Pretry sure it was a Nintendo DS/3DS or something like that. I never actually had a game console until recently. I now have a Nintendo Switch 2 (never got the v1, so might as well get the v2 since its released).
But I don’t have friends so I guess I’m just gonna play with randoms online… 🤷♂️
The Zelda Games are kinda fun, still not finished with them yet.
In school, I overhear conversations about their Wii’s, thei Xbox’es, their Playstations, and kids be like “Ooh I just got the latest one”, and basically the entire socialization was revolving video games, and some were PC gamers but they had an actual gaming rig, not some potato laptop like I had.
So I realize that most of my childhood, I may have been basically been sort of socially ostricized because I don’t know about what the kids were doing, so I didn’t fit in.
And on top of that, maybe my introverted personality just make people not like me even more.
And I think one of the biggest problems was I spend the first like 5 years of my life in the United States (I arrived in the US on an immigration visa when I was a kid as part of my family) basically trying to readjust my brain to learning English so that few years of not speaking the language was probably enough to erode my self esteem and thus spiral into the mess I am right now.
I wonder if this chain of events is why I have depression.
Now every time I hold my Switch 2, I remember the childhood that other’s got to enjoy but I never had. Kinda make me wanna cry.
Did y’all have games growing up. (Like actual games, not pay-to-win games running on a potato)
My parents were super anti-video game, and also thought Pokemon were some satanic cult thing… My brother and I used to absolutely LOVE when my mom would leave us home alone on school vacations or weekends to go shopping or something or run errands while dad was at work, we would pop right on over to Kids’ WB! and cross our fingers that Pokemon was on.
Our dad took my brother and I to some computer fair/carnival thing one time in 2000, I don’t remember exactly where it was, but it was in a parking lot in front of some boring commercial building. There were computer themed carnival games, booths with information, displays of the newest tech, etc. We played lots of games and had a fun time.
Well, turns out, I was REALLY good at throwing floppy disks, because I got the 3rd highest score in the floppy disk throwing game (you had to hit targets of varying size to score points). My prize? A purple Gameboy color and Pokemon Yellow. (First prize was a high-end Windows 98 computer. I remember being bummed I didn’t win a computer, but I still have that purple Gameboy Color… Probably wouldn’t be able to say the same for the PC)
Of course since I won this thing, my parents couldn’t take it away from me (well OK, I mean they COULD have, but besides being anti-video game and anti-pokemon, my parents were really great). This was the crowning achievement of my childhood. Of course, pokemon only has one save file, and so naturally, my brother “couldn’t play my game”. It took a while for my parents to understand this, but they eventually caved and got my brother his own neon green gameboy color and Pokemon Silver. Seeing the superior graphics of Silver, I saved ALL my pennies to eventually buy myself Pokemon Crystal. My brother, seeing the enemy Pokemon animations in Crystal not present in his Silver, saved all HIS pennies to eventually buy a Gameboy advance and Pokemon Saphhire… and the arms race continued. I got a GBA SP. My brother got a DS, I got a DS Lite, etc. etc., a constant stream of one-upmanship…
I still have the Purple Gameboy, Yellow, Crystal, Ruby, and the GBA SP, some of my most prized possessions. Almost every other physical thing from my childhood has been lost or sold. I had one of every single Pokemon game up until X/Y… A couple years back before the cartridge prices really exploded, I sold all the DS/3DS ones, which was kind of a bummer in retrospect, but whatever. I have much less interest in re-playing the DS era games. Maybe Black/White someday, I have good memories of that release. Last year I casually played through Pokemon Yellow again, and this year I’ve been playing Crystal.