Gaming Passion or A Personal Brief History of Gaming

_{Pac-Man (arcade)}

_{Omega Race (arcade)}

@galenkp made a post a few days ago asking who would buy some ridiculously expensive curved monitor and spend all that money just for gaming. Responses were varied of course and it led to other discussions like why most people game less as they get older. The general thoughts were that, sure, people who were very passionate about gaming (and perhaps "professional" gamers) and had the money to spend would buy things like a $3,000 curved monitor and that as people got older, they had less time for gaming or their priorities changed. @galenkp stated his preference for more in person social situations as a way to enjoy leisure time than gaming typically provides today and that perhaps many adults, at least as they get older, feel the same way. I made one response and was going to continue the conversation but it became quite long and rambling so I made a post of it instead.

So what does it even mean to be passionate about gaming? Does it require big expenditures or hours upon hours playing games?

_{Hungry Monster}

_{Fire Away (Cosmic 1000)}

I would argue that I'm pretty passionate about gaming despite the fact that I don't do it much these days (limited time, different priorities). Video/computer games were a big part of why I have the career I have today in software (though my job has nothing to do with making games). Memories of gaming from my childhood are some of the strongest and fondest memories I have. My first gaming memories include playing Omega Race and Pac-Man at a Pizza Hut with my Dad (probably when I was around 6) and playing Frogger on a friend's Atari 2600. After that I really wanted an Atari 2600 but those were expensive at the time. The first video game I owned was a standalone handheld LED based game called Hungry Monster (a Pac-Man clone) from Radio Shack which I got for Christmas in 1982. At the same time or possibly a little later, I also got Fire Away (the Cosmic 1000 version) which was another handheld game, this one a clone of Space Invaders and also licensed by Tandy. They were no Game Boy but they were still a ton of fun to me at the time (and easier to see).

_{Defender (Atari 2600)}

_{Centipede (Atari 2600)}

I would finally get my Atari 2600 a year later. That was one of the best Christmases ever, at least in terms of presents. I played tons of Pac-Man, despite how crappy it was, as well as Demons to Diamonds, Circus Atari, Combat, Centipede (one of my favorites at the time), Star Raiders, Defender and a few others. I even had my own TV to play on at the time though it was black and white. For the Atari 2600 that didn't make a huge difference.

_{Space Taxi (Commodore 64)}

_{Agent USA (Commodore 64)}

A few years later, my neighbor got a Commodore 64 and my life was changed forever. Sure, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal but the games and sense of discovery that thing brought directly affected the course of my life. More than anything, the experience I had with my friend's Commodore 64 and later my own is what led me down the path to a career in software. Movies like Tron, Wargames and Cloak & Dagger helped too. My neighbor got his Commodore 64 second hand from a relative. It came with tons of disks, mostly pirated games though we didn't really have a clue about that sort of thing at the time. In fact, the idea that you could make a copy of a game was a revelation in itself. At first, the only thing we knew how to do was to load the first thing on a disk (LOAD"*",8,1). Later, we figured out how to load a directory (LOAD"$",8 and then LIST) and figured out that many of the disks had several games on them. Mind blown.

_{Raid on Bungeling Bay (Commodore 64)}

_{Gauntlet (Commodore 64)}

Over the next few years I pieced together my own Commodore 64 system mostly via Christmas and birthday presents...the computer one year, disk drive the next, then a monitor (before that I used a small T.V.), etc. The majority of the time it was used to play games such as Pole Position, Kik Start, Winter Games, Spelunker, Raid On Bungeling Bay, Spy Hunter, Ace of Aces, Test Drive, Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gyruss, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Beach Head, Silent Service, F-15 Strike Eagle, Blue Max, Zaxxon, Dragonhawk, Night Mission Pinball, Forbidden Forest, Gauntlet, Druid, Spy vs. Spy, Space Taxi, Agent USA, Donald Duck, Jump Man, Pharoh's Curse, Zork, Paperboy, California Games, Rally Speedway, Raid Over Moscow, Green Beret, Outrun, Impossible Mission, and probably more that have slipped my mind...man there were a lot. Most of them were copied from my neighbor but I bought what I could afford too. However, I also used it for other things like learning to program in BASIC and writing high school papers. The first time I used a modem was also with a Commodore 64.

_{Pool of Radiance (Commodore 64)}

_{Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Commodore 64)}

Later on, I also got an NES. The games I remember playing most on that system were Super Mario Bros. (of course), Duck Hunt, Pinball Adventure, Rocket Ranger (terrible game), Strider, Bionic Commando, Rad Racer, Excite Bike, Dragon Warrior, Tecmo Bowl, Contra, R.C. Pro-Am, Fester's Quest, Operation Wolf, Nobunaga's Ambition, Solar Jetman (immensely underrated), Castlevania and others I'm sure.

_{Solar Jetman (NES)}

_{Contra (NES)}

After that came the Super Nintendo. The games I remember the most on that system include Super Mario World, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, F-Zero, Super Star Wars (way too hard), Starfox, Super Street Fighter II, Super R-Type, Populous, John Madden Football, Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Smash TV.

