This is only the first part...
It was summer, somewhere in the mid 90s. I was just a kid, dealing with school and adolescence and owning newbs in Mario Kart. A nerd in bloom, I found myself flowing between Ogre Battle, Magic: The Gathering and swiped packs of my father's cigarettes. Did I just say Magic: The Gathering? Ahhh, to be thirteen again...
I was pretty much in full swing with the Magic trend back in the mid 90s. And surprisingly (to me) I was really good. I had the Power Nine. I had a signed Black Lotus. I had a full Arabian Nights set. I had 4 Juzam Djinns. I had Big Blue. Moxes. Cards out the yin yang. For those that don't understand what I just said - I kicked major ass. I was into tournaments, conventions, gaming, just really nerdy stuff. Honestly, I didn't even realize how geeky it was til I was much older. But that's cool, especially since I made some good friends out of it (and some money, too).
Before I moved to Columbus, I lived in Houston. There was this kid that lived across the street from me. Really cool family, good people... anyways the kid, Chris, was one of my best friends. I had always been into gaming, but Chris helped me take it to another level.
My brother was turning 6 when I was born, 1984. The NES is coming out, he's already got a 2600 and a Texas Instruments. Though I grew up with a wide taste for hobbies, I feel like I was born with a controller with my hand. It's just always been around, and as I aged I felt games become more and more provocative to me.
Anyways, Chris and I would stay up all night playing nintendo, Genesis, SNES, IBM games, Virtual Boy, Neo Geo, everything. I remember one time we sat around trying to get great scores in F-Zero and send in pictures of us breaking race records to Nintendo Power. I know for a fact I had one of the records. It was like a plain green oval. Ownage.
Toning back the boasting... I was probably around 10, a kid in the mid 90s. Chris and I would ride our bikes around town, sometimes stopping by the comic shop. We noticed a small card game that was beginning to draw a lot of crowds and attention. I remember we bought a couple starter decks and booster packs, and went home and taught ourselves how to play. It took us a couple weeks to really understand how to play, but when we did... it was great! It was always a challenge, such a different feeling than Street Fighter II or Chess or playing basketball.
Over the next couple years, Chris and I developed an obssession for the game. We'd go up to the comic book shop and just dominate. I'll never forget first turn killing a bunch of fat old guys who looked like they'd come from a 72 hour D&D Marathon at the Renessaince Festival.
My father ended up getting a new job in Columbus. I said good bye to Chris and Houston. Shortly after arriving in Columbus, I met some classmates who were into games and stuff, and also some others at a hobby shop. We started doing tournaments, playing together on weekends, going to conventions. Origins was always a blast... I'll have to go back sometime.
Anyways, as I honed my Magic skills, the game itself was constantly evolving. This was a different concept than most video games. See, Magic was a set of collectible trading cards, with which a player combines into various combinations to create customized decks. Get two players together, and each player uses a specific deck to duel. As I collected, competed, and honed my skill, so did the global pool of available cards in the game. The company that produced Magic were constantly releasing new sets of cards. This concept requires the players to frequently reorganize their play decks, rethink their strategies, and expand their collection in order to keep up with the persistant maturation and development of the game itself. To stay still is... to fall behind.
The concept itself is not unlike the patch system seen in online games, where games and their content are constantly being debugged, balanced, reworked, expanded, and developed further as time progresses and the game matures. Although I did not know it at the time, this fundamental concept of continuously building upon one's self would soon manifest itself in another hobby of mine: video games.
It was autumn, somewhere in the mid 90s. The leaves were changing, as were my hobbies. I remember playing a game of Magic with some friends one day after school at a hobby shop. All afternoon, this one guy kept raving about this one game that was coming out soon. Finally we got the guy to show us the game on the available PC at the comic shop. That's when I saw the future, in the form of some dinky isometric fantasy game. We all laughed at the guy. "MUDs are boring," we told him. "I tried The Realm and it sucked," I quipped. I didn't know it then, but he was right. Ultima Online was the future, not only for me, but for an entirely new community of online gamers. A few months later I was beginning to sell off my cards, and looking for newbies to kill.
I'll post Part 2 when I get a chance.