I actually said this better in a blog post I did over 10 years ago when I was wondering when it became odd for women to play videogames.I am launching a new wrestling website covering AEW and All Elite Wrestling. Check out GrapPro.com for more details.

Fumbling Towards Forty: Prologue
Fumbling Towards Forty: The Internet
Fumbling Towards Forty: Camping
Fumbling Towards Forty: Drugs

Here is an excerpt:

My life doesn’t function without videogames nearby.

When I was born, the house already had an Atari 2600. I once tried to feed it purple Kool-Aid. Turns out that was proof that when you’re at the age where people don’t actually describe your age in years but months? You’re actually who warning labels were made for.

Later on in my young life, my parents purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System. It wasn’t for me but for my sister. It was also technically a family machine because my dad also played some videogames on it. Eventually I came of age to play videogames on my own and that started with Super Mario Bros. Eventually the Legend of Zelda came out, which angered my sister and father because whenever I tried to play I would end up deleting their saves.

When I was smart enough to play without deleting the saves, I still was too young to know how to read. I would always ask my mom or dad what the old men were saying. Eventually my mom told me she was tired of having her life stopped all of the time to tell me what the text was saying and offered to help me learn how to read. I eventually did with the “See Jane Run” books. The first message I had to read afterwards? “Dodongo Dislike Smoke.” Almost gave up reading right then and there.

My mom didn’t play the NES much. I remember her trying out Paperboy and Tetris and we also once bought Taboo: The Sixth Sense because the idea of the Nintendo becoming a Tarot card reader was just too enticing. But whenever we found a pinball machine, my mom would sheepishly mention liking them and once we gave her a quarter or two and went elsewhere, we’d come to find her with a high score and a free play. Hopefully some reading this aren’t too young to know what a pinball machine is.

When I became old enough to goto the arcade armed with my allowance, it was first an arcade in Chatham, Ontario, Canada called the Eight Ball. A little later it was the Wild Zone. There was also a small arcade in the mall but I don’t recall the name of it. All three of these places had a regular rotation of machines. The Eight Ball I played the most in and from memory, it was mostly boys (because it was also a dingy bar and I wouldn’t have trusted my daughter there). The Wild Zone was attached to an indoor amusement park of the low income variety and that was an unquestionable mix of gender. Girls and boys all played arcade games and nobody was shocked to see girls in the early 90s playing Street Fighter II or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It wasn’t rare to see four girls all playing the Turtles in Time machine. I had an older friend by about five or six years and when we went to the arcade he was looking for girls to flirt with while I just wanted to play X-Men Arcade or Terminator II. It was a place for a guy to pick up girls and vice versa. It was a hang-out for anyone.

My dad played Final Fantasy for the NES so when it came time for me to have my Nintendo, it was the Super Nintendo. The second game I had after Super Mario World was Final Fantasy II. That was my Final Fantasy. One time I got stuck finding the Crystal Sword. My paper boy played videogames and we “talked shop” about it a lot and he told me to go over to his house because his mom knew where to find it. His mom loaded up her copy of Final Fantasy II, where she was pretty much max level and showed me where the invisible bridge was. This was around 1992 I believe. I believe she was in her 40s.

Point being, none of this is weird. But it might sound weird to you.

Back to 2024

One of the few games I own in box, booklet, maps, the whole thing.

Actually, no, let’s go back. I’m just not needing to take from an old blog post.

Final Fantasy II (IV) was my life for a good year. Then I remember I got my first communion at the Polish church and my babcia convinced a bunch of random Polish people to give me money. I had enough money to buy Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Mario Paint. I think I got my own GameBoy around this time as well which for some reason I didn’t ever get the Final Fantasy games on. Instead I remember being really into Kirby’s Dream Land and later The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening which ended up being my favourite Zelda game of the 90s.

