Video games have an extremely strong nostalgic character to them that maybe has something to do with the interactivity involved. I've been trying to rack my brain to figure out what my earliest memory involving video games might be, but I'm still not 100% sure.

My first gaming experiences have to have been mobile games on a Nokia 3310. I got my first phone when I was quite young (maybe four-ish) and learned to write simple text messages a couple years before first grade. That phone had four games: Snake II, Space Impact, Bantumi and Pairs II. I have no recollection of the latter two as they were probably too complicated for me to wrap my head around, but the first two could very well be the first video games I ever played.

After the Nokia, my next avenue into the world of gaming was through my father's laptop. For some reason, the very first PC games that I can recall all happen to be Disney games. There was Adventures in Typing with Timon & Pumbaa (1998) and Disney's Magic Artist Studio (1999) the latter of which I absolutely adored and used as one of my first digital creative outlets.

At some point I got a demo disc of Disney's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding (2001) which only contained the first few levels, but I remember playing it for ages and inventing a whole storyline while I did. Donald Duck: Quack Attack (2000) (known as Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers in the US) I vaguely remember getting from the store. It was the instigator of my first existential crisis. I was playing at our summer cottage and had made it to the rainforest temple -themed (possibly final?) stage of the game. I was going through the level, jumping on enemies and having them disappear into a puff of smoke, when suddenly I became acutely aware of my own mortality. I'm quite sure it wasn't the effect the developers had intended.

Even though I had had so many wonderful early experiences with the medium, video games didn't really become a "thing" in my life before sometime in 2005, when I got to watch Pokémon being played on Game Boy Color at my friend Roy's house. Pokémon already meant a lot to me, but mainly as an anime series and a card game. My fateful encounter on that day ignited in me a thirst that couldn't be satiated by anything else expect me getting my hands on a Pokémon game of my own. I imagine my parents had tried to keep me from gaming consoles as long as possible, but at that point my lobbying probably became insufferable. And so, on my 9th birthday, I opened up my beautiful silver Game Boy Advance SP, and I've been hooked ever since. The GBA came bundled with Mario Party Advance (2005), and I also got Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 (2001) (a remake of the SNES game). No Pokémon yet, but I was overjoyed nonetheless. Apparently, the GBA Mario Party is not very well liked. For me, it's concentrated nostalgia.

The first Pokémon game I finally got was Pokémon Ruby (2002). My father occasionally went on work trips to Southeast Asia, and started buying and bringing back pirated games. Sometimes he asked me what I wanted him to get, but most of the time he'd just have the sellers give him whatever was good for a child my age. Later on, he even took my PS2 with him to Cambodia and got a modchip installed to make it region free. All of this was surprisingly out of character behaviour, considering he seems to have always had quite a negative view of gaming in general. I clearly remember the first evening I played Ruby and the sense of wonder it instilled in me. I still have my first Pokémon, a Blaziken named Tori, who's been transferred from game to game through the years and is currently residing in SoulSilver on my 3DS. Quite miraculous, now that I think of it! Pokémon Emerald (2004) I did get in an official manner, on transit at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport tax-free electronics store. I don't know how I managed to get my mother to buy it for me on the spot, but playing it on the plane immediately after is one of my best gaming memories. It doesn't seem to have mattered to me that it was essentially the same game as the earlier one.

I took my GBA everywhere, to the restaurant, to the pool (yikes!); I beat Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (2005) on a school trip and thought: “Now I can die happy!”. I even got into a bit of trouble because of it. My GBA addiction was strong enough that I started secretly playing in bed under the covers. It would have been the perfect crime if only I had kept the sound off, but little by little I got careless and gradually raised the volume every night. I probably didn't even realise I was playing at full volume until that one evening I heard my father's angry voice from the doorway. This was the first of two times I got a temporary ban from playing games.

Next came the PlayStation 2, and Roy was once again a big influence on me regarding it. At his house I got to try out EyeToy: Play (2003), and after a couple hours of flailing about headbutting ninjas and washing windows I tried to convince my father getting me a PS2 would be a direct investment into getting me to exercise. I was a sucker for gimmicks, as any child is at that age. Somehow it worked, and it wasn’t long before the wonderful world of home consoles opened up before me. Roy later on also introduced me to one of my most beloved game series, Kingdom Hearts. I played Kingdom Hearts II (2005) (probably still my favourite game of all) first, but couldn’t make it past the half way point. I borrowed the first Kingdom Hearts (2002) from my sister, and took a whole year to beat it, slowly but surely! Time flowed differently back in those days. As a side note, Kingdom Hearts is the only series I have ever bought a console specifically for. I never played a single other game on my PSP except Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (2010)...

Though wonderful single player experiences were abundant on the PS2, one of the great joys it provided was couch co-op. Just playing at the same time on two different devices was something of a communal experience, especially if the same game was being played. This happened quite a lot with Pokémon on the GBA, with occasional multiplayer battles and trading in-between long stretches of each just playing their own games. Talking through the action was part of the fun. On PS2 as well, sometimes playing a single player game and swapping the controller back and forth was enough (I remember taking my PS2 to a sleepover at a friend’s house so that I could watch him go through the first couple hours of Kingdom Hearts), but getting to play together at the same time was something else.

