Comics Segue into Gaming

In my last Wednesday post, I referred to my first New England Comics catalog. After flipping through it again, I realized it not only explains a lot of my comics interests, it's probably responsible for getting me into gaming a little bit as well. Granted, many of the comics I found at my parents' house last weekend had ads for the Rifts role-playing game, but then I noticed that the catalog page pictured above calls it "Palladium's newest . . . (and) best-selling game!" I remember that being one of the first games I ever bought, and since that time I've bought nearly all the other games mentioned above. Just to break it down, my actual first game was TSR's Marvel Superheroes Basic Set, followed by the Swamp Thing Sourcebook for Mayfair's DC Heroes role-playing game (both pictured below). Both owe a lot to comic books. In fact, I'm sure no serious gamer has ever played either game. They were made with simple comic fans in mind. When a former roommate and my wife got me back into gaming in college, one of the first games I bought was a superhero system that was compatible with my wife's Sailor Moon adaptation, but mostly I bought it because it had a history of comic books in the preface (it was the Guardians of Order Silver Age Sentinels, pictured below).

Even my first Palladium game, before I got Rifts, was Heroes Unlimited and that was just so I could invent my own superheroes, and perhaps play out adventures that could then be translated to the comic page. Next I got Ninjas and Superspies (all these games are listed on the catalog pages above) to pad my Heroes Unlimited characters. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Down Under was still an extension of my comic book reading. Either Rifts or Robotech II: The Sentinels could be considered my first break from strictly comic-related games to serious adventuring. Continuing on the right page of the catalog above, I got the 4th edition of Shadowrun in college, along with 3rd edition GURPS in junior high and its version of Cyberpunk . I never got into Star Wars or Aliens gaming, but I did get into the role-playing version of Battletech, called Mechwarrior, at a Boy Scouts aquatics camp that I went to for a couple of summers. Last but definitely not least, I never played Dungeons and Dragons until after I learned the D20 system in college. I then waited until after the animated series was released on DVD (Christmas 2006) to go back and buy the 3.5 edition starter set of the game.