About Me (extended)

Hi folks! My name is Antonio Muñoz. I’m from Murcia, Spain.

I can visualize my whole life through names of videogames. I think the best way to know me a little bit better is to take a journey through all those games that are part of who I am. Let’s learn videogame history!

All started at my grandfather’s electronic shop. He was selling fridges, stereos, washing machines and so on. One day a strange black box appeared in the shop, it was the SEGA Master System with the pre-installed Alex Kidd. I couldn’t undestand what was going on at first, why was I being able to move the character in the TV? My mind literally exploded that day. Alex Kidd was made in 1987, the same year I was born.

Not much later I started playing floppy disc games in MS-DOS on my father’s computer. I still remember Commander Keen and Duke Nukem, such master pieces, but I was mainly a console player. I started to take computers more seriously the first time I played Monkey Island. It was like watching TV cartoons with the difference that the main characters did “whatever” I wanted. Everything was funny and enternaining, the animations, the dialogs, the puzzles. I will mention Day of the Tentacle too because it’s probably my favourite graphic adventure game.

Soon came Sonic the hedgehog, my chilhood favourite game. I have finished it at least fifty times or more, literally. Since Sonic I have a special attachment to platform games genre. For example, nowadays when I play Ori or Hollow Knight I still feel the same as when I was playing Sonic. I became a SEGA fan..

Then, my uncle started to bring computer games. Wolfenstein 3D was born. I was amazed seeing a 3D world, it felt so realistic! You can imagine the next game in this time line, DOOM. Omfg what was that!! It was like playing Wolfenstein but ten times better, all those monsters, the effects, everything was impresive. If I speak the truth…my parents never wanted me to play that game, and at my age I was a bit scared sometimes. Since then I have not been able to stop playing first person shooters. I officialy became a PC player.

It’s mandatory for me to talk about Quake. I still remember launching the LAN cable into the air through the window to play with my cousin that was living next to me. Being able to play cooperative with my cousin, killing monsters, was fucking amazing. That was the moment I discoverd what multiplayer was all about.

Then Age of Empires was installed at my uncle’s computer. I was used to go there on Sundays. At that time I had only played games where I controlled a single unit so I was pretty shocked moving an entire army! Mining resources, building defenses, researching upgrades..such depth! I remember convincing my father to letting me play more time by telling him that I was going to read the civilization’s history at the begining of each level (not happened). This was my first touch with RTS games. I’m not quite sure but I remember playing Diablo around that time too.

After that I ended up with a demo copy of Starcraft, just a couple of campaign missions, but I falled in love of that speed of gameplay. BEST RTS game ever made! Many years later, when Youtube was created, I found by luck a highlight video of Slayers_Boxer a South Korea Starcraft Starleague Terran player. That was the first time I heard about ESPORTS. I couldn’t believe those huge crowds of people cheering up for a videogame professional player. I began to mimic his strategies and build orders. My friends were no longer rivals. By the way, I continue playing competitive Starcraft 2 nowadays in case you want to play ^^.

Coming back, I started organizing my own LAN parties with small groups of friends because WHY NOT. My father had three computers at that time, he worked fixing cash machines for banks. My parents usually went to our beach house on weekends so I took advantage of the situation and invited my friends, most of times by secret with the corresponding cosecuences :S. Main roster: Half life, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Heroes of Might and Magic III and Quake.

Talking about Half life, cybercafés started to spread thanks to cheaper and better internet connections. A cyber opened in my town and I played Half life for the first time there. I had pretty good aim and I started to win a lot of matches. They organized a half life tournament and I won it haha, I got a lot of free hours because of that. Months later I realized that the game also had single player mode. Half life felt different from minute one thanks to it’s narrative. It wasn’t just killing enemies, it had an intriguing story behind it. My favourite FPS no doubt.

( long period of time forward )

Years later I was deciding about my university career. My family wanted me to study architecture but I wanted to make videogames so I decided to study Computer Science. I met a lot of my closest friends there, it was awesome to study with people with the same interests and hobbies. I remember when they discovered that I knew how to play Starcraft. A good friend organized a 2vs2 againts two of his friends from Madrid. We demolished them! We developed a strong relatioship around starcraft and video games in general since that moment <3.

Returning to Computer Science, years passed and I started to get a bit bored about university. Being a game developer became like a childhood dream, impossible to reach, more like being an astronaut you know. At that point a lot of my mates were finding a job. I started working as web developer, I knew I would like it because I did some money developing web pages with Flash and PHP when I was younger. I have spent approximately six years developing web servers with Java as well as SQL data bases for public administration. The problem was that every year some sort of crisis popt up, I felt a huge lack of motivation with the work I was doing. But I always had videogames development in the back of my mind. I saved money along those years waiting the moment to change, it came late but finally came.

Lately I have spent A LOT of time playing Sandbox Suvival games. Games like Ark Survival Evolved and The Long Dark. Misteriously I haven’t played Minecraft yet.

Now? I’m currently living in Madrid. I have attended a videogame programming master’s degree at Complutense University and I’m looking for a job as game programmer. It’s time to contribute to videogame industry, put my skills at its service and make other people feel the same way I have felt with all those games.

I hope you enjoyed the reading! :D