My mom wasn't big into games, maybe a computer game every now and then. She was more into actual gambling. That said, she might be the single greatest Virtua Cop player who ever lived. I wish I'd had the means to record her playing it because it was unreal. But that was it for her. My dad, however...
My dad had a Coleco Telstar Arcade prior to having a 2600, and he played pretty regularly throughout his life. I was born around the same time the 2600 released, so games have always been a constant in my life, and having someone who was older that was also interested in it, helped make it more fun. We'd play a lot of Commodore 64 stuff together, and then later the Sega Genesis. Around the time of the Saturn/PS1 era, we branched off in our own ways. He was way into anything with a samurai in it, and he liked driving and golf games. I got him a PS1 in either 98 or 99 and he played a ton of Gran Turismo, and the PS1 wound up having the game that I would guess you could say was his favorite, Rising Zan. He wasn't generally into wacky stuff, but man he loved that game, and would always ask if there was going to be a sequel.
When the PS2 was coming out, we'd both preordered and prepaid, but gamestop said you still had to camp out for it. So I did, waiting for about 14 hours in line. My dad rolls up at around noon, and he saw a guy filling out job applications... so my dad paid the guy $10/hr to wait until he came back later, and wound up being about 20th in line as a result. He played so much PS2 that he eventually wore it out and had to replace it with a slim. He also had a launch good 60gb PS3, the PS4 and PS4 pro, and was debating a PS5 not long before he passed away. One of the last times we talked games, he mentioned how tough it was getting to find PS4 stuff at retail, and he wasn't sure what to play next, but felt good about milking every bit of fun out of the Mad Max game he paid $4.99 for.
He had a GBA SP that he used to carry in his work car, in case he had time between appointments or arrived early. I found it right before I moved in march and gave it to him along with his games, but the battery was shot. So he had ordered one and replaced it, but the screen would only display one row of pixel. I thought it might just be dusty/dirty inside and need some sort of cleaning, but he died before either of us could give it a onceover. When I get back to CA, I'm going to see if I can repair it, even if he won't get to use it now.
He liked having fun, and I'm glad he did. I always looked at games as an escape and a way to do so but not just sit and watch a thing, and could use it as a way to gauge how good he felt. When he got through chemo, I knew he felt good again when I'd see him playing an open world game. When he felt bad, they'd make him motion sick. He'd randomly text me like, "come downstairs and see this" and he'd be stuck on a thing, but we'd figure it out. Sometimes I got it right away, other times he'd spot what he didn't see before, because he didn't have to focus on the actual playing. It was cool. I'm going to miss all of that. Well, not going to. I miss it already.
eventually tho, my mom got pissed at him for always staying up to play until 3AM and he moved the PC to the living room and stopped playing, and while I was still allowed to play, he was always a bit anti-gaming from that point on. Although later he got me a PS2, which I absolutely loved, and made most of my gaming tastes to this day.
As for my mother, she had a playstation that she bought for her little sister back in the day, but sinceher sister wasn't intersted in it, she kept it. She told me that she enjoyed dino crisis and final fantasy VII. We had a lots of games,my sister played Creaturesa lot, and for my brother it was FFVII and FFVIII. We also played Rivals Schools and Bloody Roar together. I miss these times. (Sorry for bad english, I live in France)
