About Me

 My name is Captain Natalie. I was born in that strange sliver of time between Generation X and Millennials. The last wave of kids who still grew up before the internet took over everything.

I remember when going outside actually meant something. When pinball machines were still in bars, black and white TVs would cut to static around midnight with that loud hiss, and you had to be home when the street lights came on. I grew up during the tail end of the bit wars, back when radios were still a household staple, books were how you learned things, and “in color” was still advertised at the start of some TV shows.

The first thing I remember is watching my father play ColecoVision when I was two years old. That spark never went away. Before the internet existed for regular people, I was already bringing games to my friends and teaching myself how electronics worked. I was fascinated by technology even when most people weren’t paying attention yet.

I grew up with Zenith TVs that made that loud, ugly clunk every time you turned the dial; like someone just got shot in the living room. I had an RCA SelectaVision CED player that sounded like it was chewing on the movie, with these heavy mechanical clunks and grinding noises every time it loaded a disc. I learned how to clean Nintendo cartridges with alcohol, q-tips, and a good set of lungs long before YouTube existed. I was there before DVDs, before CDs were normal, when people still required typewriter classes to get jobs, and when VCRs were still something people bragged about owning.

I went to a strict Christian school that somehow managed to push people away from faith more than toward it. I graduated with near-perfect grades, aced English 101 and 102 in college, and went through several trade programs that mostly just gave me certificates to hang on the wall.

Once the internet became publicly available, I used it to share my love of games with other people. I still remember stacking books on a chair to film short videos because that was the only way to get the camera high enough, then waiting hours for a three-minute video to upload on pre-YouTube sites while listening to that awful dial-up screech in the background. Eventually those videos got longer, platforms improved, and streaming became what it is today.

I married my childhood best friend and we’ve been together ever since. We raised a family while I continued sharing games in whatever way helped people; whether that was making them laugh, giving them an escape, or just being someone to talk to. That’s something I’ve done for years and still do.

I’ve lived through a lot of technological change. I was there when it was all still new and loud and questionable, and I’ve watched it become something most people can’t imagine living without. I go into detail about the old days because I want people to understand what the world actually sounded and felt like before everything went quiet and smooth.