So, what was your 'trigger' item? (i.e hobby motivation)

[Dangerboy]

So while in #vbender talking to Ze_ro, a very vivid memory popped into my head about the Turbo Duo, and that is what I dubbed the "trigger item". That is, the one, solitary item that made you decide you had to do ????? in relation to that game or game's system.

Personal Examples:

Trigger Item: Aero Blasters
What is caused: After playing that specific game among several others I bought from a friend, I realized what I was missing in my life; a Turbo Grafx library. I set out on the journey to track down all the games, and eventually did. It was my first complete collection and still nearest to my heart, next to PSX.

Trigger Item:Every NES Owner
What is caused: Me to decided to collect something else. When i was within about 200 games of the entire NES library, I noticed everyone else was doing it. So I decided I'd try and start collecting everything PSone. I mean c'mon, it'd be crazy to try and do that. Look where that got me. :)

Trigger Item:Madden 2007 Wii
What is caused: Me to love a sports game - For the first time since NFL 2k5, I wanted to try something new, and this is the game that has caused me to want to try every and all Wii games, just to see if they'ed change my mind about a game I would not have cared for without the Wii control touch.

Basically, I was just curious to see what motivates you to do what you do in your hobby.

Jason

[RadiantSvgun]

Hmm...

Usually, any console that has a Castlevania title grabs me.

I guess shooters and arcade stuff trigger it for me. Thats why I like the Duo and the Neo-Geo so much.

[Nesmaster]

Megaman 2 for the NES
Caused me to: Start collecting retro games.

The Wii
Caused me to: Sell 80% of my retro games.

N64/Xbox 360
Caused me to: Truly appreciate the power of a new generation of consoles.

PS3
Caused me to: Waste $550 in Credit at Blockbuster Video. Oh well, it'll be worth it when I get around to playing Uncharted, and when LittleBigPlanet comes out.

[SkiDragon]

When my friend lent Shining Force to me, and I started looking for my own copy, I started to quickly aquire a bunch of other old games that I discovered while searching. I had collecting tendencies before that, but that really kicked it off.

[Poofta!]

Trigger Item: Secret of Mana
What it caused: As i found this game in my friend's basement 3 1/2 years ago, he gave it to me as a gift when i recalled all the great times i had. the game was cart only but it triggered me to start collecting. i have since added every ps1 rpg to my collection as well as almost all snes. i have yet to complete this copy, when i get a complete one i will return this to him.

Trigger Item: Final Fantasy 7
What it caused: me to buy a playstation. pure and simple. when i played it at a friend's house. no other game before or since has made me actually want to go right out and get a system.

Trigger Item: NES & several games
What it caused: when my family and i still resided in the soviet union, my dad brought me an NES and several games back from america when he returned from a short visit in '89. the games were mario/duckhunt, gotcha!, tiger heli, spy hunter (all of which i remember, couldve been more...) i was 4 and had never seen/heard a video game before, needless to say i was hooked, and it started my gaming passion.

[boatofcar]

Trigger Item: EGM
EGM had an article about Classic Gamer Magazine (http://www.classicgamer.com/) (then in print form) back in 1999 or 2000. For the first time, I realized other people liked playing games from older systems and started searching the internet for retro-gaming websites, which led me to ezboard, which led me to DP :dance:

[MegaDrive20XX]

Trigger Item: CastleVania Bloodlines
After seeing this game for the first time back in 1998. It triggered me to find out, what Sega really had offered. Since I could not believe that Konami pulled off a CastleVania on the Genesis and it managed so well at that. so I spent the next 3 years searching and understanding. Sure I was already aware of Saturn, since I had one before the PSX back in 1996 until 1998. Yet the Genesis was the only system I ignored for over 6 years at that time, since I was mainly a SNES fan back then.
Also, this caused me to collect import games for Saturn and many other systems during the late 90's, to appericate what MegaDrive and Saturn were really like overseas.

[PentiumMMX]

Item: Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
Caused me to: Get hooked on gaming (If it wasn't for DKR, I probably wouldn't be on these boards right now)

Items: Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic & Knuckles (Genesis)
Caused me to: Realize there are good games that exist on non-Nintendo systems.

Item: Final Fantasy VII (PSX)
Caused me to: Get an original PlayStation. This was in 2004 (Yeah, I was late to the party)

[mailman187666]

trigger item: my old boxes of old games and consoles in my basement.

what it caused: to realize while games of today are great fun, there is something missing that these older titles had. So I hooked them all up again and started going to flea markets to find the games I always wanted to play. I then realized there was game rarities and values to them, so I started hunting. Thats when I became broke as well.

[Oobgarm]

Item: Spy Hunter (arcade)
Without it, I wouldn't be playing games. It's the first game I remember going nuts for.

