Obligatory New Year's Eve Post About Video Games.

Ten years ago, I was still a Nintendo fanboy. The only consoles I owned were an N64, a game boy color, and a Super Nintendo. I didn't care about the upcoming Playstation 2, I had no clue what was happening with PC gaming, and I only remembered the Dreamcast because it came out on my birthday in 1999. For me, the year 2000 will be known as the first year I spent hours playing Perfect Dark with my cousin. It was the year of amazing new games like Majora's Mask and Pokemon Gold and Silver. It was the year I proudly defended my console of choice to the death.

It's amazing to see how much I've changed since then.

As the decade progressed, I learned to love games from all different systems. The big turning point was when I decided to buy myself an xbox, the first non-Nintendo console I ever owned. I have Halo to thank for that.

But more importantly, I began to see video games on a few different levels. Ocarina of Time was one of the first games that made me realize the artistic and storytelling potential of a video game. But it was during this last decade where I really began to understand what that meant. The way Silent Hill 2 pulled me into it's world was something I had never experienced before. It was the first video game that I had to play multiple times just to get my head around the inner meaning of the story. Rez HD was a fantastic mixture of audio and visual design that provided total sensory immersion. And even though games like Flower and The Path were mostly artsy just to be artsy, I still found new and exciting elements in each one.

Of course I still had all the old standbys to keep me occupied as well. I had my Zelda, my Mario, my Warcraft. These were all games I could enjoy on my own time, away from other people. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't relish the Friday nights lost to massive Halo 2 LAN parties. It was the social aspect of these parties that I really enjoyed, and while I always knew that games were sociable, there was something different about a LAN party. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we had 16 players instead of the standard two to four. Whatever it was, the advent of Halo 2 helped redefine how I played games with friends. I'm reminded of this every time I plan another Team Fortress 2 party.

I could continue to talk about how important the past 10 years have been for gaming and predict how games will change in the next decade. Maybe even make a personal top 10 games of the decade list. But everybody else is doing that. Instead I'll just end by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Here's hoping the next decade of gaming is just as exciting as the last!

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