My First Time Rage Quitting

The Frag Dolls are having a contest called "My First Time" so I want to thank them for the inspiration for several blog topics.

I don't rage quit too often. I do rage scream/rant at the game or characters in the game a lot to the point where my boyfriend thinks I should turn off the game (ask him, he'll tell you all about it). My latest rage quitting was with Fallout: New Vegas. I pre-ordered the special edition last year and it was glorious. I loved the poker chips, the platinum chip, the card deck, and the graphic novel that came all with it. As many enthusiastic gamer soon found out, the game was full of some glitcheroos and was really dodgy to play. Now I know there are so many elements that have to come together to make a video game, yet alone an amazing one, but come on! It was very frustrating. Luckily Bethesda listened to us and came out with a patch (or 3). Eventually I beat the game and all was well. Then came the DLC. A friend of mine bought the first 2 DLC stories, Dead Money and Honest Hearts and told me not to play Dead Money, it was awful and frustrating. So, I played Honest Hearts and loved it. But, me being the completionist that I am couldn't resist and bought Dead Money also. I rage quit that bitch so many times. That was one of the most frustrating and annoying DLCs I have ever played!

Pros:
-Increased the level cap by 5

-A creative/spooky location and backstory

-Provided some closure to Veronica's story

Cons:
-Everything
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But I digress, this was supposed to be about my first time rage quitting, not my most recent (and probably not my last).

The first time I did rage quit was on my Sega Genesis playing ToeJam & Earl: Panic on Funkotron. I love TJ & Earl, but those damn tourists taking pictures were so annoying and their chittering little kids too!!! I screamed at them and mashed the power button in such a way that my finger got pinched, which just pissed me off more. I still have that game and every time I get nostalgic and start playing again, I remember why I quit in the first place.

Stupid cows.

My First Time...

The first time I played a video game I was about six years old, it was a Nintendo Entertainment System and the game was Super Mario Brothers. It was in my childhood friend, Andrew’s basement, and it was a magical day. So magical, in fact, I can look past all the other punk things that little boys do to “torture” little girls at that age, and even for leading me astray later on with his game system advice for me (but we’ll get to that in a minute). At the age of seven, one of my girl friends at school got a Nintendo for Christmas. Well, really, it was supposed to be shared by her and her younger brother, but when I came over to play after school, we took it over and owned on Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt.

My parents finally realized that I should have my own game system; otherwise they would never see me again, as I would constantly be at my friends’ houses. So I got a Game Boy as a birthday gift. I enjoyed Tetris but I LOVED Paperboy. I only got a handful of games, because gaming was still sort of new to my parents and relatives and I couldn’t afford to buy my own on my $2-a-week allowance for doing my chores. Also, even as a seven-year-old, I balked at 1) Nintendo’s attempt to appeal to girls with their games with Barbie-themed platformers and 2) My relative’s assumptions that I ever liked Barbie Dolls for more than a hot minute and bought me Barbie Game Girl. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I played that hell out of that game, but even at the tender age of 7, I knew how ridiculous it was. Maybe at a later date I will go into how sexist the game actually was, but for now, this is a story about growing up as a girl gamer before “girl gamer” was a thing.

My first console was a Sega Genesis. This goes back to Andrew. He was tired of his NES (why, I know not) and wanted to get rid of it/sell it to get a Sega Genesis. I tried to convince my parents to buy his NES and they seriously considered it, until (bum-bum-bum) Andrew convinced me that I would be stupid to want his NES and I should get a Sega too. Well, as a scrawny little tomboy growing up in a boy’s world where I already felt the need to prove myself just so the boys would let me play Ninja Turtles, American Gladiators, video games, and go sledding down the big hills with them, I wanted so badly to have the best console to run with the big dogs. This was my first introduction to the budding console war of the 90’s.

Amazingly, “Santa” brought me my Sega Genesis (2) for Christmas 1993. It was a glorious morning filled with glorious Sonic the Hedgehog. I couldn’t tell you any other presents I got that Christmas. I do know that when my parents separated not-too-long after that Christmas, gaming became an outlet and a comfort to me by means of escape and venting my frustration. 
Even when the kids who had SNESes were snubbing me, I still felt a loyalty to my Genesis. It was my first. To this day, my Genesis (and all of my games I saved so diligently to buy) is sitting safely in a drawer under a PS3, XBOX360, NES, SNES, and GameCube on the entertainment unit in my living room, where we break it out every now and then to relive some happy childhood memories.

So, how long have I been a girl gamer? I think I was always a gamer; the video game medium just wasn’t readily available to me right out of the womb like it is for kids today. (Did I just say “kids today”? Ugh. I feel old.) My gaming days started out with Candy Land and UNO, but have grown to encompass a slew of board games, console games, PC games, card games, and dice games (including ye olde D&D).

Thanks to crafster.org for the Duck Hunt Lamp image.