Pretty much everyone knows I've been a Pokémon addict master since I was 13, but did you know that I was passionate about a number of other games before Pokémon? Like most kids in the late 80s/early 90s, I really, really wanted to play Nintendo. Most of my friends had either an NES or SNES (or both), and my siblings and I wanted one, too. For a variety of reasons (cost/distracting from schoolwork/we only had one television), my parents refused to get one for us.
I'm pretty sure I whined about this almost daily, and the eventual compromise was to get my sister and I each a Game Boy and one game for Christmas. I was so happy. Finally, I could play video games of my own. Not only that, but it was a one-player system, meaning I would never have to wait for one of my jerk friends to finally relinquish the controller so I could have a freaking round at Mario.* Just about every childhood memory I have revolves around playing that Game Boy: Saturday afternoons, visits to relatives, summers spent helping my dad at his shop, or my mom at the school library were all accompanied by that big, grey brick. I'm pretty sure I even snuck it into church a few times.
*The majority of my experiences with video games up until that point had been at friend's houses, where I was usually resigned to maybe 5 minutes of play time for every three hours of watching them play. When I did get to play, of course I would die quickly because I had no experience with the game, meaning my turn would be over and I'd have to wait another three hours.
For our first games, my sister picked Jurassic Park, which is just...just terrible. (Check out this playthrough video. It is 6 minutes of literally nothing happening. I've been distrustful of film tie-up games ever since.) I wanted to go for something cuter, of course, so I picked...
