Hellos and My First Memory of Video Games

In many blogs, the first post is usually extremely awkward. For amateur bloggers such as myself, the first post poses a bit of a conundrum. "Should my first post sound professional or vulgar? Should I begin with a welcome speech, introducing myself or begin with just a normal post?" Many new bloggers, in my experience, find a great deal of anxiety in this, thinking that this first post will set the stage for all the posts to come. This, however, is not the case. For those few people who actually care to read your blog (as these people are few and far between) it does not matter in the slightest what your first post is like; if people care enough to read your crappy writing, they will read it regardless of what your first entry consists of.

I, however, have thought carefully about what my first post should be like (professional or vulgar, long or short, an introduction or a normal post) and I have decided to choose all of the above. I will make my first post neither long nor short, but medium in length. I shall both introduce myself as well as make a "normal" post and I shall be both professional and vulgar. Penis.

That being said, I would like to move on to the second part of my first post: my background in video gaming. More specifically, my first memory of video games. I was born in 1993, three years before the release of the Nintendo 64 and two years after the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Mine was a Nintendo household. Many mornings I would come downstairs to the sounds of Link's swinging sword or the classic over world theme of Super Mario Brothers. However, my memories of video games actually start before my family purchased an N64, back in the days when you could rent entire consoles from Blockbuster.
It was late in the afternoon in winter, sometime around the beginning 1997. My older brother and sister had finally convinced my mother to allow them to rent an N64 along with two games: Super Mario 64 and 007 Golden Eye, or as my brother and I would come to refer to it, "The Shooting Game." It had rained a great deal in the past few days and our entire downstairs had flooded so we removed the carpet to  let it dry. The living room consisted of a cold, carpet-less room with a couch, a small Tv, and, of course, the rented N64. All I remember was sitting on that couch on the kind of day that's much too cold despite the sun shining without a cloud in the sky. I was eating Cape Cod brand white cheddar popcorn and I was watching my brother play the first level of 007. I was hypnotized from the moment the camera flew down into the back of Bond's head. Every aspect of the game mesmerized me; the colors, the graphics, the crack of Bond's gun, the blood splotches on the terrorists' shirts. Although I didn't know at that moment, video games would become a massive part of my life. I would come to learn the Konami Code by heart, I would come to learn where each of the Kongs was held prisoner in DK64, I would come to learn how to defeat Pyscho Mantis, and I would, of course, learn that the cake is a lie. I would think all day in school about video games, I would take my meals in front of video games, I would even dream about video games.
Although I am sure that this was not my first experience with video games, it was certainly one of the most influential. This is the memory that truly made me what I am today, this memory is the memory that made me a gamer.