appealed to me somehow, and I think it was the design of it, the way the game looked in that back boxed was amazing to me. I turn to my brother for some kind of help of wich of this games should I buy, I told me he would't play Fifa with me and that I should go with my gut. Well my gut told me to buy Final Fantasy VIII and I'm glad for it (I wil wright more about it in future posts, I would do that for my favorite games and the games that had more impact on me).

I can't say how much I played of that game I can only say that I dind't turn down my console for, at least, two weeks so I didn't waste time with the initial loading of the game, and when I finally shut down the console because it started to make to much noise it never worked again. So Final Fantasy VIII broke my console and worts of all I didn't even finished it.

After the demise of my beloved Playstation I turn myself to pc gaming, I should say that I always played games on pc but, as I never had a great pc until I was old enough to tell my dad what to buy, I didn't care as much as playing console games. So my real pc gaming experience started after my Playstation broke down and for a couple of years it was the only place I played games. I had moved out of my neighborhood and couldn't go to my friends house to play, and the new neighborhood didn't had a lot of great kids, they were ther but they were all kind of assholes.

At the time my pc gaming was essentially playing Footbal Manager games and som other games that didn't had great impact on me, in fact I can say that I rarely finished a game on pc at that time and was almost always playing FM.

When the Playstation 2 launched and after that the XBox I started to saving some money so that I could buy one of them but never could save enough. I finally got to owning a XBox by wining a TV competition with a huge help of a friend of mine, let me explain. The competition asked us to write a little text were we should tell wich WRC car we love the most and why, well I don't know anything about WRC but I wanted the console wich came with Colin McRae Rally 2005. So I asked a friend of mine, that was fairly knowledgeable of WRC and cars, to write me the text. He did, I sent it and I won! I felt kind of bad for not doing anything to win so I tould my friend he could come and play whenever he wanted and that I even lend it to him. And that's the way I returned to consoles, I had an XBox and no Playstation 2 (I will write about how it felt to be a XBox owner with the MGS and FF franchises on the Playstation 2).

I had little games for the XBox, manly I had a friend that lent me his games so I would have to go and ask my dad for money or games. I wasn't a fan of the XBox but I didn't hate it, I mean the franchises that made me a gamer were all on the "other side" but I still had great experiences with it. There were 2 games specially that marked my gamer life with the XBox, they were Fable and Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic. The first one became on of my favorite games of all time and the reason that I bought a XBox 360 years later, and the second one was the only game that brought back the same feeling I had when I started playing Final Fantasy VIII.

Years later the XBox 360 was launch and after that the Playstation 3, I was then old enough to get I job and I did it so that I could buy a Playstation 30 60GB and play Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and the future Metal Gear Solid Games. So I bought a Playstion 3 and later a XBox 360, I would write something about it, and I probably will in the future, but they are not as much as my gaming pass but more like my gaming present.

I know this is a long post but I tought it would be nice for you to know my gaming past, and a little about myself. You will notice I don't talk about Nintendo all that much, that is because I didn't had much of an experience with Nintendo, apart from playing a little of Super Mario on a store, watching a friend play Zelda one time and playing little of Nintendo 64 I can say that it hadn't much of an influence on my gaming habits.

What can you find in this blog?

Finally lets go to the next topic and this is going to be shorter, much muck shorter. You will find in this blog my experiences with games, past and present, some stories about them and my thoughts on gaming and on being a gamer. It's going to be as personal as I can go and I intend to talk about averything that I like or hate about videogames.

The purpose of this blog

I wanted to start a blog beacuse I felt that I need to do something creative, I need to write and think about videogames because they were and are a great part of my life. I also wanted to start writing in English, I feel that I need to practice it more and what better way to do it by writing about something you love on the site were you spent most of you're "internet time"

So this is the long LONG post that begins my blog, I hope you guys and girls liked it and that you check it from time to time, any sugestion or critic will be greatly apreciated, and once again I apologize for my writing.

See you soon.