Background

I have a pretty odd background when it comes to games. My family had a computer in the house since I was relatively young, on which I played some classic games like The Manhole after spending time in a typing program (every minute I typed counted for one minute of gameplay), but we never owned a game console. My NES days were pretty limited, as I played only the types of games that were generally good multi-player games: Mario 3, where a friend and I could alternate between Mario and Luigi, Ninja Turtles 2 in two-player mode, that kind of thing. Up until about grade 7, all I really knew of gaming were platformers, action games, and sports games. In grade 7, I discovered RPGs watching someone play Final Fantasy Legend II on the Gameboy on the school bus, and I got a Gameboy that Christmas. A couple school friends introduced me to more complex adventure games like the King’s Quest series and Monkey Island, as well as the odd game of multi-player Doom. I discovered emulation through another member of my high school programming team in grade 11, which I used mainly to play the SNES Squaresoft RPGs. When I finally got my own PC in university, instead of having the family 486 (yes, our main computer was a 486 right until 2000), I was able to get access to a lot more games, and have since experienced MMOs, RTS and turn-based strategy games, puzzle games, and with the advent of the Nintendo DS and Wii, motion-controlled and touch-based games.

Overall, I still favour RPGs, but I generally like games that aren’t excessively violent (I draw the line at something like Oblivion), and that require at least a reasonable level of thought to play, whether it’s thinking about timing, memorizing patterns or geography, or developing high-level strategies (even though I’m not particularly good at most RTS or turn-based strategy games and would lose quickly in mutiplayer; I still enjoy the challenge).

Favourites

My current favourite games include World of Warcraft (which I no longer play), Oblivion, Morrowind, Warcraft III, classic Square RPGs (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy IX), and nearly every Zelda game, particularly Phantom Hourglass.

Other Games

I also like most board and card games, especially ones that don’t rely too strongly on chance (i.e. Monopoly is out). We don’t have a huge collection, but we do have a couple less-known games, like Rook (a trump and bidding game), Bang! (Mafia with guns and booze in a western setting), and Killer Bunnies (easily the quirkiest game I’ve played; it has weapons such as “Green jello with evil pineapple chunks” with which to kill others’ bunnies).