I remember a casual afternoon at my parents’ house when some of the family had come over to visit. They’ve got enough yard space for the kids to play and my mom enjoys entertaining family and friends. Some family were talking with one of my older cousins and someone had asked “What do you want to do for job?” or something like that. I was in middle school at the time so he was probably in high school . His response was “to make video games” and as he went on about his answer, a lightbulb that I didn’t even know existed popped into existence and lit up at the same time. My cousin is still talking but I’m only half-listening as a line of thought crawls through my brain. I didn’t know you could do that or rather I’d never thought about it. I was aware of game developer’s, Blizzard was a favorite then, but had never considered it from the level of the individual. So right then and there I’d decided I’d do the same. Starting in high school and on through College that was the plan. This was how I got into software development and eventually picked Computer Science as my college major. My sophomore year I heard about a local group called Hoosier Games. I joined them and was shown how little I knew about anything. Somehow I was able to find an Internship for the summer at a local Software and game devolopment studio called Plow Digital / Plow Games located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. It was there I was given a crash course in Unity3D and spent the next few months cranking out digital game guides (I worked on the Street Figther IV guide), mobile games, custom interactive experiences, and probably more.
The experience at Plow was really big for me. I worked with a lot of cool, creative people who were unanimously both cordial and driven. They moved into a new office space shortly after I left and I haven’t kept up with them but they still seem to be doing pretty well. My experience there put me back at Hoosier Games but this time leading a small team of seven people to make Katabasis. This was everybody’s first game, and my first time leading a team. While it was never a perfect process I still remember the time fondly and wish the best for the team. We had myself and another who voluteered to code, an artist, and two musicians, while everybody helped with design. Most of the team persisted for a year but after two it became a solo act. Early on it took a while for the identity of the gameplay to come through but our artist had a very distinct style that worked great for the game. Our composers also put together some really interesting tracks. In fact just yesterday I was looking into custom vinyl presses of the game’s soundtrack as this year is it’s fifth anniversary.
The following summer I was able to get a job interning on Marvel’s Video Game Production team. I mainly helped the senior Producers with whatever project, so I bounced around to different games and ended up doing lots of QA and testing when possible. Not everything that came to our desk was a game build sometimes it’s concept art or in-game art, design documents, pitches, and more. Being an organizational nut I organized the spare office space and cleaned up the shared digital documentation. The latter was an extended effort to catalogue Marvel character’s first appearances and confirm other similar historical questions. While there I worked on a variety of projects like the yet-to-be released Spiderman for PS4 and some others. It was a great team but I never belonged, way too friendly and social. The position itself is also too people focused for me, but it did give me some managerial insight.
I would go on to continue on some other solo projects but had largely disconnected from Hoosier Games in my waning time as a college student. This was mostly due to some fortune in acquiring a position under one of the professors doing freelance game development. This position lasted about a year until it transitioned into Water Works, an educational game being developed through the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. This was a web-based game and thus a bit of a departure from my usual work. Not only that I was picking up what was left as someone else’s passion project. This was where the majority of my game development time went until I left college.
After moving out to California’s Bay Area to be closer to a couple of different studios I started interviewing around, trying to connect on LinkedIn, and doing contract work. I met some really nice people in the area who gave me some great advice but I eventually gave up and started pursuing my Plan B, Software Engineer. A silver lining I suppose.
Perhaps most kids who grew up enjoying games like I did also dreamed they would one day own as many games as they wanted. The proverbial “Kid in the Candy Shop” being able to walk away with everything. Well I certainly did and everytime I felt I had to sell off older games for newer ones that idea was given more fuel. Learning about emulation was a revelation and provided an accessible gateway but it’s alway felt off, not properly scratching that itch. Don’t get me wrong I think emulation is and will be a cornerstone of game preservation, but the disconnect from the physical process makes it feel hollow to me. I missed sliding a cart in, clicking an on switch and gripping a distinctive controller in my hands. Even just picking out what to play, the little game in your head to decide. There’s a ritual to it that adds to the experience, but for me even the feel of the controller is important. Playing Sega Genesis games requires the Genesis controller with it’s big, clicky buttons that make arcady games oh-so satisfying. Or even as simple as Super Mario Bros. on NES with buttons locations helping inform the gameplay. Nowadays it’s easy to get 3rd-party controllers for PC to imitate older controller designs which is also great. With just a decent PC you could emulate almost everything but more recent generation consoles while using faithful controllers. For me, clicking through an emulator menu just can’t replace grabbing something off of a shelf and physically turning on a system.