Item: Contra
It embodies the reason I love games so much.

Item: Funcoland
Made me want to start collecting games-primarily NES, but that spilled over to everything else not long after.

[UniHamachi]

Jeopardy!

Not the VG, the actual show. I appeared on it back in '93. Did not win (I was up against a 50 year old guy, and there was a ton of 60's and 70 history that day), but part of my consolation prize package was the SNES and Genesis versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. I had not been gaming since the C64 (that's right, skipped the NES generation altogether), so I went to a Funcoland and traded in the games for a used SNES and a couple of RPG's.

Donkey Kong Country -- Up until I started playing DKC, I only played JRPG's because I didn't think I had the coordination and reflexes to play platformers (that and I TOTALLY suck at SMW and still do). After DKC, I started playing games of all genres, regardless of twitch requirements. I'm a pretty middling player, but I did get all the stars in SM64 and finished DKC.

[MrSparkle]

trigger: final fantasy 1

picked a few copies of this up a year or two ago which i still consider some of the cooler carts in my collection had one new in box but my roommate sold that shit out from under me

trigger: sega32x

this is definatly one of the things that got me into videogame obscurities still have my original one hooked up from back in the day this is a collection that i feel i could actually complete due to the small library hehe

trigger: ibm xt

this is the thing that started it all for me programming basic games sometimes just copying them out of books and poking around with them making little changes i got started on this machine when i was in pre-k

[otaku]

Trigger: first exposed to gaming by two of my cousins one a sega fanatic the other nintendo, only played a few times a year though until... I decided I wanted my own system

trigger: Parents bought me my first system at 7yrs of age-an N64 and so my love of gaming began

trigger: Jr high friend gets me to play dreamcast, resulting in my loving sega, the dreamcast and the types of games it offered (more so than nintendo games)

trigger: sega saturn-triggered my buying/playing imports and very expensive games (100+)

[The Great Dane]

I've got plenty, but I only have time to mention one right now.

Item: Suikoden 1

What it caused: Well, I played this when it first came out in 1997. I personally DID NOT like rpgs. I didn't know what other people saw in them, as they were boring. Then, I was at Blockbuster one day and saw this game. I had a look at the back and read the story. It sounded neat and interesting. BUT, it was an rpg. I decided "what the heck?" and rented it. I now own all Suikoden games and still play the first two all the time. And, I am now way more open about rpgs, and all video games in general. I will at least give different types of games a chance now, even if it doesn't sound that interesting, I will at least try new things now.

[YoshiM]

Trigger: Atari 5200 4 port system
What it caused: me to start collecting older video games. I never really saw and definitely never played on a 5200 before. Saw a boxed system at a new game store for $10. It didn't have the TV switch/power supply so I set it aside. Curious on what else was out there along with a new interest in history of my hobby, I started collecting what older systems I could find.

Trigger: Wing Commander article in VG&CE
What it caused: me to want to upgrade my PC. I sold my CoCo 3 and peripherals for money towards an IBM PC Compatible 8088 10 MHz machine that came with an amber monitor and CGA/Hercules graphics (640K RAM and a 20 MB hard drive for $5000: yippee!). I read the article in VG&CE on Wing Commander and my jaw dropped. So about $150 more and a VGA card with monitor later and my 8088 could do 256 color VGA graphics. It was the first time I ever opened up a computer to work on it and probably was the primary catalyst to get me into the field I'm in today.

Trigger: Doom shareware version
What it caused: me to REPLACE my PC. I downloaded Doom on my girlfriend's computer from Prodigy. She had a 486 SX/33 and I still had my 8088. I was blown away and I think I burned a number of hours on it. Feeling bad I figured I should get a new computer so I could at least learn what's in the current market (as I just started in the electronics department at Wal-Mart), like this Windows thing I heard about (yeah right-I was a DOS man and I hated Windows). I bought a 386 EXTREME bare bones from some company from Processor magazine but I learned my first lesson: the parts from my 8088 were too old to work with this machine. I sold it to a buddy at a loss.

Not too long later I got a credit card at Sears when I needed to get tires for my car. The tires took up half the credit I got. I wandered the store and saw they had a 486 SX 25 for $250. I couldn't resist and I maxed my card. I had a good talking to from my Dad ("Why'd you spend all that money", etc) and at the third time of saying "It was a 486. Complete. For $250." his gears switched and he asked if there was one left :D .

Trigger: Elder Scrolls Morrowind and the Type S controller
What it caused: buy an Xbox. Funny thing is, I never got around to buying Morrowind for the Xbox. Got it on PC instead.