Then came the Christmas of 1994. At the time my parents were going through money issues but I still got my one big gift. I got a lot of small gifts (my parents put fruit in my stocking because that’s what they used to get, and I think my dad cried when I was actually happy to get a giant orange. I didn’t fake it either. Giant oranges are cool gift me one anytime) but the main gift of Final Fantasy VI, known then as Final Fantasy III.

To say that game changed my life is an understatement. I wrote about it a few times:

#FFVI20Years: The War of the Magi
#FFVI20Years: My Star Wars
Final Fantasy VI and Suicide

I think of myself as someone who doesn’t cling to their past and their nostalgia. I can still appreciate the modern, the new, the young. My favourite movie came out in the past decade. Some of my favourite music came out in the past decade as well. My favourite videogame hasn’t changed since 1996. It’s Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.

Both games are equal at the top for me. I’ve written more about FFVI but Chrono Trigger is more valuable in other ways. Going to the Kingdom of Zeal for the first time in Chrono Trigger is a moment I’ll never forget. The music, the magic, the wonder, everything about it. It’s the first time I played a videogame and wanted to live in it.

Words to live by in Chrono Trigger.

I did own a Nintendo 64 and played a lot of stuff on it (Mystical Ninja 64 and Hybrid Heaven confirm that Konami won that era in my books) but I really started playing emulated games on my computer more in those days. Websites like Zophar’s Domain were important for me to download translation patches so I could play Final Fantasy III Japan version for the Famicom or Seiken Densetsu III for the Super Famicom. It’s how I got to play Shining Force in full and beat it. I stayed loyal to Nintendo consoles and have my entire life, but I am not against playing the other consoles on emulator. I even eventually played Playstation games on my computer which got me into the Suikoden series.

If you can tell, a lot of my gaming was with roleplaying games. I did play other games, including a lot of different NHL games, Mario Kart, etc. I was crazy into WWF No Mercy, which eventually led me to playing wrestling simulators on my computer. It started with Extreme Warfare 9000 and eventually to Extreme Warfare Deluxe and then Extreme Warfare Revenge. I did try Total Extreme Wrestling but it was too many menus and too slow for me. I’ve played a ton of EWR though. My favourite thing to do is play a scenario where a company like the American Wrestling Association survives in the 90s and competes with WWF and WCW. I’ve played some crazy long scenarios of that.

In the 2000s I played Gamecube and Wii, even getting so good at Mario Kart Wii I was ranked for about, oh, a week. I did play some great games, especially on Nintendo DS with Radiant Historia, which I think is the first game to really get close to the experience I felt with Chrono Trigger since 1995.

What’s interesting is that I felt like my need to play violent games or action packed games really started to wane. I enjoyed Animal Crossing more. At one point in college the trailer for Phoenix Wright coming out for the Nintendo Wii released. I didn’t know about the games for Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS. I immediately purchased them in early 2010 and it became my new obsession. I was now all about these visual novel games.

Never would have got through the pandemic without Animal Crossing.

From Phoenix Wright to Hotel Dusk to the Nonary Game series, I was all about games that were essentially RPG games without battles. It was all story and puzzles. This soon led me to Her Story in 2015 for the PC. Sam Barlow essentially made a game where there’s nothing really to play. There’s no narrative. You all find it yourself by going through clips you searched for. I spent a day playing it with a pad of paper, going through every word I could think of to uncover the story. I hadn’t been that locked in on a game ever in my life. I’ve definitely enjoyed Sam Barlow’s next games in Telling Lies and Immortality, all some of my favourite game experiences.

In 2024, having a Nintendo Switch I still game a lot. Honestly the perfect console setup to me that you can play it at home and on the go. I’ve got back into action games with Hades, I absolutely loved Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Super Mario Odyssey is just as good as any 3D Mario platformer which maybe more charm than previous titles? I’ve played a lot of indie titles because that’s easier to justify spending on than an $80 game. I still regret my purchase of Civilization VI on the Switch. Ugh. I’ve enjoyed the Octopath Traveler and its sequel. I regretted AEW: Fight Forever but it was pretty cool to play as Hangman Page, Hikaru Shida, and Swerve Strickland. Honestly had more fun playing as them after making them in Wrestling Empire, which is a wrestling game where you can do steroids, murder a wrestler in the ring, attend his memorial show, and murder someone else in the main event tribute match to the first wrestler you killed. Good times.