_{F-Zero (Super NES)}

_{Super R-Type (Super NES)}

However, even during the times that the NES and Super NES were the most popular systems around, I still spent more time overall with my Commodore 64 than with those combined. It would remain my primary computer and primary gaming machine until I upgraded to a PC in 1993. And I did pay a crapload for it then. For $3000 (supposedly equivalent to nearly $6200 in today's dollars), I got a Gateway 2000 486 DX2-66 with 16 MB of RAM and a VESA local bus video card from ATI. It even inluded a single speed CD-ROM drive and a whopping 340 MB hard drive. I spent all the money I made that summer on this computer and it was worth every penny. I never had a second of buyer's remorse. I would soon add a Sound Blaster 16 and modem and later on an additional 1 GB hard drive and a Zip drive. This was the computer I would use throughout college and first get on the Internet and use a web browser with. It was also around 1993 that I discovered BBSes including online door games (mostly I played L.O.R.D.).

_{Doom (DOS)}

_{Rebel Assault (DOS)}

While that computer had plenty of serious use, it was also used for a ton of gaming. Doom was one of the first games installed on it. Others include Doom II, Rebel Assault, NASCAR Racing, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Descent, Heretic, Mechwarrior 2, Eye of the Beholder, some other mech game the name of which I forget, and probably several other games that I am also forgetting at the moment. I would say though that the vast majority of the gaming time on that computer was spent in deathmatch with Doom and Doom II and their seemingly unlimited mods. It was also around the time I got this computer or not long after that emulation really started to take off. The first version of MAME was released around that time and there was also a Commodore 64 emulator that was reasonably decent and worked at full speed even on a 486. That was pretty impressive to me at the time.

_{X-Wing (DOS)}

_{Leged of the Red Dragon}

The monitor would die about four years later and I would end up getting an entirely new computer with the 486 being passed to may parents. The new computer was also from Gateway 2000 and was a 333 MHz Pentium II. If I remember correctly, it came with 64 MB of RAM but I would add another 128 MB soon after for a total of 192 MB. Of course I spent time gaming on this one as well with games such as X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, Baldur's Gate, and others. After this, I started building my own computers starting with a Duron, then Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Phenom, Phenom II, Athlon FX, Intel I7-5860K and so on over the years. However, my computer gaming since the days of Baldur's Gate, X-Wing Alliance and a couple of relatively brief forays into MMORPGs with Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars Galaxies, has been pretty minimal.

_{Baldur's Gate (Windows)}

_{X-Wing Alliance (Windows)}

I also had various newer game consoles that I spent time gaming on, including the PlayStation, PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube and X-Box. I also picked up gaming systems I missed at their peak including a TurboGrafx-16 I got on clearance at Toys R Us about the same time I got the PlayStation, plus a used Genesis, Sega CD, and Saturn. Those were the last gaming systems I really spent any significant time with. Occasionally I will play a game of Mario Kart on the Wii or Switch. The only game I can say I play regularly these days is Pokemon Go.

_{Worms Armageddon (Dreamcast)}

_{Re-Volt (Dreamcast)}

As far as the social aspects of gaming go, I am an introvert and have absolutely no desire to talk on a headset with someone I don't know. Having said that, playing games with friends is a blast. Much of my Commodore 64 gaming was done with friends as was much of my console gaming. In my early days of PC gaming most of my Doom deathmatches were with my college roommate who was playing on his computer in the next room. I definitely appreciate the social aspects of gaming with friends, and I always enjoyed certain games on my own too (particularly RPGs which were usually one player anyway). I don't mind anonymous matches online (I wish you could still play the Nintendo DS version of Mario Kart online for instance). However, as time has gone by it does seem like gaming has lost a lot of that in person social component and modern games are often spent online with strangers.

_{Mario Kart: Double Dash (GameCube)}

So yeah, even though I hardly play games these days, computer and video games make up some of my best memories and many of these were in social situations. I'm still passionate about it even if it isn't something I do much these days. And despite the fact I don't break them out often, I still have all of my original video games systems and games and of course the Commodore 64. If I do get back into video games a little, my time would probably be spent finding all those old games over the years that I wanted to play but never got the chance to or reliving some of my old favorites via GoG or emulation (or on one of the real systems I still have). The only modern game I can even think of that I wanted to try in the recent past is Star Wars: Squadrons because it looks like a throwback to the old X-Wing series of games which were some of my favorites. But like gaming in general for me these days, I just haven't gotten around to it. I would never have labeled myself a "gamer" as the connotation just doesn't seem to fit. Nerd? Sure. Geek? Maybe. Video game fan? Ok. But to me, gamer almost implies a way of life that revolves around games. Even something like a modern professional game tournament doesn't interest me nearly as much as something like the Nintendo World Championships would have. One is for amateur's having fun and the other is for professionals trying to gain fame and fortune (though I get that those lines can blur significantly). Nothing wrong with either one of those things but when it comes to gaming I personally much prefer the former to the latter.

_{Pokemon Go}

Back to the original question that was asked, I certainly wouldn't ever spend that much for a monitor but I would spend quite a bit on a computer setup in general that would be capable of playing the latest and greatest games though my usage is somewhat different these days. And I agree with the comments on socializing. I would be far more likely to pick up an old game (or even a new one) if I had one or a few friends that wanted to do the same.

So how passionate about gaming are you?