Friday, December 27, 2013

[Video Games] A Love Story



Let's talk about video games! Video games, much like lolita, is a huge part of my life. Since I shared my lolita life story with you lovelies, I'd like to share my love story with video games with you.

My story starts (as far as I can remember) in 1992. 4 year old Megan started her video game career playing "Duck Hunt" because her brother said she wasn't allowed to play other games. My brother received the NES as a gift from one of our uncles and we had a plethora of games. My brother and I played co-op "Super Contra", and competitive "Super Mario Bros.". I loved to watch my dad play the original "Legend of Zelda", and Tetris. I liked to play Super Mario Bros games, especially 3, on my own, and I tried my hand at Ninja Gaiden, but I loved watching my brother play. I have a lot of fond memories of the NES but I had the most fun playing "California Games'! This was the first game the I ever screamed while playing. You know the one; that gamer scream when you're about to beat your all time record or barely avoid a game over? I screamed a lot while playing "X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse" for the SNES too, but that was more out of frustration than sheer joy, ha ha! "Tiny Toon Adventures" was the first game ever that I stayed up late to play.

In 1995 a SNES magically appeared besides my electronic best friend and a whole new generation of fun began! I don't remember clearly if we had as many games for the super Nintendo as we did the NES, but I distinctly remember playing a lot of "Donkey Kong Country", "Street Fighter", and "Mortal Kombat". It was around the same time that we aquired a Sega Genesus as well as a Sega Dreamcast. I played A LOT of "Sonic the Hedgehog 2", "Ecco The Dolphin", and "The Lion King" on the Genesus. "The Lion King" was the first platformer I ever raged quit over. It was a frustrating platformer and I remember only being able to make it to a certain level for the longest time. I remember having a particularly good day with the game and made it super far! In my excitement however I pulled out the controler, and the game froze, and I never played the game again. The Dreamcast is probably my least favorite console.I honestly don't remember any of the games we had for it except for some weird super hero dog game and a Brahm Stocker's Dracula game.

For my 8th birthday my brother got me a watermelon green N64. At the time my dad was pretty adverse to video games so I only had 2 games for the console and I rarely got to play. Everntually my dad made me give my N64 back to my brother which started my 6 year dry spell of owning any consoles. During this time my only access to video games was over at the few friends that owned consoles and watching Pokemon as well as collecting the cards.  Up until this point not many of my friends played video games. It was almost like there was some sort of secret rule that only boys could play video games and some of my girl friends in elementary school thought it was weird that I played. Elementary school was an awful experience in general, and because of it I didn't talk about my interests with others until the end of middle school. When I entered high school and I discovered the xBox and immediately fell in love with the "Dead or Alive" series. I begged my parents to buy me one and my mom finally caved and bought me the console and "DOA: Ultimate".

It was when I got my xBox that I started my bad habit of buying consoles for only one game. I discovered my all time favorite video game series, "Fatal Frame" and "Silent Hill" through the xBox. "Fatal Frames" first instalments had xBox versions, and "Silent Hill 4: The Room" was made available on the xBox as well. I fell in love with these titles and began researching the games and joining fan forums. These two series were the soul reason behind my purchasing the PS2. Both "Fatal Frame" and "Silent Hill" started out as Play Station 2 titles and Fatal Frame returned to the PS2 when they released "Fatal Frame III: The Tormented". Since it was my favorite game series, I naturally needed to by the console for it. I picked up "Silent Hill 2 and 3" for the console later, as well as "Persona 3", "King of Fighters 2006", and "Arcana Heart". As my love for horror games grew I made it a goal of mine to pick up every obscure title I could find. I discovered beautiful games such as "Rule of Rose", "Haunting Ground", and "Kuon" this way. Also because of my love for "Silent Hill" I purchased a PSP mainly for "Silent Hill: Origins", and I bought a "Bleach" game for it too, but like the Dreamcast, I wasn't all that impressed by the PSP.

I bought a Wii pretty much as soon as it released and it was this console that my dad warmed up to video games again since I was able to get the original "The Legend of Zelda" on it. We played a lot of games together like "Mario Party 8", and "Mario Kart Wii". My dad really liked playing golf in the "Wii Sports". It was awesome having a consol in the house again that everyone could enjoy. When "Fatal Frame IV: Mask of The Lunar Eclipse" released to the Wii but wasn't released outside of Japan, I entered a contest and won a copy AND a Japanese Wii. I haven't bought any other Japanese games for my JP Wii, but I've played the heck out of "Fatal Frame IV". 

Despite my love for PokeMon I didn't play any of the games until I bought "PokeMon Black"  It was around this time that I bought my xBox 360. It was on this console that I fell in love with "Assassin's Creed" and "Bioshock". I brought my love of "Assassin's Creed" to a whole new level when I cosplayed Fiora Cavazza AKA The Courtesan from Brotherhood multiplayer. "Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen" is one of my all time favorite games that I've been working on a cosplay for too! My boyfriend, (who is a character animator who worked on "Guild Wars 2" and is the lead animator for "Throw Trucks With Your Mind" /humble brag), bought me a 3DS recently along with "PokeMon X"  My 3DS game collection is steadily growing but the amount of hours I've been putting into "Animal Crossing: New Leaf" rivals the hours I've put into any "Fatal Frame" game ever. 

Although I've mainly been a console gamer I've ventured into the realm of PC gaming this year. I started a Let's Play channel called Lacey Plays (My cosplay handle for a while was AntiqueLace). Naturally I've played "Amnesia: The Dark Decent" and "A Machine For Pigs", and I've been playing "Dark Souls" on the PC lately. I have a bunch of games on my Steam library that I have yet to touch.

If I didn't make it abundantly clear before, I love video games! My favorite are horror, of course, and story driven games. I have to admit that I don't look into the lore of every game I love, but if you want to have a discussion on Fatal Frame, Bioshock, Rule of Rose and Silent Hill, I am armed and ready! Through my love of video games I have met a lot of really neat people that I can geek out with and get excited with or make really bad industry inside jokes with (is anyone here a nerd for nurbs?). I would love to know what some of your favorite video games are!

Thanks for reading, lovelies! 

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