Hello there, I'm luffy744 (a screen name, obviously, since my mother was considerate enough to not put numbers in my real name). I'm 22, live in California, USA, and I'm a gaming addict.

It started in late '87, when we were visiting my aunt and uncle, and guess what my uncle brought home one day? A brand spanking new Nintendo Entertainment System along with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt (and back then, they even gave you *2* controllers, along with the game, when you bought a new game system). When my turn came up, I promptly ran straight, right into the first goomba. My first video game experience lasted all of 3 seconds, but that was enough to hook me (at 4 years old, it took me about 8 trys to get past that first goomba!). The following year would be spent begging and pleading for a Nintendo of my own (since this uncle lived hours away, playing his wasn't an option) and going over friends houses to play their systems. Then, Christmas 1988, what does Santa bring me? A Nintendo, Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (I loved that movie). 17 years later, and that is still the best Christmas ever.

Later on I would go on to get a Super Nintendo at launch (Not exactly sure how mom payed for that one...), but ended up returning it when I beat Mario World in a week (it didn't occur to me that I skipped over about 60 levels of gameplay goodness) and used the money on more NES goodness. But then about a year later I believe, Street Fighter 2 came out, and I ended up with another SNES, and made the horrendous mistake of SELLING MY NES AND ROUGHLY 25 GAMES TO FUND IT. I'm still kicking myself, though I ended up rebuying a NES years later.

So yeah, for the first chunk of my gaming life, I was a Nintendo fanboy (it's hard not to be when you start out with the big N at 4 years old). I eventually branched out with the Sega Genesis and Sony Playstation, but no one could touch the holy Nintendo in my mind.

Flash forward to the present, and I don't have a favorite company, thought these days I really wonder why I never saw the brilliance of Sega back in their Genesis days (too busy with Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong Country and Chrono Trigger I suppose, so the time wasn't exactly wasted! )

Today I own 16 different consoles/handheld systems including PS2/GC/Xbox and roughly 300 games. My current plan is to reduce that to maybe 250 (get rid of crap/mediocre games) and begin my serious collecting of Sega Saturn, Neo Geo AES (I think I hear my wallet scratching at the door, attempting to escape ) and PC Engine, because those are the ones whose game libraries most interest me at this point.

And for my own quirky mini-collection, I've set out to get a copy of every single Super Robot Taisen (a looooong running series of Japanese strategy rpgs that take the characters and robots from dozens of different anime and squish them all into a single game universe) game. This game collection spans about 10 different systems/handhelds, though I have all of them aside from the Wonderswan, so that's not a big hurdle for me. Plus, there's no big hurry on this mini-collection, since I intend on playing each of them, and each one takes me roughtly 25-100 hours to get through (plus add on the hours of anime watching to get the most out of each game!).

And I'll stop talking for now, as I'm sure most of you were ing half way through this post.