My Gamer History, Chapter I: Early Childhood

Ever since I can remember, there has always been a computer in my life. Judging from some old videos, we had a ZX Spectrum even before I was born - mostly due to my dad being a technology geek (thankfully). As I look back now, games shaped my life and I learnt a lot through playing. It wouldn't be the same without them and sometimes it's fun to remember the unique history that we, the kids of the 90s, witnessed. As we grew, the games evolved with us and that is something you won't see happen twice.

Trivia: Can you name the game below?

Before PC, I spent hours watching my dad play those 256x192 pixel-ed ZX Spectrum games, amazed by the  stunning 80s/90s "graphics". And even though I didn't really start playing myself until I was a bit older (but no older than 5), there is evidence of my 2 years old self identifying the helicopter cockpit steering stick as a "joystick". I knew my tools, 'kay?

Man, that sure looks like a fun game there. (20th March 1994; 3 yrs old)

My first games were just about anything my dad played, although I did like to alter the gameplay to suit my childhood abilities and preferences:

* Duke Nukem 3D (where I always played with cheats; 1996) 

* Tomb Raider (where I only played the training house; 1996)

* Age of Empires (where I was the only player on the map; 1997)

* Half Life (where I only played the part before the accident; 1998)

SIDENOTE: Sadly, the existence of Warcraft and other similarly popular fantasy games remained hidden to me, because dad disliked fantasy settings in his strategies.

FUN FACT: Duke was the first love of my life. I had/still have a thing for bad guys.

I did play a few girly/child's games too. Mostly Barbie Riding Club (my sad substitution for real horses; 1998) and Putt Putt (adventure games for kids; 1992). Now the Putt Putt series was interesting because I could neither speak English at the time, nor was I aware of -what- I am supposed to do in the game. And still, somehow, I was able to have fun and finish each and every one of them. To this day, I think that is what really helped me learn English so easily later in my life.
That... and Sims! (Did it really come out as late as 2000?)

Sims: The year it came out, I had it. I loved every bit of that game and got every single expansion pack afterwards. The music is forever stuck in my head. 

I admit, most of my time in-game was spent building new houses (usually, they were as big as the land slot allowed) and arranging furniture. That is where I decided that maybe I will want to be an architect someday (though I gave up on that later due to my horrible math skills). All in all, if I were to sum up my total Sims playtime, it would probably come to months, maybe even over a year? (I am comparing this to the numbers I got from WoW --> which I will speak about in another chapter.)

FUN FACT: In the 90s, my country didn't sell games in stores and if they did, they games were expensive and hard to get. We got our very first CDs from a guy who knew another guy who had a Russian friend... you know what I mean. Even that way, each of them cost a bit and I used to share the CD with a neighbour who paid half the price. Remember, "no-CD cracks" were still a new thing.

At this point, I need to address the matter of my "external" battle stations = the games I didn´t "own" myself but played/saw at other people´s places. That would be the NINTENDO type games (like Super Mario, Circus Chablie, Lion King) and Pharaoh/Cleopatra.

The battered object that was my cousins' Nintendo-type console was simply referred to as "THE GAME".  "The game" used yellow "cassettes" that we obtained from various sources, mostly second hand markets. That is also where the console itself came from (probably a fake). It needed some tweaking to work, but it was awesome and if it wasn't for this mysterious object, I would never have played Super Mario.

As for Pharaoh/Cleopatra, that one is special to me, because I only played it on my godfather's laptop whenever he came visiting (which was more or less once/twice a year). Building the pyramids on my own in the later years was never as fun as it used to be when we played together. What a disappointment it was the moment I discovered I had reached the maximum object limit!

Perhaps the first documented visual evidence of me playing on an actual PC. With MS DOS, no doubt. (16th November 1995; 5 yrs old)

And that is all for now. Thank you for reading. 

In the second chapter, I will try to sum up some of the games that arrived later, the period of my dreadful computer-less-ness and finally... my sad little MMO career.
(Sad mostly because it was never quite as long and intense as I had hoped for.)