What can I say about games? They have been a part of my life for many years. From family game nights to learning games you played in school, games are everywhere.
My first steps into gaming were two very special games taught to me by my mother and her mom (my Beca):
Pig – A card game played with a deck of 52 cards arranged in a circle like a pig pen, with one card turned face up in the middle. The first player draws cards from the circle until they find one of the same suit as the one in the middle, then plays another card on top. The next player does the same (or plays one from their hand), and play continues until the pen is gone and one player has played all cards from their hand. The remaining players count their leftover cards (or pigs) and add it to their score. The first player to a chosen end score loses.
Tile Rummy – A tile laying game consisting of tiles representing the cards of two full decks plus two jokers. Each player starts with thirteen tiles and tries to be the first to get rid of all their tiles by laying down sets of 3 or more tiles (either the same number or runs of the same suit) or by adding to sets that have already been laid down. When one player gets rid of all their tiles, the remaining players total the value of their leftover tiles (face cards are all worth 10 points and jokers are worth 25) and add the total to their score. The first player over 100 points loses.
From there my gaming bug grew.
My next big leap with gaming came in elementary school with computer games like Number Munchers and Encarta ’98 Mind Maze, but the game series that gets my geek on the most is Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (along with Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego, Carmen Sandiego Math Detective, and my favourite, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego). Some of the more fun time-killing games we had at home were Pink Panther’s Passport to Peril (an educational adventure game), 3D Frogman (basically a frog version of Pac-Man), Speedy Eggbert (a 2D platformer), Star Wars: Episode I Racer, Ms. Pac-Man: The Quest for the Golden Maze, and the first three Harry Potter games (all the Harry Potter games after the first three sucked).
Console games were something I never had personally until my mom’s 49th birthday when she got a Wii, but I did play some at my friends’ and relatives’ houses:
Dr. Mario at my aunt’s
Donkey Kong Country at my uncle’s house when we lived with them for a couple of weeks between moving houses.
Mario Kart
Mario Party 64
Super Mario 64
Banjo Kazooie
And Banjo Tooie, my personal favourite, at my best friend’s house (she also lent it to me occasionally)
I loved all the games for the Wii that got me up and had me be mobile, like Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and Just Dance. I also really liked trivia games for the Wii, like Scene It, Smarty Pants, and Jeopardy (look at the little Alex Trebek – he’s so cute!), along with Mario Party 8 and Mario Kart, and the Lego games (Harry Potter specifically).
Once I turned 19, a bunch of new games came into my life – drinking games. My top one was Never Have I Ever. I know that people have drunk before it was legal for them to do so; I just wasn’t one of them.
Then a few more years passed and I met @noctilucence , and he introduced me to the biggest computer game I have ever played – World of Warcraft. My main character is a gnome warlock. For the Alliance! (I have characters on both sides though.)
My love of board games grew with Noc’s. We watched a YouTube series called TableTop hosted by the one and only Wil Wheaton Our top games that we learned thanks to TableTop are:
Alhambra (a tile based village building game)
The Resistance and Coup (team-based games of deception)
Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Pandemic, three cooperative strategy games that are just as much fun to lose as they are to win)
Qwirkle (a tile based colour and shape matching game)
Tsuro and Tsuro of the Seas (strategic tile laying games)
Roll For It (a dice rolling game)
And we have many, many more.
Now our collection of board games is at or just over 1,000 games. We have it split up into many categories:
Brain Teasers
Card
Cooperative Strategy
Dice
Drinking
Murder Mystery
Party
Strategy
Trivia
Word
We also take a bag of games with us to dinner with some easy to play games in it, and if we don’t bring the game bag with us, I always have a deck of cards in my purse so we can play simple games at the table. One of our favourite card games is Gin (or Gin Rummy), which we learned to play after watching the movie The Apartment.
I hope my love of games never dies. I also hope I introduced you guys to a bunch of new games that you’ll be itching to try yourself. Any questions about these games or if you're curious about some of my others, feel free to PM me.
That’s all for now.
XOXO Gyidge
@missy @rambo
Below are a couple pictures of part of the collection at Noc's place. It makes up about half the total collection.
