The year was 1995. It was the year of classic kitschy films like Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers, Batman Forever, or even more serious films such as Se7en, 12 Monkeys, and The Usual Suspects. Simultaneously, you had the release of games such as Chrono Trigger, Mortal Kombat 3, Phantasmagoria, Command & Conquer, Twisted Metal, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, King's Field II (localized States-side as just King's Field), and even the ever-loved The Ultimate Doom which first introduced the fourth and final episode of the game "Thy Flesh Consumed."
And that same year, near the very beginning of it, I was born.
Largely isolated in my upbringing with no nearby friends and no siblings, mine was a childhood dominated by video games and VHS. My early memories are filled with time spent playing Pac-Man and Space Invaders on my father's Atari 5200, which was eventually replaced by a hand-me-down Sega Genesis. If I wasn't doing that, I was either typing out small snippets of HTML on the family computer (a beige-colored PC running Windows '95) or I was rummaging through my father's collection of movies on VHS. Any other influence over my interests came from my older cousins who I saw on a semi-regular basis -- I can still remember sitting in a dark room watching my cousin play Final Fantasy 8.
As I got older, even as I entered the era of Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 and DVD, I retained my love and appreciation for the things that came before. Even now, as I find myself slowly but surely approaching my 30s and taking on all of the burden to mind, body, and soul that comes with age, I return regularly to these older things and feel myself enveloped in that old but comfortable feeling. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, of course, but the appreciation that's there is beyond nostalgic. They really just don't make shit like they used to.
Of course these days I have some pretty good friends to help get by, and that makes a big difference.