Trevor Rivers Associate Producer, GameSpot Live	Now Playing: Earth and Beyond beta, Enclave Most Wanted:Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Electric Sibling

It goes without saying that if you were to compare a game from 20 years ago to a game that came out last week, there would be a considerable difference between the two. Games are technology after all, and they've come a long, long way in the last quarter century. I consider myself very lucky to be my age, as far as games are concerned. Video games and I are about as old as each other. Nostalgically speaking, at the young and impressionable age of 5 or so, I played my first video game. The game was Frogger, and I played it in the local arcade--the Chuck E. Cheese's near my home in Los Angeles. Even at that age, I knew that something huge had just happened, and the experience would never leave me. I still have fond memories of that game, and I'm sure that most people who enjoy games remember the first game that gripped them as well. Considering that Frogger was one of the first classic titles, in the same pedigree as games such as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, it was about the most perfect place for me to start. Since then, I've grown up quite a bit, and games have aged alongside me, growing in maturity and complexity as I have. This is why I consider myself so lucky.

Frogger was the first game I played, but by no means was it the last. When I was young, my parents refused to buy game systems for me or my siblings, so in order to play a game, I had to beg, borrow, or steal money and run to the local arcade, or find a friend who had a console that I could play on. It's for this reason that my experience of older console games is a little spotty at times, because I had to rely on friends and their tastes in games. Luckily, about the time that I became hopelessly enamored with Frogger, I had a neighbor with an Atari, and he was more than happy to share it with me. Soon enough, I was hanging out at his house all the time, playing games like Burger Time, Tron, Bump 'N' Jump, and of course, Frogger and Pac-Man. How fitting that these were the games I played before I left grammar school. I learned how to add and subtract about the same time that I learned how to avoid traffic and devour pellets in mass quantities.

"This was the first game I ever played."

A few years later, my family packed up and headed north, away from the smog and into the fog. I was in the fifth grade and sadly found myself without any friends who were willing to share their Ataris with me. But lo and behold, I did find friends who had Nintendos, and I quickly became attached to games like Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt--everybody had those, after all. After becoming more familiar with the area, I started riding my bike to the other end of town where the bowling alley hid. It had arcade cabinets of the first Mario Bros., Pole Position, and a great light-gun game called Cheyenne. There was even a Foster's Freeze nearby that had Bump 'N' Jump and Galaga.

Fast-forward through the next few years: Junior high saw the release of the Sega Master System and the growth and dominance of the NES. By the time I reached high school, the Sega Genesis was out and threatening Nintendo, or so it seemed. The SNES came out, and thanks to my after-school job, I owned both that and the Genesis. Every stinking penny I made went into buying games for a long time there, and I still have my game systems to prove it. I bought a Sega CD at launch, and soon regretted it. I bought a 32X, and didn't forgive Sega until the Dreamcast was released. I learned how to drive a car about the same time I learned not to buy a Sega peripheral.

After high school came the PlayStation. After seeing it on display at the local game shop, I had to have one. Luckily, my brother had bought one and gotten sick of it, so I got it for a deal, with Tekken, Loaded, and Battle Arena Toshinden thrown in for good measure. Twisted Metal came out shortly thereafter, and as my friends and family can attest, I was never quite the same. I had moved out by this time and was living with a couple of friends. The PlayStation and SNES quickly became the center of attention in the house and the highlight of a number of parties. I'll always remember fighting with my roommates over whose turn it was to play through Super Metroid again, or why couldn't I let somebody else have a chance at Twisted Metal 2.

"This game may as well have never left my N64 after I was done with Mario 64."

The N64 was all about one game to me: GoldenEye. There were plenty of other games that I played the hell out of, Rogue Squadron and Super Mario 64 to name a couple, but GoldenEye was the game of choice for my friends and me for years, literally. Even after Perfect Dark finally came out, we were still playing the odd game of GoldenEye. Needless to say, I've got a lot of fond memories of that game.

And that brings us nearly up to the present. The Dreamcast has come and gone, and the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube have all since come out. More importantly, games, or rather making videos of games and writing about them, have become my profession. And frankly, that blows me away. Talk about coming full circle.

From Frogger to Earth and Beyond, I've been playing games my entire life. And I can tie some game to every momentous occasion in my life, just by remembering what I was playing at the time. To this day, I still smell Round Table pizza when somebody fires up the Street Fighter II CE machine here in the office. Some people look back on their life and remember experiences to the sound of music that was popular at the time. I remember games.

What can I say? We grew up together.