These are the games that made a dent in my life and why. They're ordered by when I was introduced to them. 1. Sonic the Hedgehog was the very first video game I actually "owned". My parents were pretty against me playing video games...but my dad won a Sega Genesis at work. And thus I was able to play video games at home (for a very limited time each day). I was mesmerized. Looking back, this might have been the first real spark that went off. 2. I had just started skateboarding around the time Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out. I didn't have a console that supported the game at the time, but I'd play it on PlayStation at my friend's house (and then later on another's N64). I was so in love with skateboarding and couldn't believe how this game made me feel – and I felt like I was getting better at skateboarding because of it. Ultimately I saved up my paper route money and bought an N64 and was able to play it on my own. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was legitimately my first real experience listening to "my own" music and being able to play songs from my own "collection". THPS is responsible for getting me into music and to start building a CD collection of my own outside of games. Was pretty surreal seeing Goldfinger in Toronto recently and them having THPS visuals up on stage when they played Superman. Really took me back! THPS also ended up inspiring a bunch of things in some of the games we've made. 3. Super Mario 64 was (and still is) hands down THE most impactful video game on my life. I still remember the exact moment I collected the 120th star. I replayed the game (for the first time) in 2021 on my Switch while recovering from shoulder surgery and I was quite surprised how I'd walk into a room and hear the music in my head before it played – but I could never have described it or known it until the moment just before. It was like walking into my childhood. While it wasn't the first Mario game I played (or even the first N64 game), it's the one I still think about all the time, even to this day. 4. Goldeneye was my first real multiplayer experience in video games – or at least the first one that really made an impact on me. A whole bunch of us would play at each others houses and there was even one friend in the neighborhood who'd go from house-to-house to unlock the most difficult of cheats (Facility I'm looking at you). I loved the single player campaign too. This game also sparked a sense of wanting to travel and see the world (and it of course got me into the Bond movies). 5. At first, Halo was just a single player game (which I absolutely adored). I remember getting lost in the campaign mode and even playing co-op with a friend from school. We then started playing multiplayer rounds in my parents' living room...but then one day, Jordan (my best friend and business partner to this day) and I figured out that we could connect my Xbox (which I had bought with money I made working at Wendy's) to my parent's PC via System Link to a PC using LAN tunneling software to play online! We couldn't believe it! We were playing online multiplayer with strangers! We played countless matches of Capture The Flag through the beautiful landscapes of Blood Gulch. We were pretty good. 6. At some point my gaming seemed to transition from console to PC – though it was only to play one game: Counter-Strike 1.6. I can't even begin to tally up how many hours I must have spent playing this with my friends over the course of a few years. This primarily took place during high school weeknights from 9 or 10pm all the way until the wee hours of the morning...sometimes until 6am or until I had to leave the house for school. A couple times my friends actually lugged their PC towers and monitors over to my place and we setup a little LAN cafe in my parents' basement. This was my first experience with a more in-depth multiplayer game (thinking about strategy more like an adult vs. run-and-gunning in Goldeneye) and the first game I played online with friends where we used voice chat (Ventrilo). When I think back to high school, this is one of my fondest memories. A few of us even got together in Toronto last summer to play a bit of CS at a LAN cafe. I couldn't believe how rusty I was. 7. At some point I realized that video games were a big waste of time and that if I wanted to make something of myself I better quit. And so I stopped playing video games cold turkey. It wasn't until I was a year or two into my career at Marketcircle (a Mac software company) that I decided to buy myself a PS3. But it was only so that I could play Gran Turismo. I convinced myself that I was only buying a PlayStation so that I could improve my driving skills (I still standby this). At the time there was a new one coming out "soon". Polyphony Digital had released a Prologue to GT5, but not the full game. Anyways, after racing around for a while and seeing this expensive piece of hardware sitting in my room, I decided I may as well try out another video game since it had been a while. The first Uncharted game had come out recently and seemed to be all the rage, so I bought a copy. Very quickly I was completely engrossed with the game. I felt like I was taking part in a movie. Even my dad would walk into the room occasionally and find himself taking a seat just to watch. I since went on to play every Uncharted game and (The Last Of Us) and saw Naughty Dog as one of the few game makers that really painted the back of every cabinet. Uncharted is probably partially responsible for me wanting to go on adventures to faraway places in my real life. 8. Originally I was going to leave Gran Turismo off this list as I never really saw it as a video game (even though it's pretty good at being one). My first exposure to the series was on a previous version (probably GT4) at a friend's house who had a full steering wheel and pedal setup. We would take turns driving, while the other would kind of sit there and act as a bit of a coach, calling out tips and ideas for improving the other person's driving. Gran Turismo 5 (I guess the Prologue) was the first Gran Turismo game I owned myself (along with a Logitech steering wheel and pedal setup) that let me practice my driving until my heart was content. And it never was fully content, which is why I still spend hours every year honing my driving skills with Gran Turismo, albeit on GT7 now with an even better hardware setup. 9. While I never actually loved the moment-to-moment gameplay in Tiny Wings (I found it too hard and too particular – you had to be extremely precise at a certain point or you'd lose), this was the first video game I was ever exposed to that showed me that video games can be art. That doesn't mean any of the previous games I played weren't – I just hadn't considered them that way. Tiny Wings made me feel calm, relaxed and happy. I remember I'd sometimes just leave it open on its home screen to let the music play on my iPhone speaker while I worked. It completely transformed the way I looked at video games and ultimately helped inspire what went on to become Alto's Adventure. Okay, there's my summary (if you're still reading)! The funny thing is, I don't really consider myself much of a gamer. I don't think about video games ALL that much outside of work and don't spend a TON of time playing games in my spare time these days. I never grew up wanting to work in video games and never in a million years thought I would. But looking back and putting this list together, I realize that video games have had an enormous impact on who I've become and the lens I see the world through sometimes. I've also met a lot of cool people and had many experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. But this is not about that. What I will end on, is a HUGE, huge thank you to anyone who worked on any of these games or played any part in making them happen. You've truly made a dent in the universe – at least mine. – at Toronto, Ontario

Finished MIXTAPE by @bnd_studio last night. Wow, what a thing. All kinds of high school memories came rushing back to me as I played through. Some sad, some happy. Makes me want to hop on my skateboard and cruise around the neighbourhood with my friends and build a tree house. Glad @A_i helped bring this to the world. – at Toronto, Ontario