HOW CRIS GOT INTO VIDEO GAMES.

HOW CRIS GOT INTO VIDEO GAMES.

I grew up in a small town in southern Chile. Being surrounded by nature and amazing landscapes I mostly enjoyed my time playing outside, always imagining that I was some epic hero of those fantasy stories that amazed me so much by that time. Even though my father always encouraged me to do outdoors activities, I started getting more and more interested into that little black box in which I could experience these worlds that would go beyond imagination. 

Around 1989 my parents got an Atari 2600 as a present but never used it. I would play with it as a toy and I would look at the cartridges thinking what would be like to see them on a screen. 
One day, when I was about 6 years old an aunt brought her Original Nintendo to our house for a few days. That was my introduction to video game consoles, being Mario Bros 3, my first video game experience.

Years passed and while my friends at school would play Pokemon Red or Blue on their game boys color, my parents insisted that I should spend more time playing outside. But my fascination for the creativity and stories invested on these imaginary worlds kept me watching TV shows and movies most of my day aside from school.
Then my grandfather came to my house with a Windows computer as a present to be used for general tasks, homework, printing, etc. But guess what, it came along with two games, one of them was "The Magic School Bus".

So I started playing it and a couple of more games I got later, but eventually, I just got bored of them. 
So Grandpa came to the rescue again. He brought me to the big city close to my hometown and got me my very first console: The mighty original Play station. It came with "Omega Boost" and later on, the game that became my "Mario 64" in the case of many of my friends, "Spyro the Dragon 2: Ripto's Rage" which I would play with my best friend and his brother who would usually come and sleep over because I lived too far away in the countryside. We would spend the whole night eating Melted cheese and playing Spyro.

When I turned 12, Grandpa was there once again, we were at the beach spending our holidays and he took me by surprise and brought me to a store. This time it was the Nintendo Game cube Bundled with "Mario Sunshine". 
So there was this little tension between him and my father, who wanted me to stick to sports and not screens.
 A Year passed and for my next birthday I got "The legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time" and "Starfox Adventures". that's how I started discovering the awesome stories that could be told trough video games, which eventually made me develop an obsession for Role Playing Games. 

When I was old enough to start earning my own money, I started buying my own consoles and games. Nowadays I consider myself a little bit of a collector having mostly all consoles from the late 90's early 2000's, as well as many games for all these systems, mostly RPG's.
Generally, Japanese titles call my attention more than western games, with the depth they give to characters and worlds story lines, making the JRPG genre my very favorite. 
I like building my own computer rigs too, I've been doing it since 2011 to satisfy both my gamer and work needs.
I'm also a pretty decent Super Smash Bros Melee player.

I've been a gamer pretty much my whole life, and now this interactive form of art has become an important part of my life to the point that, eager to create and tell stories, I want to make it part of my career. 
When I see my parents, my dad still tells me to go back to the dojo instead of staying up all night long on my own Modded Minecraft server with my friends. But I have never stopped, and I don't think I ever will, playing video games.