70's-80's My interest in gaming began with the first video game machine the atari 2600 (go figure) I was the middle child and spent alot of time at home, i guess you could say i got the most use out of it. I later traded it in for an atari 800 which i kept til after i gradurated from high school IIRC til my managers apt burnt down and as a show of kindness i gave my 800 to his daughter, and have missed the machine ever since i had all the classics pac man, missle command, defender, asteriods, an atari art pad and cart. I also owned a commadore 64 at one time, but later sold it. at the moment i own 11 game machines and play most of them, and collect the others, trying to rebuild my lost collection. I also spent time and money in the arcades enjoying games like double dragon, castlevania, and so many more, I can't begin to list them all.

90's: In the 90's a i owned both the sega gensis and the super nintendo, and have enjoyed both systems, though sega put most of it's apples into the sports genre, overlooking other genres to excel in, however sega still hung in there with fighting games like golden axe, and streets of rage, alien storm, and introduced thier new mascot Sonic the hegehog, I thought sonic was the cooler of the 2 (mario and sonic) and enjoyed the games more than marios, and certainlly liked sonics TV show better, that's for sure. The super nintendo was a superior piece of hardware, and showed it off in almost every game with killer sounds and music, great graphics.

90's handheld wars: As if a console war wasn't bad enough there was also a handheld raging between nintendo, sega, and NEC (makers of the turbo grafix) the gameboy was realsed first and had a strong following because of it's battery life, and great game line up, NEC countered by realsing a portable version of their turbo grafix hardware, and had a good foot hold with TG16 owners, because the games they owned can be played with the turbo express small game cards known as HUcards this was NECS selling point, the machine was priced about the same as their home machine IIRC, sega realsed the game gear, a rectanuglar piece of gaming hardware, using mostly the same processors as the sega master system did some 5-10 earlier

3-d fighting vs 2-d fighting: FIGHT!! (heh) this topic will never die i am afraid, but that's ok, SNK made tons of money off thier king of fighters series, capcom cashed in with street fighter, and various crossover series, and SNK and capcom have joined forces several times now, While 3-d games like soul calibur/edge series has had great sucess, along withthe virtura fighter series (By Yu suzyuki and am2) of course theres the now home based fighting series dead or alive (DOA) I could go on like this forever, weither 2-d or 3-d fighting games are fun to play and have a certain apeal, but to me i like them both, capcoms street fighter series has a cast of nicely (sometimes too nicely) draw fighters, while 3-d fighters have goregous photorealistic backgrounds and killer character animation, making you feel kicks and punches as they pummel eachother.

95' - the 00's usered in the birth of the sony playstation, sega dreamcast, and N64 and sparked a gaming war between the 3 machines, the playstation was the new kid on the block, but with the name sony behind it, was more respected by non gamers and adults i bet, sony's ps1 is now a little over 10 years old as i write this

Sony and the game industry: Sony has become a games giant and is defantley responseable for video games being seen with more respect

My take on video game violence: back in the 80's games where relavtively basic and cute, but as technolgy advanced, and the world changed around us in the 90's and 00's games changed as well, but lets not forget that almost every violent act in the real world was being broadcast into our living rooms, i suppose putting it in a video game caused protective and overacting parents to call up toys r us' and ask they stop selling these games cause billy was taking off a person head in a video game, Also the media tried to cash in my bringing violent video games whenever possible as a possible cause to almost any teen murder case.

Columbine and violent video games: Let me start by saying there was nothing more shocking than what happened in Columbine to the students and teachers, but i feel the teens envovled with this travesty may have played too much Doom, but the real problem here is the lack of parenting these days and to let your child sit and play video games all will have effect on them, but it won' turn them into a gun toting lunatic

My favorite games: let me close this by naming my favorite video games, from both the arcades, and home machines, i will start with arcade machines:

Dungeons and Dragons series by capcom

Virtual On: Cybertroopers by sega

Offroad challenge by Midway

Street fighter series by capcom