With my first full-time job I had finally achieved I decided to try and satisfy that childhood dream of owning any game I wanted. It all started when I had my recurring urge to play my favorite GBA games. Instead of emulating like I had since high school I bought a GBA SP and a few games. Then it dawned on me I could do more. I moved onto the N64, then a PS2, and more. I started keeping track of what I wanted in a spreadsheet as the possibilities opened up. Then the spreadsheet kept track of everything I had as the collection grew. After some more research you realize there’s better ways to get faithful HDMI signals with upscalers like the Framemeister. You can also use different types of cables for better signals. Signal switches can make using multiple consoles easier. If you have friends who’ll play you’ll want multiple controllers for the different consoles. But what about cleaning, maintaining and moving your collection. Discs and cartridges each require different cleaning solutions. Disc based consoles have internal or external memory units while cartridge games often have in-cart memory that requires replacing batteries on the board. Older consoles die, newer consoles fail. Discs will face rot. You want to move? How do you package and safely move all of it? Where does all of this go in your home after? You’ll need shelves, boxes, labels, or something. It’s expensive. It’s never ending. What was once a glorious childhood dream is now a burden that makes you question your adulthood.
Collecting quickly became a game unto itself. Finding recommendations to look out for, finding random picks wherever I may roam, the “it’s my birthday, so it’s ok if I buy a Model 1 Genesis in box”. Completing my list and adding new items to the shelf became more gratifying sometimes than some games. Same with upgrades to my media center. I’d update some things to improve accessibilty, flow, or usability but never access or use them. So not only do I have a bunch of fragile, non-liquid assets taking up a large amount of physical space, I felt guilty for not playing what I had, continuing to buy more, and not playing them.
Not mine, way too many 360 games.
Over time I’ve come to terms with my relationship with my collection. Even if I don’t engage with it as much as I think I should that doesn’t mean I won’t or can’t. In fact the point is that I do have them for whenever I may want to play them, not to play them all right now. Sometimes you have to be in the right mood for a particular experience or take a chance to experience a new one. In the end the boundaries and expectations are yours to control, you just have to be honest with yourself and wise enough to know when you’ve gone too far. It’s your collection, you decide. For me, just because I don’t play Super Nintendo every day doesn’t mean I should sell off my copy of Tetris Attack.
Any day now I’m going to come home from the hospital with a baby girl as a new father. I feel anxious, excited, afraid, curious, and more. For the moment I’m just double checking everything, trying to keep the house clean, and my wife happy. My wife is ready to no longer carry a watermelon-sized person around her belly also. This has been the largest reason I’ve not found the time or motivation to write much of anything. Even now the words come only with much focus and thought to wring out something. Anticipation has always had a way of staying under my skin, making me overwhelmingly anxious. For relief I always end up going over all the details, even the only mildly related ones. The nursery is setup, I’ve re-organized the garage, re-evaluated and sold off part of my video game collection, re-organized and cleaned the kitchen, and put some finishing touches into my gardens. I think I’m feeling the end of this chapter of my life and I’m trying to finish what I can so I can start the next as unburdened as possible.
I have so much going on and so much to say this will probably be quite long, especially with some pictures. So it’s been broken up into pieces, mostly for my benefit. If you’re asking why I didn’t release smaller posts over time, that’s a good question.
