The Console/device that made you a "serious" Gamer

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I loved gaming more than any other pastime since I was 6 years old. But there are two defining moments that made me realize that gaming can offer so much more than any other medium First was when I played Morrowind for the entire summer on my PC. And the second one was when I got the PS2.

 

[hermes]

Serious gamer... ok

But going with your criteria, I would say it was the NES. Sure, it wasn't my first console, there was no access to E3 and nothing resembling Internet gaming sites back then, but it was the console I had when I started collecting magazines and following the news, even though most of them were closer to advertisement.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The PS2 was when I started "delving further" into gaming, for lack of a better term ("serious gamer" sounds awful).

 

[Vigormortis]

I'd been playing video games since the late 80s, but my 'love affair' with the medium didn't really kick in and take hold of me until the mid-to-late 90s. Around that time my family had finally gotten a PC that wasn't a grotesque husk of antiquated hardware, allowing me to start playing games the likes of which I'd never seen before. I started playing games like Doom, Mechwarrior 2, Quake, Myst, Zork:GI, and Half-Life. I began seeing video games as something more than just a toy. From there I began reading up on the process of game design and started paying attention to the industry as a whole. By the time I'd gotten a Gamecube, an Xbox, and had finally built my own PC, I was waist-deep in the medium.

The PS2 was when I started "delving further" into gaming, for lack of a better term ("serious gamer" sounds awful).

Why? Does "serious reader" sound awful?

I mean, unless you're taking it as a literal definition[footnote]Which would sound awful in any regard.[/footnote], I don't understand the issue.

"Serious gamer" seems a little bit of an oxymoron to me.

Well, at least you're contributing to the topic at hand instead of being dismissively insulting while painting with broad strokes.

It's certainly not like you've lambasted people in the past for doing the same, right?

 

[Remus]

NES, yea that's right. At a certain point I started keeping a list of the games I'd beaten, on a little notebook next to my television. Some time later, after that list passed about the 200 mark, I had to stop because that's when I discovered Everquest. My life has never been the same.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

PC.
Before this, I would just mindlessly play consoles and never think about game beyond just something to play.
I also didn't have much money to buy games before I was old enough to buy my own PC.

Of course I played tons of video games, at least every single game I could get my hands on.

But at the time buying a "worthy" gaming PC fully built and ready to go was far too expensive for me or my parents to help out with, so my only resort was to build it on my own.

The first game to get me interested in building my first PC was the original Far Cry. It was probably around 2009 that I discovered the game existed and I thought the screenshots still looked fantastic, but was heartbroken to find out it was a PC only title.

So after a pretty successful birthday that year and amassing a couple hundreds dollars, I bought a refurbished Dell PC from Amazon. I can't exactly remember how much it cost, but I do remember it had an Intel 3.4Ghz dual-core, 4GB of RAM, and a 120GB HD. And the graphics card was a GT 430. That I didn't get until a year later. Yeah, before that I bought a cheap Nvidia card that I can't remember the name of. Ran Far Cry pretty well, but then I discovered Crysis on the PC, and that ate my original graphics card for dinner.

It was at this point I started to get a grasp on the concept of hardware and how different each piece really is. I took classes in junior high based on computers and learned a wealth of information that I otherwise would have remained ignorant to.

In a way I almost regret it since I either get asked repeatedly to fix my families tech woes, or I volunteer myself, annoyed, because I can't bear to see my friends struggle with computers due to their ignorance.

 

[ultrabiome]

NES hands down. Me and my brother had Nintendo Power.

I started with Atari 2600 but was too young to care about game making, and we had it second hand while the NES was first out, so new Atari games were whatever ones we found at the second-hand store.

My dad picked up the NES around the time the SNES came out, and we were glued to it and NP. I haven't really left gaming since, although I have expanded into PC and PS as well as continuing to be a Nintendo fan.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'd been playing video games since the late 80s, but my 'love affair' with the medium didn't really kick in and take hold of me until the mid-to-late 90s. Around that time my family had finally gotten a PC that wasn't a grotesque husk of antiquated hardware, allowing me to start playing games the likes of which I'd never seen before. I started playing games like Doom, Mechwarrior 2, Quake, Myst, Zork:GI, and Half-Life. I began seeing video games as something more than just a toy. From there I began reading up on the process of game design and started paying attention to the industry as a whole. By the time I'd gotten a Gamecube, an Xbox, and had finally built my own PC, I was waist-deep in the medium.

The PS2 was when I started "delving further" into gaming, for lack of a better term ("serious gamer" sounds awful).

Why? Does "serious reader" sound awful?

Yes, I prefer "avid reader", or "avid gamer" for that matter. "Serious reader/gamer/lumberjack" sounds too pretentious.

 

[Vigormortis]

Yes, I prefer "avid reader", or "avid gamer" for that matter. "Serious reader/gamer/lumberjack" sounds too pretentious.

Egh, I guess. "Avid" sounds just as pretentious to me.

To each their own, I 'spose.

 

[Cap'nPipsqueak]

For me that would have been my first Amiga back at the beginning of 1989. I followed all the well known names in the industry at the time - Psygnosis, DMA Design, Bitmap Brothers, and some promising young company called Electronic Arts.

SNES for all intents and purposes restarted the gaming industry.

I mean, of course there was the NES before it, but once they reached the 16-bit era, they finally realised "Hey, we can do some pretty awesome shit here; let's see where we can take it."

The CONSOLE industry, maybe. Since I was gaming on computers rather than consoles even back then, I hardly even noticed the great game industry crash. I was already gaming in 16-bit long before the SNES hit the market, and shortly after that began moving to 32-bit.

Yeah, but computers were stupid expensive back then. Not everyone had that sort of money to throw around. Plus, computers weren't nearly as easy to use as they are today.

