Memoirs of a Videogame Dork.

Merritt · #1 (**permalink**) 02-03-2007, 06:36 AM

Hello, welcome to my new weekly maybe bi-weekly column. My name is Jeff Merritt, I’m 33 and I’m a videogaming dork. There I’ve said it; it does feel much better…

With that said, I would like to explain what I intend to do here. My intent is to provoke thoughts and memories. Sometimes painful, like when you actually found out there really wasn’t a cheat code to another kingdom in Atari’s Adventure and it was just your older brother messing with you. Sometimes funny, like the time you purchased a Nintendo Virtual Boy. Come on I know some people did. Or sometimes provoke poignant thoughts such as the case of the failing PS3.

I’ve personally been writing for years, I don’t have a Harvard background. In fact I don’t have much of a background at all. I wrote for my high school and college newspapers, I wrote for local magazines, and I also wrote for some tired old websites. I suppose that’s good enough, I’m unbiased and most importantly fair and balanced. I’ve been a gamer since I can remember and this is the story of my life so far:

I remember it like it was yesterday; Christmas morning, getting my Atari 2600 playing it all day all night for about fifteen weeks straight. I don’t believe I got any sleep or went to school…well, the last part isn’t true, my parents made me attend school. Needless to say I was about 8 years old, that’s when my love affair with gaming began. I actually had the less than stellar Sears’ console that had Breakout, Pong, and some other bat and ball bounce games on it. It wasn’t until I played Combat against my older brother that I realized “Holy Mackerel!! I love this stuff!!!”

“Holy Mackerel I love this stuff!!!” Yep, that’s what it was like, Star Raiders, Adventure, Indiana Jones, etc…etc…etc. I remember my parents having some wild hookup to get games on the cheap from some “friends” of theirs. I’m not sure how that worked out, but I was the first kid in my neighborhood to play Real Sports: Football!!! This is in Toledo, OH people. We (at least I) got excited about things like that.

Another Christmas a few years later I received my Commodore 64. I played it forever, again with no sleep, I did attend school, but I wasn’t very efficient. Fast Hack ‘Em 4.0 gave me just about any game you could ever imagine! Summer Games I & II, Winter Games, Racing Destructions Set, the D&D Gold Box games, they were all part of my C-64 repertoire. The Commodore 64 also let me experience the greatest masterpiece of gaming this world has ever seen Wasteland. Those were certainly the golden days of gaming. I almost lost my console roots due to the Commodore 64.

Then came the Sega Genesis, and all hell broke loose. I was hooked once again. I had a job at Software Etc. I was in the prime of my dark hours with the home computer. The Sega Genesis had just been released and then Madden came out. It was like an epiphany, a bolt of lighting, it was like someone or something had grabbed the back of my spine, and jerked me awake!! This is what I had always dreamt about playing, this is what I always wanted in a game, and this was the end all be all in videogames for me!!! It was all a blur for a few years with the Genesis, too many overnight gaming sessions, to many wasted hours, too many wasted days. Sonic, NHL ’94, (last one to feature blood) The Immortal, Rings of Power, I could go on, but those stand out at the moment, I’m really drawing on some old memories here so I’m having a flurry of visions.

Out of nowhere came the Saturn, I was very sad when that came and went, I liked it. This system came out of nowhere, it was the worst major console launch in the history of gaming, it had no legs when it was born and it didn’t grow any either, oy vey, what a debacle! It did play some decent games Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 2 were certainly no slouches.

Atari’s Jaguar was next, umm….yeah. I had one. I had to go back to my roots I suppose. What a pile of garbage that was…Cybermorph?!?!?! I mean freaking Cybermorph?!?!?! One bright spot was Alien v. Predator, and that was that. That’s all I have to say about this subject. I’m almost ashamed to admit my purchase of this machine.

Those years actually drove me back into the dark depths of the PC. The X-Wing series was spinning in my CD-ROM for quite sometime. I had totally missed the Playstation boat, and I wasn’t going to go back. I was stuck on PC gaming for life! PCG4L!!! For my third computer “system” I bought a Gateway Destination System, you remember them, the ones with the 32” monitor and the DVD player? Oh yeah it was sweet. Baldur’s Gate never looked better! You couldn’t find DVD’s back then and Netflix had just burst onto the scene with about 30 titles. So I was in movie and gaming heaven.

Sega then released the Dreamcast. Which is unequivocally one of the best systems ever to be constructed by 1000’s of sub-minimum wage workers. I had it thing plugged in via Ethernet, Quake 3, was played for days and nights and night and days. We’d swill beer and do whatever until 5AM playing that game online. There was also the NFL 2K series (R.I.P. sweet love of mine), the series that single handedly forced EA into signing a BS contract with the NFL to put them out…(although there are rumors of a return, that’s for another time though.) I had many memories with my Dreamcast. Once again I missed the Playstation boat with the PS2, and I wasn’t looking back! Then the worst thing to ever happen to gaming happened…the Dreamcast fell silent. No more production of systems, no titles, Sega shifted and went into another gear all together, I nearly cried. I held onto it until Microsoft’s behemoth came along.

I loved online gaming on the Dreamcast, it was so much easier than PC online gaming, so who could deny Xbox Live’s enchanting call? I was a beta tester; I still have my shirt, orange memory card, and the funky CD holder. I have very fond memories of Re-Volt and a little boy that went by the gamertag of: “Bill Gate’s jr.” In the early days of Live only a thousand or so people were playing online. He was always on Re-volt, so running into him was a common occurrence; let’s just say he made me look cool. I played my Xbox religiously day in and day out logging many, many hours of Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, and Halo 2. By this time, I was married, so she held the reins of my playing time. It was when she went to sleep, that’s when my Xbox Live addiction grew. Hours upon hours of sleepless nights and sleep filled days.

Then my pretty white box arrived, its sleek curved surface, called to me as if from a dream…saying “buy me Jeff, buy me.” I did. I have not regretted it since. The connectivity, the HD, the games, the downloadable HD movies, the HD-DVD, and the options…I am here to say the 360 is one nice piece of kit.

…So that’s that, my brief summary of my gaming life. It’s been a fun ride so far. Of course I dabbled in other systems, played hundreds, no thousands of games; there is only so much room to write. So I have to hold back quite a bit. I have many fond memories of gaming and the good old days. I don’t believe I will ever stop gaming. It’s embedded in my culture now; I’m not a second class citizen anymore! I’m a productive member of society, I’m hip, and I’m cool...it’s all lies!!! I’m still an overweight, over aged videogame dork.

Have a good one everybody, until next time. CG4L!!!!

totalownership · #2 (**permalink**) 02-05-2007, 10:20 PM

How come that picture above reminds me of this...

Merritt · #3 (**permalink**) 02-06-2007, 12:32 AM

I don't know if it's that bad. The guys in the bathtub are much cuter. Haha. I did a google search for videogame dorks, that's one of the pics that came up.

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