Mario, bomber man and metal slug. However my first Xbox game which Really got me into online gaming was halo 3. 11 years of gaming and I still haven't had a moment that can compare to the fun I had with my friends in halo 3 custom games.
I was born into a family who owned an arcade, so that definitely helped start my appetite for gaming, but let's take a stroll down memory lane anyhow. My brother is 4 years older than me, and obviously being born in the 90s, it was inevitable he would turn into a gamer. And since I was a tomboy and his only sibling, I got sucked into it as well. He would get lonely and ask me to play, and would show me the controls. We started playing his games. Virtually every racing game and war game ever made from '95-'04 for every console and PC. I enjoyed them, I started playing them well before I could even read. They were a great way to pass the time, especially since I didn't have to read anything. He also got me into Pokemon at some point, but I would just skip the dialogue and identify Pokemon by looks, as I was a fan of the show and the card game. When I was 3-4, I started collecting my own games. Lots of Nintendo games and PlayStation games as well. They actually started teaching me how to read. Spyro, Sonic, Animal Crossing, Banjo Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, etc. But I still played my brother's games too, like the James Bond games, and as I said every single war game or racing game ever made. We both got into Sims at some point or another, which was alright. I still needed help reading some things, but I managed. I switched constantly from PC to console to PC to console. I probably spent a lot more of my childhood gaming than I should have realistically. The first game I truly grew an emotional attachment to was Warcraft III, back in '02 I think it was. I played it all day every day for a few years. The plot was a little hard to follow as a 6yo, but it was a fun strategy game. And then came World of Warcraft, which is how I got into competitive gaming. I was extremely hesitant to try it, because I loved Warcraft III so much and didn't want to take time away from it, plus I figured WoW would be bad in comparison because it was so different. But my brother was persistent and demanded I at least give it a try. He coaxed me by telling me I could be a nature-elf with a pet kitty cat. That grabbed my attention, and I tried it. At first, WoW was EXTREMELY hard to get into. Back then, it took a billion years to reach cap level. To level even once was beyond difficult, and the quests were impossible to do alone. My brother didn't even teach me how to play, he just helped me create a character and walked away. After slaving away and dying every 5seconds, I finally got to level 5, where I ran into another night elf hunter. He offered to help me that first day. And we kept questing every day after, until I reached cap level 60, which took me over a year. That one guy made me fall in love with WoW for its community. He also taught me how to enjoy the game for the content, as complex as it was. Also, WoW was hard to get into for a kid starting as a hunter (as I did) because you had to buy each arrow, budget that, find money to feed your pet or else it would run away. You also had to buy two separate weapons, a melee and a bow on top of all the arrows and the pet's food...and trying to manage all the arrows in your quiver...if you ran out, you were fucked. And after I started WoW, I just kept playing and still do. It opened up a lot of opportunities for me to try new games as well. It made me want to try more online games and RPGs and taught me not to be put off by the more complex and competitive games as a kid. If I hadn't started WoW, my game library would be extremely limited, as would my knowledge of games. Plus, WoW made me want to design games. So I guess there's that. My life kind of centers around that game.
I got into gaming when I was around 6. A kindergarten friend of mine brought over his Gameboy Color one day and let me try it out. I was fucking blown away by the game. I ended up getting a Gameboy Advance for Easter in 2002, and that only got me more addicted. In December of that year I got a Playstation 2 and grew an unhealthy addiction over the years. In 2006 I heard one of my friends talking to someone in class about a girl who tried scamming him out of a water staff, and when I asked him about it he told me he was referring to Runescape. I checked it out and when I finally started to play it in December I was once again blown away by the vastness of the world. I got addicted to MMO gaming and later on got introduced to Counter-Strike and the FPS genre.
