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I can barely believe it when I think back on it, but I didn't touch video games from 2001 - 2006.

Just suffered from burnout I guess. I was a huge SNES fan back in the day (still am) and was obsessed with JRPGs (again, I still am). I remember when the N64 and Playstation came out in the late nineties. I hated them. The blocky graphics looked hideous and I thought it was ridiculous you had to stick a card into the PS1 to save games. I didn't know about the Sega Saturn, otherwise I probably would have dug Magic Knight Rayearth, Albert Odyssey, etc.

I kept playing SNES until I finished high school in '01. Decided not to take any consoles to college and completely fell out of touch with gaming in general. In 2006, my wife got me a Wii (totally unexpected) and I enjoyed it. At first I bought Wii games every now and then, but then something sparked inside of me and I started buying games/consoles like mad. In the span of a couple of years I've acquired a Master System, 3 Sega Genesises, 2 Saturns, a Dreamcast, 2 N64s, 2 Gamecubes, PS 1, 2, and 3, Xbox original and 360, TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine Duo, Atari 2600, 3 GameBoy Advances, 2 GameBoy Colors, NeoGeoPocket Color, PSP, GameGear, Sega CD, and about 380 games. I love collecting things so I'm having a lot of fun with this: going back and discovering all the games I missed.

Anyone else have a similar experience, or take a huge break from gaming only to get back into it (like a boss, in my case)?

My longest non-gaming streak was probably the 6 months of basic training/tech school back in my Army days.

From spring of 2007 to somewhere around 2010.

To make a long, intricate story short: When I moved out on my own, I did not bring any video games. Sometime in 2010 my fiancé, in a very supportive manner, encouraged me to get back into them a bit, saying I needed a hobby other than writing.

A few road trips, purchases, and general research later, I'm back into gaming a bit -- even if the only consoles I own anymore are my NES machines and the red Wii.

I feel like I've seen this thread before...

I don't think I ever took a full break from gaming, although plenty of times since childhood I've had to slow it down to the point where it must have seemed like a break.

I didn't own any consoles from like 2002-2007.

I have taken six month breaks. But never anything more than that. There was a time when I was working two full time jobs, a part time job, and two oncall jobs so I had no freetime whatsoever. The only thing I did in my downtime was sleep, play solitaire, or watch whatever the tvs at the hotel I was on call at were stuck on. I didnt even use a pc for most of that time.

noiseredux wrote:I didn't own any consoles from like 2002-2007.

heh. 2002-2007 for me as well. i always had my consoles and game collections back then but midway 2002 i got into a serious relationship during that span and she would hate it if i spend more times with my video games than with her. most of my video game collections was just left in dust and storage most of the time. when our relationship ended, i started to open that video game pandora box again and somewhere along in 2008 i found racketboy and the rest is history..

Back between 1990 and 1996 when I was a teenager I was the most hardcore gamer possible. Traveled to play Street Fighter in Cali, imported Saturn games when it started to suck. Had a TG-16 even though I knew it was fail. Simply loved games and played a ton!

I stopped playing completely between around 1998 and 2005. Packed up the collection and worked on being a touring musician 24/7. After traveling to Japan to play music between 2005 and 2007 a lot I couldn't help starting up again. Japanese gaming was something I had imagined from afar as a kid and seeing it up close made me want it!

The longest I've been without playing a video game? Probably 1 year in 1996-97 when I moved to St. Louis, and I couldn't bring my PAL Mega Drive with me . But then I bought a gameboy and I was set for portable life .

Though I did play some games every now and then at a friend's house or at an arcade, so I don't know maybe a few months if you count that as gaming .

And after that long break, my longest break was 6 days when I went on a trip and forgot my gameboy....really regretted that XD