Since I’m suffering from some tropical bacterial infection here in Zanzibar where I’m working this summer and can’t do anything, I decided to actually make a blog. It’s kinda wild since even though I’ve lurked TL since 2010, I only have around 60 posts and I still at times feel shy to hit the “post”-button. Be gentle.
After taking a good look on the blog about TOP 10 SC2 songs by Falling and the songs included in that thread it made me think: What had led me to SC2 and e-sports? If I would break it down to game titles that I’ve played and which were the most important to me, how it would look like?
Here’s mine for show (in chronological order):
Crash Bandicoot --> Spyro --> Final Fantasy --> Command and Conquer --> Call of Duty --> Starcraft 2 --> League of Legends
Little background:
PS one was my only gaming platform back when I was a kid. My family bought a PC only when I was around 13 years old which was really late imo. Luckily Playstation had some of the greatest games back then. Crash and Spyro were the dearest to me in the end and I played through all their installments. Unfortunately I totally missed all the titles that came out for Nintendo… All in all my gaming started from platform games. I guess this is the case for most of us?
Turn of events happened when my best friend back in my childhood received FF IX as a birthday present. I think I was around nine years old back then. We played the game for hours without understanding much of its story telling since English wasn't our mother tongue. Still the game had a hold on us that was hard to explain, maybe it was the turn based battle system that got our attention. After playing the game with my friend I demanded my father to buy the same game for me for my birthday but he “fucked up” and bought me FF VII and VIII instead. I still replay at least one of these three, if not annually, then in every couple of years.
Command and Conquer was my first title that I played mainly on PC. Actually my very first RTS game was Red Alert…in PS one. I still remember how ridiculously overpowered soviet tesla coils were, how useless allied navy was in most of the skirmish maps and how I was unable to beat either of the campaigns. C&C Generals was one of my favorite games ever. It is a prime example of RTS that is fun to play.
My gaming got a more competitive nature when I got home from the army and started studying for university entrance exams. During that 6 month period I played an immense amount of Call of Duty MW2 online, mainly Domination and death match. This time it was more about stats and performing better than others. Shamely, I only got a nuke once -.- Apart from that I played a lot of Nazi zombies with my irl friends. Good times. Despite spending quite a few days playing I was still able to get accepted in uni.
aaaand not soon after I started studying I discovered SC2 and esports. After three years of playing it most of my friends had moved to playing LoL and soon I followed. Nowadays SC2 is still the only e-sport title that I follow, but I almost exclusively play LoL.
So what kind of corners have led you to SC2 and beyond?
I have played very little games in my life actually, I haven't had a computer for a long time and when I got one, I still didn't have a lot of access to anything - we didn't have internet (almost noone did back then), my parents wouldn't buy my anything they didn't think is good for me and I had almost no friends. So I programmed some simple games for myself (I had a very sophisticated Snake; later I got Civilisation (I or II, I dunno) and played that a shitton and that was about it until I was like 20, when I moved in with my now-wife and she had some games like GTA and HoMM III and IV. These were good times.
And then some friends concvinced us toi play BW with them, which we did until SC2 came out. End of story.
The random shit was some huge combination of MMORPGs and the like, I played a ton of video games as a kid but don't remember all of them for obvious reasons.
lemmings for DOS -> mud RPGs over telnet -> sonic the hedgehog 2 for sega -> pokemon red version -> Legend of zelda ocarina of time -> Diablo 2 -> Starcraft BW -> Command and Conquers, like all of them -> starcraft BW again -> starcraft 2
I've played lots of games in between, tons of PS2 and n64 games, and recently a lot of survival crafting games. I tried my hand at CoD4 for the PC in tournament but wasn't interested. Not listed also is my all-consuming Magic: The gathering addiction that was at one time supplemented by a warhammer fantasy addiction. I didn't really have the money for single player games.
Super Mario World (childhood) -> Goldeneye 007 -> Starcraft: Brood War -> Counter Strike (1.5, 1.6) -> World of Warcraft (the lost years of my life) -> Starcraft: Brood War (again) -> Starcraft 2 (very briefly) -> Counter-Strike: GO.
There was a lot of on-and-off Diablo 2 in my CS 1.6/WoW era.
played several games here and there but not to the level as the ones listed. Notable console games would be Mega Man (NES) Super Techmo Bowl (NES), Gran Turismo (PS2), Madden, (ps1-3, wii) and GTA (ps2,3)
Hmmm...My first and probably strongest loves for games was a tie between TIE Fighter and BG1/BG2. AoEII is definitely up there, and so is BW (I never really played competitively, just loved the campaign / story and of course the pro matches). My top two console game favs are definitely SSBM and double dash.
