MY GAMING JOURNEY: Video games have been a huge influence on my life, starting with Snoopy and Basketball on Nintendo handhelds in the mid-80s, to typing dozens of pages of BASIC code from books as a kid into a ZX Spectrum just to play Centipede or tediously loading Renegade from tape with those characteristic squeals. :-)
Entered the 8-bit console era with the likes of Super Mario Bros, Contra, Metroid, Duck Hunt and Ice Climber, while being introduced to PC gaming by Moonbugs, Alley Cat and the seminal Prince of Persia. I remember marvelling at the then-gorgeous pixel art and text-based vocabulary of King's Quest IV on a friend's high-end PC, wishing my family would get one. Went through a short-lived Wolfenstein and Doom phase before realizing FPSs were not my thing. Dune II got me hooked to RTS series and my school days melted away with C&C, RA, Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires (with an honourable mention to Transport Tycoon).
Discovered RPGs after dabbling in Diablo II & Ultima VIII but then the fabulous HoMM3 would consume huge chunks of my time until the era of console dominance arrived with an Xbox 360 and Wii. Rock Band, TES IV: Oblivion and Metroid Prime would proceed to monopolize my time!
Those early Speccy days inspired a career as a software professional and Steam finally prompted a return to PC gaming as an adult, along with freeware titles like the brilliant Spelunky Classic and OpenTTD. I finally had games and the required hardware but nowhere near enough time to play them!
The Backlog Struggle continues... as a wise boy named Calvin once said with so many layers of meaning: "Reality Continues To Ruin My Life"!!