Picture: Rachidlotf (instagram)
So the other day I went YouTube web surfing and stumbled on this video:
It's about the XBand for the Super Nintendo ( it's a good watch!). Unfortunately I never owned one or knew such a thing existed, but upon learning how teams and clans started forming it so early on, it got me thinking of my experiences with online gaming.
Back in 2000-01 I saved up to buy my first computer at CompUSA. It was a fun experience exploring, going to chat rooms on AOL, pimping out my profile, playing slingo, and what ever else stupid java game caught my attention. Until one day my brother brings me to the store allowed me to get a game. That's when I ran off to see what my decision was going to be. It came down to Mega Man Legends for PlayStation or Starcraft for PC. Unfortunately I had to choose one, so I decided a need a cool game for PC. I went with StarCraft.
What an awesome decision that was. After playing single player for a while, I decided to click the Multiplayer option the see what it was about. After my first experience, I was hooked. Starcraft brought so much more then just a game. It brought excitement, rage, friendships, drama, and improved typing skills! ( communicating with your team mate in battle forces you to type faster lol ) I joined a few clans, and had a regular public channel I would hang out at, and talk about anything with people online at the time.
The thing about online gaming, before the rush of Twitch and YouTube existed, it was a niche group of people. There were all these different groups of people in different chatrooms. It felt like a community. You always had interaction with you team mate or/and opponent. You would set up meeting times to discuss game related stuff, join league and have a match, or "scrim" against other teams. Seems like online gaming lost a little bit of that. Yes I'm sure discord may have fixed that a bit, and there's all kind of matches, websites, but it was it simpler time. Now there's thousands of Multiplayer games you can play out there now, but "back in my day" it seemed more open to have a community. Or it could be I'm just older with more responsibilities and not having that time any more.
Raguardles, the years I spent playing Starcraft, Counter Strike, and even a browser based game called Cyber Nations. I look back fondly of my time wasted on these games. Made some real good friends in Real Life, and a great community of people I've met online that I may never speak to again. But memories of the laughs, battles, and relationships we made will always remain.
Shout out to I.Natas and TortoiseTerran. One day we will game together again!
What are some of your thoughts or fond memories of online gaming?
