In 1889 Nintendo was founded as a card company. In 2008, I was assigned a history assignment to make a timeline. A lot of things happened in between.

So why do I start with Nintendo? They began as a card company in 1889. My first console was a Nintendo Entertainment System. I didn’t get it when it was released (1985) but when the Play Station was released in 1995. I got a NES and a Super NES along with a bunch of games when my cousins upgraded. I never bought a game for either system but it was my first real exposure to games. So while Mario may have appeared on the scene in 1981, I didn’t meet him until 1995.

In 1946, Sony was founded. Sony was the manufacturer of the first console I obtained first-hand: the Playstation. Playstation was released in 1995 but following my late pattern, I got it when the N64 was released in 1996. Sony also made the first laptop I ever owned (a Vaio I got in 2004).

On the PS1 I got a game called Rebel Assault 2 (1995) which brings me to another set of important dates. The Star Wars franchise: Star Wars itself was released in 1977. It was important not just because of the impact it had on my life over the years but because it was a huge technological advance at the time. It was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.

In any case, the first Star Wars game, a game of The Empire Strikes Back, was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600. It was the first in a long line of games. However games that explored the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU; a transmedia expansion of the universe introduced in the films) really took off with Dark Forces (1995) a first person shooter introducing Kyle Katarn. The Dark Forces series eventually became the Jedi Knight series when Kyle Kartan starts training as a Jedi.

I have played more Star Wars games than games from any other series. The first game I played online was the multiplayer version of Jedi Knight 2 (2002). I got that game for my sixteenth birthday and shortly thereafter I learned about clans and a plethora of other social aspects of online gaming. I had been online since sixth grade but when I played JK2 online the world suddenly seemed much, much smaller.

I went with my clan to Star Wars Galaxies (2003). The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights back in 1991 however Ultima Online (1997) is credited with popularizing the genre. In any case, SWG was my first MMO. I played SWG for a year, immersing myself in it. I finally quit when I got to college in 2004. However, I had already learned how easily addicted I get to these insanely immersive worlds.

However I wouldn’t have gotten so immersed without the internet. So it’s rather important that I go over the internet.

In 1940, the first remote access computing demonstration occurred by Bell Telephone Laboratories by George Stibitz. Twenty years later, in 1960, AT&T introduces Dataphone, the first commercial modem. In 1969, ARPANET was created as the world’s first packet-switching network. In 1971, the first e-mail was sent. And in 1990, the World Wide Web was formed.

The internet didn’t just let me play games and get online. Learning HTML (2002) was my first real taste of anything remotely related to how code could be turned into screen creations. It was my first opportunity to bend a computer to my whim. Here was when I realized I loved using a computer to make things. This was when I got my first inkling of the desire to make games.

I got online in the sixth grade (1998) when my father invited my brother and I to create screen names on America Online. AOL had been available for Microsoft Windows 3.x since 1993. We had had computers and a cable internet connection in my house for as long as I can remember but looking back on it, my earliest memories of using a computer come from Windows 3.1 to play games like Tetris (originally released in 1985).

Oh, Windows 3.1. This was the first operating system I ever remember using. Created by Microsoft in 1992, its earliest predecessor was Windows 1.01 in 1985. After that I recall using Windows 95 (1995), Windows 98 (1998) and my very first personal computer (personal in that it was my very own) ran on Windows Me (2000). By this time I had gotten used to seeing computers in school but I was one of the earliest of my friends to get used to them at home. In the fifth grade (1997), while everyone else was doing presentations on poster board, I handed in a PowerPoint presentation.

In any case, my first computer was a pretty big milestone. It was a Compaq and had a meager 7 GB hard drive that I constantly had to delete things from because it was around that time that I got on Napster. Napster was released in 1999 and allowed me to download music and fill up my tiny hard drive. However it was short lived. Still, like many my age, I had already become used to the idea of finding whatever I needed on the internet rather than in stores.

Anyway, my first computer (2000) was important for another reason: it let me play games. I had previously played on my mother’s computer or, if he let me, my father’s. However, I was also kicked off whenever they needed to do work. So having my own let me play games like JK2 for hours on end.

I got a new computer in 2003 and this one had a bigger hard drive, could handle better games, and had a bigger hard drive. I was now downloading TV shows, music, and software. This machine ran on Windows XP and it was a home-built machine.

That same year I get an X-Box for Christmas. The Xbox was released in 2001 with the game halo but I wasn’t exposed to it right away. However I played it at my cousin’s house and fell in love. I needed an Xbox. So, two years after it came out, I had one. It was the last console I owned to this day.

So what happened after I took that web design class? Well I played more games and downloaded a little program called Bryce 5 (2001). I learned I had an interest in digital art. Well that sealed the deal. I liked games, and I liked using computers to create things. I dropped my dreams of becoming a stand up comic and, instead of taking AP chemistry or bio, I was the only girl to take AP Computer Science in 2004.

After graduating, I enroll in SUNY Stony Brook with every intension of taking computer science so I could learn game design. However, it wasn’t until 2006 that I took my first game design course and learned about the Torque Game Engine. Torque was released in 2001 by Garage Games (2000) and it was my chance to make games outside of toying with Visual Basic (which I took along side AP CS in ’04).

That same year, I started playing a new MMO, Guild Wars, which was released in 2005. I needed a new PC to play this and obtained my current machine which was capable of running a lot more games. I played Guild Wars until I arrived at RIT in 2008 where I gave into peer pressure and began to play the immensely popular World of Warcraft which had be released back in 2004.

In 2005, the seventh generation of game consoles was started with the release of the Xbox 360. It was followed by the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. I bought none of these consoles but played on both the Wii and the 360—in fact, playing on the 360 was a must if I wanted to finish the Halo saga.

I graduated from Stony Brook and started at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008. At RIT, I was given a timeline assignment which I am now finishing up.