When I turned 14 years old, my parents got a new PC. I already had an Apple ][, and I played games on it all the time, including RPGs. Shortly thereafter, my parents got me my first issue of any gaming magazine ever -- the December 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World, with The Elder Scrolls: Arena on the cover. I poured over Scorpia's article for months -- I had never seen a game this cool before. When the game finally came out, I picked it up immediately, and it was everything I had hoped. My love for RPGs, especially computer RPGs, started with that December 1993 issue of CGW.

My second favorite moment came up during the development of Morrowind. As the programmer responsible for the sky and weather, I was the first person to see it rain on Vvardenfell. Watching the clouds come in, the colors darken, and the rain start up -- the combination of awe at what I was working on and professional pride in my work made that moment very special for me.

I had just bought my first REAL home PC, and the first game I bought for it was Arena. I was sucked in for the few few days AND nights, skipping many of my classes and even work, just to play it. The paper doll aspect blew me away. I had to have the coolest gear known to man, and that was my ultimate mission in the game. One quest in particular I remember was having to go kill a troll for someone. The dungeon was a huge, crawling maze filled with some sort of flaming dog-like beast, and the troll was a nasty somebody to beat. My friends used to come over my house just to sit and watch me play cause they thought the game was amazing (let's face it, po' kids simply didn't have computers and cool games back in the day). Little did I know then, but the company that made that game that stole much of my life back then, would come to hire me 2 years later!

Deadliest Creature: Giant Spiders in Arena. When bitten by a spider you were paralyzed. When you were paralyzed in water you died. This combined with the fact that many dungeons contained a surplus of both water and spiders meant that even a high level character had to keep a close eye on their surroundings while adventuring.

Most Powerful Spell: Passwall in Arena. Having problems getting past some bad guys in one section of a dungeon? Continually getting lost in a maze? Unable to figure out the riddle on a door? No problem. Join the mages guild and do some leveling up until you can cast a Passwall spell, then remake the dungeon as you desire removing any offending walls from your path. Sure some of the later dungeons had 'special' walls you couldn't Passwall through (likely out of sheer frustration on the designers' part), but nothing beat the kick you got the first time you cast a spell and altered the geography of the dungeon.

I've been an Elder Scrolls fan since Arena, and in fact my college roommate and I were addicted to both Arena and Daggerfall. It's really easy for me to remember my favorite Elder Scrolls moment, because it really was one of the most memorable, significant gaming moments I've ever had. I had just installed Arena, and started up a new game. After wandering around the initial dungeon for awhile, I made it to the surface. That's when I just sat there in awe, not really sure what I was seeing was even possible. My roommate and girlfriend at the time (now my wife) were there with me, and they were equally amazed. There was my character, in a living, breathing city. A gentle snow was falling, people were milling about, that great MIDI music was playing...and the three of us were just teleported to this whole other world.

There are other memorable moments, of course. In Arena, I cruised around dungeons using the "Passwall" spell, which would actually destroy sections of wall and allow you to pass through them (you could essentially tunnel through nearly an entire dungeon...which, as Todd Howard has pointed out to me, was an absolute nightmare for the designers back then!). When Daggerfall came out, my trusty roommate (Brian Ciampa) and I spend about a half hour on the phone with Bethesda tech support, trying to get help with the HIMEM setting in the config.sys file to cut down on the load times when entering dungeons!

Okay, and to be completely honest, the one other really significant Elder Scrolls moment came on the day I first started working here at Bethesda. That was the realization of one of my dreams -- to go from Elder Scrolls gamer to Elder scrolls game designer. I can only hope that in the future I'll work with a new designer here at Bethesda who had the same experience I had -- this time, playing the stuff I helped design.