i love video games. I always have. I remember pacman and asteroids. There was a whole boom I never experienced growing up in the 80s but the cabinets were everywhere. They were all the same Atari style cabinets, centipede with roller ball tables, they were ubiquitous.

I didn’t have games growing up. I had a few tiger handhelds but didn’t get a Nintendo until they had already been around a while. When I did it was Mario and duck hunt. Skyshark was the other game because my dad liked planes. Mario was too hard, duck hunt was meh and skyshark was absolutely ridiculously difficult for a kid.

They didn’t quite click… Railroad tycoon and civilization were some of my first games along with chuck Yeagers air combat. They came packaged with a soundcard offered through one of my father’s work supply catalogs. I couldn’t even play civ for a year or two. My video card was 16 color on my Tandy 1000. I finally got to play 256 color games when I built my first franken 286 from my brother in law’s spare parts box. My first part I purchased was a 512mb hard drive.

I played all kinds of games but the only that hit home was halflife. THAT was the game. I knew I would be playing games the rest of my life.

i wanted to add a bit here because I’ve had strange reactions to my profile on bsky. I don’t think I come off divisive but I sure get blocked a lot by interesting looking people who I’ve had 0 interaction with.