Unexpected hardcore gamer in the family

Every time I go to my parents house and bring the Wii they "want to show their friends who are coming over tomorrow"... when I finally STEAL it back a week or so later and check the play time 5-6 hours a day Wii sports has been played... this happens once or twice a month since I got my Wii shortly after launch.

Additionaly: Late summer
Girlfriend: What are you doing up so late?
Me: Raiding, I almost got my Bard's epic weapon in EverQuest!
exactly 1 year later
Me: What are you doing up so late?
Girlfriend: Raiding, I almost got epic robes for my priest in WoW! she's going to look so cute with your druid!
exactly 1 year later
Me: what are we doing up so late?
Friends Girlfriend over Voice chat: helping me finish this dungeon, quit complaining, we helped you two yesterday

Effective geeks are surrounded by other effective geeks.

I could never get into PC games, aside from Age Of Empires or simple little arcade games; I've always been a console gamer, true and true.

My dad is AWESOME at DOOM and Medal Of Honor on the PC, though.

I guess it's the whole WWII setting; he's really into military history. Maybe he liked the controls so much he became a fan of the whole FPS genre, hence the dooming and FarCrying and whatnot. It's weird, because he was never really a "gamer" before, although we have had our bouts in Wii Sports.

Oh! Him and I used to freaking spend HOURS playing Bases Loaded on the NES. I remember that's how I originally got into baseball!

Nothing epic, but when I couldn't sleep one night when I was about 9 and went downstairs to see if I could turn on the Star Channel (basically, a more risque Cinemax), I found my father playing Breakout on the 2600. He let me join him and we played for a couple hours until I got tired and went back to bed. We would ALWAYS play Breakout together, and that was the best father-son pairing on games I've ever had. He doesn't play anything anymore.

My Mom ... whenever I visit home and she disappears, chances are good she's on the PC playing Bejeweled 2. She actually introduced me to the game and I enjoy playing it from time to time.

And my nephews ... one of the little buggers was 11 and had rented GTA: San Andreas from the local video store. My sister had NO idea what the game was about (or about Hot Coffee), but he DEFINITELY knew -- and he knew he was totally busted when I asked him whether his mom knew he'd rented it. I chewed him out, told his mother, and then went to the video game store and chewed the owner out, too, threatening him to not rent M rated games to 11 year olds without a parent present. Scared him right good, I did.

I got a moment like that. When I was 6 I got Banjo Kazooie for my Birthday. I loved that game but had to go to sleep cuz it was gettin late. The next day I woke up at 5 from a nightmare(of killer French fries to be exact) any way I found my dad playing it and he got 10 more jiggies than I had! Nowadays he don't play games as much.:(

I envy all of you guys: my family never had video gaming in their blood. =(

But what I can share is that there are only 2 videogames in my life which have managed to rob me my entire night.

The first one was Pokémon Blue. The second one was actually Pokémon Pearl, but that doesn't really count because I woke up at noon not remembering how the heck I fell asleep on the couch, with my DS out of battery beside me.


That's my main reason why I consider Pokémon to be the best game of all time. xD

My 58 year old mother beat Rygar on the Atari Lynx. there are 100 friggin' levels in that game, and a fairly difficult last boss that slowly backs you into a wall and kills you unless you hit him on the very top of his head like 50 times.

My mom is like Snorlax level ownage.

I remember once, around 1990 or so, my mom went to lay down for a nap. Less than five minutes later, she came into my room.

"Sorry, mom, did I wake you?"

"*You* didn't, no. But when I shut my eyes, I kept hearing the Tetris music and the blocks kept falling before my eyes. Can I play?"

My mom got more blatant about it as time went on - her favorite was to tell me to do the vacuuming, and hop onto the NES to play Tetris and Dr. Mario while I did my chores.

Then there's me reminding mom where she went wrong in one complaint against me. Growing up, she always used to tell me, "You're never going to get anywhere in life with video games. Don't play them so much." Of course, I proved her wrong by becoming a critic, going to E3 for its last six years, and actually making a name for myself writing on video games. She now asks me advice on what games she should get - I'm somewhat curious as to whether it would be safe to let her near Guitar Hero (she was always one of the ones who swung around the controller in the NES days - the Wii is her dream system).

