I’ll probably never know for sure how they managed it, but come Christmas morning, there it was. My mom, ever the skeptic about the longevity of the device, downplayed her emotions regarding the expensive toy that I had received. My dad must have been more pragmatic about it, after all I had very rarely asked for anything that was more than ten bucks a pop. I almost wish I could have overheard that discussion regarding it. By the time the wrapping paper was gone, and my mom had started to cook up dinner, dad, my brother and I were in the TV room setting it up, right next to the remains of the Odyssey, which had stopped working but I couldn’t bring myself to chuck.

By the time Christmas dinner was done, we had to come up with a system in order to make sure EVERYONE, including my mother and father got a chance. It was fun, it was addicting, and in a weird way it brought the family closer together. Weeks went by, and there were times I had to argue so I could play with “My Christmas present” instead of my mom or my brother, and after a while Breakout was starting to get a bit old. So I convinced my mom to buy more games.

Christmas, 1979. Once again, the Sears catalog was out, and a list was being born. By this time I had figured out the deal with Santa Clause but wasn’t about to give up that information to my parents since they seemed to enjoy it so much. At this point my mother and father were separated for the first time, which even at 10 had its advantages in playing them off each other for more presents.

Kids can be very, very manipulative.

Anyway, near the end of the Catalog AGAIN, I saw, and I fell in love with: The Microvision Unit from Milton Bradley. The first true handheld I had ever laid eyes on. I couldn’t tell you how much it was, but it got added to the list next to the handheld Merlin, Simon, as well as some games for it. The obsession grew.

By the middle of 1980, I was not only anticipating the release of “The Empire Strikes Back” movie, but I was also on the lookout for a new game console called the Intellivision which would have an interesting new controller, as well as better graphics compared to the Atari VCS. The first round of console wars was about to begin in earnest, and I was going to be on the frontlines. In an interesting bit of irony, the Intellivision promises a keyboard add-on to turn it into a personal computer. To this day I wonder if that’s where Sony got the idea, as the Intellivision’s version, like Sony’s, wound up coming out YEARS later, and under an almost silent announcement.

At $299 though, my parents were starting to balk a bit at my habits, so Christmas 1980 came and went without a new console much to my dismay. I knew then that if I wanted something done right, I would have to do it myself. When January 1981 hit, and I was officially twelve, I took a job as a paper boy, and started to save my money and was eventually able to buy an Intellivision. It was a sleek little console, and the games were amazing to play, but the controller took some getting used to. A tiny disc that had a little keypad that you could put a little cover on that gave customized commands for different games. It was innovative for sure, but it wasn’t an easy machine to play. By the end of 1981, I had 20 games for my Atari, 8 for my Microvision, and 6 for my Intellivision. I worked in the morning, played video games while eating toast, went to school, came home, did my homework, read a book for about 30 minutes, then played video games till dinner, then video games till bedtime. My parents wound up buying a separate “Video Game” TV just so they could watch something.

In 1982 Colecovision comes out with incredible arcade quality games. I have 24 games for Atari, 8 for Microvision, and 10 for Intellivision, and that would be where the numbered remained for those consoles, as I was saving for a Colecovision. I was even going to by the Atari adapter for it at one point, but thought the purchase foolish as I already had an Atari and the eighty dollars they wanted to charge meant at least two games. By Christmas of that year, I’d put a gaming machine called the Vectrex on my Christmas list, and thanks to my recently separated (again) parents, I am obliged with it.

My room was a gamers paradise. I wish I would have just saved ANY of those consoles, I would probably be making a killing on the eBay retro gaming market today, but alas, future thinking was not one of my strongest suits at the time. My fill of video games was so complete that there were weeks at a time where I don’t touch some systems, while favoring others. The Atari was starting to show its age, and gaming frustration brought the demise of many joysticks. I must have jury rigged at least 10 Atari Joysticks to keep them working.

Things start to slide in 1984. My parents divorce, my interest starts to turn towards computers, and I have my eye on a product called the Commodore 64, by March of 1984, my Atari breaks, and I don’t have the desire to replace it. Joysticks, paddles, and games all find their way to a landfill somewhere in New Jersey. (Probably next to Jimmy Hoffa) My brother is playing the Intellivision more than me, so I give it to him. Its whereabouts I will never know. The Microvision had an unfortunate “I sat down on it” accident, and there was no replacing it since Milton Bradley stopped making it. Hail and farewell old friend. When the Commodore 64 arrives in the house, it has almost unlimited gaming possibilities. I see no other choice; I sell my Colecovision to a friend of mine from school. My Vectrex however, is stolen from me when I offer to sell it, and the person instead decides to beat me up and just run away with it. He ran away quite awkwardly with the bulky box and its games I must add.

The Commodore 64 fills my days and nights, learning programming, trying games, getting into rudimentary chat rooms called “Diversi-Dial” and meeting new people, doing things with it that probably the manufacturers didn’t think people would do. I was a bad boy for a long time with it, but I also managed to be introduced to a little company called Electronic Arts with a game called “Arkon”, which was sort of like a battle chess game. Lots of fun.

By January of 1987, I was getting way too close to 18 to want to continue having the temptation of my hack machine in the house. Four days before my birthday, I sold it to a friend of mine, and walked away from the computer with my hands firmly in the air. The timing couldn’t have been better, as some “online” friends of mine got busted just two weeks later. The paranoid in me could almost SWEAR I heard sounds on my personal phone for weeks after, but I’m sure that was just a trick of the brain. Either way, I was done with computers for now, but not with gaming. Sega and Nintendo both had gaming systems out, so flipping a coin, I picked up a Nintendo Entertainment System. My brother, decided to go with Sega. The house was again filled with consoles.

