Video Game Blog Challenge: Questions 1 – 3

1. My First Video Game

My very first two games are some classic oldies. Centipede for the Atari, and Gorilla Basic for DOS (does anyone remember DOS for computers?). I was probably five or six years old, and my dad taught me how to play both.

I loved Centipede, and in my six year old head I kicked ass it. In reality, that’s highly doubtful.

Gorilla Basic was harder, but I still liked it. Here’s a basic layout of the game: Two gorillas are on opposites ends of a city atop skyscrapers. They throw apparently explosive bananas at each other in an attempt to blow the other gorilla up. To throw your banana, you have to calculate the velocity and angle needed to hit the other gorilla, taking wind speed into account. Clearly this was not math I was doing at age six, so I do remember my dad giving me a jumping off point, and then I took over with trial and error. Missing was just as much fun, as you ‘blew up’ giant chunks of building in great 8-bit graphics.

I still have such clear memories of playing Gorilla Basic. The triumph I felt when I blew up my brother’s monkey. My delight at his annoyance. That game probably started what would be years to come of sibling video game rivalry.

Centipede and Gorilla Basic were fun, but they never felt like mine. They were on my dad’s computer (and Atari), which we were not allowed to use without my dad’s permission. The first system that truly felt like mine (even though I had to share it with my brother) was the SEGA Genesis. It was bought just for US. I still remember booting it up and hearing the wonderful SEEEGAAA!! voice blare out. First games for that: Revenge of Shinobi (ridiculously hard), Sonic (ridiculously awesome), and X-Men (which kicked off me reading the comics).

2. My Favorite Character

It pains me to have to pick favorite characters in video games. It’s like trying to pick your favorite character out of all the books you’ve read. There’s just so many! In so many genres! And they’re all great for different reasons! But, I narrowed it down to two, from two games that 100% defined my gamer life.

First, Link from the Legend of Zelda series. To be perfectly honest, Link as a character is pretty shallow. He’s always kind of the bumbling hero, who just stumbles into the role of guy-who-must-save-the-world. But at nine years old, playing Ocarina of Time for the first time, I loved that. He was just an odd kid, who turned out to be the chosen one to save the world. And I remember thinking at the time THAT COULD BE ME!! I still love Link. How he pretty much always stumbles into the role of hero, and embraces being the chosen one. I also love that he’s never had a voice. It just fits.

The second is Aerith (Aeris) Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII. I adored her character. I wanted to be her. I loved her story, I loved that she was the healer of the party (I’ve always favored the healing classes) and I loved her character interactions. I spent hours leveling her, and obviously went the route of her and Cloud for the love story aspect. Needless to say, when she died, I was heartbroken. More on that later in the challenge.

3. A Game I Think Is Underrated

This is kind of an odd and old pick, but did anybody every play Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup for the Nintendo Gamecube? I loved that game! I loved it because A) you were playing freaking QUIDDITCH – what’s not to love? and B) The team special moves were so much fun. It was great as you could play as the Hogwart’s house teams (Ravenclaw all the way!!) and as any country for the Quidditch World Cup. I loved to play as France or Australia, because their team special moves were so cool looking, and Japan wasn’t too shabby either. Also, you could collect cards, just like in the books, for different teams/players/etc. Useless collectible unlockables? I’m in. They are a game weakness of mine.

However, this game certainly had it’s issues. It’s controls were a bit clunky; it took some serious getting used to to navigate. And also, there was no Ireland team. None. WTF?! If I’m being 100% honest, I can’t see anyone who isn’t a Potterhead enjoying this game. Being a huge Potterhead, and this being the closest I could come to playing Quidditch at the time, I adored it.

I’m using the questions from the Video Game Blog Challenge found here. All screenshots/photos you see are found via a basic Google image search. Copyrighted to their respective owners.