My Gaming History Pt. 1

Welcome to part one of a new several part long blog series on The Thoughtful Gamers. This blog series is going to be a look back through time as I, magx01, recall my 20+ year long gaming “career,” if you will. I'll take you through the ups and downs, the trials, tribulations and the triumphs. The sleepless nights, the gorging on pizza, the tournaments, the competition, the fights. The friends made over gaming, and the friends lost ov-no wait, I can honestly say that I have never lost a friend because of gaming. That would be rather pathetic, would it not?

Anyways, in all seriousness, I've literally spent most of my life as a gamer, and I'd say that now, looking back, still being involved in it, seeing no end in sight, it's something that I will do until I either die or am no longer physically or mentally able. Sure, I can no longer play ten hours a day, several days a week, but I still get in some gaming time every chance I get. It might be only 4 hours a week these days, due to my illnesses and responsibilities, but I still manage to work it in. And I absolutely relish those rare weeks where I do get to play for extended hours.

I am gamer, hear me roar

Oh, how I still love to sit for hours on end, staring at the screen, lost in another world. I love the challenge, and I love the fact that I can have an effect on the world around me. I love making moral choices, I love facing a tough enemy and losing again and again, as I learn to adapt to a new adversary and in doing so, work towards that climactic moment when I finally conquer the fiend. That feeling is a feeling shared and revered by all gamers, and it's a rush that has not diminished over time (although the difficulty of these encounters has, for the most part).

And so, with my love for gaming made clear, let us travel back to the late 1980's where it all started with the opening of a gift on a fateful Christmas morning. When the wrapping paper and bow were removed from the box, there, in front of two positively stunned little kids, was a bounty far more vast and wondrous than any bestowed upon, or stolen by, a pirate, anytime in history. There, in that living room in the late 1980's, two middle class Canadian boys had just unveiled the ultimate gift:

The Nintendo Entertainment System, aka, the NES.

Inside the box was an NES console, 2 controllers, a Zapper, and two grey carts: Excitebike, and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combination cartridge. We had three games, and they were the coolest games we had never played. And not play them we did. All that night. See, despite the protestations of the two excited children, it was bedtime. No Nintendo would be played in that house until the next day. And so we retired to our respective bedrooms, both no doubt so excited we could hardly speak, let alone sleep.

Now, my memory may be off here, so don't take this next part as gospel, but I believe that I failed to get a single wink of sleep that night. Instead, I can recall doing thumb calisthenics, thumb pushups with 300 lbs on my back, and thumb wrestling matches between my left and right thumbs. See, the next day, I was going to get to lay my grubby mitts on an NES. And once I did, I wasn't planning on letting it go until I absolutely had to.

And so, I worked those thumbs in preparation all night long, even going so far as to get my dealer on the phone and having him deliver up to my bedroom window some anabolic steroids, which I injected directly into my thumbs. Sure, I was worried about thumb gyno, nail loss and even shrinking thumbpads, but I figured the extra strength and dexterity was worth the risk, and I also knew that the shrinkage would subside once I was off cycle. And so, like the Russians and Sylvester Stallone before me, I went the extra mile so that I could go the distance. I had the eye of the tiger, and it was time to kick that Nintendo's ass.

See you in part 2.

EDIT: Part TWO