Going forward I may talk about Zelda, my daughter, but only after confirming it’s ok with my partner. We’re almost at 41 weeks and my wife is ready to be done. Fortunately Zelda is for all intents and purposes in good health despite her late stay. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for our local hospital to deliver a few other Summer babies before we can schedule an induction and a definitive end. One way or the other within a week I’ll be able to hold my newborn. My wife is abuzz with the possibilities for Zelda, whether she’ll be good at math, a natural swimmer or anti-social like her dad. How quickly will she learn to crawl and speak? Will she be noisy or quiet? Active or still? All I can hope to do is comfort her against all the possibilities and assure her Zelda will be fine.
Ironically by the time this post goes live, my daughter will have been born already. On July 4th close to midnight Zelda was born with no complications, and all the struggles my wife suffered for the past 40+ weeks melted into one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen her wear when they handed her this tiny, quiet, little girl. Two days later and we’ve taken the baby home for the first time. Here’s to a healthy baby and wife *drinks more caffeine*.
The Wife
Wild salmon, fingerling potatoes, and green salad.
My wife has found the dwindling end of our non-parent life together pre-occupying her mind. As a balm I suggested a long list of ideas for “Dates”, with extra attention to her limitations in pregnancy. While we were unable to do all of them we did knock off quite a few and having this list to work through made planning a fun day quicker.
Dinner for two by candlelight
Bake desserts and make ice cream sundaes
Picnic
Work on some artwork together
Day trip to an interesting nearby city
Try a board game, card game, or video game
Faux camping in the backyard with smores and grilled food
Watch a movie at the Drive-in
Food crawl through a town
Dinner at a nice restaraunt
“Movie Theatre” at home
Pictured below we were able to complete a “Paint-by-numbers” on canvas that we are now deciding where to hang. Most likely in the nursery.
The final product of our collaboration.
The next we were able to do was try Anti-monopoly, a variation on the classic board game. It was the first time in a few years we had played a board game or anything like that together. On occasion she’s willing to play the video game Overcooked with me and it’s a bit of chaotic fun. We were also able to catch Everything Everywhere All at Once at a nearby Drive-in Theatre. We grabbed some mexican take-out and had a great time gorging and watching. Earlier in the year we had driven north to Napa, CA (the city not the county) where we roamed around taking in the sights and eating at a few places, this is the closest we got to a true food crawl. When I first moved out to California my wife and I were not married yet and were actually taking a break from each other. We eventually met for dinner at a nice local italian place and re-kindled our relationship that night. I was hoping we could go one last time before parenthood and we may still but it seems we won’t. Lastly my wife had received a small projector as a gift from work and with some tinkering I was able to setup our spare bedroom into a “home movie theatre”. The projection’s image is rather grainy but sharp enough for subtitles, a must for my wife. For our movie night I suggested The Grand Budapest Hotel, something we had meant to watch together for some time. This was my second viewing and her first. It’s a pretty fascinating movie with lots of stuff bubbling beneath the surface, she enjoyed it quite a bit so I’ve moved onto my next recommendation for her, Catch Me If You Can also a hit. Even though we worked through half the list we hit a point where we knew even amongst those limited options, our choices were fewer each day.
Just a funny aside, we have a local pizzeria that serves a “Prego” pizza. One that is claimed to help start labor, and my wife anxious to get things going advocated for it’s consumption. So I pickup what is essentially a combo pizza with extra onions, pepper, and linguisa added. She wasn’t a fan, she doesn’t like such “american” style pizzas so I’ve had pizza for lunch for almost a week now.
The Prego pizza
Myself
I’ve spent some time thinking about why I even have a blog and what purpose it serves. One conclusion is that being able to write about whatever I want with no real objective gives me the opportunity to organize my thoughts. Then in the writing of it I ask myself critical questions, which reveals more understanding. If nothing else having a place to speak even an empty room is conducive to my mental health and self-awareness. It’s my hope I’ll continue to think out loud and find more confidence in exposing more of my thoughts as I do so. Aside from my mental health I’ve taken a break from serious excercise to nurse a foot back into shape, but between an acceptable diet and limited activity I’ve lost another ten pounds in the past month. This makes 25+ pounds over two months. Down from 220+ to 195. The end of last month, June, was when I hit two months of no alcohol as well. Things are not perfect but I’m making the changes that I think are meaningful for now.
