My Video Game History through the Decades

I was playing a favorite First Person Shooter with my brother through Xbox Live, him from Brooklyn and me from California. We started talking about how his sons, my nephews, are completely hooked on games like Minecraft and Fortnite Battle Royale. We began to reminisce about our first exposure to video games and the lifetime of joy and memorable experiences they have brought to all of us (I have 5 siblings). 8 years ago I blogged about my not-so-brief history with video gaming (link here). With another decade down, it is time to revisit the topic.

 The 1980s

 It was around 1982 when my father took us to Toys-R-Us and bought the Atari 2600 and a cartridge game called 'Pac-Man'. This was the catalyst for the decades of video-gaming to come. We spent countless hours on Pac-Man, and my sister and I had a mini-family tournament in which she exceeded 1 million points and I got just shy of that mark. Despite my loss, my father bought both of us a Valencia cake (it's a Nuyorican thing) featuring our titular yellow pie-shaped hero.

The Atari 2600 brought us many iconic titles and hours of enjoyment. My favorites included: Combat, Pitfall, Yar's Revenge, Space Invaders, Centipede, Frogger, Asteroids, Defender, Berzerk, Joust, and Dig Dug. And then there was Star Raiders, the game that fueled my desire to be an astronaut and explore space. It was the first video game I ever purchased that included a physical accessory - the 'Video Touch Pad', showcasing how peripherals could enhance the entertainment experience. I saved up my lunch money and bought Star Raiders as a birthday gift for my best friend in grade school, Billy Kohlbrenner. I gave it to him so we could each play from our own homes, then I'd call him so we could pretend we were in the same galaxy destroying aliens. Little did I know connected gaming experiences would eventually be a reality.

Also in the early 80s came my exposure to Dungeons and Dragons and Choose-your-own-adventure books. I learned computer programming (BASIC) in the 4th grade when I was 9 years old on both a TRS-80 and a Commodore 64, around the same time we got the Atari. Through this I was first exposed to the text-based computer adventure Zork. I ended up programming my own text-based D&D adventures just for the fun of it. As the 80s progressed, the school upgraded from TRS-80 computers to the Apple IIe, where I first began exploring the world through the game "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and the included Almanac and Book of Facts. Years later when I actually visited the many places I discovered through Carmen Sandiego, I could still recall things I learned from that game.

By the mid 80s, I got my first job at Northeastern Produce in Brooklyn at the tender age of 14 (New York state still issues blue working papers for 14 & 15 year olds). With the savings from my first job, I upgraded to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Thus emerged the era of blowing into the cartridges as a troubleshooting method. The graphics were beyond anything I had experienced on the Atari 2600.

My favorite game for NES was The Legend of Zelda which satisfied my innate needs for problem solving and adventure and made me a lifelong fan of the protagonist Link. It also had RPG elements where you could improve your character through heart containers for more health and different types of weapons. Duck Hunt was only the 2nd video game I ever had that required a dedicated peripheral, the Light Gun. Top Gun, and its soundtrack from the movie invigorated my dreams of becoming a pilot. Many, many games followed:

• Castlevania
• Donkey Kong
• Double Dragon
• Dragon's Lair
• Gauntlet
• Super Mario Bros
• Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!
• Ms. Pac-man
• Q*bert
• Rush'N Attack (clever)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Tetris
• Contra

Hearing rumors that the Sega Master System was superior to NES, I used my savings to purchase it in the late 80s. Phantasy Star stole hours of my youth and reinforced my love for Role Playing Games. The platformers Altered Beast and Golden Axe were two other memorable games from that time.

As a senior at Cunningham Junior High School, our assignment in computer class was to complete King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne. This was 1986. That's where I became hooked on Sierra and their many series including King's Quest, Hero's Quest (later renamed Quest for Glory), Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. All of these games carried me through 3 years of high school (I managed to graduate a year early despite all the video gaming). I actually still have all the original boxes with the 5.25" floppy disks for most of these games. At that time, I wanted anything made by Sierra and this started my gradual transition to PC gaming as my primary platform.

