darthballsac

You can almost say that I was forced into gaming from childhood. My grandparents were gamers and still kind of are, playing emulators and older generation consoles. I guess you could say my family has been my enabler into being a gamer. I remember watching my grandfather play Dungeons & Dragons on the Intellivision system in 1 room, while my sister watched his gameplay from another room shouting instructions. When they upgraded to the Nintendo Entertainment System, my grandfather was happy to play and share the controller with me. You can call this my retrospective of consoles I’ve started with life into gaming.

Intellivision

The Intellivision system was my introduction to most games. The system started out with cartridges like most systems did, but had a controller with a number pad and required sleeves to play the games to use the controller properly.

The first and my favorite game to play on the Intellivision was ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, which later had the subtitle Cloudy Mountain. You start out on an open map to venture into mountains where the real challenge begins. You fight rats, snakes, demons, and dragons with your only weapon, a bow and arrows. The annoying pests to hinder your adventure in the hidden tunnels of the mountain also include: bats to make noise and hide some creatures, spiders to steal your arrows, and blobs that you can’t kill but will kill you. Certain mountains will give you items to make your way across the board to the ultimate goal of killing the most dangerous dragons at the main mountain to rebuild the crown.

Night Stalker would be my second favorite game. It has the feel of a third person shooter. In this game you run around the board to collect a gun and fight off skeletons, robots, and many other nasty things to protect yourself from.

Nintendo

I’m sure everyone around my age played some game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Most people were introduced to home gaming thanks to this console. Super Mario Bros. was probably the biggest break out game for so many people to lay hands on a NES controller.

Kung Fu was my favorite game to launch with the NES system. A side scrolling game where you kick and punch your way up to the top of the houses full of bad guys. The ultimate goal was to save your girl and be the hero. There were many bad guys and great bosses to strategize your way through the game rather than just button mash your way.

I wouldn’t be able to call myself a true gamer if I didn’t mention how arcade games paved the way for any gamer. Arcades started many people their way to play something because you couldn’t go anywhere back in the early 80’s without running into an arcade cabinet or pinball machine somewhere. Arcades and game room help boost malls and entertain kids at bowling alleys across the nation. Still today most multiplexes and theaters have a few arcades or game rooms to keep the kids happy. Some of my favorites to play were Centipede, Altered Beast, Missile Command, and of course Pac-Man.

What started you on your way to become a gamer?