Counter strike/red alert 2/starcraft - medal of honor/ battle realms/ hitman 2 battlefield 1942 - blade and sword/age of mythology/ half-life/team fortress - max payne 2/american conquest/GTA SA, VC, LCS/ - defense of the ancients, warcraft 3 - starcraft - world of tanks - nba 2k14 - starcraft
My introduction to RTS was Starcraft64 on the Nintendo64.
Super Mario 3 - NHL '94 Hockey - Fire Pro Wrestling - nWo/WCW World Tour - Starcraft 64 - Starcraft/Brood War - Red Alert 2 - Company of Heroes 1 - Red Alert 3 - Wings of Liberty - Borderlands 1/2- Heart of the Swarm - WildStar
Doom 1 -> Doom 2 -> Warcraft 1 -> Priveteer+Wingcommander -> Warcraft 2 -> [C&C+Red Alert+Dune 2000] -> Diablo 1 -> Age of Empires 1+2 -> Starcraft -> Diablo 2 -> -> Warcraft 3 -> WoW -> Starcraft 2 + Many RPGs and games along the way, but these are the main titles that shaped my pc gaming experience. Half Life 2 being a favoriate, Zelda Ocarina of time, and so on.. You know, this could get super long so I'll stop here. Age 25 btw, I started young..
On July 26 2015 09:19 y0su wrote: paratrooper > (no computer - NES) > red alert > wc2 > diablo > starcraft > subspace > diablo 2 > wow > sc2 > csgo
played several games here and there but not to the level as the ones listed. Notable console games would be Mega Man (NES) Super Techmo Bowl (NES), Gran Turismo (PS2), Madden, (ps1-3, wii) and GTA (ps2,3)
Super Tecmo Bowl, NHL '94 Hockey, and Fire Pro Wrestling are the best couch competitive multiplayer for consoles since the Atari 2600 was released.
There is an annual Tecmo Bowl tournament in Madison, Wiscounsin and NHL94Online.com is still going strong.
Wow, over 10 patterns already and no one has mentioned Heroes of Might an Magic o.O I could've added it to my list, but decided not to in the end. Cool to read these, thanks
On July 26 2015 20:51 Koivusto wrote: Wow, over 10 patterns already and no one has mentioned Heroes of Might an Magic o.O I could've added it to my list, but decided not to in the end. Cool to read these, thanks
I have, in the very first reply. Maybe using the acronym was misleading
I've always played mutiple titles, but the most important were heartlight -> starcraft -> brood war -> diablo 2 -> starcraft 2 -> osu! (-> LoL)
I played heartlight when I was 6 or so. My parents only bought me games they deemed educational and this was the only game I liked (not sure what was so educational about the game though..). A friend of mine really was into gaming and showed me starcraft, with which i fell in love. I copied his cd, and later we bought brood war together, where i copied his cd again. So my first copies were illegal, lol. sc2 had as a game the least impact, but it got me into e-sports, so that's a pretty important change. Osu! is the only game in which I've played somewhat competitively, achieving #680 wordly as highest rank, which is quite all right. It took me a lót of time to get that far though. What I liked about competing in this game is that you can actually study very specifically, at least compared to other games. I noticed that getting better at this game seemed very similar to learning a (musical) instrument. And last, I've haven't played a lot of lol, but I will do so more in the future with a few friends of mine, who are all decently good. I'm the worst and least experienced of them all, but I've spent quite some time in the game conceptually, so I just need to play the game to catch up i feel (I'm at <50 normal games atm). What draws me to this game is it's team aspect, which is why i nearly solely play with friends via skype.
Flash games -> Stupid MMORPGs -> more stupid MMORPGs -> world of tanks -> sc2.
Up until a few years ago I was the guy who clicked ads on the internet to join the first cheap, retarded f2p browser game I came across. I regret I didn't play WoW (which I tried later on but having already lost interest in that kind of games) rather than that shit. Most of them were pay to win too. There were adult people playing who spent thousands of euros on those crappy games to be the best, which frustrated me a lot since I was underage and couldn't load up money easily. Later on I discovered the competitive side of gaming. I first played world of tanks, which was cool but the lack of any form of MMR made it too frustrating once I got decent enough. So I moved on to sc2 since I had already played some sc1/bw casually, which is 99% of what I've been playing in the past 3 years.
