My Shelf

With GTA VI just around the corner, probably the most anticipated video game launch in history, I realize I have always been more of a tourist than a resident in this series. I have played fewer than half of its entries: the first one I tried was GTA III, but the first one I truly spent time with was Vice City.

Even so, my strongest memory is tied to San Andreas. I went to buy it on launch day with a classmate, and we ended up doing the classic move of stopping someone on the street so they could buy it for us, because the clerk would not sell it to us due to our age. After that came endless afternoons of playing and repeated days meeting at my friend’s house.

GTA IV caught me at a different stage and I ignored it completely. With GTA V, I did get that day-one ritual again, this time legally old enough, and I played it for days at the company office, on a PlayStation 3, with lots of people passing the controller around. Expansions, handheld versions, ports, and everything around the edges have always passed me by.

GTA is not in my personal top, but that does not make it any less important: Tetris and Minecraft are giants too, and I would not touch either of them with a ten-foot pole. I am not asking GTA VI for a life-changing revelation; if it is a game with absurdly high production values, that will already satisfy me.

And yes, I have it pre-ordered in a fake physical edition, code in a box, because I like having the case on the shelf. I would much rather it came with all its discs inside, of course, but for me that is a preference, not a requirement. The photo shows GTA V on PS4 because it was the first one I found; I do not keep that many GTA games around, since several of them were played at friends’ houses or digitally on PC.

I have a PlayStation on the shelf, but it is not mine in the classic sentimental sense: I never owned one back in the day. Still, I played it a lot. PlayStation was a console from other people’s houses, from afternoons in friends’ living rooms, and from long stretches when I managed to convince someone to lend me theirs.

I also inevitably connect it with piracy, although for me that story started earlier and was mostly a PC thing: before PlayStation exploded, I was already downloading and playing all kinds of games on my platform of choice.

What the console did have was a different ritual: whenever someone lent it to me, it came with several towers of pirated CDs, a kind of impossible-to-organize all-you-can-play buffet. I played a huge variety of games, and I absolutely destroyed some of them in terms of hours, especially the ISS Pro Evolution Soccer games, with the second one above all.

But if I have to choose the real before and after, I am not going to be original at all: Final Fantasy VII. That game marked me in a way that is still there today, and it will always be, without question, one of the best video games in history for me.

The photo shows the first Zelda games I ever owned. They were not the first ones I tried, but they were the first ones I completed from beginning to end with no help at all and without looking anything up anywhere.

At twelve years old, they were not easy for me, and that is exactly why they stayed with me: they were the games that turned me into an admirer of the series.

People often talk about system sellers, and for me Zelda is exactly that. As long as this series exists, Nintendo will always have a very effective way of making me buy its next machine.

Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons are nowhere near the best Zelda games. But they are mine. And because of pure affection, because of that exact moment when a series goes from something you like to something that stays with you, they are the ones with the most emotional value for me.

I have always leaned more toward Marvel, although I would not really call myself a fan of comics in general from either of the big two. What I do watch almost by default is everything connected to their cinematic universes.

When James Gunn, one of my favorite directors, arrived at DC, I decided to make an extra effort and look a little beyond the screen. One of the first great surprises was this comic: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which has already become one of my favorites in the genre.

And the movie? I do not share the widespread level of hate, but it was still a disappointment for me. Milly Alcock is magnificent; I already liked her a lot as an actress, I had seen all of her short filmography, and she always shines.

The problem is elsewhere. The movie is inspired by the comic’s story, but leaves out too many subplots, locations, and special moments, and the result is several orders of magnitude weaker than the original work. It also adds a new character who brings nothing to the table, and its villain is not up to the task, probably the worst part of the adaptation.

In this case, the comic absolutely crushes the movie. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.

My first console of many. Even though over the years I have always leaned more toward the PC Master Race, the NES was the first console I had at home as a kid, and I have huge respect for what it represents in video game history.

It also carries pure nostalgia for me: some of my first proper gaming sessions are tied to it. I mostly associate it with Super Mario Bros. 3, a game I played for countless hours without ever finishing it.

Since you could not save the game and my mother never let me leave the console turned on, every attempt meant starting again from the beginning and trying to get further than the previous time, faster and faster.

On my shelf I keep it with two controllers and three games: Super Mario Bros. 3, Popeye —terrible— and Ice Climber, which I also played a lot in co-op with my sister.

I own quite a few art books, but this one is special because Expedition 33 went straight to the very top of my gaming life.

The first trailer already caught my attention; by the second look, I was sure there was soul in it, something that feels increasingly rare in this industry. And when I finally played it… at last, something that made me feel.

As an art book, I especially like that it is not just a collection of beautiful images: it includes a lot of development material, with contributions from many different members of the team, and offers a real glimpse into the creative process behind one of those games that will define an era.

And yes, I am fully on board with calling it the best game of the decade. Maybe even that is underselling it.

There are probably not that many books about gaming, regardless of the angle, so I wanted to highlight this one more for what it represents than for its specific story.

Play Nice offers a look at the transformation of a purist Blizzard, a company where game creators were in charge, challenged each other, and kept trying to hook players again and again.

But it also shows how the ambition of the industry, corporate growth, and money slowly transformed that soul into what we have today, where absolutely nothing remains of those beginnings.

I have never considered myself a Blizzard fan, even though I have played many of their games; if I had to choose just one, I would not hesitate: StarCraft. I wish there were many more books about video game culture and the industry behind it.

I have been subscribed to the Spanish magazine GTM for years for several reasons. The first is to support a project where the editorial line is sustained by subscribers, not by advertising or by the industry itself.

The second is that, as a physical object, its materials and design quality are far above average. I also like that it does not focus only on current news and game criticism.

Its pages include opinion pieces, video game history, interviews with studios, and conversations with relevant figures, which makes it feel closer to a cultural publication than a simple magazine about new releases.

And even then, when it comes to reviews and criticism, I often do not agree with their perspective at all. Even so, I would recommend it to any lover of the video game industry.