A Little History

Good grief - I've been promising this for a couple weeks and have finally gotten it down.

I've been playing video games since I was a kid - starting out with Pong and Intellivision (ah, memories), and getting more sophisticated as time went by. My game of choice morphing into role playing games, then the first person shooter. I started with Wolfenstein 3D (remember that?) and Doom, and absolutely loved Star Wars: Dark Forces (which, besides spending time eating out and going to movies with my wife are by far the fondest memories I have of grad school). That was starting back in the mid-90s.

But didn't have the chance to play Guitar Hero until a few months ago - this past Christmas Eve. My brother had Guitar Hero III, and hearing that he'd enjoyed playing it, for Christmas, we bought him a (cheap off-brand) second guitar, so we could both play during the holiday. And suddenly, I had the most fun I'd ever had playing a video game. Fortunately, we'd bought the family a Playstation 2 for Christmas. I got rid of my last gaming system - a Playstation - around the time my daughter was born (Julianna - she's now 6). There was no time for it then - but now we can play as a family. And to be honest, the only game I have that I don't play with my daughter is Bard's Tale (ah, back to role playing - fond high school memories of the C64 original), but that one sits on the shelf collecting dust.

So we took some of our Christmas money, bought the Guitar Hero Dual Pack (I and II) and a guitar and had a blast. I tore through Guitar Hero I and II on medium in a couple weekends. My brother let me borrow Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's, and I finished that on medium in about 2 hours.

But, as with all things, your life gets full, and you just don't get to put the time into what you want. I couldn't get my daughter into it (yet) and there wasn't a ton of time for me to play by myself, so I just wasn't playing as much as I wanted. But then, a couple of months ago, I had an idea. A wonderful, awful idea. (Sorry, when I started writing this, Julianna had just read How the Grinch Stole Christmas to me.) What if I got up early, and played every single day, and really rocked out? I'd get some exercise, and I'd be playing more than once every other week. Plus, I could share my experience, writing about it every day.

It took about a month to really talk myself into it. But finally, I took the plunge, jumped in, and here we are. A nice pound less than what I was a month ago, but...