Dynasty Warriors 5 (2005), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) (or more precisely, its first two levels - the rest were way too difficult) and LEGO games were the co-op games that got the most playtime. Sometimes when I had sleepovers at our house, we would bring a TV into the guest bedroom and covertly play LEGO Star Wars (2005) all night long. I wasn't really interested in Star Wars at all, but the LEGO game was a whole different experience. At some point we even started sneaking Fanta from the kitchen for our play sessions and hiding the empty glass bottles in the guest room cupboard. I can’t remember my mother ever being as furious as when she found the stash. This was the second time I got banned from gaming - maybe for an entire month.

Not all my friends had consoles of their own, but pretty much everyone played online browser games of some sort. Almost all computers had access to them. We went to Lapland for Christmas holidays one year, and I have fond memories of playing Santa Claus -themed flash games on the rickety old PC in the hotel’s lobby. Games were found on quite a few websites, some of them coming and going with the times. My mainstays were the Cartoon Network website and the legendary Miniclip. Favourites on Miniclip were Save the Sheriff, a platformer where a pig has to save his owner (which I remember beating), Bubble Trouble, a game about popping bubbles that could be played by two players, Leo Steel, a runner, Canyon Glider, which I had a whole storyline for invented in my head (impressive considering the game was only about trying to fly for as long as possible without hitting anything) and, of course, MotherLoad, a deeply mysterious mining game.

Then there were actual online multiplayer games. I have some memories of playing social games such as the Finnish sensation Habbo Hotel (2000) and Club Penguin (2005), but MMORPGs were what I really enjoyed. I was introduced to RuneScape (2001) around the same time I got my PS2. Euvor, the name I gave my wizard character because Gandalf was taken, has followed me throughout the years and appeared in several games since. I’ve played a few MMORPGs at different time, for example Runes of Magic (2009) and Dofus (2004), but nothing has ever come close to my love for The Lord of the Rings Online (2007), the only one I’ve ever gotten back into after my MMO-phase. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2022, adventuring through Middle-Earth with my roommate became a real lifeline and stands as one my most cherished gaming memories.

But LOTRO was not the first MMORPG I got truly obsessed with, for I too experienced the zeitgeist that was World of Warcraft (2004) in its Wrath of the Lich King -era around 2008. WoW was my first experience with a subscription service, and I somehow convinced myself I wasn’t getting my money’s worth if I wasn’t playing it every waking hour. I wasn’t even paying for it with my own allowance. Even though I do have some positive memories of exploring Azeroth, especially with friends, my time with WoW has left a sour taste in my mouth. It consumed my free time, and I only got out of it when my mother’s credit card info got stolen and she cancelled her card. Talk about a lucky break.

A far, far more positive gaming experience during that time was the Wii. The Wii is something else. Nintendo’s motion controlled console was originally known as the Revolution, and rightfully so. The Wii was the first video game system I ever saw being played by people from my parents' generation. A middle aged couple of family friends had bought one for themselves, and I’ll never forget playing Wii Sports (2006) after a dinner at their house. Even my father tried it out, it was incredible! When I opened my birthday presents that year to find the white box, he said: “That had better be the last one”, referring to game consoles, of course. At the very least it was the last one I was gifted, my DS I bought with my own allowance sometime later. The Wii felt like the future at the time, but of course nowadays everything about it screams that certain transitional time period from childhood to early adolescence to me. It was a time of “letting go of childish things”, but thankfully the Wii in its own way helped keep the magic going. And like childhood, the Wii never died, but after a few years of only reminding me of its existence from time to time, it came back in full force. If you couldn’t tell, I adore the Wii - I love the feel, I love the look, I love the atmosphere - my phone’s message sounds and ringtone are taken from the Wii - I don’t typically like white as a colour in design, but the Wii is one of the few times I think it’s ever been pulled off without feeling clinical and empty... and the games are great too, of course.

Quite early on, not long after I had first gotten my GBA, I decided I wanted to try my hand at making my own games. I had been reading Choose Your Own Adventure -books at school, and inspired by them, I used Microsoft Powerpoint to make an interactive Pokémon story. I only finished the first chapter, but I burnt it onto a CD and got my teacher to keep a copy to be used on our classroom computer. Maybe it’s still there, who knows? Things got a little more serious, if only slightly, when I discovered RPG Maker and started churning out an inordinate number of Kingdom Hearts -inspired fantasy game opening sequences. All of them fizzled out pretty quickly. The furthest I ever got with a single game was something called Nightmare (if I remember correctly) that I made in GameMaker. I’m quite certain I replayed the game only a couple years ago, but I’ve gone and lost the files again someplace. If I do find it, I’ll be sure to try and figure out how to get it playable on this site. Nightmare never got completed either, but there were enough levels done that I maybe could have finished it if I’d just decided to. It was by no means a good game, but an interesting relic nonetheless.

At no point did I ever really stop playing games, unlike some of my peers. There were times when I played less, but I still kept up with series like Kingdom Hearts and got a new game here and there, mainly on PC until I got back into console gaming after high school. Little by little, I started getting interested in the medium as a whole and digging a bit deeper in regards to what games I decided to try out. I have quite a few too many gaming memories to mention here without this write-up getting wildly out of hand (and new ones are constantly being made), but I hope to have given a brief snippet of what my experience of growing up with video games was like.

Screenshots via MobyGames, except Space Impact via Tech in Asia. All other images © Bouleaux.