The 1990s

By the early 90s, my transition from console gamer to full-time PC gamer was nearly complete. My last console purchase was the Sega Genesis, but I got relatively few games for the Genesis as I started to convert to PC gaming. The few games I got were Phantasy Star II, Ecco the Dolphin, and Streets of Rage.

Just before entering college at the Cooper Union in 1990, I decided to buy the highest end computer I could get for "schoolwork" and bought an MS-DOS based 386MHz IBM-PC Compatible from Gateway 2000. While I still played Sierra games, one "pain point" for those games was the constant dying - make one wrong move and you're dead. And no matter how clever the death sequence, if you hadn't saved the game for a while before you died, redoing all the lost work was a pain. So when Lucasfilm Games came out with The Secret of Monkey Island - it showed that you could make a great game with a compelling storyline without constantly killing the main character. It was fun and humorous, with challenging puzzles to solve and witty dialogue. I enjoyed the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood and all his follow-up adventures in the sequels, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Escape from Monkey Island. SimCity and Lemmings were also favorites that came out around this time, both for the strategy elements and problem-solving.

In 1990, Sierra acquired developer Dynamix and launched "Red Baron", a WWI flight simulator. I purchased it in 1991 and it continued to fuel my dream of becoming a real pilot and with the number of hours I put into the game, I probably could have achieved flight certification. One of the best features of the game was being able to record any of your mission, replay it, and then jump back into the action at any point in the recording to try the mission anew. A truly innovative feature that significantly extended the repeat playability of the game. The following year Dynamix launched 'Aces of the Pacific', taking the battle to WWII, and I eagerly latched onto that game as well. It would be almost 30 years before another game would capture the magic of the vehicular combat of these two games in a realistic historical setting - the Battlefield series (more on that later).

Not long afterwards, I was exposed to the most amazing game I'd seen to date - Wolfenstein 3D. That was my very first exposure to First Person Shooters (FPS), still one of my favorite genres. This was followed shortly after by Doom in 1994. With the ability to expand memory, storage space, graphics cards, and sound cards (anyone recall Soundblaster?), I was fully converted to PC gaming at this stage, all the way through the remainder of college and my graduate year for engineering, followed by my time at Honda and Porsche in Germany. In those years, I was exposed to the Real Time Strategy games of Warlords (turn based strategy game), Warcraft, and Starcraft. RTS became my new favorite genre, putting FPS on hold for some time. Additionally, random treats like 'Alone in the Dark' emerged, the "First Ever 3D Survival Horror Game". And, of course, Diablo (lovingly referred to as Potion Quest), with its Town Portals, randomized dungeons, inventory management system, and networked gameplay allowing my brothers and I to quest together, turned out to be a big favorite.

The 2000s

After Germany, I entered the MBA program at University of California at Berkeley. I decided to go on a hiatus from gaming to focus on school. World of Warcraft was looming large and I knew I'd spend many precious hours on that game that I needed to devote to my studies. I returned to PC gaming back up after I graduated and started my first post-MBA job in brand management at P&G, with some of my loved titles tied to D&D like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II.

Later I would get into Microsoft and decided to switch back to consoles. After spending so many years working in front of a computer and as TV screens started getting bigger size, I didn't want to come home from a long day of work to spend more time in front of a computer. I wanted to relax on the couch and enjoy gaming on the biggest screen in the house. The simple fact that the original Xbox included a built-in hard drive (which blew my mind), meant that console games could now be as powerful and convenient as PC games. I purchased an original Xbox and immediately got hooked on Halo: Combat Evolved - bring FPS to a console like I never thought possible. With my fondness for RPGs, I also discovered and enjoyed Fable, and the way you could impact the physical appearance of your character by choosing good or evil.

Then came the launch of the Xbox 360, and I had the great fortune of being part of that wild ride. One of the many benefits of working there were the free 1st and 3rd party games. Since 2005, I've collected more than 100 Xbox 360 games. I decided at one point to concentrate on a few great games and go into more depth rather than spreading myself out too thin. Here's a sampling of the great games I enjoyed on the Xbox 360.