[djbeatmongrel]

Trigger: Buying my gamecube w/ luigi's mansion and super mario sunshine.
This basically started my collecting bug. It was the first time i realized I can (at age 16) buy games for myself. Granted i kept all my other stuff i owned till then but this was also the first time i own two current systems at once.

Trigger: Guilty Gear X
This was the first 2d fighter i was naturally good at. It started my obsession with collecting 2d fighters. specifically collecting all guilty gear releases (and i have done so with all US releases).

Trigger: Brief blurb about the wonderswan in Gameinformer.
At the time i still didnt own a gba (like 2003-2004ish) and there was a mention of bandai stopping production on a system i had never heard of at the time. I did what research i could and decided it was the route for me. So here i am working on a complete wonderswan and wonderswan color collection.

[Pantechnicon]

Mine was a double-action trigger:
(The hammer pulls back) - 1988: Without my consent, my parents sell my Atari 2600 and stack of around 30 games at a garage sale while I'm in Marine Corps boot camp. I really want another one, but my enlisted military lifestyle makes owning one an impractical pursuit for several years. The desire, however, remain intact until...
(The hammer strikes the firing pin) - 1995: My new wife and I move into an apartment building located next to the largest Goodwill in town. She goes to check the place out and comes back to inform me that they had "lots of that Atari stuff you're always talking about...really cheap, too."

Hence, my need to right with a vengeance the horrible wrong what my ma and pa done me back in 1988 has become something of a lifestyle now.

[Juganawt]

Item: ZX Spectrum 48k given to me at 3 years old (1983)
Caused me to: become extremely interested in videogames. While I couldn't fully understand how to play many of the games, I was fixated on the TV that could actually respond to me hammering on a button and make pretty sounds and colours. I'm one of those people who can literally say "I Grew up with videogames", as they've been around me for as long as I can remember, and are a huge part of my childhood, and are still just as important in my life now.

Item: Commodore Amiga 500 given to me as a Christmas present in 1985
Caused me to: turn my interest in videogames into Complete, utter, obsession. I was old enough to understand how to load my own games, how to decipher the rules, and how to play...and that with practice, you can really be good at them. To think, if it wasn't for Amiga, I might have been a doctor or a lawyer something instead of a videogame nut. Dodged that bullet!

Item: Brother's imported Japanese Sega Megadrive with Altered Beast (1989)
Caused me to: Realise that Amiga wasn't the only machine out there, and that consoles were brilliant too. This was the first time I owned more than one system at any one period, so I guess this was the start of my collecting.


Item: Street Fighter II (1992)
Caused me to: get hooked on fighting games, eventually collecting every single fighter across all systems. I studied them, saw what worked, and what didn't, and swore that one day I'd make the perfect fighting game.

Item: Virtua Fighter - Saturn (1994)
Caused me to: Realise 3D was the future, and that no other fighting game would ever be as good as VF. Also realised that I didn't need to make the perfect fighting game anymore, as Sega beat me to it. VF was the first series of games I really wanted to "master", so I could show off my skill in tournaments...which until VF came out I had never even known about. Videogame fighting tournaments? I signed up. I still sign up for every UK VF tournie, and I'm STILL trying to master the series. VF started a dream of being a professional gamer.

Item: Playstation (1995)
Caused me to: modify all my consoles after seeing some of the great games in Japan that never made it to the UK. Playstation started my interest in importing games, and was also the first time I ever used a soldering iron, which it turns out I'm rather apt at using.

Items: Carmageddon, Quake II, Dungeon Keeper, first ever job (1997)
Caused me to: Invest in my first ever Windows PC with my first ever paycheck. I bought a 166mhz system (overclocked to a whopping 200mhz) with 256mb or ram just to play Carmageddon, Quake II, and Dungeon Keeper. This took me back almost full circle, to being a computer gamer instead of a console gamer... which leads me to

Item: AOL (1997)
Caused me to: Get online for the very first time, and discover the wonders of the internet...and emulation. AOL was crap, but it definitely was my introduction to forums, downloading, emulation, and playing online.

Item: Japanese Sega Dreamcast (1998)
Caused me to: Balance from PC Gamer only, into a rounded PC Gamer & Console gamer. Also Dreamcast was the first console I ever had a complete collection for. I guess this one really instigated my "gotta get 'em all" mentality. Also, DC re-affirmed my affinity for online play.

Item: Xbox 360 (2005)
Caused me to: Realise that being a Pro Gamer could be reality instead of just a dream, with online competitions and online leaderboards that show just how good you are compared to the competition. Xbox 360 turned the jaded gamer that only collected games into a happy gamer that not only collects games, but strives to play, enjoy, and become proficient at each and every one of them, so that maybe, one day, gaming could not only be my passion, but be my job too.

I think that pretty much sums up why I am like I am.