My memory is shotty, so I'll try my best. I'll slowly add images so you don't have to read if you don't want to.
1990's
Gameboy - I was young, like I can't even remember young, but I had a Gameboy. I can only really recall 2 games,
Tetris and
TMNT Fall of the Footclan. I played those games so much. Never really touched the system after I got my Game Gear. Until
Pokemon Red came out. That game changed EVERYTHING. This was honestly my first experience with an RPG game. I had dabbled with Breath of Fire 2 and Super Mario RPG, but never really played those games. I was so hooked. I watched the anime and recorded all of the episodes. I bought playing cards. I did tournaments. I had gym badges, merchandise, and even had the hat. I got
Pokemon Yellow, which was pretty cool with it's few new additions, but it was the same experience. I was bored with the franchise by the time the next full entry came out. Never really played it. Don't know if I ever even beat the remakes.
Atari 2600 - My family had a 2600 before I was born, but it wasn't popular and they packed it away. Eventually, someone decided to unpack it and set it up to show it to me. I fell in LOVE with this system. I really don't know why, the games are so freaking basic. But they were fun. Games like
Surround, which is basically like the TRON lightcycle game, and
Maze Craze, which is described as a cops and robbers game, but it's really about who can get out of the maze the fastest. Then you had the basics like Tennis, space invaders, pac-man, and some racing game I can't for the life of me recall the name of, probably indy 500.
Game Gear - I don't remember adverts or commercials or any reason why I knew I wanted this system, but I freaking wanted it. Honestly, this was probably the first game system I acquired near or at launch. I only ever owned a handful of games for this system, but like any kids, I played them like crazy. I wasn't fortunate enough to have good tastes as a child, I only owned maybe 3-5 games for the system.
Sonic, which was probably the best game I had for the system, I never had Sonic 2, which I believe was the common pack in title at some point later after launch.
Surf Ninjas, which was one of my favorite movies and used the Game Gear a lot, but was actually kind of a horrible game.
Itchy and Scratchy, which I really don't to this day know what the point of the game was other than to beat each other up, but it was hella fun.
Ren and Stimpy, a moderately good platformer. And
Power Rangers, which was actually a pretty weak fighting game. But that thing ate up batteries so badly, eventually we just bought an AC adapter and I stayed tethered to a wall outlet because my parents were tired of buying batteries.
Super Nintendo - I wanted so badly to get a Sega Genesis. I loved my Game Gear so much, so I wanted a Sega Genesis so badly. It was X-mas time, and I saw a big gift wrapped, suspiciously shaped like a boxed game system, I knew this. So as a shitty little kid, I undid the wrapping just a little to see the corner, and I saw some basic design on the side and felt like I knew I was getting a Genesis... I was so freaking happy up to X-mas. The big box was handed to my eldest brother. I was confused. He opened it. It was a Super Nintendo. I was so freaking devastated and felt so betrayed. Then we set it up and all took turns playing
Super Mario World, this game opened my eyes. Sega was shit, Sonic sucked balls, Nintendo owned me, and I was Mario's little bitch. Honestly, I don't think I ever really bought a game for the SNES, I got gifts sure, but I think most of the games were my brothers. I rented games a lot, but that was it. At some later X-mas, I was given
Donkey Kong Country 3. We were out of state for every X-mas, but this year, my eldest brother had to go back home earlier than everyone to go back to work, so he asked if he could borrow my new game since he was taking his SNES back home anyway. I said sure. By the time we got back to town, he had already pawned off my game. I never got to play it. To this day, I still have not ever played DKC3. That experienced kind of fucked up that game for me. I own it sure, but I haven't played it. I played so many games on this system, there are probably games I've played that I'm not even aware I've played before. I remember stuff like renting
Super James Pond when I was sick. Or wanting to rent
Mega Man Soccer and
Earthbound but they were never in stock for renting. I remember renting
Pieces very frequently and my whole family taking turns playing against each other, but never actually purchasing the game. I remember playing
Tetris Attack and
Tiny Toon Adventures Wacky Sports Challenge with my sibling unit. I remember playing
Mega Man X and pretty much playing through the intro and the Penguin stage and then turning it off, for some reason I never had any interest in progressing past that.
Nintendo 64 - Before this system came out, we were seeing the adverts and getting the VHS advert tapes. We knew we needed this system. We got it. I think this system was given to my slightly older brother for his birthday. We got
Super Mario 64 and
Mario Kart 64. Honestly, if you only had 2 games for this system, those would be mighty fine choices. A great single player experience and a phenomenal multiplayer experience. This system was the first home console that I went out and bought games for. I still rented games of course, but it was a new experience for me, going out and buying my own games. I remember owning, and subsequently losing, several copies of
Goldeneye 007, and just absolutely wrecking everyone who would play against me. I remember
Donkey Kong 64 renewing my short lived interest in the DK franchise. I remember playing
Pokemon Puzzle League and
South Park Chef's Luv Shack with my siblings like crazy. These games, both SNES and N64, that I would play with my siblings, this is stuff we would do up until a couple of years ago when shit got really bad between us (mostly everyone hating me). I remember my kid brother being really jealous and pulling the carts out of the system while we were playing if he wasn't the center of attention. I remember him breaking my copy of Quest 64 and microwaving my copy of Rush 2, spoiler it caught on fire. I remember collecting the Mountain Dew cans in
Rush 2 and doing insane stunts in
Rush 2049. I remember making our own hostage game mode in
Duke Nukem: Zero Hour with laser tripwires. I remember thinking
Yoshi's Story was so funny because it sounded like they were singing "You're an asshole". I remember buying the Mad Catz Steering Wheel and playing Cruis'n USA, doing the in car camera on certain levels and bugs and bird shit hitting the screen. I remember having
WWF No Mercy on all night because I would make it play the wrestler's music videos all night and change the colors of my bedroom walls. I remember playing
South Park and thinking the Yellow Snowballs were just the funniest damned thing. I remember playing
Super Smash Bros with my brother-in-law before everything went to shit with them. I remember playing
Pokemon Snap and just thinking how damned cool that game was, being a pokemon game in 3D. I remember
Mega Man 64 blowing my freaking mind and becoming one of my favorite games ever, I still have a weird crush on Tron Bonne to this day. But then our N64 burnt out. No games to play for like 6 months.
