Gateway games

Never in a million years, did I think that the sight of black forest cake would one day make me simultaneously smile and cringe. Portal ensured that it happened.

Some of the first video games I ever played were Pac-Man, Centipede, Tetris, and Pong. However, it wasn’t until I played Super Mario Bros. that I saw the true potential of gaming. It was time to say good-bye to stationary backgrounds, and hello to side scrolling platformers.

What would you do if you could go back in time? Invest in stocks before they took off? Get a better date to prom? Come on, those are small time changes, think big. How about killing Hitler?

I still remember when I was a wee lad…back in the NES days, there were a great lot of games to be played and it was my goal to play them all. Each week I would travel to Mr. Video where I would check and see what new grey cartridge might satiate my appetite for the next few days. While I did indeed spend a lot of time playing that little 8 bit box, particularly the Mega Man and Super Mario Bros series’, it wasn’t until NES’s big brother came along that I was really hooked on gaming.

My first outings with videogames were memorable but far from profound. Most Argentine children of my generation grew up with the Family Game, a cheap Nintendo emulator made in China. With it, I jumped through Super Mario Brothers and Antarctic Adventure, which motivated my attachment to the medium but never fascinated me. Even when I graduated to the Super Nintendo, a legal one, I still considered videogames to be one among several fun activities, like sports or trading cards. In 1997, though, one title would teach me that there were unexpected feelings to experience through videogames.

My wife handed me a heavy, neatly wrapped box and said something to the effect of, “You’ll never guess in a million years what I got you.” She was absolutely right. I had no idea what was in it, and gaped in awe as I opened the rectangular package. Inside, eloquently displayed, were three old game cartridges below three Game Boys of matching color. This year for my birthday, my wife got me a glass case exhibiting Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow with matching Game Boy Pockets. It perfectly represented me and my evolution (intentional word choice) as a gamer, cascading me with that sensation known as nostalgia.

It’s sometimes mind-blowing to look back at the past and consider the versions of you which have existed thus far. One such example is a 15 year old boy who once thought RPG’s were totally lame. I mean, who wants to just tell characters what to do and watch them attack? Not me! And managing stats? Boring!

I was rather late getting into the videogame scene. Despite time spent at friends’ houses playing Sonic and Donkey Kong Country on their Mega Drive and SNES, it wasn’t until much later – when the PlayStation was well and truly established – that I finally got on board. Games like Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider were great fun, and helped reinforce the all-important playground notion that twelve-year-old-me had picked the ‘right’ console (‘N64 still uses cartridges and can’t get proper FMV!’ we chanted).

Gaming can mean different things for different people and some are more inclined to engage in these activities than others.  The rise in popularity of video games led them to grow beyond the boundaries of an arcade to our very homes through our computers and our video game consoles.  We are, by our very nature, …