I first remember playing the Atari in the basement of my house in Lewiston, Idaho. It was connected to the television that didn’t have the best color, but that did not seem to bother us. I spent hours playing games ranging from Pac Man to Space Invaders to Super Breakout. And I loved them all. In one game I could be a cowboy, using the joystick to maneuver up and down the screen (the precious stick-man I was) to shoot either a bouncing ball or an opponent, most likely played by my mother. I watched my mom play Pong and Space Invaders and wished that I could be as good as her.

I also played Atari at my Grandma’s house. She had different games; I remember playing pinball and car-racing games there, as well as Outlaw, Firefighter, Circus Atari, Missile Command, Alantis, and Combat. She also had a game that would send me on a quest to do something that I never did, so I can’t relate the final goal to you (it was called Adventure). In that game I (the small square) would go throughout a kingdom (or so I assume) that was decorated with a number of "castles" designated by their color. In the "kingdom" I would collect keys to be used in the "castles." The keys were much larger than I (the square) was. Of course, along the way I was faced with a nemesis, a dragon who would eat me (I conveniently fit inside of the square stomach of the crudely drawn dragon). Occasionally I was confronted by a bat who would fly by me and steal my key, pick me up, and place me in other parts of the game. The bat was very determined—even if I was inside of the dragon’s stomach it would pick us both up and fly with us across the screen.

As I got older, my interest in Atari games changed. I soon became obsessed with a Star Wars game based on "The Empire Strikes Back." In this game I, as an X-Wing Fighter, would attempt to shoot the Walkers before they reached their final destination. This was another challenging game that I would never complete.

When I was in grade school, my parents decided to buy the family a piece of technology that was about to change the world: the Apple IIC. Really, it was way more advanced than the computers we had at school, and we could play games on it. My parents got a hold of all sorts of games that have since become favorites, but have yet to be found on the personal computers of today: Snake Bite, Dig Dug, and a variety of other games that entertained everyone in the family. Eventually, I was exposed to Disney produced games such as The Matterhorn Screamer, and educational software including Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego.

At school, the use of games as an instructional method was also developing. We had games such as Number Munchers, which allowed us as little green monsters to devour the correct answers to math questions (ie: "Which are the even numbers?") and Oregon Trail, which let us become pioneers destined to die of dysentery on our way across the continent.

Not long after the Atari was sold at a yard sale, my mother bought a Nintendo. This game console came with one cartridge that had three games on it: Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and the "Olympics" game. Mario managed to entertain all of the members of my family for years (no one ever passed it) and Duck Hunt was a big hit with my cousins and I, who would get so close to the television that we would hit the screen with the gun and get in trouble. The "Olympics" game was great fun. It came with a big pad to set on the floor and run on. This was entertaining, but the "computer" always seemed to win. (I just learned recently, however, that by placing the game pad on the floor and using your hands to "run," you can out-do the "computer" challenger—oh, cheating!)

As time went by we collected a number of Nintendo games. I only "beat" one game: Ducktales (another production of Disney based on a cartoon show). My mother was more inspired to play games like Zelda. In fact, the Nintendo 64 was purchased by her when the "new" Zelda game first came out. We didn’t really use that console much; we were much too old for video games by then (except for my mom). It wasn’t until I got to college that I started playing Nintendo again.

When I was a Junior in college, and living in an apartment off-campus, my friends and I started getting together once a week. We needed a way to entertain ourselves, and since the apartment we used most frequently for a gathering point had a Nintendo 64, we started playing games. First we played Mario Party, which provided us hours of non-stop fun and arguments. Then Mario Party II came out, and we raved over that game. Both versions were similar to playing a board-game, but with more interactions between characters, and someone to save at the end (but only if you were the Superstar). We also began playing Goldeneye—a game that allows players to take on roles of James Bond movie characters and kill each other. There were a variety of guns, personas, and situations to be placed in. Again, endless hours of entertainment and a way to relieve stress.

The attitude that I had about games seemed to change as I got older and made my way through school. When I was in grade school, it was cool to play Nintendo. Everyone wore charm necklaces, blew bubbles in class, put on slap bracelets during recess, and played Nintendo. People would go to each other’s houses to play games; sleepovers were better if the hostess had a Nintendo. We were obsessed, and it was okay. Then we reached Junior High.

In Junior High there was an emphasis on acting older than you really were. And even though our parents still played video games, so did our younger siblings, therefore we considered them to be too babyish for us. Enter the closet gamers. These people would slyly trade floppy disks during lunch, sit by themselves, and were called nerds. Of course, these were the same people who became the computer engineers ten years later, but how were we supposed to know they were going to be the ones with the bright futures?

During High School, video games had the same bad rap. It wasn’t until we reached college that there were open gamers sitting in their rooms huddled around TV screens playing games all night, and sleeping all day. At first these people were given their traditional label of nerd, but as time passed, the computer lab in the basement of my residence hall filled up at night with college students who apparently had nothing better to do than play games. Big games. Games that I was told encompassed players from all over the country. And this introduces us to another label given to those who enjoy gaming: those who waste their time.