Let's dive in

So It's December 25th, christmas morning and my brother and I wake up early to go look under the tree.  Of course we can't figure anything out since we were young and dumb but we try anyway.  We spend the next three hours waiting for it to hit 6AM so we can wake up our parents and open gifts.

Finally 6AM hits and we run upstairs to wake up our parents, screaming, jumping on the bed, you know the usual thing cute kids do.  Now i really don't remember any of the presents under the tree except for one, Zelda II The Adventure of Link.  I'm five years old but have already played and beat the original Zelda and it's my favorite game so I'm so excited to play it, but of course my dad knows we've been up all night so he makes us go upstairs and sleep for a bit.

I finally wake up and go downstairs to find my father playing the game himself and he is pretty far.  He's already got the hammer from the crazy rock maze level (of course i don't realize that he is so far at that point I'm just excited to see the game) and the first thing i notice is how different this game is.  I beg him to let me play it and he finally does, he shows me the ins and out of the game and how you can level up etc.  This surprises me because my father never has played a video game in his life except some Bass fishing game i barely remember but i go with it and start on my adventure.

This is the game that takes me from enjoying video games and living video games and also the game that makes my dad never play another one in his life.  See he had started playing this game back in October when they had bought it for us and back than games were really tough.  Anyway long story short sometime a few months later when he is at the final castle where you have to go through a huge swamp, the final castle, the pheonix boss, and shadow link on three lives and I decide to let my brother start his own guy.  He is 3 years old and of course i make the mistake of letting him mess around on the main screen and he deletes my dad's file.  Man was he pissed, he never picked up a video game from that point onward because he felt he had wasted months learning the game and it was all down the drain.

This game started me on some bad habits as a child.  I remember waiting for my parents to fall asleep and than going out and trying to grind of the jellies in the first are just to get that next sword level.  When my parents caught me they'd ground me from the game for a week but I'd still do exactly what i did again during the week because my dad was still playing at this time and i knew they wouldn't take it away.  I actually faked being sick to stay at home and play this game too, that's how addicted i was.

I never was able to beat that final castle without my Game Genie and considered it to be the hardest final castle of all games until a few years later when i was in my teens and tried it again with no trouble.  It took me a week at most to beat it but it still holds some of my fondest memories of gaming because that is the game that got me started on hardcore gaming.  I'm sure any real gamer has that memory of the game that got them started.

My next blog will focus on my sufferings in school and outside life because of being addicted that young and some of the mistakes i made even as a adult because of gaming, hope you enjoyed the read.

Gaming as a child

Hey all figured I'd introduce myself, I'm Jamie Mieger, 24 years old with a family, and have been gaming since i can remember.  Literally one of my first memories is playing the original Zelda when i was 3 three or four years old.  I grew up around gaming because of my grandpa (yea my 65 year old grandpa still plays video games) and he got me in early.  I started out playing regular RPGs such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Zelda etc... and when my parents got me my own NES at the ripe age of four i started getting into "regular" games like Mike Tysons, Battle Toads, Big Nose, and Mario.

So anyway the point is this set me up with some bad bad habits to have as a child, such as staying up till 2am to get that last level, waiting till my parents went to sleep and than sneaking out in the living room to play all night.  I remember a time where my uncle came over when i was five and we played Blades of Steel till around 3AM.  Don't get me wrong i loved every moment of it and it's what shaped me to be the person i am today.

Anyway what my blogs will revolve around is me growing up as a hardcore gamer, the side effects it had on me, and the many many problems it caused but also the great times i had.  Hope you enjoy and my next blogs will be much longer and very specific.