• Kameo (the Xbox version of Legend of Zelda)
• Halo series
• Gears of War series (greatly enjoyed the story line, multi-player co-op, and the cover system)
• Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (one of the best fantasy RPGs and the first game on Xbox where I earned 100% of the achievements)
• Mass Effect series (I was so impressed with this game, I sat and read the entire ending credits)
• Bioshock Series (a FPS with powers - clever and entertaining gameplay)
• Crackdown Series (I loved the RPG element of increasing your skills, climbing buildings, tossing cars, and flying through the skies)
• Fable II
• Forza Motorsport
• Grand Theft Auto Series
• Saints Row Series
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Assassin's Creed
• Guitar Hero and Rockband
• Blue Dragon
• Lips (karaoke)
• Iron Man
• Kung Fu Panda
• Tomb Raider
• Scene It?

The Xbox 360 was also home to a host of casual Xbox Live games that I enjoyed when I only had time for bite-sized gaming. The casual games I enjoyed included:

• Zuma
• Astropop
• Peggle
• Trials HD
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Feeding Frenzy
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
• Hexic HD
• Jewel Quest
• Puzzle Quest
• Portal: Still Alive
• Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
• Worms
• Plants vs. Zombies

For competitive intelligence, I purchased both a Sony PS3 and a Nintendo Wii. Aside from Wii Sports and Legend of Zelda, I didn't play anything unique on either console as I was inundated with games for the Xbox 360 (in a good way).

The 2010s

The start of this decade was an exciting time to be in the industry as my colleagues at Xbox and I launched the revolutionary Kinect and these great games I enjoyed:

• Kinect Sports
• Dance Central
• Kinect Adventures
• Star Wars Kinect

Leaving for PepsiCo in 2011, I purchased an Xbox One X on launch date in 2013 to support my former colleagues. One of my favorite games in this period included Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, only the 2nd game in which I gained 100% of the achievements after hundreds of hours of gameplay. When you think about entertainment value for the dollar, that kind of durability is hard to beat. Limbo, a small puzzle-solving platformer, was another favorite, beautifully artistic and creative. I talked about how the deaths in Sierra games became bothersome after a while - not so much so with Limbo, even though I died a whole lot. Also, with the conversion of the Elder Scrolls into a MMORPG with The Elder Scrolls Online, I've left Skyrim behind to explore this broader world since its launch. Finally, perennial favorite Gears of War 4 is the go-to game for my siblings and me, and it is kept fresh with the constant live service updates, new game modes, progressive experience system, and weekly loot crates.

Back in 2010 while at Xbox, I had proposed a "Netflix of Gaming" service for video games for a project I was spearheading. It was too ahead of its time due to technology limitations, consumer penetration of high-speed internet, and the resistance from retailers in an era when physical game sales still dominated. Thus, I was very happy to see the relatively recent launch of monthly subscription gaming services like Xbox Live Game Pass and EA Access. With these subscription services, I've now been able to catch up on a significant number of games without the relatively large investment to do so. I downloaded the final two chapters of one of my favorite franchises of all time - Mass Effect. I was also able to jump into classics like the Battlefield Series, which not only has an incredible first-person shooter campaigns and multiplayer, but also the vehicular aerial combat that I so loved with Red Baron and Aces of the Pacific, specifically with Battlefield 1943, the first game in the series I played, and later updated spectacularly in Battlefield 1. Other games I was able to enjoy through these subscription services were Saints Row IV, Need for Speed, Unravel, and more. These new services also open up the market to an entirely new segment of the population by lowering one of the most significant barriers of entry to console/PC gaming.

The future appears incredibly bright for the video game industry, and my journey through it is becoming infinitely more interesting, as I'm sure it is for many others as well.

On a final note, one thing I love about the Xbox Live service is that it is able to capture and store my entire gaming history on the Xbox platform. If I had a service that could capture all the games I played since the 80s across console, PC, mobile, and tablet, this would really be daunting. Happy gaming!