I’ve recently been addicted to Balatro, the card game more addictive than gambling. I got a point where I said to myself, “I don’t want to go further I’ve done enough” and now I avoid it the best I can when I see it on my Switch. Oh, Clubhouse Games is INCREDIBLE and everyone should have it. It’s the best for quick plays like Yahtzee or President (called Asshole when I was in high school.)

I’m close to finishing Sea of Stars which is heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger and even got Yasunori Mitsuda to do some tracks for the game. It isn’t hard to tell which ones were his (“In the Womb of the Stars” and “The Dweller of Woe” I knew playing was from Mitsuda) but the work by Eric W. Brown and others has been fantastic overall in the game. There’s a lot of moments in the game where I go, “Oh they are doing their own Robo” or, “Oh yeah, they had to go to the sky for their own Zeal Palace” but they do it competently enough I don’t feel like it’s a hack job. I’ve really enjoyed it as a fun laid back JRPG made by French Canadians who made sure to add poutine for food you can make.

Am I saying anything here about videogames?

Not really. Just running through my experiences. Some of the best ones I remember:

– Playing X-Men vs. Street Fighter at the 7-11 after school. Everyone would line up with a couple bucks in quarters in their pocket and get their shot. We always kept track of who won and who lost.

– My mom, dad, sister, and I all playing The Simpsons arcade game at the Wild Zone and beating it.

– The first time I beat Zeromus in Final Fantasy II for SNES (IV)

– As previously mentioned, the first time I entered the Kingdom of Zeal in Chrono Trigger.

– Playing the entire season mode in NHL Stanley Cup for SNES, a game that not many people remember fondly.

– My dad getting me Lord of the Rings for SNES and later apologizing for it because the game sucked.

– Beating someone in Mario Kart Wii who was using mods for an infinite golden mushroom on Rainbow Road and watching them rage quit after.

– Playing some online RPG which allowed you to be a Rogue and set traps that hurt your own teammates so I could set traps when we were fighting a boss, let them die, finish off the boss, and sell their equipment later. Me and another guy were doing that and got banned from the game for it and they changed the rules. Can’t remember the name of the game. This was like 2004ish?

– Muscle March on Wii.

– Playing NHL06 as the “Las Vegas Millionaires” where I had a 35 and up rule. Nobody could be younger than 35 on my team. Usually Mark Messier and Ron Francis would retire one year in on the sim and for whatever reason the refused to retire in the 20 seasons I played. I had Mark Messier and Ron Francis still playing today.

– Playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door to the very last boss, dying, and then not playing again for a year. Then picking it back up and beating the boss next try.

– During the pandemic, playing Animal Crossing and having my friends come to my island. It was the only way we could see each other.

– My dad being so good at GoldenEye it got me out of playing first person shooters (he used an N64 controller for like five minutes and knew how to strafe headshot me)

– Being so obsessed with Chrono Trigger in grade school a girl decided to name her dog Crono

– Doing the Relm glitch on accident in Final Fantasy VI and it glitching up my game (I had 255 of almost every item, and 255 times 20 of just dirks)

Not sure what else to say. I’ve had Sabin suplexing a train from FFVI as my phone lock screen/wallpaper ever since they let me add it to a phone. I truly believe I’ll be playing videogames for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’m ever going to feel like I’m too old for it or it has passed me by. In some ways maybe it has since I don’t go crazy for the majority of AAA stuff that comes out and just stick to what Nintendo makes or indie games. But that’s the mainstream. Leave that to the younger players. I got my visual novels to enjoy.