Like a lot of "gamers", I started young and I started as a Nintendo kid. My mother once said that she would know whether I was in the car with her not because I was talking, but because she could hear the sounds of Super Mario 64 DS behind her car seat. As a kid, I was so obsessed with the Mario franchise that I was convinced I would one day create the first encyclopedia of Mario lore (if only I had known then what I know now about the internet, I could have been ahead of some trends). I don't remember much of why I loved those platformers, but I do continue to carry a lot of fondness for that plumber and his friends.
The only other game that could compare for me (at that age) was the Drawn To Life franchise, the first game in particular. This was one of the first times I truly felt immersed in something as a kid. I loved taking the time to draw each individual limb of my hero and then watching my character literally come to life in the platforming sections. Although, everything always came back to Mario, even with the impact Draw to Life had on me. The only other game to have that big of an impact on me as a child, ironically, was another Mario game. Albeit this time, it was on a different console.
As a kid, I actually saw a walkthrough of the game before I personally played it. However, watching that YouTube video convinced me that I desperately wanted to play it. To this day, Super Paper Mario for the Wii is one of my favorite games of all time. Is the combat great? No. It's hard to compare to the others in the series, but the storytelling on display was something that would follow me for the rest of my life. I would even argue that the story of Super Paper Mario pushed me into the next era of my gaming life, which was significantly more narrative-focused.
This is where I would usually tell you that I started playing Ace Attorney, and don't get me wrong, I do love Ace Attorney! But it was not what got me into murder-mystery visual novels. For a while, I was rather content with my Nintendo-exclusive gaming set-up until a certain murder-mystery visual novel got a fan-translation on Tumblr. I became invested in the infamous Danganronpa franchise before it was even released in the West. It was the anticipation of its release that convinced me to get a PS Vita.
Oh, reader, it was love at first sight. I loved the Danganronpa games. I loved getting to talk to the characters, feeling scandalized by the murders and feeling so close to the cast that I could have touched them. While I played I thought this must be unique to the game but after finishing I started to devour whatever other visual novels I could get my hands on...in addition to rhythm games.
Why rhythm games, you may ask? Well, thank to my PS Vita, I was able to try a demo for Hatsune Miku Mega Mix for the first time and start a life-long addiction. To this day I at least try every Hatsune Miku rythm game I can get my hands on, and this has spilled over into a general level of Vocaloid and Uatuloid in my everyday. This has evolved to the point that I now collect Vocaloid merchandise in my free-time. Due to all this love in my heart (and the fact I hadn't tried anything else, nor did I really want to), I continued to mainly play Nintendo games, rhythm games and visual novels up until I became an adult and could afford a proper gaming PC.
Thanks to my PC I’ve now been able to branch out and explore other genres, like JRPGs, first-person shooters and even some simulation games. I continue to try a large breadth of games, even if they aren't always for me. The fact I'm lucky enough to have a PC and even got to experience new games at all was a real gift!
Some more recent additions to my gaming journey include the Bioshock trilogy, the When They Cry franchise (including the fighting game), Clair Obscure, Needy Streamer Overload and The Road to Empress.