The Most Important Moment in My (Gaming) Life

An 8-year-old kid makes a fateful decision.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs. My mother stood at the top, visibly weary from having to deal with three mischievous children, one of whom (me) was prone to falling down those very stairs. I twisted uncomfortably in what must have been one of my ill-conceived youthful outfits: sweat pants and a tie-dye shirt. My mother stood resolute, statuesque. "What a handful," she must have thought, "but one day he'll be a successful doctor or maybe a famous author! Really, I'll settle for any respectable profession. Just as long as he doesn't end up embedded in Baghdad. But what are the odds of that happening? He's wearing sweat pants and a tie-dye shirt for God's sake." I twisted some more -- staying put was not one of my specialties. Finally, exhausted, she asked: "Which do you want, Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo?"

Before I go on, a little background: I was eight years old when this conversation took place. The smooth, narcotic grip of video games had yet to fully wrap itself around me. But it was a noticeable part of my life. I remember watching my older brother play Kung Fu on the NES, playing R.C. Pro-Am with my friend Ed at his house, and pumping quarters into Rampage at the movie theater. I was far from an expert on video games, however. I knew, though, that I wanted a next generation system of my own (the NES really belonged to my brother). And Christmastime 1991 was the ideal time to score one. The only question was which console to get: the ultra-cool Sega Genesis (which had been out in North America for two years) or the untested yet strangely familiar Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) which had launched that August.

At the time, I was undecided. Both of those shiny new systems called out to me, but neither had me completely sold. The Super Nintendo was the successor to a system I knew inside and out, and loved. But the Genesis was more of a novelty, and it was definitely the "cooler" console. I had contemplated this decision for days, for weeks, and I couldn't make up my mind. Little did I know that my decision would forever flavor my perception of video games, and define the library of games I played for the next 17 years.

So these were the thoughts swirling around in my undeveloped brain when my mother asked me definitively, "which do you want, Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo?" I contemplated the choice one last time, and blurted out what seemed like the more sensible option: "Super Nintendo." I walked away from that encounter with no confidence at all in my decision. It had been as if I had flipped a coin.

In the months and years that followed that Christmas, the decision seemed to make more and more sense. I fell in love with Super Mario World, which was bundled with the console. Other games won my attention too: F-Zero, Street Fighter II, Super Play Action Football, and later Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. My tastes in video game slowly began to change. There were certain games, exclusive to Genesis and its successor Saturn, that I never learned about. I preferred the Nintendo brand, its mascots, its controllers. I began spending more time with friends who also played SNES -- it was something we had in common after all. I started a subscription to Nintendo Power in 1996 (I still receive monthly issues) and for Christmas 1996, five years after Santa delivered a SNES, I found a Nintendo 64 under the tree.

My first issue of Nintendo Power.

By 1997 I was a die-hard Nintendo loyalist. When people spoke about Final Fantasy or Tomb Raider, I rolled my eyes. Super Mario 64, Turok, and Shadows of the Empire were enough for me. For the next decade, I played games only on Nintendo consoles, and spent my free time mostly with people who did the same. It was only in 2008, when I bought an Xbox 360, that I finally opened myself up to all the experiences I had been ignoring. Yet even now that I own almost every major console released since 1991, I still hold Nintendo above all other companies. Nintendo for me is all that's right about video games. It's given me thousands of hours of joy; it's brought me together with friends; it's made life easier and more fun. There are hundreds of great, awesome, mind-blowing non-Nintendo games out there, but none match the emotional tug of Nintendo games. They belong to my childhood, they conjure memories of my sister, my brother, my parents, my friends, myself. I grew up with Nintendo, and Nintendo grew up with me. And it all goes back to that choice I made at the bottom of the stairs.