My dear daughter,
I was especially addicted to videogame RPGs. I was already very interested in regular RPG themes, and videogame RPGs had even more elements to hijack my brain, like character leveling, huge digital worlds to explore and immersive stories.
After the Mega Drive, at one point I had saved a lot of money, from the monthly allowance my father used to give me (which I spent mostly on comic books) and money I got from my grandparents and relatives for birthdays. I had enough to buy me a Super Nintendo or a Sega CD. And I chose the Sega CD. It was a terrible choice, and at the time I already had enough knowledge to recognize it was a bad choice. But I really liked Sega and I thought the Sega CD was the “next gen” console I could afford. I think they had already released the 3DO, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar and PlayStation, but those I could only dream of. I was already impressed by the Sega CD visuals from Videogame Power magazine (because they could place recorded footage in a game, it was just a cheap trick) and I hoped one day I could play the Lunar RPG series. Many years later I learned Lunar really sucked.
The Super Nintendo was still very popular and many games were still being released. It was certainly the console with the most RPGs released in the west.
Anyway, after the Sega CD I didn’t have any more videogame consoles, not until I got the PS4 just two years ago, to your mother’s greatest distaste.
I focused on insisting with my father to improve our home PC, so I could play increasingly more system-demanding games on it. I think we managed to trade our PC for upgraded versions every 4 years or so, from 1994 to 2012. Sometimes a better graphics card was enough, and they have always been pretty expensive. We got major overhauls 3 times only.
Now, computer games were really addicting and had many advantages compared to console games, like the possibility to save anytime.
I spent a major part of my life playing Stunts, Sim City 2000, Civilization 2, 3 and 5, Sim Ant, Sim Farm, Betrayal at Antara, Tie Fighter, Full Throttle, Wing Commander IV, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight I, II and III, Doom I, II and III, Wolfenstein 3D, Half Life I and II, Heretic, Hexen, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, Rebel Assault I and II, Star Wars Rebellion, Star Wars Battlefront I and II, Age of Empires, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Trek 25th Anniversary, Warcraft II and III, Diablo I , II and III, Dungeon Keeper I and II, Evil Genius, Command and Conquer, IL-2 Sturmovik and many others.
I remember skipping dates and parties during college to play Warcraft III on the weekend.
And, of course, the computer RPGs and their evil, immensely more powerful successor, the MMORPG. We will have to talk more about it tomorrow.
Love,
Dad
Aspergers Dad 