Your significant other, a gamer?

[ZetaX1]

Just curious, but are any of your significant others a gamer too?  Even just a casual one?

 

My wife had a 2600 as a kid, but didn't really play much else (maybe things like Tetris) until we got the Wii.  She digs the Wii Sports (I guess Nintendo had the right idea), but says anything with a lot of fast-moving 3-D makes her sick. 

 

What's your experience?

 

Mark

 

 

[Atarifever1]

My fiancee plays Gamecube and DS.  On Gamecube she only plays Mario Party games and Animal Crossing.  On the DS she plays Animal Crossing and Nintendo made platformers.   She finished nearly 100% of New Super Mario Bros., she's playing GBA Mario 2 and is about halfway through that, but mainly right now she's playing "Yoshi's Island DS".  She plays videogames pretty much everyday, so I'd say she's a gamer.

[Steerforth]

My wife is a least tolerant of video games. She'l play once in a while, but for no great length of time. The only issue is when she wants to buy "cute games" such as movie tie-in, Backyard Baseball etc, and I'm like "Er, yeah they look good, but their gonna to stink!" I hate spending money on crappy games, especially when you know she'll never real play 'em anyway. I'm a harsh old turd, I know.

[VideoGameCritic]

There's only one video game that my wife absolutely loves, and that's Centipede.  I have the full-sized arcade game, and she owns the top 3 scores (over 115k each).

She'll play Streets of Rage on occasion, but I suspect that's because we played it in our dating days.  Other than that, she'll play a console game if I plod her enough, but in general she's not interested.  At least she's tolerant, which is about all you can ask.

[Alienblue]

Hey VGC, my late sister's favorte coin-op in the 80's was Centipede. She taught ME how to play it. Seems lots of women liked that, which is weird since it was a shooter with BUGS!

My experience with my girlfreinds besides my ex-wife; only one was REALLY into games as much as me and she was Bi ( very long awkward story that!)...the others, seemed to only play with their kids, like my second GF played Genesis with her son (as did I).

My ex-wife was , if anything, more fanatical about games than I was. She played MAME, SNES and GBA everyday. I think I've said before, she grabbed 80% of my SNES collection, a dozen GBA games and my SUPERVISION and 4 handhelds when she left me > ... I still maintain a tenuous freindship with her and she now has a large DS collection. And a MUCH better PC! >

[feilong801]

As noted before, my pregnant wife has taken to watching me play Oblivion. She even tried it a bit herself.

 

She was a pretty involved gamer until the 3D era began. Actually, she was like me: once she began college, she became all about her major and stopped playing games. The only difference is that they sucked me back in after a few years without them, and they have yet to do that to her. She is the perfect example of the "lapsed gamer."

 

The recent Nintendo products (as everybody knows) has gotten her to do some sporadic gaming, mostly the re-released GBA Final Fantasies, GBA Fire Emblem, Tetris DS, and Brain Age. She'll play a few rounds of Wii sports.

 

-Rob

[JustLikeHeaven1]

Well I'm not married yet, but my girlfriend is what I would call a casual gamer.  She doesn't own any systems herself, but she doesn't mind playing games.  If its too complicated she pretty much gives up instantly.  Its funny because she once watched my roomate and I play Halo 2 for an hour and she wondered what the big deal was.  She couldn't understand why it was considered to be such a great game.  After trying it out she was less than impressed with it.

That being said, she is much more into the classics.  She loves the DS /GBA and constantly plays games like Feel the Magic, Metroid Prime Pinball, Mario etc...She also really likes fighting games like, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat.  Though she is known to throw down in Dead or Alive 3.

Every now and then we will sit down and play a beat em up like Streets of Rage or Golden Axe.  She really likes to play as Blaze from SoR.  She thinks its hilarious that this skank in a red dress can go around and beating the living crap out of all these thugs.

Oh, and it goes without saying that she loves the Wii.  Rayman Raving Rabbids, Wii Sports and Trauma Center are all games she actually asks to play.  She claims that beating people up in Wii Boxing relieves stress!

[Paul Campbell]

Normally my wife likes the simpler puzzle and Tetris style games.  She can whoop me at Mean Bean Machine and Dr. Mario, and she has most of the records on Brain Age.  She also loves simpler platformers, probably because she says her and her brother had a computer with one game, Commander Keen, and they played it nonstop.  Thus she really enjoys 2D Mario games, right up to New SMB.

She actually really enjoys watching me play alot of my more complex games, and has watched just about every moment that I have spent playing Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.  When she was pregnant she would play Wind Waker the whole time I was at work, exploring the oceans and pulling up treasured on the boat.  I'm glad she did it because I didn't have the patience to find them all.

[bluemonkey1]

My girlfriend was a gamer when she was a kid but has really got back into it since meeting me.  I think we need to separate the distinction between complicated games and games that are complicated to control in this discussion.

 

Anyway she prefers 2D titles in general, likes beat em ups like Streets of Rage, puzzle games, action titles like Metal Slug, really likes titles like Rayman and has a fondness for simulation games like Sim City and the Tycoon titles.  She prefers skill based games but does like action RPGs like the 2D Zeldas.

 

Interestingly enough she thinks the DS and Wii are pretty gimmicky and takes the mick out of the Wii in particular.  She also finds the whole simple games for girls idea incredibly patronising.

[ZetaX1]

Everyone's talking about their girlfriends/wives, which is cool, but are there any female visitors to the Video Game Critic's site and forums?  Ladies?

 

Mark