I have always been a “gaming” girl since a very, very young age. Having a big brother, who’s five years older and was into everything and anything that involves using the brain (or a quick eye-hand reflex), influenced how I grew up big time. I’m sure he’d have loved to have a brother of similar age to compete against, but since he didn’t have one, a little sister five years younger would do too. What he didn’t realize was, when he lost (which happened a lot), it was just a tad more embarrassing.
Below is my “history of games”. I try to put up as complete a list as possible, to pay tribute to not only my childhood, but also my present, my continuing, though only occasional, fascination with new games and mind practices.
Childhood -> Adulthood:
- Nintendo (Super Mario, Contra, Bomberman, Tank City, Road Runners, Pac Man, Duck Hunt, various shooting games, arcade games, and tons of others)
- Chinese chess
- Chess
- Chinese checkers (跳棋)
- Go (围棋)
- 军棋，四国军棋
- 飞行棋(I think the English name of this game is called “Sorry!”)
- Connect Five(五子棋), Connect Four(四子棋), TicTac
- Various Chinese Card games (升级，争上游，捉黑叉，五十K，说瞎话，拉大车，翻对儿，51点，拱猪(Hearts), Tractor, and many others I don’t remember names for)
- Bridge
- Mahjong, of course
- Computer games (大富翁一二三代，Tronic, Pinball, Tetris, 3-D Tetris, 决战俄罗斯, Vikings, the Carnegie game(卡耐基人生指南), Sim, the Pipe connecting game, Freecell, Minesweeper, and many whose names are lost)
Games I learned/played after I came to the U.S. (most of them I now own):
- Skip-Bo
- Sequence
- Scattergory
- Scrable
- Pictionary
- Taboo
- 4 corners
- Uno
- Spite and Malice
- Sudoku
- Bejeweled, Bubbles, and many other variations of this type
- all the card games in Hoyle Card Games (Gin, Cribbage, Rummy, Pinochle, Solitaire, to name a few)
- all the board games in Hoyle Board Games (Backgammon, Mancala, Othello, Yahtzee…)
- all the casino games in Hoyle Casino Games
- all the word games in Hoyle Word Games (Anagrams, Enigma, DoubleCross, Word Yacht…)
- Super Nintendo/Nintendo 64 games (Dr Mario, Pokemon Puzzle League are my favorites)
- lots of PlayStation 2 games (Dead or Alive!)
- Wii (Wii Sports, Paper Mario, Wario, Wii Play, Legend of Zelda)
Now:
- all those stupid Facebook games I played lately :)
- Texas Hold’em Poker
Update on Jan 31, 2009:
I must add another two (newly learned and thoroughly fun) here: Carcassonne and 够级.
Between 