This started out as a PM to a few people, but it became too large and I didn't feel like breaking it down. Thus I'm posting it here.
The first time I had heard of video games at all was probably in 1996 or 1997, and after that it seemed like every house had to have an N64 and Super Mario 64 (aka the first VG I had ever heard of). I remember ONE house that had a Playstation, and there I only found out about PaRappa the Rapper, Intelligent Qube, and Tomb Raider. I never knew about the Final Fantasy series until I found Sullla's website (http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/finalfantasy.html), and I never knew about MGS until Brawl. I think that house was also my only exposure to GoldenEye 007. My parents are still good friends with those guys. I think I went to a few homes that had SNESs (plus there were SNESs on planes and in hotels), but the only games I remember there are Super Mario World and F-Zero.
My parents actually bought a GameCube with Super Smash Bros. Melee in December 2001...for my cousins. My family stayed there over winter break and I found SSBM enthralling like no one's business. I later got the game myself in the final week of summer break 2002 (and yet I didn't unlock all characters and stages without outside help until January 2011...). For the most part however, when buying games, I stuck to whatever I had seen at friends' homes, and avoided stuff rated T and above aside from SSBM. The next big milestone was when I randomly bought Sid Meier's Pirates in 2005, and this led to a purchase of Civilization IV at the end of that year. For two years I would more or less stick to the PC. After this I bought a Wii and later Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Twilight Princess, and SSBB (which is why I bought the Wii in the first place), plus StarCraft.
In Summer 2008, I started buying lots of GameCube and GBA games I missed out on earlier, and thus "classic Nintendo" largely became the focus of from then until Spring 2010 (a year after I moved to India), and I think the rest of my "gaming history" is well-documented. I must note that most of my friends in America owned Nintendo or Microsoft systems - there was ONE guy who was a fan of FF and MGS. I sure am lucky to have had a lot of Nintendo fans for friends there. That probably explains why I've been so Nintendo-inclined.
Please don't come into this thread and flood it with negative comments toward me.
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Currently Playing - StarCraft: Brood War