Stuicide

I saw this on HawtyMcBloggy this morning and thought I’d join in even if I didn’t officially sign up for it. It’s ok, I know Ms. McBloggy and she’s already fired me and put me on her “Protection List” which is the equivalent to the mob’s hitlist.

One of my first gaming moments was when we got Super Mario Bros for the NES. I found the game to be incredibly challenging since I was 4 at the time, and that there was no save function so you had to do it all in one sitting. I had a babysitter who would play it with me and she was even more skilled than me. In my defense, she was at least 14 at the time and had much more practice. So even in the early days of my gaming, I was introduced to Women in gaming, where they kicked my ass.

Some memorable gaming moments growing up, Getting my N64, and then not getting a game for it for two weeks because they were sold out. Goldeneye matches with my 3 friends that we would do all day. All of the time’s we would spend the night at Hunter’s house, stay up all night playing one match of Goldeneye for about 12 hours.

When I was a Senior in High School I was enrolled in a Programming class, where we stumbled upon LAN networking and being able to play Unreal Tournament with everyone in the class. We would hurry and get our day’s assignment done in about 15 minutes, then spend the next hour blasting away in 8v8 matches. We even had a challenge against the other Programming class across school one day after a few day’s worth of trash talking.

Gaming with my friends in class led me to get invited to a buddy of mine’s Halo LAN. I had heard of it, but never played it before I went up to the church we were using as our LAN space. It was an impressive sight for someone so new to LAN’s. There were two projectors set up and two TV’s as well. There were 14 other guys up there, and I went with my friend Shane a.k.a. Bad Karma. We sat down, set up our profiles, and got introduced to Halo the right way. 8v8 Capture the Flag on Blood Gulch. At first, I was thrown off by the controls and we were finishing at the bottom of the group in 15th and 16th place. By the end of the night we had moved up to 12th and 13th place.

Over the summer, we LAN’d as much as we could. By the end of the summer, I was able to snag top honors once in a while, as it was a truly epic match up with everyone there.

Those are only a few of the moments that I can recall at a moment’s notice, but it was the progression of how I became a Gunslinger. Without these moments, I wouldn’t ever have been enthralled in the online gaming community and could have ended up doing something productive with my time.