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Dysrianism

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Games from my childhood

We've all got to start somewhere. 
 
An autobiography of my life and video games. Albeit the development into a passionate gamer, rather then the actual games I played when I was very entrenched in the videogame community. 
 
Back when I used to post on Gamespot... The good ol' days. 
Waiting up on school nights to watch E3 press conferences live... Sony was late like 2 hours so I was stayed up till like 4am and then the conference was SHIT. 
All that crazy stuff you do when you're passionate. 
These were the games that built that crazy person inside me, and as such they mean a lot to me. The least I can do for them is to write something about them, and remember them fondly. If I knew the creators personally, I'd give them the biggest hug ever for the countless hours of joy. 
 
 I hope you enjoy reading this list, and if you have any games you remember from your childhood fondly I'd love to hear you talk about the,.
 
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I also played Age of Empires a lot, but I like having the list be only 10 games and I don't know where it'd fit in chronologically. So it's an honourable menton. 
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 I do also realise that 3 of the 10 are Mario games, and 3 of the 10 are also Pokemon games. Forgive me. I was in love. 
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List items

  • This was my first exposure to videogames. I lived in Ballarat at the time and had no idea what videogames were. I was young, foolish even! I had a neighbour though; he and his brothers had a Nintendo. When I saw it, I was blown away. I couldn't believe such a thing existed! This was the game they had that really made me interested in videogames. They usually wouldn't let me play it... I was that little kid from next door, but I didn't need to. I would watch, completely riveted. It was at that point that an obsession with games began to develop.

  • This was my first videogame, albeit not by choice. For my birthday I finally got something I had longed for, the Game Boy and this came with it. Finally, a videogame system of my own, and I could use it anywhere! I guess I was young and didn't realise that I could have got a Super Nintendo or something, but this was literally the greatest invention to my infantile mind. This game itself was a lot of fun. I loved playing it and hell, I feel tempted to pull it out now. It got pretty hard as well! I can't remember if I ever beat it, but I still remember those levels now... They're ingrained inside my head.

  • This was my first videogame by choice. We went in on my birthday to buy it and I was so unbelievably excited. I loved the Pokemon series on TV, it completely captured my imagination and I was just like the thousand of other kids who was completely obsessed by it. When I began playing it, I wasn't taken aback by how awesome it was; I totally expected it to be the greatest thing ever. And until Pokemon Gold, it was. I can't really remember many memories of what it was like being small, I can't even remember some of the houses I lived in. I do remember going up to the cashier and buying this though, and rushing out so I could play it. It's hard to forget just how amazingly excited and captivated I was.

  • Now, lets skip back a bit. Remember when I got that GameBoy? OK, I wasn't living in Ballarat anymore. So obviously I was going to have new neighbours at my new house, right? Well, this was a family of 5 boys. So naturally they loved videogames and playing and competing with one another. So when I finally met them, this was THE game. I played it and was amazed. I still play this game. I played it only last week. The replay value is ENDLESS. My first taste of the Nintendo 64 and I was blown away.

  • The influence of my new neighbours was so strong that I became obsessed with the idea of getting a Nintendo 64. I pleaded and pleaded for so long, and this tactic must of worked because we eventually got one! It was cool, purple and see-through and this was the game we got with it! My Mum and Dad couldn't set it up so I had to... They got confused because there was only one audio cable hole on the TV, instead of the red and white ports on most. I just plugged one in, the video into yellow and BAM! My own 64! I was so excited. Pokemon Stadium might not have been Super Mario 64, but it was a great deal of fun. The mini games were like addictive drugs, we couldn't get enough! I played our brand new 64 all the time.... I looking at it as we type, and goddamn, I love that thing. It gave so many people so much joy. Fuck yeah videogames.

  • As a kid, I loved James Bond. When I saw this game, I was just completely in love. I played it all the time and would love playing the multiplayer. It replaced Smash Bros for us, it was our new multiplayer game, and just like Smash Bros, I was competitive! I played it loads and became the best, with the neighbour Matt being the only other one who could compete with me. I'm not trying to boast, but it was a big part of the game for me, and I felt a great deal of satisfaction because of it. But this was the first FPS I ever played most likely, and it was amazing. The campaign had so many levels and was nearly always fun, even though you could lose yourself horribly on some levels (second time you go to the snow level... I got lost so many times!)

