I have always liked videogames. I started with an Atari VCS 2600 and my first game was Pitfall. I was 10 yrs old I think, so Iāll leave to the elders to deduce my age.
I had my Gran Turismo moments back in the Playstation 2 era; then my Quake and Duke Nukem 3D tournaments against my cousin in a pre-internet era, with 2 pcs connected on a LAN etc
Years passed by with no significant videogaming experiencesā¦then with two friends we decided to get some second hand Nintendo DS and started fighting against each other on games like Brain Training (I am so slow with maths!).
Since last Xmas I have started again playing on a Nintendo Switch with my 9 yrs old daughter (what a brilliant console the Switch!!!) and we have raced cartoonish motorbikes with Mario Kart, explored a world in Zelda Breath of the Wild, but there are 3 games that I have also enjoyed on my own, after my daughter goes to bed, and I will list them here below ā and this is for Anna @betazoid : I know and in fact I have been asking myself so many times why waste my time playing videogames, but the simple truth is that there are little gems of videogaming that wonāt require you to stop having a real life and are fullfilling experiences, like watching a really good movie, or reading narrative (the first two games), or simply trying to challenge yourself (third game in this list is a tricky mountain biking game that youād love ā but only if you mountain bike yourself):
I mean itās easy to be dismissive of videogames and Iām always ambivalent about how much space should I allow for my daughter to play videogames, but the fact is that I prefer that she plays rather than watching dumb youtube videos (same for me).