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Video games. A great way to pass some time. Reputed to be a good reliever of stress (and ofttimes the cause of it). A chance to pick up skills that will be of no benefit to you ten years down the road (unless you're one of the lucky ones who actually makes money off of your game-playing skills).

I've been playing video games since we got an Atari 8-bit computer back in the early 80s. While growing up, I got to play games on most of the home gaming systems that came out. I've played games on the Intellivision, the Colecovision, the Atari 2600 and 5200, the Magnavox Odyssey 2, the Sega Master System, the NES, the TurboGrafx-16 (aka PC Engine), the SNES, the Genesis, the 3DO, the Saturn, the Playstation, the N64, and several of the various home computer systems (Apple II series, Commodore 64, IBM PC). I'm currently the owner of both a Sega Genesis and a Saturn.

One of these days, I hope to see this idea for a game I have published (whether by a software publisher or via shareware). Until then, I'll keep playing other people's games. ;)

Links under this heading:

QuickTime movies taken from video games
An Armored Core page maintained by a good friend of mine
Info on Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (the sequel to Virtual On)
Linux Dreamcast dial-up server
Gran Turismo

DDR
Since I've been playing Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) since I first encountered it at the Chicago Gameworks back in 1999, you might assume that I'd be as good as the players you can see in videos on the internet. But you'd be wrong. Even though I've been playing it all these years, I've never really pushed myself to get "better" at the game because that isn't what made it fun for me. Instead, I guess you could say I goof around on the machine (even though there's a warning in the attract mode that says horseplay can be dangerous). The day DDR stops being fun to mess around with is the day I stop playing it. Simple as that.

Video games and consoles that changed my life

Atari 2600
While I never owned my own Atari Video Console System (VCS), my friends did. Through them, I was able to play those classic games like Asteroids and Pitfall!

Colecovision
Two games: Donkey Kong and Smurfs. Need I say more? I think not. Another system I never owned for myself.

Sega Genesis
The first game console I ever owned. Believe it or not, it wasn't the 16-bit graphics that really did it for me, though. It was the 8-bit STEREO sound. Herzog Zwei, Streets of Rage, NHL Hockey 93. Even Sonic the Hedgehog sounded good hooked up to my stereo in my dorm room at college. So what if the neighbors thought the music from one of the stages sounded like porno music?

DOOM
The first networked PC game that really ate up large chunks of my time. My best memory involves an early version where the corpses didn't get culled, so eventually we were able to create a hallway of doom that was so full of corpses, the game would SLOW DOWN whenever someone ran into it.

Descent
Six degrees of freedom? In an FPS? Hell, yeah. You could do some really cool maneuvers in this game. Oh, and played on large enough monitors, it gave me vertigo, too.

Quake
It was all about the grenade launcher. Some friends had pretty much barricaded themselves on an upper level in a Team Deathmatch game, massacring my partner and I in the process. But once we discovered that it was possible to lob grenades onto the upper level (after having bounced a few right back in our own faces), it was sheer pandemonium or bedlam.

Gran Turismo
The first time I ever watched my friends playing this game, I knew I had to own it.

Counter-Strike
One of the early betas ALSO had a hallway of doom (but didn't keep the corpses around).

F355 Challenge
The most realistic (but not perfect) simulation of what it's like to drive a high performance automobile around a racetrack. Difficult, but very rewarding all the same.

DDR
Fun fun fun