I'd say an odd gaming story about my dad... but he introduced me to gaming. When I was two years old. He is truly old-school.

My 60-year old aunt used to have an NES and and a few games. However, she just suddenly stopped. I never knew why until a few months ago; she got stuck at the 5th boss in Zelda 2, and she played almost nonstop for 3-4 days just level grinding away. When she was almost at her goal, her brother just turned it off (to watch wrestling) before she even had a chance to save. Never touched a controller since.

My AP Stat teacher, though, is a Fantasy/Sci-fi geek. His favorites are Metroid, Gears, Zelda, and the C&C series. What's even stranger is that all the history teachers love the Civilization series and that my Sociological Psychology teacher is a level 31 Tauren Druid.

When I got my N64 for Christmas 10 years ago, I also had to sleep in the living room because we had relatives visiting. This was the same room where we had hooked it up.

One night, my mother stayed up until 4am playing Mario Kart 64. Badly.

My little brother used to play SNES with the controller upside down. He had some skills back then beating me and my cousin in Mario Kart. Anyone who came to my house were amazed how my brother could play like that.

About two and a half years ago I dug out my old copy of Final Fantasy Anthology and started playing Final Fantasy VI. I was rather out of practice, so I didn't realize just how long I was playing. I started at 10pm and went to the bathroom a while later only to walk out and find my mom on her way downstairs to make her breakfast. I told her I was getting a glass of water, but the lie didn't last very long, as she had already noticed the blue glow coming from my TV.

I got 1 - it 2000 and I was a sophmore in college home for the holiday. I just installed a new graphics card into my fathers computer. I then proceeded to stay up all night playing counter-strike. My fathers office was upstairs and directly down the hall was my parents room. I remember my mother coming into the hallway at 5am (still pitch black out) and giving me the strangest look after realizing I had been up all night. The eerie glow of the computer screen on my face (like a deer in headlights). Things were just never the same after that. :-)

My sister was strangly hooked on Burnout Revenge for a few weeks.

Nothing wrong with late gaming!

This is one of the better topics I've read in a long while on Joystiq, with some truly ace replies. More of this!

Closest thing I have to this was the day I got Neverwinter Nights. I got home from work at 6pm and crashed till 10pm. Then I started playing.

I stopped when my dad came to pick me up for lunch.... I was very surprised that the sun had snuck up while I wasn't watching.

Of course, now I'm envious that you even HAVE MP3 in your country, we aussies don't even have a release date yet.... poxy PAL countries

When I was 10 my dad bought me a SNES with a plethora of games. It was only a few weeks later that I started to realise that half the reason he'd got it is so that he could play himself. I'd wake up and he'd be disconnecting it from my tv, and for the next few hours I'd be drifting in and out of sleep to the sounds of super mario world and street fighter 2 turbo coming from his room. He got totally addicted, which had its pluses and minuses. It was good because he'd buy all the latest games, and I always had someone to play multiplayer with, but bad because he would hog the console. In the end I asked him to buy another SNES for himself. Thankfully it was all just a phase, and now the only game he takes an interest in is the Tiger Woods series.

All I know is, that cat is friggin' awesome!

My mom and dad used to play Basketball on the Atari 2600. Now that's old-school.

My grandma played playstation with me. She defeted Ripto in Spyro 2 and liked final fantasy VII (well, she kinda freaked out with the honey bee inn thing (I was 8-9 BTW)), until she got really sick and now she can't play with both hands :(. She still learns pretty quick. She learned how to use my sansa in record time and was the first one in the family (after me) to learn how to use a DVD (although she only watches corny and pope movies lol).

Man, I should *not* be reading this -- too depressing. I would give my frickin' arm to come from a "gaming family". My parents were 40 when I was born, and *hate* video games, like they're going to ruin the world or something.

::sigh::