I'm a lifelong gamer who recently got back into miniatures gaming after a long hiatus.
The Wonder Years...
It all started in the early eighties with hand-held electronic games and the first home computers. At school, we had a room full of BBC Micro computers, (the height of my programming skill was simple commands that made noises) and when my friends first got in the Spectrum scene I had to have one, so I got a ZX-Spectrum for my birthday (or was it Christmas?). That was when I avidly began to play many of the games that were available - to the extent that you couldn't see the letters on the rubber keys because I wore them out . For those of you who aren't familiar with the Spectrum, games data was recorded on audio cassette, and to load data you had to hook up a cassette player to the computer! Even though things were very simple, there were some unbelievably addictive titles, including Jet Pack, Manic Miner, Centipede and so on, as well as very simple flight sims and shooting titles. Among these titles that I played were some true moments of gaming history such a Knightlore - the very first isometric game EVER.
A moment of great pride came when the school decided to include a computer gaming section in the annual "All Stars" contest for boarding students, which meant that even though I wasn't going to win any prizes in the 100 meters, I could achieve (momentary) popularity via high scores at Chuckie Egg or Galaga (or whatever the rip-off of Galaga was we played at the time.)
The Slippery Slope...
Once at High School (or the British equivalent) I had access to early PCs running Windows, so I started to get into different kinds of games, including early adventure games such as King's Quest and other Sierra Entertainment titles (including Space Quest, and even a little bit of Leisure Suit Larry...).
It was during this time that I first came across Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures. I had been into Fantasy and Science Fiction for a while and was an avid reader of all kinds of books, which could be how I got into reading White Dwarf (I can't remember). At any rate, this led to various trips down to the local Games Workshop and the beginning of a long relationship with the world of miniatures, fantasy games and miniature painting (and much later, Games Workshop IP in computer games.)
At various times in my youth I dabbled in:
- Warhammer 40K(Eldar)
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
- Lots of White Dwarf!
- Dungeons and Dragons.
- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
- Traveller.
- Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game.
- Rifts (by Kevin Siembieda).
- Palladium RPG.
- Robotech.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness RPG
- Vampire: Masquerade (By White Wolf)
- Werewold (By White Wolf)
- Cyberpunk (R. Talsorian Games)
- Mage: The Ascension.
- Shadowrun (I think I used to read this...)
- Stormbringer