As I've mentioned in my introductory post (which you can find here), I am a very big fan of gaming. One of the first games I've started playing around when I was 14 years old is StarCraft.
I first started skipping school and went to an internet cafe that was running very old PC's, with Ms DOS, but then I discovered Millennium Internet Cafe.
This new internet cafe was hosting tournaments for Quake 2 and StarCraft. Youngsters from all around flocked to the cafe to see their favorite players compete in what started with an 8-player free-for-all and ended in a 1 vs 1 showdown. All the players that lost plus all the people that were only watching gathered up behind the players that were still in the tournament, and it was a common sight for 20 people to be behind a player in the final 1 vs 1 deathmatch. E-sports extravaganza!
Prizes were diverse, starting with a 10 hour subscription to said cafe, which was far more flexible than purchasing time by the hour. You could stay as much as you wanted, and time was counted by the minute, not by the hour. But I digress.
Back then, I mostly played shooters, like DOOM, Quake and the likes. I also played a bit of WarCraft and Dune 2, but I didn't really get into them at first. In Millennium, I started playing Quake 2, participated in deathmatch tournaments and really got into gaming. But a special little game caught my eye. It was nothing like the games I was used to. Instead of fragging each other over and over until the frag limit was hit, it resembled WarCraft, as in it was a Real Time Strategy game.
I knew RTS's because of WarCraft and Dune 2, but this was something else. Vivid colors, fast paced action, and a variety of units from three different races.
I rented the CD and started playing the first missions with the Terrans. The intro was amazing at the time, and then the story began. And what an awesome story it was! It had everything that one could wish for in a story: action, drama, betrayal, sacrifice, and so much more. At that time, after playing it for months, in my eyes, it was worthy of a book. And what a book it was!
I can't count the times I replayed the single player missions, every time better and better, until I finally was familiar enough with all the units in the game. My favorite moment in the whole game was when Tassadar sacrificed himself to defeat the greatest evil, the Overmind - in spite of being attacked and judged harshly by all - in the end he was right, and he sacrificed himself to save the Universe.
He was my hero (hence my username), and I started using this nickname/username ever since, with slight variations because of availability.
I continued to play StarCraft, through Brood War, then finally StarCraft 2 with all three episodes, and continued to enjoy and take in all the storytelling Blizzard did. I play StarCraft to this day, the original -which was remastered - and StarCraft 2 as well.
Even though I am not a competitive player, I still continue to enjoy every moment spent in that game, which has impacted my gaming life in so many ways. And I encourage anyone who hasn't played it to try it out, starting with the original title, and continuing chronologically in the order they were released.
May we meet in the battlefields of Aiur everyone!
En Taro Adun!