My gaming memories
Yesterday, I announced a new contests in the Hive Gaming Community. The contest is your Best Video Game Memories.
For someone like me, video games have played a huge role in my life. I was in a military family and I moved every couple years, so there wasn't much consistency for me while I was growing up. One thing that was always consistent though, was that video games were always there for me, and they were also something I had in common with other kids in the new areas, so video games were a way to make friends.
I remember when we got our first video game system when we had just moved to Okinawa, Japan. We got the NES, which came with the Power Pad and the Zapper Gun.
My brothers and I spent so many hours racing against each other and the computer characters in the track and field game. We would set up chairs in front of the Power Pad and run like idiots while leaning on the chair backs. We would cheat so bad on the triple jump levels by jumping off of the pad and then jumping back on when our character was about to land. I am sure everyone else that played on the Power Pad had similar strategies.
As you can imagine, video games were VERY popular while we were in Japan. This was back in the 80s when going to the arcade was a big thing as well. So speaking of the arcade, Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat were some of the most popular games there.
My oldest brother was one of the greatest Street Fighter players in the area, and when we were in the arcade, people had their quarters lined up to try and defeat him. I wasn't the greatest at SF2, but would mainly eat ice cream from Baskin Robins while watching my brother beating up on everyone.
Fast forward a while to when the Super Nintendo was released and there were a few games that I loved to play. I don't know how many of you would remember Mario Paint, but I am pretty sure I spent more time playing this game than any other console game in existence.
My friends and I would create cartoons using this game because you could make your characters move around the screen in whatever way you wanted them to. It was like orchestrating a movie scene. We used to record our different episodes and I am sure we had hours of some of the weirdest cartoons.
You could create music to go along with your cartoons, but we also had microphones and would do the different voices for all of the characters. We were really young, probably around 9 or 10 years old, so there was a lot of fart and poop jokes in each episode. I really wish that I had copies of all our tapes we made because I am sure there is some Oscar worthy performances in them.
Now fast forward even further to the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo Gamecube for the Mario Party series. My friends and I would get so competitive during the Mario Party matches. We would form alliances to help each other win different mini games and we would even pick on some of the other players to try and keep them from ever winning anything. It was a ton of fun playing all of the different party games together.
As I am writing this post, I am realizing that a lot my favorite gaming memories all have to do with the Nintendo. I really think that Nintendo has done an amazing job throughout the years in making sure that people have an awesome time playing video games together.
Even with the NES, they were trying to introduce new ways of gameplay. Does anyone remember the Power Glove? That was one of the coolest things back in the day, but it was such a horrible experience, but you didn't really want to admit how bad it was because you felt cool wearing it. Man, it sucked so bad and couldn't control shit with that thing, lol.
Now other than Nintendo games, I did spend a ton of time playing an MMORPG called Rift. I played World of Warcraft a lot, but I put years into Rift. I was part of the beta for this game and played it for about 2 and a half years after it launched.
One of the things that set Rift apart from WoW at the time was the boss fights and raiding. Prior to Rift, most of the raids in WoW were simple DPS checks, but Rift introduced some crazy mechanics to boss fights and even the 5 man dungeon fighting. The difficulty of this game in the beginning was crazy.
I was in one of the top guilds in the world, we reached 17 in the leaderboards, and we would do progression raiding about 3 times a week. We had a lot of server first kills during the first raids. I had a blast playing this game with people from all over the world, but after about 2 years of hardcore raiding, I decided that I couldn't juggle my family life and this game anymore and I quit all MMORPGs for a long time because I would get sucked into that world and try and be the best. I don't even want to think about the countless hours that I spent sitting at the computer moving my little character around in this game.
Video games are a really fun way to pass the time. It is cool to see the video game community here on the blockchain and see how no matter where you live in the this world, we all can come together in the video game worlds and have fun together. I have met some amazing people because of video games and I have made some really great memories.
If you want to take part in the video game memories contest, be sure to check out the Contest Post. There are some very important rules to follow when participating, so make sure you read through the whole post. There is a 50 Hive prize pool and some very great curation rewards for taking part in the contest, so make sure to enter!
Thank you for stopping by and reading some of my video game memories. I could go on and on about video games, but I figure that this post is already long enough. I appreciate you stopping by and for your support. You are awesome!