Welcome, fellow gaming geek! You've successfully pointed your browser of choice to The Video Game Experience. It's a blog. It's about experiencing video games. You're inevitably disappointed by now about what your efforts have yielded. Fear not! You will soon find more content here.
"What is this blog about?", I hear you ask. It's about one man's journey through the world of video games.
"Who's this man?", I hear you ask. (I'm pretty good at hearing questions from the future over the internet). I guess an introduction is in order: Hi! I'm a gamer. You'll find me playing online under the handles of 'Frag_Dad' (I know, I know - I came up with it about 10 years ago when I first started playing online - if only I had the benefit of hindsight! The things a 15-year old thinks sound "hardcore"...), 'Wheels2050' or, occasionally when I'm playing a game I've only just installed, 'Player'.
My system of choice is the PC, first and foremost. I've been playing games on PC for about 20 years now, and no end is in sight there. My father was the IT guy at his workplace for a short while, and was the reason I got into gaming in the first place. I have fond memories of him mail ordering a Shareware copy of Wolfenstein 3D without my mother's knowledge (she would have strongly disapproved) and running through those garish blue corridors with Dad, collecting treasure and gunning down Hitler's minions. Dad lost interest in cutting-edge PCs in the era of the 386, and only recently took the leap from DOS and Windows 3.1 into Windows XP land. Still a couple of generations behind the times, but getting there slowly! Despite this, my interest never faltered and I've been playing PC games ever since.
Apart from short sessions at friends' houses, my first real foray into console gaming came around 1995, when my sister and I received a SNES for Christmas - it came in a bundle with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - a game which, to this day, remains one of my favourites. Unfortunately, the Nintendo 64 came out shortly after I got my SNES, and so I never amassed a large game collection for it, although I've recently gotten my hands on a few more.
That was pretty much it for console gaming for me for about 10 years, until after having a go at a friend's Wii. I was impressed at the experience it offered - entirely different from that of PCs - and so I picked one up. In contrast to what many internet forums will try and tell you, the Wii has a pretty decent library of games, a good fraction of which may be found on my shelves.
Finally, to finish off the run of Nintendo consoles (I never actually set out to play only Nintendo consoles, contrary to how it may appear), I grabbed a DSi XL a few months ago (originally intended as a present to myself to be opened after I finished my PhD thesis, although it somehow managed to open itself quite a while before that happened...) and have been building up a game collection for that - much to my wife's dismay. I honestly think it will be remembered in years to come as one of the best systems ever.
So that's me, and that's a brief overview of my history as a gamer. I'm definitely not the most hardcore out there - especially now, as the days of being able to sit at home for 2 weeks of school holidays and play games the whole time are long gone - but I enjoy it immensely.
As far as what will appear here in the days, weeks, and, assuming anyone actually comes here to read this, months ahead, this blog will chronicle my progression through the world of video games. It won't necessarily have all the latest and greatest (hell, I don't even OWN an Xbox 360 or PS3), but part of the appeal of writing this blog was to tell people about games they may not have heard of, but which I remember fondly.
It won't have all the latest strategies, exploits or cheats. It won't be the go-to resource for learning how to pwn n00bs. What it will have is a lot of heart. A bit of reminiscing, a lot of anecdotes about my gaming life, and heaps about the games I'm currently playing and my thoughts on them. If that's not hardcore enough for you, then you're in the wrong place. I hope, though, that perhaps some people will have played the games I talk about here. Some of those might have really enjoyed them. Perhaps a few of those will have even loved them. What I hope most of all, though, is that this blog will help people to reflect on why they love gaming so much. The feeling of diving headlong into a game and completely losing oneself within a brand new world is one that I'm sure most gamers can relate to, and one that I've experienced many times. It's these instances that I feel really spark our imaginations - when games transcend being simple entertainment and become an all-consuming experience.
To be able to say I've felt that is why I play games.
