My first games were with my Uncle or my Dad on the NES, a good time to start gaming, with Mario 1 and 2, Duck Hunt, Tetris, and a sweet action game called Tiger Heli. My Uncle was big into sports games, so RBI Baseball, Tecmo Bowl and Blades of Steel all featured prominently as well.

For the next two generations, I always wanted the Nintendo systems, but eventually one game would change my mind, and so I moved onto the Genesis. It was a good move with Sonic and such but what made it such a game changer was Sega Channel. I don't know if they had this outside the states, but it was basically a cable modem cartridge you would put in the console and it would download/stream games and could even have leaderboards with monthly competitions. From there I got into so many games from Streets of Rage to Road Rash, Golden Axe, the bizarre Mega Man remakes, but most importantly, RPGs. Sega was where I discovered my favorite genre and the titles were so diverse, I'm really glad I got to discover them there.

My childhood gaming was also defined by the Gameboy and ironically the Mac. Marioland and Pokemon ruled in those days and I was also introduced to Harvest Moon and Zelda with their gameboy color counterparts. Those games left a big mark on me and to this day I'm still a big handheld gamer (with Zelda 3DS coming out this month!). The Mac was cool since at school I'd play edutainment games like Oregan Trail and Dino Park Tycoon while at home I would play computer RPGs like Ultima 3 Exodus.

With the next generation I wanted a N64 but a little brand called Playstation came a long with games I didn't know could exist up to that point, although I did game countless hours on the 64, eventually getting one myself. Together with the PC these three platforms dominated a big part of my life but I think that's statying to get away from the early childhood theme we got going om here