October 28, 2011 4:27 AM EDT
First post on the new blog, seems like a fitting way to start...
I'm giving away my age here, but Arena came out the year before I graduated from university. At the time, my friends and I were all playing Doom as far as PC games went, thanks to the death-match capabilities. Otherwise, we played sports games on consoles like the Sega. In otherwords, we were more into multiplayer games. Arena was not even a blip on my radar, unfortunately.
I graduated from university and immediately (two weeks later) left everything and everyone I knew to move halfway around the world. That's another (and very long) story, but for the first few years in my new country of residence I did not have a computer of my own. When I finally did get my feet under me and get a computer, I started catching up on the games I had missed. Along the way I picked up Arena. I enjoyed it, but it didn't really blow me out of the water. To tell you the truth, I got far more involved in the Eye of the Beholder series. I never finished Arena, and the Elder Scrolls franchise failed to take root. As a result, I missed Daggerfall and Morrowind.
I don't remember exactly when I picked up Oblivion, but I do remember being back in the States visiting family, and I was walking around a computer/electronics shop when the Oblivion box caught my eye. I never made the connection with Arena, but the art and text on the box really pulled me in. I bought it and brought it back with me to install on my aging beast of a system. I had to use to the "Oldblivion" mod(?) just so I could run it on my old graphics card. Needless to say, graphics issues aside, I was hooked. The world was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen simply because it was all mine and I could do absolutely anything I wanted. I played through the entire game twice. Later, when I got a new system with a new graphics card, I reinstalled Oblibion and played it through again, this time the way it was meant to be seen. On that third playthrough I made it my goal to finish every quest in the game, visit every location--I succeeded.
So I guess I'm a relative newcomer to the series. Barring my brief experience with Arena, I've only been an Elder Scrolls player for the past few years. There's no going back for me now. It's onward and upward to Skyrim!