 

[Kyrian007]

Well, the answer to the question is the Star Wars arcade cabinet. Vector graphics. The sit down cabinet, with the big awesome booming speakers cranking out lines from the movie loud enough to be heard over the bloops and bleeps of the rest of the games in the arcade. Back in the day when it wasn't weird at all that there was an ashtray bolted inside of the cabinet. People talk about games' "immersion" now... but frankly "immersion" IS remembering stepping into that cabinet and the feeling of being INSIDE an X-Wing. And that's just vector graphics... lines making polygons. But it was so much more than that. It was being surrounded by the familiar sounds that it could produce, the howl of a TIE fighter, that moment when you fire that torpedo into the exhaust port. The feel of that steering yolk in your hands. Even though it was the freakin bees knees of technology at the time, even then I realized how amazing it was that something so simple could create such a profound visceral enjoyment of experience. That first quarter... made me a gamer. Serious... I'm still a gamer, and I'm nearly 40 now.

Console... well I had an Atari 2600. But the difference between the experience it could provide and what was available at the local arcade made it pretty lackluster by comparison. I guess it would have to be the NES. The free giveaway of Dragon Warrior (it could have been any game they were so expensive to teenage me) enticed me to subscribe to Nintendo Power. And there it was, now I was reading about games. Getting hyped about upcoming releases. Reading reviews, walkthroughs... as much following the "hobby" itself as it was just playing the games.

 

[infohippie]

For me that would have been my first Amiga back at the beginning of 1989. I followed all the well known names in the industry at the time - Psygnosis, DMA Design, Bitmap Brothers, and some promising young company called Electronic Arts.

SNES for all intents and purposes restarted the gaming industry.

I mean, of course there was the NES before it, but once they reached the 16-bit era, they finally realised "Hey, we can do some pretty awesome shit here; let's see where we can take it."

The CONSOLE industry, maybe. Since I was gaming on computers rather than consoles even back then, I hardly even noticed the great game industry crash. I was already gaming in 16-bit long before the SNES hit the market, and shortly after that began moving to 32-bit.

Yeah, but computers were stupid expensive back then. Not everyone had that sort of money to throw around. Plus, computers weren't nearly as easy to use as they are today.

They were a bit pricey, I wouldn't say they were crazy expensive though. My Amiga (with a bunch of accessories thrown in, including a RAM upgrade and a printer) cost $1400 AUD, so about $1100 USD. PCs might have been a bit unfriendly since the main OS of the day was MSDOS, but that wan't very hard to learn. The Amiga had an extremely good GUI called Workbench that was very similar to Windows 95 except nearly ten years earlier, so that was extremely easy to use. I think people put way too much into this "computers are hard!" nonsense. They're really not, at all. I think a lot of people are just terrified of the idea of learning anything.

 

[Yoshi178]

N64 and Banjo Tooie was what got me into gaming seriously.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

N64 and Banjo Tooie was what got me into gaming seriously.

This although it would just be the N64 in general. I did start with DOS games as my very first games and although I played them avidly, they didn't particularly make me wonder how they were made at the time. But FFS, I was like 6 when I was playing DOS games. Give me a break. lol

 

[Yoshi178]

N64 and Banjo Tooie was what got me into gaming seriously.

This although it would just be the N64 in general. I did start with DOS games as my very first games and although I played them avidly, they didn't particularly make me wonder how they were made at the time. But FFS, I was like 6 when I was playing DOS games. Give me a break. lol

my N64 was fun but it was Banjo Tooie that got me seriously taking an interest in video games media as a whole.

just exploring that world as a kid was awe inspiring.

 

[Something Amyss]

The NES, I guess? I mean, I got Nintendo Power almost from the beginning, and was picking up other gaming mags since the 90s started.

The only console I had before that was a hand me down Odyssey 2. Unless you count PCs as a console.

 

[Silvanus]

Well, at least you're contributing to the topic at hand instead of being dismissively insulting while painting with broad strokes.

It's certainly not like you've lambasted people in the past for doing the same, right?

Hence why I wrote a very simple definition of that term and even put "serious" in quotation marks, but thank you for bringing your thoughts on just the topic title without properly reading it.

It was a joke. I'll make sure I don't make the mistake of making one in future.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

N64 and Banjo Tooie was what got me into gaming seriously.

This although it would just be the N64 in general. I did start with DOS games as my very first games and although I played them avidly, they didn't particularly make me wonder how they were made at the time. But FFS, I was like 6 when I was playing DOS games. Give me a break. lol

my N64 was fun but it was Banjo Tooie that got me seriously taking an interest in video games media as a whole.

just exploring that world as a kid was awe inspiring.

Yep. I first started with Super Mario 64. Then Banjo-Kazooie. And then finally Banjo-Tooie. I also like how you can follow all three in a steady progression from good to better to best in that order. Although BK really is snapping close at BT's heels.

 

[FPLOON]

"Serious gamer" seems a little bit of an oxymoron to me.

Like "Serious Party Animal" or "Serious Sam"...

OT: Now, that's a tough, but great, question to me... because I really want to "blame" X-Play for making me a "Serious Gamer" if that show was actually a console... So, instead, I'll just say that by the beginning of early 2006, I was on that path with a $100 Smash Bros. GameCube bundle already bought with all of the $1 bills I earned (by working the poll demonstrating a fundraiser prize at my [new] local middle school) making up a third of that overall billing with pending games to follow, a GBA with over 15 games including Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, a still-functioning hand-me-down Dreamcast that I barely kept playing before and after purchasing the GameCube, and WAY too much free time on my hands involving a lot of pencils and paper...

Other than that, I have reflected on something akin to when I became this "Serious Gamer" the moment I upgraded my PowerUp Rewards card at GameStop... And yes, I'm still a Pro member...