Introduction: My journey as a retrogamer starts...

I was sitting there playing my PS3...

Then I realised how complex games are these days. Sometimes so complex you don't even feel like you're playing a video game anymore. You spend so many hours completing side quests, hunting small-time "unique monsters", exploring side-characters' stories and collecting so much cash that you start to spend too much time on a game, knowing there are more games to play.

There were simpler times, where you could finish an entire adventure in 3-5 hours. I remember such times...

I remember growing up playing a famiclone at the age of 7. It was my first ever console.

My father bought me one after achieving a good exam result. I don't really have a picture of it but I managed to get a picture of a similar machine from the internet.

This costs my father around RM300 (around 60USD), considered costly in the 90's.

I didn't know at the time the concept of famiclone, Nintendo, Sega, Japanese or US versions. An 8 year-old don't really care for such things. All that I know at the time was I can plug in a cartridge (locally called "tapes") and play games.

Then you start to be busy with life. School, studies, then work, family and other more important stuffs. My Famiclone also aged and disappeared in the storage room. My father was a government servant, so we moved a number of times that the famiclone was eventually lost.

I restarted again playing PC games when I was 15. In between the age of 8 to 15 I played consoles at a local game store where you pay RM4 (roughly a dollar) per hour to play Saturn or Playstation games, depending on the time. I didn't have enough money to keep on buying consoles at the time.

(This is a picture of a current generation game shop - Gamesbond where you play and pay per hour, the last time when I was growing up, the game shop I went to looked like a shabby Chinese Mahjong shop where the chairs are just old plastic ones and almost all the controllers are worn out)

Then there was PS2 and PS3 when I was much older, already working...

I managed to be a medical doctor, and the hours are horrible.

But I always remember how playing video games made me feel. It somewhat takes me on adventures, and tell me stories. I remembered the consoles I didn't manage to play, and the games they had...

So I started again.

I searched back for whatever I had: A PS2 and a PS3. I read regarding generations of consoles, the good and the bad, the legendary games and all that I have missed throughout the years.

That's when I started my journey, and the journey continues, until I reclaim all that I have lost. The benefit of going retro is that you can decide on an end-point. The target is achievable, and my target for the time being is 3rd generation onward. 

It would be very difficult to go down to Pong or anything within 1st and 2nd generation, especially when you need a functioning old-school television to go along. 

I'll stop when I reached where I started, an 8 year-old kid with a famiclone.

A long journey it has been to reach this point. My current collection: Project Dream. The journey is yet to end.