Serious/Gamer

Gaming Part 2

Around this time I was also HUGE into Mortal Kombat 2 in the arcardes, my friend and I were masters at this game, I had a 100% combo for Liu Kang
and Mileena. It was always funny, we would go to the arcade with 8 quarters (yes games cost only a quarter back then) and play for hours, the game was so popular that people were lining up to play. I would start and play 5-6 people (and win) the my buddy would play and beat me (sometimes not) then he would play 5-6 people, then I would play him and win (sometimes) and so on. We were hated in some ways, we were true Kombat masters.

Back to consoles, so the SNES and Genesis days were great, my brother and I played the hell out of so many games:
Breath of Fire 2
Star Fox
Shining Force 1 & 2
Chrono Trigger
ShadowRun
FF3 (6)
Streets of Rage 2
And many more, but I was still a ‘kid’ and relied on presents or buying myself a game once a year…but that was about to change, around 1993/1994 I had a job, disposable income and I heard about the Sega 32X addon for the Genesis, this was the start of the next generation and I wanted it badly, thank God around that time I started a habit I still have 14 years later, I researched the hell out of the 32X and discovered it was crap, it had nothing and I managed to hold off buying it. That was when the immortal Playstation term started to creep about the world…WHAT…Sony, the makers of walkman and betamax making a console, it will never work. So I researched the hell out of it and found out that this was an incredibly powerful and well thought out console, that it could do 3d games like we have never seen before and that it would be here and change the world. I didn’t buy it, it was too good to be true, the screens for Battle Arena Toshinden were too good to be true, and boy was it expensive. I couldn’t afford it and there was nothing on it yet to interest me, besides there were tons of snes and genesis RPG’s coming out that were keeping me busy, one game changed all of that Final Fantasy 7. It may not be apparent, but I am a Square fanboy, I devoured every Square game I could get and back then Japan would have a game 1-2 years ahead of us, it killed me, then when I found out that Square would not support the N64 due to their insistence on cartridges (I was strongly considering an N64 for RPG reasons) but instead were globally relaunching their Final Fantasy brand on playstation the decision was made for me. I bought my Playstation (one) in September 1997 with a shiny copy of FF7, I played this game like the world was ending, to this day the thought of Aeris sinking below the water or Sephiroth’s theme music sends chills down my spine. for the next three years I bought, played, traded dozens of games for that system. But that wasn’t the height of my obsession, that came in the form of the Playstation 2. In June of 2000 I placed my pre-order for my PS2, I had no DVD player and that was a huge draw of the machine for me, not only could I keep playing my unfinished PS1 games (with better load times and smoothed textures) but I could play new PS2 games and watch DVD’s!? Sold! So on a cold morning of October 26, 2000 I woke up insanely early and got to EB Games at 6AM (3rd in line) and got my PS2 + memory card + 3 games all for about 650 bucks. I went home and geeked out for days, out of the launch games I bought (Summoner, SSX and DOA 2: Hardcore) only SSX and DOA 2 had a long life on my shelf. A few days later I bought the Matrix on DVD and saw why people where crazy about this newish format. Many people have said that the PS2 was the greatest console of all time and I have to agree, 7 years later it is still churning out great games (God of War 2, Rogue Galaxy, Persona 3). It was the perfect mix of hardware, amazing software, phenomenal 3rd party support and amazing marketing.