Despite being pretty into books my whole life, book nerd isn’t the only field of nerdom that I have dabbled in. I would like to think that I’m a fairly decent movie nerd, Doctor Who Nerd, vampire nerd (if such a thing exists) and I went through a brief period of game nerd.
In the very late nineties my dad won a Gameboy Colour in some sort of competition (as was his way) and he gave it to me for Christmas that year along with a Zelda game (the name escapes me) and a Tetris game. I wasn’t all that good at Zelda but I was ok at Tetris and I later acquired a copy of the Donkey Kong and Harry Potter games, which I was pretty alright at. Sometime later when they stopped manufacturing Gameboy Colour games I was given a Gameboy Advance SP and bought Crash Bandicoot and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong which I played relentlessly for about four months before I gave up and played easier games like Shrek and Shark Tale, which , though simple, were somewhat amusing as timewasters.
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| Main setting in the Oddworld series |
At some point in my childhood my family received my uncle’s old PlayStation, and being four or five at the time, became incredibly good at Barbie Skating, Hercules and Toy Story 2 (I’m actually quite proud of that last one. It was quite hard for a kid’s game). I also had some more grown-up games like the Italian Job, Gran Turismo and Abe's Oddysee,but I didn’t really enjoy racing games until about year five and I pretty much failed at Abe’s Oddysee. I recently bought a ‘new’ (new to me) copy of Abe’s Oddysee, I played it for a whole week and only got to level two (that game is seriously difficult).
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| Ratchet and Clank |
Then, in 2002, my parents gave my sister and me a PlayStation 2 for Christmas to teach us perseverance and it ended up being one of the presents I have been most grateful for ever (that, my printer, my iPod and my first Human Nature CD). My sister also got Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy for Christmas, and being the selfish older sister that I was, I practically stole it from her. I played it all the time and never let her near it, though in hindsight she never seemed all that interested. Apart from that we also had a few Harry Potter games, which the whole family played together, and all the old PlayStation games. My real leap into video games came in year three when I met my good friend Alex. She introduced me to Ratchet and Clank, Vexx, Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3 and I never looked back. I remember getting up early before school to play, playing after school and even when I had people over. Alex and I used to go to each other’s houses every couple of weekends to play together and we spent an awful lot of time talking about it. I even believe that one Christmas holidays I set myself a goal to start and finish the entire Jak and Daxter series, which from memory, I believe I did (though at this time Jak X: Combat Racing, Daxter and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier hadn’t been made, so it seems a rather easy feat). To add to my madness when I discovered that Daxter and Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters weren’t going to be released on PS2 I convinced my mother to buy me a PlayStation Portable just to play them (something I don’t regret).
Trailer for Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
Though I have enjoyed playing video games every now and then throughout my life, I wouldn’t even begin to say that I was a proper games nerd. I’ve met some and I haven’t even begun to chip the surface of the gaming world. But fortunately for me, through my limited experiences, I have just enough knowledge and interest to participate in game related conversations.
- DFTBA
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