My 25th anniversary...

Twenty-five-years-ago, December 1986, a couple of days after Christmas. I was 12-years-old and my Uncle Bob had sent me a $25 gift certificate for Toys R Us. I was rummaging the isles, at the Brookfield, Wisconsin store, looking for something really cool to go along with the gyroscope and the box of microscope slides I had already picked out. I was passing the "Clearance" bin and looked in hoping there was an out-of-print Atari game cartridge or some other bargain.

It was then I saw it.

The game that started me down the dark path.

One of the corners was crushed, but it was $8 and the Larry Elmore's cover art was sooooo cool. I had only heard of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but never played them before. My curiosity and love of all things science fiction got the better of me. I snatched it up right away.

Thus, my life as a gamer began, and I don't think it's going to end until I'm a corpse.