Rules of the Game.

"Left! Left! Left! Go left!!"

"Aahh!"

"I'm dying..I'm dying!"

"You bloody asshole...! Takes this!" -shoots with a bazooka-

These are just some of the lines you would hear everyday at our house. No, we are not trying to be the Osbournes, we just like gaming.

The two of us and pop are one of the many gaming enthusiasts in the world. Mum just shakes her head and leaves the room. Whenever we find the time, we game. The two of us prefer the PS2, but pop is still old skool, and sticks to the computer.

Our love affair with gaming began with the Nintendo 64 in 1995. The machine caused a lot of disputes --- who'd play first? The console's a rectangular box, and you would fit your game cartidges inside. This is what it would look like:

The only game that we would fight over was Mario Bros. Mario and his brother Luigi captured our very short attention spans and we would spend hours and hours and hours trying to finish the game. Very hard to do, since the game has about one million stages to complete, and if the character dies, you have to start over again. No save point.

But we tried. Fighting those evil mushrooms and turtle doves (literally, "turtle" "doves"), jumping over fiery whips, breaking brick walls, collecting those gold coins, the star of invincibility..time would pass so fast with that game.

Then time passed. 1995 was long gone, and so was Nintendo 64. The era of the computers began. Back then, just even thinking about owning one was a big deal. And we wanted one. Bad. But it was a long time, and we didn't get one. Then one day, pop took a trip abroad and came back with computer games, even though we didn't own one then. That meant we would get one soon. They came in huge boxes..we would open them, read through the booklets, look at the CDs..everything was so exciting! And then the computer came too.

The humble HCL was placed on an oakwood table, adorned with garlands and agarbattis. A hefty dose of vibhuti doused the computer screen, and it was ready to start being used. And how it was used.

When computer gaming began, there was no stopping us. For hours we'd sit, glued to the screen, playing the only game we loved (and still love) the most --- Final Fantasy 7. This RPG (Role Playing Game) completely blew us away. Amazing graphics, and excellent story line and music we still recall. Every character was superbly designed, and being the nerds that we were (and still are), we decided to be those in real life. Sister was Yuffie Kisaragi, the Shuriken weilding Ninja girl. Another Final Fantasy 7 enthusiast, and one of our best friends, was Barret Wallace, the hulk with a gun for his arm.

And me? Don't have any doubt about it. I was Cloud Strife. The main character of the game.

For hours, we would pretend to be those characters, killing of imaginary mutant animals, or trying to fight Sephiroth--the most evil character in gaming history.

Pop, however, was not interested. He still preferred those old shoot-out games. So he aced Virtua Cop, while we cheered him on.

Then again, time passed. We got a PS1, but since there was a lack of games, we didn't enjoy gaming on that console. Ahh, but then the PS2 arrived, and our lives have never been the same since then.

Some PS2 games we are addicted to:

The Sims

Kingdom Hearts 2

Final Fantasy X

Jak 3

The Simpsons Road Rage

And about 40 others.

So the point of this whole post was that we are mega-nerds. But we love it.

The End.