A long time ago my big bro came to the house hauling a big gym sack over his back in Santa Claus stylee wearing a ski mask! (no he didn't!). Anyway, he placed this sack heavily on the living room's floor. He sat on the plastic wrapped couch there and started to scratch his head with a disgruntled look in his face. "What's that" I asked him. "Bah! Nothing!" He said as he gave the sack an angry stare. "Some junk that a friend gave me as pay-off from an old debt". "Can I take a peek?" I asked and he nodded affirmatively. The sack contained some baseball equipment. "What's that box at the bottom?" My hand was trying to pull the mysterious object from the sack. "It's a..." My brother spoke with a yawn. I waited till he finished yawning. "It's a... Atari or something". "Atari?!" I frowned. "It doesn't look like an Atari! This thing looks different!" "It's the computer version of the Atari" He replied as he started to get on his feet to pick up the sack. "Can I see it?" I asked. "Nah! It has some parts missing," He said. "What parts?" I asked. "The computer!" And with that he went to his room with sack in tow.

A couple of years passed and nobody remembered anything 'bout the famous box. My brother moved out of the house and his room was inherited to me... along with all his "kid" stuff. It was then that I rediscovered the sack containing the box. The baseball equipment was gone. But the box was still there. Along with some other strange alien-like artifacts (????). Actually I knew what the box was (I wasn't living in the sticks, y'know!). Most of my friends already had a NES. In fact, they all were talking 'bout a brand new console on the way (I wonder if they were talking 'bout the Genesis?). I'm guessing that the year was 1989 or something. I remember the Game Boy ads on some comic books. I wish that I could say that it was the TMNT coming to the videogame arena what made me dive into this hobby. But nope. Neither was I enticed by the Batman videogame based (quite loosely) on the movie.

What actually happened was that some new kids moved in next door and for some reason they decided to invade my home. My father was a friend of the kid's parents and that gave them the right to come over to my house. Frankly, I didn't have time for them. School was such a bitch and the only games that those brats liked to play were card games. Poker games and canasta (they had some very old parents!). So one fine day I arrived from school and I find them inside the house. In my room! My Star Wars card collection was dispersed on the floor. They had totally vandalized my posters. Madonna sported a big handlebar moustache (that was ok!). Sting suddenly had genitals. And I can't describe here what those maniacs did to my limited edition Joe Cool poster! But what really got me on a rampage frenzy was that they were using my foreign beer can collection as SHOES! (don't ask me how I manage to have such a collection). They had crushed the cans using their feet and some of them had gotten stuck to the moron's shoes! The carnage that followed I will not disclose here for humanity's sake. But that incident got me thinking of a way to keep those rats out of my room. The answer? The NES. I hooked the system to the TV and I introduced them to it. They really didn't know what it was since they had parents that looked like fugitives from some prehistoric movie and they lived like if they still were in the 60's or something.

The console had just three games. Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, R.B.I. Baseball (Tengen) and a tennis game from Nintendo. I figured that Mario would be the best game to start with because I figured that they wouldn't like to play a game 'bout sports... Ok! the truth was that I didn't feel like explaining baseball or tennis to them. So I handed them the controller and... nothing happened. They didn't know what to do with it. To my dismay I realized then that I had to teach them how to play the game. Problem was... I didn't know either! I had played videogames at the arcades (Contra was a favorite) and a little Atari 2600. But never had I played Nintendo before. The controller looked weird to me. The digital pad was like a cheap attempt to imitate an arcade stick. And the m&m size buttons made me laugh. But I said what the heck! Let's give it a try. And I played. And I played. And I played some more... and more... And more! time was going fast without me being aware of it. The rats had gone home fer supper. But I was still playing! I was like "ok I'm gonna save this princess and then I'll turn it off. What! The Princess is in another castle she said? Ok, I'll play just a little longer. Then I must stop to do some home work".

The next day at school I was asking my friends 'bout SMB to see if they could help me with the game. Perhaps they knew of some neat tips. The idiots just laughed at me. The ones that actually played videogames were now playing Super Mario 3 and they had absolutely no pity or patience towards a videogame newbie such as myself. I decided to used some Jedi-like mind tricks on them to get some answers. I told them that they probably sucked at SMB and that that was the real reason why they didn't want to tell me anything 'bout the game. That got them going! At the end of the day I had tons of SMB tips. Including the 100+ life trick and info on how to access the hidden world. Internet didn't exist back then. Well not in the form it exists today!

When I finally finished Super Mario Bros. and the other two games, I began to search for more games to play. I was hooked! A friend told me 'bout Zelda. He was kind enough to let me play it using one of his files (but he wouldn't let me take a peek at the scroll thing with all the game secrets!). He also had Zelda II. That one I beat it with relative ease. Yet I didn't like it as much as the first one. Gaining experience points, bah!

With the Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis already making headlines everywhere I realized that I had lots of catching up to do on the NES! During the summer I played so many games I just can't possibly remember them all. I do remember the good ones. But I won't mention them here. Too many.

One of the kids next door was able to evolve to human and he turned out to be an incredible partner at videogames. We would play videogames during the summer. Super Mario 3, Ninja Gaiden 2 and Contra were constant favorites. I remember the times we would fight over who got to play a new game first. On the SNES we would fight over who got to use Ryu or Ken (but only on the first version of Street Fighter II). When Mortal Kombat was king, we even entered a MK tournament! I was eliminated on the third round (using L. Kang) but he made it to the semi-finals (using Scorpion). The prize was a brand new SNES. My friend didn't have one back then.

I believe that it was during the SNES era that I began to gain "consciousness" 'bout how the gaming world worked. I learned that Miyamoto was the creator of the Mario games, The Legend of Zelda games and Donkey Kong. The technical side of videogames began to interest me as well when games like Star Fox came to the scene with revolutionary features like the Super FX chip. Then in 1994 Rareware surprised the gaming world with Donkey Kong Country. That game was a classic!

I also became interested in the companies that made the games. I learned the difference between a publisher and a developer. I also learned that the gameplay was an important factor in any game. Tetris was a perfect example of that. That game has gained its place in history thanks to its gameplay alone!

Without gameplay a videogame is nothing. It is not doing what it is supposed to be doing. I don't care how pretty the images or how melodic the tunes of a certain game is if it lacks gameplay. The reason I loved games like Contra, Zelda, Castlevania or the Mario games was basically because they had great gameplay. The visuals and music were important and helped to set the mood in those games. But they came second next to gameplay. The story element? Bah! I didn't cared! In most games I was the hero and the only thing that I needed to know was where was the bad guy. I'll kick his sorry a$$! I don't cared for interactive movies or games that limit your range of action. Leave that kind of bull to those PC guys who have the patience to sit down and push a button every two hours until their butt lines disappears. My most precious memories have their origin in the gameplay of the games that I've played!

What the fudge! they still do! And I'm not done yet! NES, SNES, Genesis, GB, N64, Dreamcast... and presently the GameCube. I haven't given up playing videogames!

Yes, I have a life outside of videogames. But I like to think of it as an integral part of my life. It is like something that makes life a little less boring and serious. Something that prevents me from going completely crazy!

When will it end? That's a question I can't answer. Will it end when I get married? I hope not. In fact I want to end up playing a videogame at the home. Yep, in my old age I want to be hooked up to whatever is available in the far future. Playing Super Mario's final adventure. Saving that darn Princess for the last time. Oh-yeah! and with some old fart yelling at me for playing a kiddie game at my age. I'll just tell him to eat my phlegm (squirms).

I just hope I don't get arthritis on the way! That would really suck!

Jedzelex