I often credit my intro to the video games to a Wolfenstein
3D demo but in reality if I think back I was interested in games way before
that. I lived out in the Iowa
countryside so I rarely had access to video game arcades. So I was super lucky in 1982 when my
grandmother gave me a mini Donkey Kong console for Christmas. I played this thing to death and was grounded
on several occasions for playing it under the blankets when I should have been
sleeping. It was super simple but it was all I had. This game had to
get me
through a number of years because it wasn’t until I was in high school that I
was able to hit the arcade with any kind of regularity and Wolfenstein 3D was
10 years away. When I did get to the
arcade I would go for Duck Hunt, Tempest, and Rampage but my favorite was
always Joust. I don’t know what it was
about those flapping ostrich riders but I couldn’t get enough.
After graduation I had a roommate and he had a Sega Master
System and I was hooked. Space Harrier,
Ghost House, Psycho Fox, Fantasy Zone.
My game play became pretty regular and annoying to the people around me
including my roommate who wanted his console time back. But like everyone fresh out of school I had
no money and when my girlfriend and I moved out and got married we didn’t have
money for games and again my inner gamer went into hibernation waiting for the
right conditions to emerge.
These conditions happened years later when my wife
mistakenly agreed that we should get a Sega
Genesis system. BAM!! Again emerged the gamer sleepily playing
until dawn, beating each expensive and carefully selected title to
completion. Golden Axe, Ghouls &
Ghosts, Altered Beast, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, the list goes on
and on. I never crossed that line into
Nintendo gaming. I think from being a
car enthusiast I was stupidly brand loyal and Sega was my brand, the
underdog. I kept my Genesis until I
moved to California to attempt a career in animation. Which is where we bought a Windows 486 PC and
my wife came home with a Wolfenstein 3D demo disk that some guy at her job
said, “Chad might like this.” That guy
later got a job at Activision and helped me get hired as a game tester in their
QA department.
One day my wife came home and found me yet again playing
Wolfenstein 3D rather than working on my animation portfolio which lead her to
say, “Chad we moved to California so you could become an animator, but instead
of working on animation all you do is play games. Maybe you should work in games instead.” I whole hardily agreed and the gaming
industry is where I have been ever since.
