(Re)Introducing Mike

First I would like to thank everybody who has, and does, support this blog. Without you, my friends and I would not have a reason to write and report on video games, or the video game industry.

I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce myself and share how I developed my passion for video games! My name is Mike Clark, I was born in Utah, and have lived here my entire life, save two years I spent in Western New York. My story is simple really, it goes a little something like this:
The Nintendo Entertainment System, (NES), was released in North America in 1985, and with it came a game called “Super Mario Bro’s.” I was 1, and was, obviously, much too young to even think about video games. Growing up all of my friends had the NES, but my family couldn’t afford one, so I resorted to going to my friends house’s often for the chance to play NES games. In 1991 my Grandmother purchased a NES, causing all of us grandkids to flip out! We went crazy over it. Luckily for me we visited my Grandparents house about once a week. My brother and older cousins played the Nintendo more than I because, let’s face it, they were older than me. Honestly I was not too great at these games due to my age, but enjoyed watching my brother dominate “koopa troopas” in Super Mario Bro’s.


Eventually the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was released, and again all of my friends had one, while I did not; I was able to go over to their houses to play quite a bit though. In 1994 I moved to my grandparents house while my family's house was being built. It was around then that my Grandmother purchased the SNES, which included Super Mario World. Super Mario World was a huge advancement over the original Super Mario Bro’s series. It was bigger, better, looked cleaner, and ran much smoother. Super Mario Wolrd was amongst my favorite SNES games, including such amazing titles as: Donkey Kong Country, Tecmo Super Bowl, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, Killer Instinct, Ninja Gaiden, Batman Forever, Castlevania, Earthworm Jim, and NBA Jam.

If I had to pick one favorite game for the SNES though, I would have to say Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. It was very challenging, the graphics were incredible, the backgrounds had a unique depth of field, the colors were wild, the music was brilliantly written, and, most importantly, it was a game that I could play for hours with my brother Brian. Those moments spent playing games with my brother are amongst my most memorable. If it weren’t for Brian I don’t know that I would have developed such a huge passion for playing and discussing video games. I can still remember him talking to me about Donkey Kong Country when it first came out. His best friend had it and he played it a lot over there. He would come home and explain in detail how the game functioned, looked, and sounded. I would sit in awe as he described that when jumping up to grab a bunch of bananas, each one would individually jump to the top corner of the screen to add to the total number of bananas collected. He was so passionate that it made me excited to talk to my friends about my own experiences.

In 1996 Nintendo released a gaming system that would change history: It was called the Nintendo 64, (aka “The N64”). The N64 introduced a level of 3D graphics previously unmatched. Again I did not personally own a Nintendo 64, but was lucky enough to have friends that did, and wanted me to play with them. While Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 are a couple of my favorite games on the N64, the way I felt about video games changed when Rare’s “Golden Eye 007” was released. This game is the reason I fell in love with first person shooters (FPS’s). I would sleep over at my friends house’s, and we would stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning playing Golden Eye against each other. Those were some of the best, and most fun, experiences I had at that time.

I played games on the PlayStation, but not as many as I would have liked; because it was initially an expensive system, and none of my friends had it. When the PlayStation 2 was released, I was speechless. Never had I seen graphics so detailed and rich. One of my favorite games for the PS2 was Dynasty Warriors 2. Then came Devil May Cry which changed the way I felt about 3rd person games. Not to mention Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which was one of the most incredible experiences I have had on the PS2. MGS2 introduced incredible graphics, challenges other than just the story itself, character development like I had never seen before, and cinematic cutscenes that knocked my socks off. It was an incredible game.

In 2001 I made my first ever console purchase: the Xbox. The Xbox sucked me into the digital world of video games deeper than I could have ever dreamed of. I could go on and on about each of the games that I played on the Xbox, but my all time favorite, is Halo: Combat Evolved. It changed the way people felt about first person shooter games on consoles. No one, especially hard core PC gamers, thought a good first person shooter would be released on a console. Bungie was able to change a lot of people's minds when Halo launched. The graphics were incredible, the gameplay felt natural, the sound was very real. The game dominated over every first person shooter released at that point.

So there you have it folks. I have been obsessed with video games ever since I can remember. I owe a big portion of that to my brother Brian, but also give thanks to Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and Microsoft for launching such sweet consoles, as well as the many game developers who have released games to play on them. I have a pure passion for video games, as can be seen. Hopefully I will be able to add upon the knowledge you currently have about video games, and in turn increase the passion and drive you have for games, as my brother Brian did for me.

I hope you enjoyed your meal here at Gaming Cuisine. Until next time, keep on gamin' on!

- Mike “HunterZero” Clark