Tag: Gaming Community

EXP Share #2 – Sharing a pastime…

Today’s anecdotal ramble-post is inspired by the second round of the WordPress gaming community collaboration – EXP Share, prompted by DanamesX from Tales From the Backlog. We’re still in the midst of the holiday season, so for this month’s theme we are discussing times we shared our love of gaming with others or they have shared it with us. For my addition, I’ve included a couple past examples, along with a more recent mention. Let’s start with a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

First, this month’s theme…

Share a story where you shared the gift of gaming OR someone shared it with you

Number 1.

A pretty early example of someone sharing gaming with me, indirectly or not, was an older cousin bringing over an old Apple II computer to our house and….just, kinda leaving it there. I don’t remember exactly why a spare room at the end of the hallway was the place to leave a 10-year old computer, but regardless, there was a small box filled with some floppy disks that had a few old games on it, including a version of Mario Bros.(which confused me as a young Nintendo fan) and a spelling game which I forget the name of. Along with those was a game I had never heard about called The Oregon Trail, which I knew the likely basis for the game, being a history nerd since childhood. I remember spending many, many hours playing the game, trying to keep your in-game family intact as you traverse the 2,170-mile voyage between Independence, Kansas and the Oregon Territory, hunting for food and managing supplies all while doing your best to avoid drowning while crossing rivers or diseases like dysentery, typhoid or cholera. In addition to Mario and Sonic games, “edu-tainment” games like The Oregon Trail and Where in the U.S.A is Carmen Sandiego? were some of my favorite games to play as a young kid; throw SimCity into the mix and you’d have the three games that comprised 98% percent of my pc gaming experience until my adult years…

Number 2.

One of my childhood memories, video game-related or not, that remains the most vivid in my memory is getting a N64 for my birthday in 1998. I’ve mentioned previously on this blog site about Banjo-Kazooie being THE game that made me determined to get a Nintendo 64 and it was later that year I received one as a birthday present about a week early. One of the first things my younger brother and I did after hooking up the new console to my bedroom tv was head over to our neighbors, who’d had a N64 since shortly after it was released, and borrow a few games. I believe one of the first games we borrowed was Cruisin’ USA, which we had played there after school many times before, but another game that we decided to check out was the video game adaptation of a movie that had just come out a few years earlier – GoldenEye 007. I had never played a first-person shooter game before – it took me a little bit of getting used to, but it quickly became one of the most amazing games I’d played before, turning into one my favorites(we did eventually buy our own copy). Another example of going into a game knowing absolutely nothing about – much easier when it a monthly magazine that provided most of the information you received about games, but ended up being something truly spectacular. I played a little bit of GoldenEye on my old N64 a few weeks ago and I still get the rush of nostalgia just hearing the intro or level music…

Number 3.

My final example of sharing games with others is less of a specific instance, but more of a general one. Twitch, as a platform has been awesome as a means to connect with others across the globe and share one’s enthusiasm for video games. Throughout the several years I’ve spent watching various Twitch streamers, I’ve learned about quite a few different games that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Over this past summer, I started streaming my own playthroughs of games more regularly and it’s been pretty awesome to have others say as much about being introduced to different games, whether watching myself or others on Twitch. I can’t help but laugh when I’m being held responsible for causing someone else wanting to play a game after watching me play it(and poorly, I might add) as I woke up a couple weeks ago to some Twitter mentions as Kim from Later Levels blames me for wanting to give Yakuza 0 a try…

One Year Anniversary!

It’s been one year since I started my very own blog site on WordPress and this also marks my laziest 100th post! I don’t really have anything special to commemorate the event, but wanted to say thank you to everyone for reading my weekly posts or giving even a passing interest in my nonsense. I’ll also take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for sticking to something for an entire 365 days without getting bored or discouraged and moving on to something else, hooray for me!

I initially began this journey not so much as a creative endeavor, not entirely at least, but as an outlet to discuss anything video game-related on my mind at the time. I wanted a place of my own to discuss games and further elaborate on what specifically I love about them or what they have meant to me over the years. I’m genuinely happy I was able to nudge myself outside my comfort zone and attempt something like writing on a blog site. I was never very adept at writing and transferring my thoughts onto paper was never easy, but I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit in my relatively short time on WordPress; as clichéd as it is, my biggest help has been to keep writing. It was difficult at first, but the longer I kept at it, I’ve genuinely come to enjoy the simple process of creating something…or trying to anyway. The past year has been a learning experience, given how little knowledge or experience I have with keeping up a website or just writing anything longer than a grocery list; I don’t even want to acknowledge how long it took for me to get the hang of adding images.

The internet in general can be an intimidating as well as wonderful place for someone a little more on the introverted side, but I have had nothing but positive experiences and interactions with the great blogging community here on WordPress, whether participating in blog parties or post comments section. Here’s to another year of figuring out what the hell I’m doing…thank you so much for reading!