Video Games
Video game shelves
It’s weird that I feel so compelled to finalize things. Not only that but what I cared about or what mattered shifted quickly as the expected due date neared. This was most apparent with my intentions towards game collecting where I had streamlined my collection selling a good chunk of it. Cutting down on larger items like collectors editions and entire genres I’ve realized I just don’t like. Not only this but I bought plastic shells for all of my Nintendo paper game boxes as that finalized level of protection. In addition after a lot of shuffling around I’ve found a layout for my games that I find functionally effective and aesthetically pleasing. From the hookups for all my handhelds over on the left, to the ready-to-play PSOne between my genesis games, and everything else. I look at these shelves and see an interactive shrine to what gaming is to me. In an effort to make playing any of my consoles even easier I’ve started switching over to all wireless controllers. So far this covers the Genesis, SNES, and PS2 for the consoles that dont have first-party wireless controllers. So far it’s been pretty effective, I just need to document what combination of switches need to be activated for seamless component video out to my Retro-Tink 5x.
Vinyl
My vinyl setup
This push to tie the bow on my collecting also included my vinyl collection which saw two new additions with another three on the way. Most recently was The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual. I bought my first TBDM vinyl, Abyssmal a week or so before Trevor’s death and I had posted about not enjoying their recent music as much. I know I don’t have anything to do with what happened but it still left me with some guilt later. I only wish the best for those left behind. Continuing with the Death Metal I also picked up Black Crown Initiate‘s Song of the Crippled Bull and Selves We Cannot Forgive both excellent listens with a lot of variety, though I would like to say the former is more like one 21 minute long track that’s broken into four pieces. The latter goes to a lot of different places and most of the tracks have a clear identity picking only a few styles to blend each. The last Death Metal album is the newest release from Archspire who seem like a joke band because of how ridiculous some of what they do is, but every time I listen to their past two releases what I hear is some pretty great songwriting. Finally I was able to find an affordable copy of one my favorite 90’s east-coast hip-hop albums. It has this theme of a city bracing for a hurricane, the eponymous storm in the form of “Hurricane” Starang Wondah, Louieville Sluggah, and Top Dog.
For anyone curious about my setup, I’m using an AT-LP120XUSB so my audio is actually transmitted via bluetooth as I’m low on space for chords. At the moment I’m only outputting to a pair of decent Bose bookend speakers that’ve lasted me since High School. Given our house is mostly hardwood and vinyl planking the acoustics are exceptional and I can fill the whole house from downstairs at well less than half volume. My turntable accessories and stuff for cleaning are in the drawer just below the turntable, while replacement vinyl sleeves are on a shelf lower. My vinyl shelving was just some second-hand furntiure left by a friend of my wife’s. After having it for some time not knowing why this “book”shelf can’t hold books, it all clicked when I was looking where I could put my vinyl somewhere safe, accessible, and allowed for legible spines. I’m using some cheap metal bookends to keep the vinyl vertical and help with organization. Right now I have them organized into four sections Metal or Hip-Hop my wife doesn’t like on the top left, stuff I don’t listen to or damaged vinyl on the bottom left, video game soundtracks on the bottom right and everything else (jazz, rock, classical) is in the top right. Just for my vanity and because vinyl album covers are an art to themselves I bought a stand to display whatever’s playing.
The year I finished high school I went on to college at Indiana University. By chance I ran into half a dozen friends/acquaintances at one of the Welcome Week events held by the university. I started out in the dorms and one of my friends whom I hadn’t seen in a few years stayed in the same dorm just in a different part of the building. My first semester roommate was a fraternity pledge, so we didn’t see each other much and eventually he moved out to be replaced someone who’d recently come from China for University. He would ask me questions about life in America, Americanisms, etc… for hours every night. Not that I minded, the building to this day is still without any form of AC so most nights were too hot to find sleep.