  • As a kid, I had played Super Mario 64 and I loved it, but I never owned it. When I got this though, I didn't need it. This was my Mario for the 64. Rare created such a charming game that I found unbelievably compelling in every single way. Stylistically, unparalleled for me and the gameplay easily matched any other platformed I'd ever played, being far better then most. I was really obsessed with this game. I mean, sure, I played lots of games, but generally multiplayer ones with my neighbours. The single player adventures I had were mostly exclusive to the GameBoy. This really was the defining single-player experience for consoles in my mind at the time. I was obsessed. I lost myself in the whimsical world of Banjo and Kazooie. When I finally beat it, I think I cried. I didn't want it to end. I was growing older and loosing my naivety. To me, the game was absolutely magical. That meant a lot to me, because I was loosing that magic in most areas of my life. It was disappearing with my innocence. Banjo-Tooie reminds me of that lost life. It reminds me of being a kid, and my unlimited imagination and love for adventure, whimsy, and yes, magic.

  • This was probably the last Nintendo 64 game I got into that I really loved. I remember seeing it at my neighbours house and really wanting to play it... Eventually, I got to hire it. I loved the universe. The characters seemed so cool to my young self, especially how there was a rival team called Star Wolf! That seemed so badass to me. I really enjoyed that game, so when I saw it for cheap in an EB Games I bought it. What I didn't expect was for my love to continue developing. I'm at the point where I'd definitely consider this one of, if not, my favourite videogame of all time. By the time I actually owned it, I began to delve into the multiple paths, all the secrets you could unlock and the crazy levels that would teleport you to a different planet. I wanted to get the medals, I wanted to meet all the side characters and drive the Landmaster and Submarine. I got the real ending and thought it was the coolest videogame ending of all time at the time. It's still pretty badass! I played it over and over and over; I was at the point where one of my friends in Adelaide, who also played it a lot, would say random quotes from the game and the other person would have to say who said it and on what level. It was a testament to that games charm that I nearly always knew where the quote was from an from who.

  • Goddamn. What a game. What can I even say? Probably played it more then any other game just about. I was completely immersed in it. The game played into my love for the previous generation by letting me revisit Kanto, yet with all the gym leaders making immense progress. That was a lot of fun to see. The battle with Red at the end. I just remember how awesome it was to meet him, just standing on that mountain... Silence. Then a level 82 Pikachu that went down one shot because it wasn't evolved. But I'll be damned if that Snorlax wasn't a fucking tank. But seriously, I just completely lost myself everytime I played this game. It was on such a small screen, but when I was played, it surrounded me. The sense of adventure was unparalleled. No game has ever felt like such an incredible journey for me. There was just so much ground to cover, so many Pokemon, your rival, the Elite 4, the antagonistic Team Rocket, it just goes on and on. A game I truly lost myself in, and without a doubt a game that will always occupy a very special place in my heart. Everything I've said about the games on this list, whether it was magical, whether the locations were ingrained into my head, whether it was immersive, full of charm, an amazing sense of adventure, cool characters, amazing game play... this game had it all. It had everything I loved about the medium in the spades. It was the best escapism, because I believed so utterly in the world the game showed. Because I loved it, and I really felt like the creators did too. It just had so many details and seemed so lovingly crafted. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I've actually gone completely mad. I don't care. Just give me Pokemon Gold.

  • And this is where it ends. I got a Gamecube right before I moved away to Adelaide. By this point, I was heading into teenage-hood, and videogames were changing. The technology seemed so much more advanced, and being so in love with videogames I knew I had to get the Cube. This was the game I got with it, as well as Super Smash Bros Melee. This was what got me really into videogame culture. I loved games as a kid, but when the Cube came out, I started buying the Cube magazine at the time (called CUBE) and found myself becoming a part of the videogame community and culture in a much bigger way. With the internet I found Gamespot, and then when that fell, Giant Bomb. During that time though, my main passion in life was videogames. It isn't anymore, but I still remember those years fondly. I loved that generation of consoles, but if it weren't for these games here, I would have never had seen so many amazing things about games. Especially the community of dedicated, passionate videogame lovers out there. Rarely do I see people who seem more in love with what they do in their spare time. They're dedicated. Even though I fell out of love with the medium in some regards, I'll always consider myself a part of that community. I never was a part of any other subculture; it was the closest I ever got to being in a clique. I was a gamer.
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