2000's
Playstation - My birthday came up. I asked for a PSOne. Yes, PSOne, the smaller Playstation system, that's how late to the game I was. I think this was a few months before the PS2 was coming out. I got a couple of greatest hits games with the system.
WWF Smackdown and
Driver. I played through these games so damned much until their respective sequels came out. Driver 2 was such a freaking mess, I don't think I played it more than maybe 20 minutes before never touching it ever again.
WWF Smackdown 2, I played that game so damned much, I played through the story mode for so damned long too. I was stupidly into wrestling in my youth, not that it is stupid, but I was into it to a stupid point. At some point a friend's family was having a yard sale or something, and my friend wanted money, so he asked if I wanted to buy a game from him. He kept trying to sell me on the game, but I just didn't give a damn. Eventually I wore down and gave him the $1 he was asking for and told him I didn't care, but he insisted that I take the game because it was such a good game and that I'd like it and he was done with it. It was
Wild Arms 2. I ignored that game for so damned long. No joke. Eventually I got the nickname Ignition and found out the game was referred as 2nd Ignition, so I finally played it. I'll be damned if it wasn't my first experience with a true JRPG (I hardly count Pokemon) and I fell in love. It was also my first experience with playing a game with a walkthrough, and one where I renamed all of the characters, so when the walkthrough referenced a character by their canon name, I had no fucking clue. Now I never rename characters.
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Playstation 2 - Oh man, this one is going to be hella long if I'm not careful. About 6 months later, I had asked for a PS2 for X-mas. My family tried to joke with me and hand me
Grand Theft Auto 3 and
WWF Smackdown 3 but no game system. I could see the gift hiding behind someone's chair, shape and size of a game system box. (Funny borderline irrelevant story) A year or two back, my nephew had been wanting an Xbox 360, and asked for one for X-mas. My brother in his infinite wisdom, bought him an Xbox 360 game, Velvet Assassin, I think, and gave it to him for X-mas. He was so fucking thrilled, he knew he was getting a 360, much like I did. He didn't get one. (Back to relevance) I was not given a memory card with the system, which I should've know I needed one honestly, but for some reason I didn't I guess. So I played Smackdown and 100% completed the game without a memory card with in a day or two of getting it. I got a memory card a day or two later, but I had already turned off the game, so I 100% completed it again. With GTA3, my friends and I would take turns activating the cheat or working for it, and getting 6 stars and seeing who could last the longest. I had a habit that if a friend would leave to use the restroom, I would hurry and drive to 8 balls bomb shop, arm the car with a bomb and drive someone less suspicious, and get out. As soon as you get in the car it would explode. So they would come back and I'd say "Oh, I died, your turn" and they would immediate hop in the car and die. This rolled over into
Vice City and
San Andreas. San Andreas being my favorite entry, even to this day. I had no interest in that gangsta shit, but it grew on me. I love that stuff now. Luke Cage is my show right now, obviously. But the gangsta stuff aside, it is a giant game with so much content, my personal favorite feature is the Gang Wars stuff. Eventually I got a copy of
Gran Turismo 3, mostly because my buddy had the game and showed me all of the customization you could do. I wound up tweaking the Suzuki super car to do wheelies and hit like 500 mph. My kid brother wanted to buy a game at Gamestop/Funcoland and picked
Timesplitters and I kept trying to convince him not to because I really couldn't tell what the game was about, he just wanted it because of the pretty much naked Robot on the cover. The fucking robot looked like it had fucking nipples. I don't know how that cover got approved, honestly. That game was pretty great, felt like a slightly upgraded Goldeneye experience, duh of course it was, I just didn't know better. Then
Timesplitters 2 was coming out and it had been advertised as "Heir apparent to Goldeneye" and it all just came together. This game blew my freaking mind, it was so freaking great. At this point, there was a kid who lived a block over who I hung out with a lot, this guy was my best friend. We would take turns making story maps to challenge each other, but he had a Gamecube, so we would have to play each others maps at each other's house. I can't recall how, maybe I just wrote everything down and recreated it, but I had a memory card that had all of the maps he had made and stuff. Maybe I had a GCN memory card and I lent it to him to make stuff for me, for simplicity. Eventually he passed away, and my nephew corrupted the memory card. I no joke cried for like 2 days. It was the thing we did the most together, it was one of the few, if not only, things I really had to remember him by, and it was gone. Eventually
Timesplitters Future Perfect came out, and while that game's multiplayer mode was a little bit of a let down after TS2, but the story mode was the most wonderful experience I had ever had the honor of having. It was Doctor Who level shit. As much as I knew I wanted the game, I waited several years to finally purchase
Wild Arms 3. This game is hands down, my favorite JRPG ever. I don't know if any RPG will ever topple it, it has a great story, great characters, and I personally love guns over magic and wizardry, and I like western settings.
I think I mostly ranted and rambled through all of this. I'll just stop here.