I had brought my Xbox 360 with me to university and aside from my laptop would be my primary source of games throughout my time in university. My freshman year was 2011 and that September I walked to the nearest Best Buy to get a copy of the newly released Dark Souls. The trip took a little more than an hour, but it was worth it. With combat not too dissimilar to Monster Hunter, an open world gated by skill, knowledge, and locked doors it quickly became one of my favorite games. It felt like the 3D Castlevania Konami had been trying to create since Symphony of the Night re-wrote the series. Just as I had tackled MH with a friend, I kept up with a friend from my hometown of Indy to share notes on DS. Being so early in its release there wasn’t much information online yet either, so it took months until we started to see the game’s bigger picture. There was another pretty important day in 2011, a Pocky Day during a year ending in ’11. Truly a momentous occasion to be remembered forever. The small number of people who bothered to play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might remember it also came out on 11-11-2011. All joking aside I had played ESIII as a youth and then ESIV as a high schooler, so I was pretty excited for another sequel. Skyrim would be the only game I’ve attended a midnight opening for, though I was a good kid and waited ’til after class the next day to indulge. Truly a landmark year for gaming, dragons, and dragons in games.
Eventually I’d room with a good friend my sophomore year. He wasn’t much of a gamer but pretty quickly he chugged through Mass Effect two and then even beating the third before I could. Later Street Fighter X Tekken came out and we sunk hours into it. Despite the hate it gets, SFxT did have some fun concepts. Personally, we enjoyed running through the campaign with tag-in co-op and other co-op modes. Then later that year I got myself Borderlands 2 for my birthday. Funnily enough he and have birthdays a week apart so I’m sure we spent the week staying as high as possible and playing as much as possible. Borderlands 2 is in my mind one of the last great couch co-op games released for consoles, since then the industry has moved more to online exclusive co-op.
Starting my junior year of college, I’d be living in an apartment for the first time, and I’d have to find a job to pay for it. My friend had also left for family reasons, so I’d have to find new people to share expenses with. For the job I got work as an undergraduate Teacher’s Assistant for what was essentially CompSci-101. Given the large number of students I was one of a dozen or so UA (Undergrad Assts.) while there were several graduate TA’s to help the Professor. The job involved grading homework and tests, holding office hours, and running labs on Fridays. I enjoyed it, and though I was “teaching” people only a couple years younger than me it was a good experience. The pay was just enough for me to sub-lease a room off-campus. Living off of my labor was as difficult as it was liberating. I had regular income but expenses as well. At some point during this year I was invited to an old friend’s baby shower party in another city. He and I wrestled together in high school and I hadn’t talked to him much since. There we ended getting caught up trying to play through Dark Souls II, which had just released. Given my limited budget I had told myself to wait on purchasing it, but the taste of it lingered after I went back to my home in Bloomington. It must’ve been shortly after that the semester ended. With about a week left on the lease and no classes or work, I bought DSII. This time though I went digital and downloaded it. So, for the following week I stayed holed up alone in my apartment grinding through Dark Souls II. I remember it being rather glorious.
That year and apartment would be significant in another way since I would go on to date and then marry one of my roommates. We lived with each other for about two years until she graduated and moved west to California. That same year my friend had returned from helping his family in California, so he and I went on to share an apartment. Nearly all the furniture there was secondhand/free, our kitchen had little more than ramen and potatoes usually and we both just kept our mattresses on the floor. For us though it was a paradise. No annoying roommates, we could smoke as much as we wanted, music was always playing, there was decent affordable BBQ within walking distance, and people were always stopping by to chill. It was one long relaxed party with breaks for classes and work.
Later I had stopped caring much about my degree as much and focused more on making games both through my day job and as a hobby. After I worked as a teacher’s assistant for two years I was able to work for a professor developing various games. At the same time I had been attending a local campus game dev group and had worked on several projects through them. This became my focus, even taking a break from school to focus on game development more. Finally, I’d move out to California to try and break into the game industry while finishing my degree remotely. I was able to finish my degree but after a few months of sporadic contract employment and no long-term possibilities I gave up. As a backup plan, instead of trying to program games I could just become a mainstream software engineer. Despite having planned for game making as a career since I was a young boy, my ultimate choice was an intentional Plan B. I didn’t get to spend my career making games but that’s ok.
