Heh, pacman and centipede.

I had the high score at the gas station nearest my house on the pacman machine until the place closed. Nobody could even get close in the local area. I would usually be in the top three at the arcade on both games, depending on whether or not I had access to time and money. None of my scores were high enough to be some kind of record, but I was the king of those two games in two counties. I’m not saying I could never get out-scored, I could. But I never had bad games, only less good, where the other players around would have way more bad than great games.

But I fucking loved pacman. The entire sensory assault of it was so damn satisfying. I was good at centipede (largely because of the trackball being very intuitive for me), but I liked it more because I was good at it than for the game itself.

Pacman though? Fuck, I’d spend hours playing it. I even had one of those old coleco mini versions that I got for Christmas one year. Which, I was not as good at, what with the difference in controls, but I still loved playing it until it died maybe ten years ago (seriously, that fucking thing lasted decades).

I was so fucking bummed when I couldn’t find any place to play the real version. Later console versions didn’t have the same joy for me. I’ve managed to luck into some time on restored machines here and there, though.

Past that, mario cart was big in our house when it came out. My sister was better at it on average, but we’d have some killer weekends playing it with our mom and friends. I never liked consoles much. The controls just didn’t work for me.

So it wasn’t until this century that I got back into harmony gaming at all. Mmorpgs are my thing, when I can do it (disability makes pc gaming sporadic). The first game I found that sucked me in was shaiya. It wasn’t that great of a game overall. Heavily pay to win. But the story was good, and I had a great guild.

Then it was on to war and battle of the immortals. Mid tier games, but I liked the world setting.

Then, I found neverwinter and that was my game. I haven’t been happy with anything else since. I don’t really play any more, but that was the perfect mmo for me. The d&d world, with an intuitive and fun control setup. The classes and races were fairly well balanced. The graphics were fucking bonkers for the era too. It just made me happy. It still kinda does, but I don’t have the time or stamina these days.