I was 6 years old when I first got a gaming console, it was a Game Boy colour. I was told by my parents that I wasn’t allowed a gaming machine before that, so I’m afraid that unlike the rest of the veterans out there, I have never played an N64 nor owned a Gamecube or whatever. I guess that means I’m not really a veteran, since despite being born in the 1990’s, I didn’t have a gaming console till the early 2000’s. To be fair, it wasn’t a Game Boy colour, it was a Game Boy color, since it was bought for me by my Dad as he toured America with Love City Groove. He bought it in Nashville, whilst trying to buy the new Game Boy Advance – just out. Unfortunately it wasn’t in stock, so he decided to buy the worse console instead of just waiting a few days. But as what was to be later show, that would prove to be an important decision. My brother, at the age of 4, received a doll otherwise known as Woody from Toy Story. 3 years later I would melt precious Woody’s hat on a lampshade, though my brother did get another hat, it was never the same.
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| This is the same as my machine. Well, it's missing the tape |
So the first game I ever had was Pokemon Crystal version. Which was a good decision on my father's part, in fact a decision that would affect my life. I loved Pokemon, and now being able to catch them, train them and evolve them in an interactive, cool, albeit pixelated world; just fuelled my obsession with them. This is probably why at the age of 7, I decided I wanted to be a Pokemon trainer when I grew up. Now that I think about it, I never actually got another game on my Game Boy colour, Pokemon was good enough for me. I was somewhat confused by the fact that the Pokemon on TV were different then that on the game, since the nice Japanese people in Tokyo had decided that they needed more of the colourful little creatures who could only say their names, but neglected to put them into their TV shows at the time of the release of the game.
During this difficult time where I needed to collect all 8 badges and grab all 150 Pokemon, I couldn’t read, as at this age I was a little slow. At least a couple of steps behind my class. However, the tour from America had provided my family to refurbish the house, and as such my parents were preoccupied with the rebuilding and management of the kitchen and bathroom. This meant that my father did not have the time to read aloud to me what the on-screen characters were saying, therefore I forced myself to learn to read in order to understand what was actually going on. So the moral of the story is: Video Games are important, since they provide you with those all important life skills.