In an ongoing effort to tie some things up, I purchased a few easier to acquire items from Estarland. Some games are just rounding out my library; the loose Spyro game is meant to join a case and manual though. Given how easy it is to get loose disc games, I grabbed a CD folio to keep them. Normally I prefer complete games but my tastes have evolved. Hopefully these loose discs I hope to re-unite with a case, but that endeavor requires time and money.
I also wanted to add the few PC box games I care about to my shelf. A few sellers on Mercari helped me find the four pictured. First was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines which is probably in my top fives games of all time. Inspired by a youtuber I found recently I also wanted to get the first Harry Potter game on PC. My parents had bought me this when I was a kid and a few months ago I played again out of curiosity. Age of Mythology was one of the first games I personally bought on PC and I still prefer it to Age of Empires.
Shadow of Intent – PrimordialShadow of Intent – ReclaimerBolt Thrower – Those Once Loyal
About two weeks ago while looking for new sources for harder-to-find vinyl I came across IndieMerchStore. They sell licensed clothes, music, etc… for many different bands like Archspire, Black Crown Initiate, and Rings of Saturn just to name a few. Here I found a few albums that had been elusive previously. First is Shadown of Intent’s Primordial and Reclaimer their first and second albums respectively. Both are really good listens that keep you on your toes start to finish. I believe these are also my first Deathcore albums, which is fitting given how highly I’d rate them in that pantheon. Now their third album has been released but I didn’t like it anywhere near as much. It was also the album that forwent the use of Halo lore as a narrative backdrop. Next is my third acquisition of Bolt Thrower’s, Those Once Loyal. This is likely the last album I’ll get of theirs but is no less exceptional. According to the what I’ve read from interviews Bolt Thrower won’t release another album so Those Once Loyal is not only one of their best but also their last. Strangely Bolt Thrower also started out using a pre-existing Sci-Fi universe, Warhammer: 40k, as a backdrop for their early releases as well.
At the end of part one I had left with the idea that the Gameboy Advance was the ultimate system for me as a young child, and while that’s true it’s also an era nearing its end. Once I had started middle school, I went to a different school than basically all the people I grew up with, so for my entire first year of middle school I didn’t really have many friends. Even on the school’s wrestling team I was the only 6th grader. The transition however left me very busy between school and wrestling. What little time I did have to myself I spent playing games as I had before, though by this time I had become more involved in playing PC games such as Warcraft III. In fact, I’d venture a guess that, even almost two decades later WC3, is still one of my most played games. It comes with a built-in tool that allow users to create their own content and so the WC3 servers were always bustling with new types of games or variations of older ones, making it endlessly playable. This was back when DOTA was new, and the terms ‘pwn’ or ‘own’ were just making it into online vernacular. I was getting older, my tastes were maturing, and my environments were changing.
Around this time my father, due to a fortunate turn at work could afford to buy a gaming console. Originally, he went to get a PS2 as he knew I wanted one but was talked into the just-released original Xbox by the Wal-Mart sales associate. While initially disappointed, as all I knew about the Xbox was some game called Halo a cousin really liked, I gave it a fair shot. The Xbox was my first “mature” gaming console . While older 16-bit games could be mature in nature like say Mortal Kombat it was less often they were thematically mature like Halo or Knights of the Old Republic. I went from playing Banjo-Kazooie on Saturday mornings to grinding through KotOR and Jet Set Radio Future. From family tournaments of Goldeneye to those of Halo. The original Xbox was a new frontier with a much vaster breadth and depth of content. My brother being much older was also aware of this other new thing called Xbox Live, an internet service that could allow people play games with each other remotely. We were able to convince our dad to run an ethernet cable from our modem box to the family room where the TV and Xbox were and after the purchase of some Xbox Live 6-month subscription cards my brother and I were ready to take Halo online. It was at this time when I came up with the name Ooglykraken, combining my love of mythology and an off-hand quote from DragonBall Z’s then running Majin Buu saga.
