Tasting Gaming: Day Zero

Welcome to Tasting Gaming, Here we're going to do little bloggy “article” things, game reviews and general game discussion. I know there won't be a lot of people reading this at first, I imagine future nerds digging through archived content and stumbling upon this. So here-goes my gaming experiences:

I remember watching the adults as a young kid, late 90s, playing sports games and I’d watch and want to get involved but just didn’t have the capacity to do so. Later on in time, these adults got into games like Mortal Kombat, Medal of Honor and Resident Evil. Around this time, I could play games and get involved but couldn’t afford modern Gen hardware. I bought my first two consoles from yard sales, that’s an old-school Craigslist or one of those “for sale” Facebook groups. A young bright eyed Tyler purchased an Atari 2600 and like a dozen games for a crinkled, three-cornered yellowing five dollar bill, I personally was only fond of Adventure, Yars Revenge and Combat, (of course Pac-Man but I personally experience that through Plug-n-Play consoles that poor kids used to get for Christmas.) The second console (actually purchased before the Atari,) was a Sega Genesis where I was introduced to actual Mortal Kombat gameplay, Sonic and Knuckles, as well as ToeJam and Earl.

I fondly recall my dad and his friends, his friends had brought a Super Nintendo to our house, and let me play Super Mario World, we all got so into the game, the classic platformer creating that unique tension that the genre is known for, and I died, cheap death probably, but I swore and it was the first time my dad let me swear in front of company because we were all caught up in the game and a unified reaction to the experience. Around this time I also got into Gameboy-era stuff I owned the original Gameboy, Gameboy Color and GBA within a short time of each other. This began my Era of Pokemon Games, that I played up to Emerald, The Second Generation (Johto,) being my favorite. I was also introduced to the Zelda Oracle series, which made me fall in love with the top down adventure classic and that shovel though.

I’ll never forget my first brand new console was the updated PS1, (which is when I first starting hearing the grey Playstation referred to as the “PSX.”) the games I got with the console were Final Fantasy VIII and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Final Fantasy VIII is my favorite game to this day, the Final Fantasy Series being my favorite series to the point that most of my tattoos are Final Fantasy oriented. Final Fantasy holds a special place in my heart which I’m sure I’ll go into more detail later but I would like present that as a Bias of Mine. Tony Hawk as series, the Pro Skaters being my favorite, really captured me in a way sports games of the time couldn’t, I’m still not attracted towards sports games of the current generation but I’m very excited about THPS5, I loved attempting to 100% the Tony Hawk games and played loyally up to American Wasteland. A few honorable mentions from this era for me personally are the Misadventures of Tron Bonne, Abe’s odyssey and a tip of my hat to the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games of course.

 I was a late-adopter in terms of the N64 but I spent a large portion of my life playing that console and we’ll be diving deeper into that elsewhere on through Blogger. I loved my Playstation 2, there is an endless library of games, just game I played alone for that console, especially with its backwards compatibility making gaming very accessible for someone of my income demographic, it was a game-changer in terms of quality games and the normalization of a console being a media device in an in a growing amount of people’s home with its ability to play DVDs. Final Fantasy X was beautiful and a noble bow-out on Square’s part. The introduction of Kingdom Hearts, captured my attention, my heart and was where I first delved in Disney Culture (sans the Lion King.) DrakenGard was one of my favorite games, I don’t remember much besides thoroughly enjoying it and never saw what became of the IP but I will be revisiting that soon. GTA 2 was a top down open-ish world when I would play it on the PS1 no one really took it seriously and we’d start the game with cheats and just fuck-off for 20-30 min game sessions it wasn’t until the 3D Grand Theft Auto universe was created that Grand Theft Auto became the game I hold so near and dear. I adored GTA 3 but was never good enough to beat it, Vice City and San Andreas hold a special place in my heart for just how involved in them I would get, the sheer amount of times I beat them and the endless hours I sunk into those universes. Mortal Kombat Armageddon and Vengeance in particular were my favorite of the MK universe. The PS2 is still a relevant device to me currently. The Gamecube became very cheap and I bought one new with the remakes of Zelda OoT and Majora’s Mask this is was first contact for me in terms of 3D Zelda Games and they were great, my fondest memories of this console were beating True Crime Streets of New York and playing Super Smash Brothers Melee with friends.

I played portables up to the Gameboy SP and Micro Era, I still wish I got into the Nintendo DS systems and the PSP on Sony’s end and am currently working towards doing this in the near future to expand my Gaming Horizons. I still haven’t decided between a Xbox One, PS4 or Building a PC none have solidified me being sold, so the resolve of that will be coming to the blog soon. I stopped playing video games from the time I was 16 until I was 18, I lost touch a lot with the direction gaming went in the last game I played (that was my own,) before owning an Xbox360 was Stranger’s Odyssey and Fable on the original Xbox. I still played, hopping into multiplayer games, fighting games, maybe some waves of horde on Gears, Maybe a song on Guitar Hero if I could set it to medium, but we played a lot of Peggle despite this. I feel I missed out on a crucial chunk of gaming and currently struggle with First Person Shooters and Fighters these are things I want to work on these and explore these genres in between platformers and RPGs and share my experiences with you all, cus I love ya. I got back into gaming because it brought me back to older time because I was conquering mountains that I once dared to not cross paths with in my youth, playing through 11 of the Final Fantasy titles, playing some newer titles and beating games I struggled with as a child. Currently in the last couple years I’ve struggled with balancing a healthy Game life to Social Life to Work Life Ratio and found that I have a bias in favor of single player gaming experiences, maybe because they can arguably be more personal but because I personally don’t think a game is worth its salt unless it can stand up on the single player experience alone, this is another bias I’d like to be straight forward about. To explore new ground and solidify my skills as a gamer I will be replaying old classic, new titles, genres I hold near and dear as well as genres I may not normally go out of my way to play. Lastly I believe games are art and you probably believe the same if you’re interested in this type of media, I hope you find something here for you, something you can enjoy, maybe a laugh or two and remember, keep on gaming!