The OVBGlowUp

G'Morrow Gamers,

The content for this week's post is going to be a little bit of throwback for me. Feel-Team Six made in arrival over the weekend, and I took a ride on the nostalgia train for a little bit. Here you'll be able to get a sense as to how young my gaming roots begin.

Every character has a story, and every story has a beginning...I wasn't kidding when I said I started games at a young age. The youngest I remember being when starting out my gaming career was 5 years old. Yeah. 5. And I started out with the typical sesame street CD-ROM games

Something that looked like this:

And I must've had a collection of about 12 of these types of discs. They covered every learning topic imaginable. However, this was also the birth of my competitive spirit, as I would try to spend the majority of my time racing my mom to solve equations and puzzles throughout the various levels of the game

My evolution only continued from here. Next, was the introduction of an RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game revolving around the art of war. I was a fine Sun Tzu in the making, and my father would be the next big influence on my still-developing gaming career.

This. This was the start of the OVB name. At the bright age of just 6 years old, 2 Years after the second installment of the Generals series in the Command & Conquer collection, this was when PC Gaming took a turn for the better.

LAN (Local Area Network) Matches became resolutions of conflict between my father and I. On rare occasions would we team up and cooperate against waves of enemy AI generals. But it took plenty of virtual beating before I could hold my own. Many. Virtual. Beatings.

However this was still, simply the beginning...

The year was 2001, Microsoft releases its first iteration of the home-gaming-entertainment-system. Something us gamers of today would call the console. Or better yet, "console gaming". This was where my time on the sticks would be long spent playing: TMNT - Battle Nexus, Burnout 3 Takedown, Burnout Revenge, NHL 2007, MX Unleashed, NBA Street, and most importantly Halo 2.

I was not lucky enough to receive an Xbox until later in the years, around late 2003 I became the console gamer of my early pre-teen, to late teen years. Here is where my skills would hone themselves, hours of mastering all achievements in games, and trying to find all hidden easter eggs along the way.

The evolution continued. Year after year, I would transform and evolve into higher competitive settings, only to leave a ruthless path of defeated individuals behind me.

From NHL tournaments with my rivaling hockey teammates. To hiding behind couches at family events to try and beat my time trial ghosts on MarioKart DS. My career has early beginnings and continues to persist to this day. I have since moved my efforts to the PC world, and continue to develop Enthusiast level builds in attempts to keep up with the high demand of AAA titles.

The games I play both for the thrill of competition and entertainment, to this day, are seen here below in this gallery:

They continue to shape and guide me towards goals, challenges, and objectives that I repeatedly set for myself. My evolution as a person first started with my evolution as a player. I am glad to claim the title of "gamer" and will continue to live by its code for the rest of my days.

I hope you enjoyed the little insight into my past, as I continue to age, my skills only seem to continue to get better, as I hope they will for a continued portion of my remaining LP.

As Captain Price famously once said -

"Let's do this."

- OVBDavid