As I write this what I find most interesting in this reflection is how much I grew up alongside many of the technologies and ideas that are ubiquitous today. When they were new, I was still young enough to soak it up like a sponge no questions asked. Those who are younger would grow up with many of these things after they’d become commonplace. While those who are older will recognize they too went through formative experiences alongside tech growth that others then grew up with, unaware of it’ s own journey into ubiquity.
Moving into 7th grade was strange as everything in my life changed. That year I made friends with many people I call friend today, including one who would later be my college roommate of several years and then my best-man at my wedding. It’s during these times that a lot of people become more socially independent, making their own identities. So just as it was a time of abundant social development it also facilitated the kind of “school-yard” sharing. Word of mouth was still quite powerful for school kids despite the growing abundance of information online. It was through my new friends I found games like Devil May Cry, bands like Slipknot, and a broader exposure to anime. My brother had become independent around this time, so he moved out to his own apartment. This was the first time I’d had my own bedroom since I was a little kid and the freedom that came with it probably helped spur the growth of my atypical tastes, atypical relative to my family.
By the time I was in high school I had steady work landscaping and my age provided more personal freedom, so I was able to independently explore my own interests. Things such as being able to have my own TV, something rightfully prevented by my parents knowing I’d hole up in my room like a goblin emerging only to nab bits of food and then scurry back to my cave of a room. The light of a TV being the only signs something is living there. As far as gaming related changes, I traded in my GBA SP for a PSP. I was aware of the PSP but initially wrote it off. Then a friend of my brother’s gave me the whole spiel about modding, homebrew, and custom software. This was a whole new frontier. Emulation? Homebrew? Modding? All these unknown concepts revealed and demystified. First this meant I started learning how to emulate on the family PC, but also this convinced me of the PSP’s worth. I’ve never enjoyed selling games and consoles to get new ones but one website which made it more palatable was Estarland, an online storefront for games of all eras. After an appraisal of my collection from them I had just enough to get started with a PSP. I mailed in my old collection and anxiously awaited to be credited. Fast forward and I had a PSP and just like the GBA before it, it was immediately integral to my free time. Not only could the PSP play games, but it could store music, play movies, and more. Then it was quite novel but only a precursor of things to come. Now I did eventually try to mod my PSP but not ‘til later as at that time it was a risky procedure with the chance to brick the device or at the very least destroy the battery. So, I had to wait until I could afford a spare battery. My first try didn’t work, and I couldn’t keep on buying hardware for repeated attempts. Despite this, the little device made a lasting impact. There was a period of a few weeks after one of my friends got a PSP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite that we put several hundred hours into the game. I don’t have that original PSP or anything else, but I remember my final hour total on the game to be somewhere around 600. What a waste of time, right? Maybe, but thinking back it’s all fond memories. In the end MH would be quite pivotal in refining my tastes and understanding of games.
Finally late in high school I was able to save up enough to buy an Xbox 360 which was just a solid evolution on the original Xbox. Thinking back, it’s funny thinking about how socially integral video games had started to become by that time with the popularity of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. High school became this time where if I wasn’t in wrestling practice or at school, I was at one or another friend’s house playing Borderlands, League of Legends, or fighting games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This was the explosion of multiplayer console games especially those of the online variety. My friends and I still tended to play in-person, however.
This period for me is one of my most nostalgic, being this combination of freedom and a lack of responsibility outside of school and wrestling. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend almost my entire weekend at one friend or another’s. The whole time a heady slurry of weed, video games, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, movies, and music. All my friends were within two miles walking so I could head over whenever I wanted to. In seven years, I went from innocent youth to a young person yearning for independence. I recognize to some degree my desire to play games as freely as I wanted (my parents had restrictions on time spent) helped foment a desire to live on my own. This is also what drove me to spend so much time at friends’ houses where such impositions didn’t exist for me. This is just one way my relationship with gaming affected the way I interacted with family, friends, and my responsibilities. The implication isn’t that games helped raise me either but rather they’ve had indelible impacts of varying magnitude on me. This exercise is meant to tease those impacts out and examine them, with special consideration for nostalgia and other long-term effects.
