GameInformer

Gaming Background:

I started gaming when I was about 5 years old. My grandfather bought me a Gameboy Color for my birthday along with Pokemon Blue version and Game and Watch Gallery. After pumping a couple hundred hours into Pokemon, I was rewarded with a perfect complete. As my sisters had received red and yellow versions, I was by far the first to finish everything. Leading the family 1 to 0 to 0, I had to finish a second game before my sisters in order to validate my place in the family as "the one who played a lot of games". 

Fortunately, there was a Zelda game right around the corner to take that slot. Link's Awakening was released shortly and if you thought that a couple hundred hours before the age of 7 was impressive, how does thousands of hours before the age of 10 sound. I played around 7 save slots through 100% completion. I played speed runs such as no save, no sword or the impressive no die before I could comfortably write paragraphs. This would eventually be the game I look back to as the reason I kept playing games.

At the time, my babysitter was an avid gameboy gamer and I remember frequently stealing her games. She would appear with Donkey Kong Country or some random third party poker game but she would never notice if her games disappeared for a week or so.

It wasn't until 2 years ago that I actually bought a true console. I bought a 360 with Halo 3, L4D and, as it was a hot new game, Fallout 3. This was before I read any reviews of games or anything so Halo came from recommendations and L4D came from my beating the Orange Box at a friends house and falling in love with VALVe. Fallout 3 managed to cement my love of RPGs while simultaneously ensuring I would never stick to one genre of games.

(More to come)