During my high school and early college days I was a gamer. By the time I hit my gaming stride at 14 years old I'd already maimed my hands on the NES Rectangle of Pain, ruined my eyes by staring, too close and unblinking, at myriad TV screens and gotten intimidatingly good at Street Fighter 2. After a middle school spent transitioning into computer geekdom - assembling boxes from parts and getting my first taste of online multiplayer through Doom II and Duke Nukem 3D - I entered high school as a Computer Gamer. I'd taken One More Turn a million times in Civilization 2, racked up a Flawless Victory in Red Alert and co-founded one of the more skilled and successful Jedi Knight clans on the MSN Gaming Zone.
And then, in the summer of 1998 at a computer show at a nondescript Hilton Hotel, I found StarCraft.
