Game History timeline.

Some of my earliest memories are of playing various Poker and Poker-like card games with my family, namely my parents and grandmothers. My grandmother on my mother's side taught me how to play card games of this nature when I was young, and one the last things we did together before she died was to play for pennies.
Poker is largely believed to have been invented in New Orleans, but historians believe it may date back to China or even Persia.
https://bit.ly/433M39B
Picture also from above link.

Pokemon Yellow was the first video game I ever played, borrowing my neighbour's copy and falling in love with it. I nagged my parents until I got a copy of Pokemon Gold a few years later.
Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition (Japanese: ポケットモンスター　ピカチュウ Pocket Monsters Pikachu), often known as Pokémon Yellow Version, is the third Pokémon game for Game Boy released worldwide, as a solitary version of Pokémon Red and Blue Versions.
https://bit.ly/3ImNoOZ
Picture from above link.

My brother taught me to play D&D, 3.5 edition. The game helped with my maths and problem-solving skills, and gave me a way to be creative with less anxiety. I still play and run D&D and am working on a business around making miniatures D&D and other TTRPGs.
Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
https://bit.ly/48HsKDU
Photo by me of a character that I painted for myself.

The brother that taught me D&D introduced me to Magic: The Gathering, a game that, over the years, has helped me be part of a good community and helped me learn to talk to strangers a little easier than I used to.
Richard Garfield created Magic: The Gathering, which is considered to be the first collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993 and its success spawned many imitations.
https://bit.ly/3TltZV0
Photo is a selection of cards that are important to me and art cards from MTG.

Pokemon Diamond was the first game that I ever bought and paid for myself. It gave me a large confidence boost and I feel that it let me really start looking into other games for my Nintendo DS.
Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl are Nintendo DS games that are the first core series Pokémon games of Generation IV. The games were released in Japan on September 28, 2006, in Australia on June 21, 2007. They take place in the Sinnoh region
https://bit.ly/3SZCh3G
Photo of my copy of Pokemon Diamond.

As a teenager, one of my friends that was very into games that were more "grown-up" than Pokemon introduced me to Oblivion. It felt like a one-player version of D&D at the time and I loved it. This made me interested in other console systems and games outside of Nintendo.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an open-world action role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, and co-published by Bethesda Softworks, 2K Games and Ubisoft.
https://bit.ly/49Y3oCK
Image from Wikipedia.

I first tried Ark the Xbox gamepass, then on Steam in around 2020, I liked the idea but something kept throwing me off. Then I saw it was on sale on the Nintendo Switch and thought I'd give it another go. Something about the screen made it easier to play and I started to love the game so much, the open world and creative opportunities.
Ark: Survival Evolved (stylized as ARK) is a 2015 action-adventure survival video game developed by Studio Wildcard.
https://bit.ly/49BFSfj
Image from Wikipedia.

Poker and Other Gambling Card Games

Pokemon Yellow

D&D

Magic: The Gathering

Pokemon Diamond

Oblivion

Ark: Survival Evolved