Junior High and High School. My days of half-assed studying, social awkwardness and nonstop gaming. The days when playing with myself was fun, but playing with others was even funner. Co-Op and Multiplayer gameplay is probably my favorite aspect of video games. The way that games bring people together to have fun and compete is unlike any other medium. Some of my fondest memories came from Multiplayer gaming. I remember laughing till I cried, screaming at the top of my lungs in victory or defeat, and wiping the sweat from my palms after a sigh of relief, all from games.

One of my first multiplayer gaming experiences came from an RPG of all things. I've been a huge RPG fan since the original Final Fantasy, but one thing that most RPGs lacked was any semblance of cooperative gameplay. That is, until Secret of Mana. My brother and I would invite a friend over and the three of us would spend an entire weekend playing through the game (i was usually the Sprite). Not only did the game have co-op play, but the battles were in real time too! It wasn't just three guys sitting around inputting commands, it was three badass muthaf#&%@s running around f#&%in' $#!% up!



The summer after Junior High, we took a family vacation to Taiwan. While there, I noticed that my cousins had a floppy disk drive attached to the top of their Super Famicom. Instead of game cartridges, you used two or three floppy disks to load up a game. So naturally, my brother and I had to have one too. When we got the disk drive we also bought a dozen games at about $5 a pop. One of those games was Super Bomberman 4. I think we must have played that game every weekend for over a year straight. We'd invite a couple friends over, plug in the Multi-Tap and it was on! Some marathon battles would last until dawn in all their hilarious explosive glory. A couple times the neighbors from across the street would come by because we were being too loud.



After the N64 was released, Goldeneye became my first experience with addiction. I remember the adrenaline rush I got the first time I blew up my friends with a rocket launcher, or planted proximity mines behind me as they gave chase. Temple and Complex have to be my two favorite maps. Oddjob is cheap! Especially in Slappers Only mode! KLOBB kills ftw! Everything about the multiplayer mode is made of 100% pure awesomeness. In fact Goldeneye is probably one of the greatest multiplayer games ever made. When I got to college and started playing Counter-Strike , I still went back to Goldeneye for split-screen mayhem.



Another college favorite was Mario Party. It was my first experience gaming with girls, and some of them were pretty damn good too. That was the last time I viewed gaming as a "Guy Thing". I was fortunate that all my roommates in college were gamers too. When we got WCW/nWo Revenge we even bought a replica World Championship Belt. All challengers were welcome and needless to say the Title changed hands more often than in real life. I can't explain the feeling of drunkenly holding the Title Belt over your head after a heated 4-way match. " I'm on top of the world, ma!! "



Tribes 2 was another game that I played endlessly. No longer was it about Team Deathmatch, Capture-the-Flag was THE mode to play. Nothing beat grabbing a flag and hopping into your Shrike to cap the game winner. Or blowing up a potential flag capper w/ a satchel pack. Or sniping someone out of the air. I loved the foggy swamp setting of Quagmire. Setting up a remote inventory station underwater and bombing the opposition's generators to hell is oh-so-sweet.



After college, I started my career and eventually a family. Unfortunately, I don't have as much time for gaming as I used to, but I always get a little in each week. While online gaming grants me the freedom to game with others 24/7, I miss the days of sitting on the couch w/ my brother and our two best friends while we shot, bombed, stabbed and sniped each other for hours. S#!% talk is much more refrained when the guy is sitting next to you. There were no racist remarks from faceless 13-year-olds. Team Coordination was much easier, even though the other team might cheat by glancing at your screen. We shared laughs, we shared triumph and we shared defeat. It was just more fun to play your favorite game with your favorite people over two large pizzas.