February 26, 2010 - At IGN, we're a lot of things. Nerds, douches, Achievement whores, over-raters, under-raters, and so much more, but at our core, we are gamers. Each and every one of us has a brain filled with cherished memories that revolve around our hobby. Unwrapping a Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas morning, beating Streets of Rage with a pal, desperately trying to get Lara Croft's nude code to work – you get the idea. Before all of us who lived the adventure drift into a senile state and forget, IGN thought it would assemble those stories in an ongoing feature called "Gamer Memories."

Here, an editor will walk you through one of his or her favorite memories involving a controller, some kind of dance pad, or (more generally) a memory that was a defining experience for the editor's time with games. On tap for this installment? Why, it's none other than Levi Buchanan, IGN's expert on all things retro, iPhone and beard-related.


BERJAYA
I do not subscribe to the adage that things happen for a reason. Things happen and how you react to them is what shapes you. How I got into videogames – and I mean into videogames – is a direct reaction to something well beyond my control: a birth defect that damn near killed me. When I was eight weeks old, my internal organs started to shut down due to a severe problem with a valve inside my heart. Surgeons were able to temporarily fix the defect by opening up this faulty valve, but as a result of both their caution and my own energy levels, I spent a lot of time inside. And when I did play outside, it was usually slower activities like playing in my sandbox.

As an "indoors" kid, I spent a lot of time reading and playing videogames. I was fortunate that in the late '70s, videogames were a family activity (much like they are again now after two decades of being pushed into niche audiences) and as such, my entire family played Atari 2600 together. One of my earliest memories is playing Warlords on the 2600 and my dad absolutely laying everybody else's fortress to waste until my mother quietly said something to him. Magically, my brother and I started doing a little better.

BERJAYA
Even as other members of my family peeled away from videogames, I stayed obsessed – and that has not waned one iota since Warlords. When the industry collapsed under the weight of some dreadful games disappointing that wider audience (E.T., Pac-Man), I remained a true believer. In addition to playing Atari 2600 and Colecovision, I also dove into the VIC-20 and Commodore 64. I dropped dozens of hours into Mail Order Monsters, thumbed the manuals of Imagic's Atari 2600 games until the pages ripped, and hung the cloth maps provided in early role-playing games.

But this isn't about drawing up lists of games played and consoles owned. The point is how the circumstances of my childhood drove me into videogames, how videogames were there for me at critical points in my life, and how my love for gaming has shaped who I am now.

Wait. Now how have videogames been there for me? In 1988, I was exhausted. I was tired all of the time. My yearly heart clinic revealed that following a growth spurt, the defective valve did not keep up with the rest of my body. One of the three flaps in a valve that pumped blood to an upper chamber of the heart was unable to close, allowing blood to trickle back down into a lower chamber. Over time, this blood was enlarging the heart and dangerously close to causing permanent and potentially catastrophic damage. And so I had to return to the hospital for valve replacement surgery. Obviously, it was a success. I still have that same valve in my body right now.

Following the valve replacement surgery, I had to spend two weeks in the hospital for monitored recovery. I have no idea what I would have done without the children's ward's NES and a copy of Super Mario Bros. 2. Unable to get up and move around, I was able to escape into Mario's dream world. It made that hospital stay tolerable. Not only did nurses regularly wheel the NES into my room, but I was also given an issue of Nintendo Power to flip through. (I still have that issue of Nintendo Power with the clay scene from Super Mario Bros. 2 on the cover in a box. It remains a personal treasure.) I cannot possibly express to you what Super Mario Bros. 2 means to me because of that hospital stay. It was there for me when I desperately needed that comfort and escape.

From when my mother patiently hunted down SEGA of America's headquarters.
From when my mother patiently hunted down SEGA of America's headquarters.
This only strengthened my appreciation for videogames. These are not time-wasters. In the right circumstances, they are essential. They are incredible pieces of entertainment. Videogames fire the imagination – they certainly did in my situation. In addition to videogames and film, I have another great passion: writing. In my free time, I (attempt to) write scripts and books. This interest was stoked by videogames. When I was a kid, I wrote manuals for imaginary videogames. I drew little screenshots with blocky sprites. It was a lot of fun, and I still have some of them. But then I discovered Alex Kidd in Miracle World for the SEGA Master System. It changed my life. Seriously.

Writing a fake manual for an Alex Kidd sequel wasn't enough for me. I started writing a side story for Alex Kidd – basically, fan fiction. My story wasn't that great, but the process of writing was so enjoyable that I kept writing. And I've been writing for the last two decades, both professionally and personally. That's because of a videogame, something that is supposed to be a time sink or an unnecessary distraction. If, one day, I am ever so fortunate to sell a script or a book, I will owe it all to that one videogame and a family that saw how videogames affected me, embraced it, and supported me.

What are your favorite Gamer Memories? Tell us your story in the comments below.