A little bit about myself and this blog

Growing up before the great video game crash of the 80's, my family's first video game console was the Sears Intellivision. I don't recall the exact Christmas my parents, I mean, Santa Claus gave my brother and I the console, however I still have memories of playing those simple games. Years later we would find ourselves buying the Atari 2600. Eventually we even got one set of grandparents to buy the console so we'd have something to do when my parents would drop us off so they could have their "date night". Despite my dad not really understanding and liking video games, he was generous in buying us these two retro video game consoles.

The last console my dad would buy for my brother and myself was the Atari 7800. Even to this day I can hear his words in my head stating that this would be the last video game console he'd ever buy. Despite our love for games, my father's promise would hold true. That being said we had to make the 7800 last for a long time. Outside of the joystick giving my hand terrible cramps from the poor design, I played the mess out of that system. Desert Falcon, Food Fight, Dig Dug and Galaga were some of my favorites. Luckily we still had a good amount of 2600 games to play too so I was satisfied until 1986 when the Nintendo Entertainment System would be released.

My parents divorced when I was young, around 8 I think. This meant come the holidays my brother and I essentially had two Christmas'! While it would be a few more years before I had my own NES, my brother got to hand pick his out for Christmas in 1986. My older brother was very particular, still is, about the condition of anything he owns. While this isn't a bad trait to have, it was particularly annoying when I'd ask to play a game on his NES and he would literally hover over my shoulder while I washed my hands. He'd even inspect my hands to make sure they were clean before I could even pick up a control pad! I'm not exaggerating either. None the less we had hours upon hours of fun playing Super Mario Bros. and I even enjoyed watching him master Metroid and Rygar.

Maybe half way through the NES' lifespan I ended up w/ my very own Nintendo Entertainment System. No longer would I have to get my brother's permission to play games. Now I could play whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. That roughly translates to "play until your dad gets home from work" each day for an 11 year old kid. My dad had pretty strict rules when it came to video games. I could play until he got home from work (around 4:30 PM) and after dinner and my homework was complete, I could play for an additional 30 minutes. Back then usually my game of choice was the very addictive puzzle game, Bubble Bobble. I remember having to work my butt off for my dad and for my aunt, helping finish the deck my dad was building on the house and pulling weeds on a large, steep hill for my aunt. In the end it was worth it as I went to the security cage at my local Toys 'R Us to purchase my very own copy of Bubble Bobble. Man where those some great times.

Back then you didn't have GameStops. If you got tired of playing a game you traded it to your friends at school. If you wanted to play a new game you either rented it from the local video rental store or had to purchase a new game from your local retail store. Perhaps it was my brother's attitude towards the condition of his possessions that rubbed off on me because even back then I didn't like to trade or sell my games. I ended up keeping just about everything that was given to me or that I bought. While the cardboard boxes NES games came in didn't always survive, I made sure to keep the dust sleeve and instruction booklet for every game. Who would have known that this behavior would one day lead to this:

November 2015, my current game room set up. Over the years my interest in gaming has come and gone, but I'd say in the last 10 years it's been something that provided me with countless hours of entertainment. Now you may be wondering what the whole purpose of this blog is. Well I created it for a number of reasons. If you look over to the right sidebar you'll see I have a network of sorts of different sites/blogs dedicated to my different hobbies. Having so many hobbies makes it hard sometimes for me to figure out how I'm going to spend my free time...which is something that seems to have diminished the older I get. 

My first blog, Cardboard Collections was created to help me enjoy my card collecting hobby. It worked too as I created new digital friendships and really expanded upon the hobby. Next I created what I consider to be my main blog, Random Toy Reviews. I've always had a love for toys and action figures, particularly Transformers, so that blog was created to again get more enjoyment out of my toys. Instead of just sticking them up on the display shelves, I could photograph them and tell stories about the figures. My next site is more of a side project than it is a blog. I call it the Transformers Bio Card Database. Piggybacking off my love of trading cards, I'm trying to catalog all the trading card sized bio cards that come packaged with Transformer toys, both official and 3rd party. Next I created the site Rugged Music to help get more enjoyment out of my massive Christian music collection. By having that site I could catalog my music as I went back and rediscovered albums from my own collection. I'm kind of looking at doing the same with this site. I own well over 1,000 video games now and many of them have never been played. It's a shame, I know. Well I'm going to try and right those wrongs with this site and sit down and play these games. As I do so I expect to sit down and upload some photos and share some comments and my opinion of the games played. While it may not be the most riveting read, I enjoy putting my thoughts on digital paper if you will in this YouTube society we live in. 

My first real post will be a virtual tour of my current game room. That will sort of set the stage for the software related posts that will follow...hopefully on a somewhat consistent basis. So I welcome you to Adventures in Video Games and I hope you enjoy the journey that I'm about to take. If you like what you are reading, please make sure to +1 the posts, follow me on Google+. If I feel like there is enough interest to warrant a Facebook page, I'll eventually create one like I've done for some of my other sites.