Tchaikovsky and WaltonTchaikovsky inside leftTchaikovsky inside rightWalton insideTchaikovsky and PopsPops insideReplacement sleevesJohto Legends and FFX
Every once in a while I’ll make trip to a local goodwill to try and find anything useful, usually with an eye for organizational tools. Recently I made a visit and was able to pick up a large cast-iron skillet, some vinyl, and a couple other miscellaneous things. I haven’t quite gotten around to listening to any of them but I did go through my ritual of dusting, cleaning, and replacing paper sleeves with new anti-static ones. As I did this the smell of the larger collections was just like that of older books, so I did some cursory research and found that both were released around 1938. If you look on the inside of the back cover of either they list other vinyls the companies are selling with prices as high as $6.50. The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 also has a mild fracture in the second and third vinyl. I’ll just have to see how well they play.
Though I haven’t listened to my Goodwill vinyl, I ordered some off the internet. First from iam8bit was Johto Legends, an orchestral scoring of the music from Pokemon Gold and Silver. I’ve listened through all four sides a few times already. The album progresses with the childish and adventure themes giving way to more japanese-folk inspired music and finally becoming more dramatic overtures. Second was the soundtrack from Final Fantasy X from the Materia Collective. First off the packaging is really weird and I was concerned it was a knockoff at first, and this is my first album with picture disc. It gave me weird vibes, but after a few listens I didn’t mind either way. The music is a little ecclectic as it jumps between the different themes but it does give this sense of moving through different locales. The standouts here being all of the village/town themes, as traditionally in JRPG’s village music is the best.
Finally as I was about to post this I remember I also picked up the vinyl for Polyphia’s New Levels New Devils. A good addition to my growing set of albums fit for general consumption.
Edit: After a thorough cleaning the older albums all still pop with some frequency. I intend to hit them with some cleaning solution and a microfiber cloth and see if that alleviates some of it. Also the Tchaikovsky Symphony no. 6 is only the sleeve, it actually holds The Irish Rovers’ Tales to Warm Your Mind.
As an elementary schooler I was introduced to a wrestling program held at my local high school and I immediately fell into the life. By the time time I was in middle school it was in my blood. For a couple years I even wrestled two different seasons, folkstyle at school and freestyle through a club. Late in high school and after I became more interested in Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing, and other martial arts.
Now about a decade after I left the wrestling room for the last time I’ve finally made up my mind to attend a local BJJ gym. It’s been so long I’d forgotten how great it feels to be back on the mat. However I’m more out of shape than I’d like to be but I should catch up after some regular attendance. The next time I’m able to hang out with my MMA-interested friends, I’ll be able to flex my new BJJ knowledge.
Recently having felt the need to get out of my house and do something so I can get out of my head I went to my local game store, Phoenix Games, in California’s north bay-area. I’ve been a patron there since I got my first job after moving out to California about five years ago. Even though I haven’t been there in about two years the owner recognized me and we chatted as I browsed around. To be honest it felt really good to have an honest, earnest conversation with somebody else about whatever it is we talked about. Rarely do I relish a chance to conversate but I’ve known him long enough I didn’t feel akward saying what was on my mind. We chatted about games, rising prices in California, other general chit-chat. It goes to show even introverts need socializing.
I was able to find a copy of Dynasty Warriors 3 and Haunted Mansion for PS2, Spider-Man 2 for Xbox, Mutant Football League, Madden NFL ’93, Cyberball, and Revenge of Shinobi for Sega Genesis and finally Killzone: Liberation for PS Vita. Most of these are an attempt to play something from my childhood to re-evaluate them while Killzone is apparently the only FPS worth owning on Vita.
ooglykraken 