PSN Community Spotlight – Brothers in Gaming

Brothers in Gaming

I always loved to play games. I remember the first one I played on my grandfather’s TV. It had a fun little game of tanks with the task of destroying each other. Every day my brother and I went to his room just to play, of course sometimes we couldn’t because he was watching something. Those were the moments that forced us to ask my father to get a TV with those games, as I didn’t know anything about consoles at that time.

Sometime later, a friend of my godmother had some personal problems and was allowed to stay in the house with us. As we helped him move we opened a box and found this thing called PlayStation (well, I pronounced that horribly at first because of my native language). I didn’t know what to make of that grey box with a fun-looking character (I would later know as Crash Bandicoot), so I decided to ask, “What is this thing?” He answered, “A game console.”

So it began, our first days as gamers. Since he was so nice he let us play with it all we wanted. The first real game we played was Final Fantasy 7. It was a really bad choice, not because of the game but because of our zero knowledge of the English language. Fire creatures were being healed by us as we cast fire against it, our party died slowly because they had been poisoned and we didn’t know what it was. Our first hours of gaming were best described as a total mess. Finally we were aided by the owner of the console. There was lot of trial and error because we had to see what the different attacks and potions did. This made me want to learn English, as it was the best way to be able to play this complex game. In the meantime we played Crash Bandicoot (which is what made me a fan of the system) and Spyro the Dragon.

From that day on I began to meet characters that I love nowadays. Sadly, the fun ended when the owner left the house. It was a bad day. My dad noticed the sorrow on our faces and acted. In two weeks we had a PlayStation of our own. It became a tradition to play it every night with my brother and my parents, even my grandfather joined sometimes. Later, our cousins joined too, and then they wanted a PlayStation.

Needless to say that when the PlayStation 2 came out we got it immediately thanks to my father. We enjoyed the sequels to those awesome games we played before even though some of them were made by other developers and now a little different. Later I learned about Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games. These two developers made me stay with Sony and they quickly convinced me that it was a good choice when the Uncharted and Resistance series arrived.

With the PS3 came the internet, so now I know much more about them and other developers out there. My favorite is Naughty Dog. Their music is one of the many things I love about them, hearing it inspired me to make music of my own, for fun for now. Even though it’s hard for me and my brother to buy games now that they are expensive, we try our best to join forces and get one that can entertain us for a long time. We also get help from my cousin in Canada who comes every year with at least three new games for us; other times… we can’t wait. Our search for games has become a problem too. Why? Because every single game on PS3 is exciting, challenging, has good music, and is fun. But not only that, I’m also able to relive those old classics that made me a fan of the system through the PlayStation Network store.

So, yes, I learned English just to play video games. People laugh when I tell them this, but what can I do, I learned English as I played with the PlayStation, an ability that I try to improve over time.