At last, I had found something that I was good at. I found something that gave me excitement when I came home from school and completed my homework. My interests in games expanded through a combination of what I read in Nintendo Power, and being able to rent one video game at local rental stores every weekend if I did well in school. The way my mind worked at the time was that if I was midly curious about something, I would rent it. If there was something I knew I absolutely wanted to play, I would wait until my birthday or Christmas to ask for it. By 1994, video games became my most dominant interest, even reaching a point where in my spare time, I would make my own video game magazines like Nintendo Power out of notebook paper, and three ring pocket holders. There was concern among my family that my investment in video games would be so great, it would distract me from other things, most importantly, my school work.
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On the contrary, video games helped me seek out new things to learn in school. Like the solar system. When Nintendo Power did an article on Mega Man 5, and revealed that each of the Robot Masters were named after planets in the solar system, I became curious about the planets themselves, and would check out every book on the planets at the school library to learn and read about them. This in turn increased my curiosity in Sailor Moon, which was airing in syndication at the time, which in turn increased my developing interest in anime, which further established myself as a geek. Like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, nearly everything and anything that I stood for or knew of could be rooted to my interest in video games very quickly. And Mega Man V was a huge example in how games can further amplify my education, as another developing interest of mine, anime.