Me and game consoles: a short history

I've had an idea to run down a history of what consoles I've owned for a while. I just never bothered to write it all down. But the wife is preventing me from playing more Galactrix on 360 with ANTM, so I'll sit here and type.

It started, as it did with many others, on an Atari. My much older brothers had an Atari 7800 in all it's fake wood grain glory. So I got my start on Missle Command, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong, which came on a crazy white cartridge by some company named "Nintendo." When that old hardware eventually crapped out, I asked for an Atari 2600 for Christmas. There were rumors and commercials of a new system but I had done my research (you know, in the JC Penney catalog that passed for the "internet" back then). That Christmas (1985?) I rocked out with a new 2600 and great new games like Pole Position and Battlezone. It only took me a month or two to figure out that I'd made a terrible mistake with my Santa Claus request. The new NES was awesome and I had to have one.

So just a few months later my birthday rolls around and I have a new Nintendo. I soon had what I still consider to be the best game I've ever played, The Legend of Zelda. This dude had a sword! And he could go anywhere he wanted! And fight Octorocks and stuff!

The NES kept me occupied for quite a while. During this time the seeds of my game madness were sown. I subscribed to Nintendo Power. I read every article. I played something new and awesome called "two player simultaneous" games. Before, my friends and I had to take turns on levels or something. Now we can beat up dudes at the same time! Totally rad.

Since I read Nintendo Power all the time I was understandably excited about the Super NES. The painful months between its release and the next birthday or Christmas nearly killed me. I had to make do with my stupid regular Nintendo and play Super Mario World at friends' houses. But I eventually got one and the next Zelda came shortly after that. The Super NES brought with it incredible digitized graphics, one of the best entries in the Metroid series, and a great (looking) Star Wars series.

A similar process repeated itself for the Nintendo 64 even though I was in High School by that time. Let's just...not think too much on that. The 64 upped the graphics again and brought with it the craziest controller I've ever seen. The standouts for this era were Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. My college roommates and I spent waaaaay too much time playing Goldeneye and Mario Kart.

Nintendo took their sweet time coming out with the next console and I'd already gotten a Playstation 2. I rationalized the expensive box saying that I needed a DVD player anyway. To my credit, I still have never bought a standalone DVD player. The PS2 had great realistic sports games and a completely different focus than what I was used to with the Nintendo systems.

Metroid, and the promise of an upcoming Zelda pushed me over the edge and I got a Gamecube. So I split my time between the 'cube and the PS2. They actually complimented each other nicely because of their different focus. I had two systems for the first time and was lovin' it. Later, the new Zelda went in a weird direction that took me quite a while to get used to, but I think I eventually started to like it.

I managed to get an elusive Wii on the day it came out. No, I didn't camp out all night. I just went to the store about 15 minutes before it opened that morning and got in line with all the other antisocial dudes. I was towards the end of folks that got one, but I wasn't about to camp out. Of course I played Zelda again and all the crazy waggle games.

Not too long after I got the Wii, I picked up a used Xbox 360 since I'd been keeping an eye on the games released for it and there were quite a few that seemed worthy. Once again, I had two systems that complemented each other very well. The crazy and different games have a place on the Wii, along with all the classic Nintendo franchises. The 360 (in beautiful HD) gets used for everything else. They've done a tremendous job with the online portion and I've already talked about how well they did points.

So that's it. Maybe some other time I'll talk about portable consoles (original GameBoy, then DS) or why I don't play PC games.