Hi, I'm one of the "new faces" The Count mentioned below (hope you don't mind if I call you "The Count", right? One gamey-game, two gamey-game, ah hah hah!).
Anyway a little about me: when I was young I wasn't allowed to have a Nintendo because my parents thought it would corrupt my delicate sensibilities. Of course, like all girls, I should be more interested in Barbie dolls and playing house than shooting ducks and working on my plumber skills. This didn't last long, since my school friend had one and I would go over to his place and play Duck Hunt and Mario Bros with him almost obsessively. I particularly liked Duck Hunt. Also around that time, my dad got an IBM compatible PC! It was a 286 and cost him about $8000 and came with a VCR. I think it was around 1985. Anyway, we were allowed to play "educational" games on that (I was particularly good at "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" & "Gumboots around Australia" & "Alpine Tram Ride") but we managed to get some games like "Castle" and "Gorillas" and "Nibbles" and "Capture the Flag" on there. Anyway, a little while after that, when I was around 8 or 9, (1989!) my sister got a Gameboy and there was an even better Mario and... Tetris! And Burger Time and Pokemon and a bunch of other games I would fight over the Gameboy with her for.
In 1998 I got my first own computer, a hand-me-down P90 from my dad, and throughout my HSC (leaving certificate) I became addicted to Warcraft 2 and online MOOs (which I'd actually been playing since about 1996).
Suffice to say, apart from a slight flirtation with Sony's PS2 and PSP, I've been a Nintendo/PC girl all my life, with a 64, GC, GBC, GBA, DS in my history. I also have a Dreamcast which I get out when I feel like some space dancing! My favourite games are the following (in no particular order):
* Knights of the Old Republic
* Baldur's Gate 2
* Final Fantasy XI (which I am on hiatus from while doing my PhD), XII, I, II, IV, VII Crisis Core, Tactics TWOTL (PSP), Crystal Chronicles (best music in a game ever) (GC), the DS CC game too (the rest I haven't really played except X which I hated with a passion)
* Phantasy Star Online (GC ed) (which got me into MMOs)
* Space Channel 5 (Dreamcast)
* Planescape Torment
* Loco Roco
* Patapon
* Starcraft
* Warcraft II & III
* Mario Galaxy, even though I suck at it
* Guitar Heroes & knockoffs
* Portal
* Prince of Persia, SOT
* World of Goo
* Desktop Tower Defense
* probably a bunch I've forgotten ^^;
I'm currently not playing much on the PC because my PC really sucks (was a cutting edge expensive Athlon 1.2GHz when I bought it like 7 years ago but no longer does it) -- I log onto FFXI occasionally but that's it. I was particularly annoyed that when I bought Portal it didn't run very well at all on my computer, understandable UNTIL YOU FIND OUT that the pirated version that cut out all the Valve Steam dumb stuff that I was playing until it was released here ran PERFECTLY FINE! RAR.
I'm playing lots of PSP recently, because it's my recent acquisition baby. Loco Roco stays in my UMD drive and I have a memory stick loaded with awesome. Something I'd like any games people who read this stuff understand is that Australia seriously sucks for release schedules. For some reason we're classified "Europe" so we get everything a year later and 3x the US price. So it really puts the crunch on poor students like myself. And they wonder why piracy is so prevalent in Australia?! Seriously, I'm happy to buy games that are released on time and for a reasonable price (say, the equivalent of the US price, perhaps?) but no way am I going to fork out 1/10 of my fortnight's salary for a new game.
I'm also an avid boardgamer, playing with a group of friends Tuesday nights & play D&D Monday nights with an awesome crew. I can write about my boardgame acquisitions too if people are interested :)
I'm also doing a PhD so I don't have a lot of game time and casual games are really where it's at for me right now.
So that's me. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention -- knitting is also kind of like a game for me, except I get something nice at the end of it to wear or give away :D But I won't update you on my progress there because that's not really what you're here for ;)
System wish list: new computer, PS3
Game wish list: Rock Band, GHWT, Mirror's Edge, Fallout 3, NWN 2 (yeah I'm behind on that one)
Looking forward to: Starcraft 2, Sims 3 (haha)
Finished recently: My Life as a King (Wiiware)
Currently playing: FFVII:CC (PSP), LocoRoco (PSP), FFT:TWOTL(PSP), Planescape Torment (again!) (Mac through VMWare), World of Goo, Wii Fit (ongoing!), PhD (not a game, but it takes up a lot of game time)
PS Nas can you add me to the "email when comments are posted" list please? :D liedra at liedra dot net
2 comments:
Hey : )
I've added your email to the list that is mailed whenever comments are left.
It'll be good to have your perspective around, since your tastes cover some areas mine tend not to do so much. And please, tell us about your board gaming and D&D too! If I still played Magic: The Gathering I'd probably be posting deck lists here.
Tell me more about this computer that came with a VCR, lol. Was it used as data storage, or was it totally not related?
Around the time I got my NES at age 7 or 8, my mom also brought us home a Commodore 64. I think she had bought it from someone she worked with. I don't remember much about it other than the big brown keyboard, the fact that we had it connected to a little 13" TV, and games like Math Blaster and Congo Bongo. There must have been a few more, but that's all I recall.
Several years later my stepdad got into computers, or rather he bought one because he was in graduate school. It was an NEC that had Windows 3.1, and it had a pretty nice selection of games. There was a military helicopter sim called LHX, and then a bunch of little games like Lunar Lander, Adventure (text-based), a ski game, a 2D helicopter game where you flew into caves underground (which somehow never bothered me when I was 11 or 12 years old), and a few others.
Then, even later, when I was around 14 or 15, he got a new machine, and I discovered Doom, and the Internet. It was on that machine and the one I got when I went to college at 18, when I did the most PC gaming. Doom, Doom II, Quake, Warcraft II, Diablo, Starcraft, Half-Life on the LAN at my university...
From there I made a switch to laptops, and I've almost not gamed at all on computers since, but that's something I'm going to change soon!
Thanks!
The 286 was one of the first NEC IBM compatibles. My mother was still using it as a word processing machine (she loved Word 2.0 or something like that, with her overlay over the keyboard!) until it finally collapsed in about 2004. Almost 20 years of service!
Anyway the VCR was just an added bonus as a sweetener to buy the computer, we used that for almost as long as the computer :) It was one of the first VCRs too! I think we got 2 videos with it, one being Ghostbusters (which I wasn't allowed to watch til I was 8).
And I remember Math Blaster! But that was a much later game than the initial ones we had for the PC. Alpine Tram Ride was like a Mastermind game with animals (in cable cars up a mountain for some reason? lol) that cost dad a lot more than games retail for now! It had pretty state of the art graphics. We ran just plain old DOS on it, but then dad upgraded to 3.1. He taught me how to program BASIC on it when I was 5 or 6.
I remember we also had Flight Simulator for it (the original MS one). For some reason we didn't get the manual (I suspect dad got it from a BBS or from the PC magazine he subscribed to) and so we had to learn how to fly the plane from scratch. I was so impressed when I learned how to land it without horrible fiery death!
Later, on the P90 that eventually became my hand-me-down, we used to play the demos that came with the AusPC magazine to death -- star wars rebel assault, etc.
Haha memories :D
And sure, I'll post about board games! I recently acquired a whole lot of new ones, so I'll review them as we play them on Tuesdays.
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