On July 26 2015 09:19 y0su wrote: paratrooper > (no computer - NES) > red alert > wc2 > diablo > starcraft > subspace > diablo 2 > wow > sc2 > csgo
played several games here and there but not to the level as the ones listed. Notable console games would be Mega Man (NES) Super Techmo Bowl (NES), Gran Turismo (PS2), Madden, (ps1-3, wii) and GTA (ps2,3)
Super Tecmo Bowl, NHL '94 Hockey, and Fire Pro Wrestling are the best couch competitive multiplayer for consoles since the Atari 2600 was released.
There is an annual Tecmo Bowl tournament in Madison, Wiscounsin and NHL94Online.com is still going strong.
0. chocks away on the bbc whatever that shit was we had at school lol 1. f16 combat pilot, duck dash, rick dangerous, 007, that ball game, that pipe game and that other game and lemmings, on the atari. and this music maker. 2. sonic 1 on the mega drive 3. age of empires 1 demo and other demos on the pc which i could never figure out but spent days on 4. ff7 on the pc 5. sonic 3d on the mega drive. borrowed sonic & knuckles from a friend. rented an rpg but mom makes me return it after 3 days. im still mad 6. space hulk on the pc 7. soul blade on the psx 7a. got blown away by seeing 007 on the n64 at my friends house 8. ff7 on the psx 9. ff8 on the pc 10. the Discworld MUD 11. broodwar 12. ff6 emulated 13. oldschool korean mmo 14. oldschool korean mmo knights online 15. some other oldschool korean mmos 16. nextgen korean mmo 17. still on Discworld MUD 18. ff7 again 19. dota 20. random this-gen games that i delete after a few hours under the guise that i need to do work but instead re-install dota
my parents would never really let me buy/rent games so my selection was super limited. but once i got to uni i went nuts for those first-gen MMOs that you could just Explore. back when you lost xp when you died and danger was actually a thing that you could put yourself in and care about. of course i spent most of my time playing the MUD which will always be 100x more detailed than any "visual" game (although reading text translates well enough into visual imagination), and more emotionally impactful (dying in that game = you lose 12 hours of hard work and potentially items you've spent 20 or much more hours aquiring, and you can be killed by anyone so you need to always be alert, and if you die to npcs then you lose 1 of 8 lives which can only be rebought at massive cost). not to mention the world detail and character detail is unmatchable by any stretch of the imagination. yeah nothing will ever come close to that experience. and then Dota.
Will try to get it chronological but might miss the order a bit. Skipping at least a hundred games I can recall or look up since they aren't worth mentioning.
On July 26 2015 09:19 y0su wrote: paratrooper > (no computer - NES) > red alert > wc2 > diablo > starcraft > subspace > diablo 2 > wow > sc2 > csgo
played several games here and there but not to the level as the ones listed. Notable console games would be Mega Man (NES) Super Techmo Bowl (NES), Gran Turismo (PS2), Madden, (ps1-3, wii) and GTA (ps2,3)
Super Tecmo Bowl, NHL '94 Hockey, and Fire Pro Wrestling are the best couch competitive multiplayer for consoles since the Atari 2600 was released.
There is an annual Tecmo Bowl tournament in Madison, Wiscounsin and NHL94Online.com is still going strong.
On July 26 2015 07:32 Fecalfeast wrote: lemmings for DOS -> mud RPGs over telnet -> sonic the hedgehog 2 for sega -> pokemon red version -> Legend of zelda ocarina of time -> Diablo 2 -> Starcraft BW -> Command and Conquers, like all of them -> starcraft BW again -> starcraft 2
I've played lots of games in between, tons of PS2 and n64 games, and recently a lot of survival crafting games. I tried my hand at CoD4 for the PC in tournament but wasn't interested. Not listed also is my all-consuming Magic: The gathering addiction that was at one time supplemented by a warhammer fantasy addiction. I didn't really have the money for single player games.
My first consoles were gba and gamecube, so I pretty much just played the popular games for those for a long time. In middle school maplestory got popular so I started that, and then a friend on my first forum (a pokemon development site) sent me his wc3 and scbw files. I also read a bunch of visual novels, idk if they count.
Pokemon sapphire -> pokemon gba/ds/gamecube games -> sonic gamecube games -> ssbm -> net battle -> ssbb -> old fire emblem games-> maplestory -> age of mythology -> scbw -> shoddy battle-> wc3 -> new fire emblem games -> sc2 ->pokemon online -> lol -> sc2 -> pokemon showdown -> ssbm
Then hearthstone beta came out in October 2013 or so and I've been playing that and smash pretty exclusively since. and the occasional pokemon/ fire emblem game as they come out.
EPT
