There once was a boy. A boy who played with legos, Lincoln logs and Robin Hood action figures all day long. The boy enjoyed his time. Building towers and having Robin Hood steal for the wee yellow people of Legostan. (I literally had an entire city including police, train, and fire station, spaceport, dock, and liquor store.)This was all fun and games but not in the sense of handheld-wonderment that was to come.

I must have been around six when Festivus rolled around. I don’t really remember asking for the ultimo-gifto bludgeoning device that was the Gameboy: and I mean the big grey brick of a handheld. I do however remember asking for this really shitty plastic work bench. Boy was that fun! It included the fake sawing of fake wood. What more could I ask for?! The blessing in disguise, or in this case a neatly packaged blessing, was the gameboy. Little did I know that it would utterly make me who I am today and perhaps even tomorrow.

The portable device I received was my first foray into video games or as my grandparents call them “money pits” (as if legos weren’t a fucking money pit. Come on $80 for a space shuttle. Shit now I can go play Mass Effect and pilot that space shuttle, but instead of a little yellow NASA guy I can be Cuntolina Shepard.) With the gameboy came one of the games in “teh greetest franchise evarz” Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awaking. I played that game more than any other in my past. Even more so than the 180 brain-numbing hours I clocked on Morrowind; or any other RPG for that matter. I played Zelda with such an intense passion that I started to take ideas and morals presented in the game and crossed them over to real life. Chivalry, nobility, loyalty, always trying to do the right thing: these were principals I engraved into my psyche. It wasn’t until later on that I realized that there really aren’t any princesses worth saving and all the evils in the world weren’t moblins and witches. Man what a bummer that shit was.

Fast-forward a couple of years and I have a decent game collection for my gameboy and my once prized SEGA genesis. I had some real shitty games also. Actually not just shitty games but a shitty system as well. Let’s play “name the super-lame-educational-home-console-cluster-f-uc-k.” Take a guess at which one I could be talking about. If you guessed “Socrates” you are correct! If there is anywhere within the info-tubes of the internet that someone would know about Socrates educational gaming system it would be here at Dtoid. Just hide in shame if you actually owned this system.



The Suckrates as I called it was horrible. It was nothing but educational games that tried to teach 8 year-olds algebra and other useless shit of the sort. This was another Festivus gift, a rather misguided gift, but a gift nonetheless. And the providers of this gift were none-other than the “useless money pit” proclaiming grandparents. In all honesty I can’t begrudge them for it. Their reasoning behind getting me this pre-brain age cockchugger of a system was understandable. “If he is going to play video games all day long, why not let him learn while doing it. (Yea like reading all the fucking text wasn’t helping me, or I don’t know, maybe the puzzles in the games were fucking useless as well. If only Zelda actually had a “useless money pit”. It sure had its fare share of useless pits and useless money.) Long story short there was only one good game to play on that system. I can’t remember the name just that it consisted of teaching the user to memorize the notes and tones for “Do Re Mi”. If you can’t appreciate that then you can go Fa So La Ti fuck yourself. (kidding)

And thus ends Part One of what could be a multi part blog about my gaming life and how video games made me who I am today. Let’s hope I don’t get hit by a buy so you can read the next part. Or conversely if you happened to hate everything I just typed, then by all means wish me to get hit by a bus. It won’t help you, there is no god, I killed him in final fantasy, and his name was Kefka. Oh btw im only doing this because I want to be super popular and have tea and crumpets with Jim, minus the super popular part.