Blog # 8 ----------- 2000-2004

This is a great set of years for me, because these years are when I really started getting in to gaming. It’s sad that I missed out on all the old classics that we’ve been discussing for the past 8 or so weeks, but there are still some great games that spawned in this era. They were good enough to get me addicted, and to spark my passion for gaming, especially my first game: I-Ninja.

Now, I know this game was released in 2003, and that I usually go in chronological order, but this game is incredibly special to me. Strangely, I had completely forgotten about it until class last Thursday, but once I saw it, the nostalgia hit hard.

This game got me in so much trouble, I got lectures and speeches about how all this gaming is gonna rot my brain and destroy my eyes, but it was worth it. I-Ninja was just addicting. Hours and hours of slicing open enemies all to save my sensei who really just needed to “stay here and try not to die again”.

It wouldn’t be fair to base this whole blog on one game, so let’s move it back a bit to the distant future, the year 2000.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Now I know what you’re all thinking, again Daniel? Kirby? Wasn’t this discussed in class already? To answer that last question, no it was not, but it should have been.

Honestly I don’t have a lot to say about this game. It was a 2.5D platformer which is pretty cool, but other than that, I only included it because it’s Kirby.

2001 brought the release of Halo: Combat Evolved. This was mentioned in the powerpoint, but it was mistitled as just ‘Halo’, therefore:

Halo was my first FPS, and I was… Terrible at it. But, the fact that you could use system link to have such a large amount of players made it a large part of my childhood. We would have a TV in one room, and another in the room behind it, with a cord running through a hole in the wall. It was my first non-single player game.

I’m just gonna skip right over 2002 because I probably don’t care about any of the games released that year other than whatever 8 versions of Tony Hawk Pro Skater came out.

2003 was honestly just a great year for gaming. Crimson skies took up so much of my time, obviously not as much as I-Ninja, but it was up there. There’s about 10x more information on Wikipedia about this game compared to I-Ninja so I’m beginning to regret choosing it for my presentation. Either way, it had a difficult development due to [7 paragraphs worth of information], and was a difficult game to play (at the age of 6).

2004 brought us some MMORTS called world of witchcraft of something stupid like that. I only played it for like 11 years, it was aight. Pac Man World was also released this year, which I don’t actually remember playing, I only remember fighting over the controller trying to play it.

In conclusion, these 5 years were obviously extremely significant for gaming, and if I hadn’t been introduced to gaming during this time period, I might not be here.