The realization that gaming is one of my hobbies

I spent the beginning of my summer trying to conquer Ball Revamp 4 on Yahoo Games, it took me about a week. I was very proud of myself. I hadn’t realized how much of game junkie I am until I read the Johnson article and listened to Jenny Levine speak about gaming. I am one of those people that dreams in Tetris, JT’s Blocks, Soduku, or what ever other game I am currently playing.
My earliest memories are playing Frogger and PacMan with my mother on Atari. This was followed by Nintendo playing Mario Brothers, Tetris, Castlevania, Metroid, Contra and Duck Hunt with my brother (we were never into Zelda). We also spent a considerable amount of time trying to get that stupid robot to work with Gyromite. We then got a Sega Genesis, and my time spent playing the Sonic games which now comes in handy when I babysit (although the Aladdin game was my favorite). The kids have one of those controller games that has all three Sonic games built into the controller. They can’t believe I know how to get all the Chaos Emeralds-this earned me huge points with the 8 year old. I also have a Playstation which I will occasionally break out to play Skull Monkeys and classic Atari games. My friends have a Wii and it is addicting!
Somewhere along the way in the late 80’s, we inherited a ColecoVision Adam from a neighbor and aside from the 3 games that came with it, it served as my way to word process things through the mid-nineties until the last of the printer ribbon ran out. My parents were not into technology, we even had a Beta player (which I am pretty sure is still in their shed), but I was and had access to computers (for academic purposes) at school. When we got our first computer in December 1995, we entered a new realm of computer games. We tried Myst, and I adored SimCity and SimTowers. We have been gaming ever since. Yahoo Games has been a favorite of mine for a while and I continue to play many of the free games. I usually block the chat feature as often it is someone asking you to look at their pics.
As I think about this more, I was playing computer games like Oregon Trail in elementary and middle school. I have been playing video games my whole life which makes me sort of resent the fact that I am not a digital native. I know that my access and exposure to technology is way more limited to technology than kids today, but it has always been a part of my life. Also, I would never list gaming as a hobby, or when asked what I like to do I would never answer that I am a gamer. However, it is clearly something I like to do very much. I guess I always thought of a gamer as someone who spent hours online playing World of Warcraft or other such games. I am may not play World of Warcraft, but I spend quite a bit of time playing games (of course this is not happening right now with school). I will now have reply when someone asks me what I like to do besides go to school or buying shoes. Or maybe I should find a new hobby.

Beside Yahoo Games I also like Pogo and PopCap games some of which are linked through Yahoo Games.