By 1988, “Techmo Bowl” begins a Friday night tradition with our friends. Beer when we could get it, pizza and video games. You couldn’t get better than that at 19 years old. Mario soon joined the party, and the controller would go from hand to hand after three lives were down. High scorers walked around like mini-gods of gaming, low scorers were forced to go pick up another pizza from Nick’s up the street. By the Summer of 1989, I had a Game Boy, and was going CRAZY over “Tetris” the way half the world did. Talk about your killer app.

I was keeping up with things, I heard about NEC coming out with a system called the TurboGrafix-16 which had games on a chip, was a 16 bit system, and eventually would have a portable system that you could play its games on! I was excited as hell, and started saving immediately, and by the end of 1989, I had it in my grubby hands. What a console it was! It would be upgradeable, with a CD-ROM attachment that would allow for more advanced game play, and the portable unit as well that would allow me to play the games anywhere! I played my games, and anxiously awaited news of the CD-ROM and portable unit.

Then the news came, $399 for the CD-ROM unit, without a game, the portable unit would be about the same price.

I started to ponder my hobby.

I was now 20 years old, in a serious relationship, and starting a new job that would pay me a good deal of money, so I could get my own place. But a good deal of money when living with your folks is not such a good deal of money when you have an apartment. It became a matter of choice, living on my own, or covering a habit akin to snorting Cocaine on a monthly basis. Gaming just didn’t seem so important in the grand scheme of life, so with a heavy heart, I gave away my TurboGrafix-16 to a cousin, my Game Boy to my mom, (who had fallen in love with “Tetris” as well) and moved on.

I ignored the N64, the Jaguar, the Sega-CD, the Saturn, and the Super Nintendo. I purchased a computer and played some games there, eventually discovering “Half Life”, “Unreal”, ”Quake” and “Duke Nukem”. I worked hard, and by 1997 had worked my way up in the world, to the point that I was making more money than I could spend. I was literally pissing away my money on VHS tapes, beer, and take-out food on a nightly basis, and I still couldn’t use it all. A friend of mine told me that Sony had come out with a gaming console that used CD’s as its main storage. I started looking into it, the N64 cartridges for seventy dollars a pop was just too outrageous to even THINK about, but the Sony games were at a decent price, and the graphics look really, really good. I was going to buy it, till my dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I jokingly said “A PlayStation”.

He said ok.

For what would most likely be the last time in my life, a parent provided me with the first hit free, of what would begin anew my addiction to all things gaming.

Fade out 1997, fade in 2000.

I am engaged to the woman who had already become my best friend, and would soon be my lifelong partner. Video games are few and far between, there’s so much to do and see with this person that thinking of sitting and wallowing away that time with a Video Game just doesn’t seem right. She is also interested in Video Games, to the point that when we get our first introduction to a place called Dave & Busters, it is like a switch has been hit, and we realize we want a new console in the house.

But which one?

We were saving to get married, saving for the future, we had purchased new cars, we had a lot of nice furniture and TV’s and electronic do-dads. (My wife is also a technology junkie; she married almost as well as I did.) The idea of investing into three consoles just seemed insane. Granted the Xbox and Dolphin (As the GameCube was called at the time) were no where near out, but the PlayStation 2 was around the corner, so we entertained the idea of getting one.

Then we stopped.

The initial investment was $299, and we didn’t really see any games that were supposed to come out that made us go “Wow! GOTTA GET.” Besides, with the Xbox and Dolphin coming, we figured we would wait to see what was around the corner. In the meantime we moved, we convinced a friend of ours to get a PlayStation 2 to see what it was all about, and liked what we saw but still, we were not ready to commit. And we wouldn’t be…

…till 2003.

I am 34 years old on January 27^th, 2003 when it officially started all over for me. Finding that love of all things console gaming again, came from Costco with two controllers, the DVD remote, “Jet Set Radio Future” and “Tetris World”. In the end, it was “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” that caused us to choose the Xbox as our console. Even though KOTOR didn’t come out till later that year, I felt confident that we would see a lot of good games for it.

Here’s a funny little side note about my Xbox purchase, I was so out of the gaming world that I didn’t even KNOW about a game called “Halo”, only learning about this incredible game after signing onto the Xbox Forums for the first time. It soon became a must own, with “MechAssualt”, “Crimson Skies” and a myriad of others. I was happy with my system purchase, somewhat despondent with not being able to own all three, but I knew that I was an adult now, with a wife and the potential for a family. Responsibility comes first, gaming comes second.

Since then I’ve never looked back. Someone once said that “Being an adult does not mean you completely lose your youthful identity, it’s good to hold on to one piece of your childhood as a means of staying young forever.” It’s a great quote, and I wish I could give proper credit, but chances are it was told to me by a friend at a bar in a drunken stupor, and there was most likely an embarrassing story that followed, so maybe its better if it remains forever anonymous.

So after this diatribe you are probably wondering: “Hawkes, what the hell is the point of this?”

Really, I had none. I wanted to lay my soul out to everyone that reads the site. I wanted you to understand why I am a gamer, and why I am still a gamer at 37. How I slipped the rails for a while, and how I got back on track. But most of all, I wanted you to understand why I hold on to these “childish toys” as a friend of mine once called them, with a sense of pride above many other accomplishments.

I am a husband, a father, a friend, and a hard worker. But within that man, lies the soul of a gamer.

And you can’t crush that with Game Company closings, or hardware obsolescence, or with time.

Semper Fi!