Don’t you hate it when one simple design choice ruins an entire game?

As a 3DS Ambassador, I got 10 free Game Boy Advance games via download, including Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. I haven’t played much Fire Emblem despite owning both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but James, editor at Nintendo Life, asked me if I’d review it as my first Nintendo Life assignment. I agreed.

I’m not super into strategy RPGs, but I do love me some Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics, and I’d always wanted to really get into Fire Emblem. I liked the look of it and the “rock-paper-scissors” weapon balance was super fun. The writing was good and I loved the character designs. Things were looking good!

Everything was going fine until I ran into what broke the game for me: when a character dies in battle, they’re gone FOREVER. Okay, that’s fine I guess. If someone dies, I’ll just reset! No big whoop!

That worked until one chapter in particular where the field was covered in fog and I couldn’t see anything that wasn’t directly around my characters. Despite moving them in a tight formation, enemies would always pour out of the fog and gang up on one character until they died.

I restarted that mission no less than ten times before completely giving up on the game.

I’ve gone into it a bit before in other posts, but I have weird anxiety issues with games. The thought of letting a character die and NOT resetting almost gave me a panic attack. No, I can’t do that. Then they’re gone for the whole rest of the game. What if I need them? What if they had something important to say later? No, I can’t let them die.

I had to email James and apologize, but I couldn’t play enough of the game to review it. I felt really guilty and embarrassed, since it was my first assignment and all, but that game was paralyzing me. I tried really hard to work through it, to put my crazy aside and be a professional, but my constitution stat wasn’t high enough, apparently.

So it looks like I’m going to have to admire the Fire Emblem series from afar. Have any of you ever had an otherwise awesome game ruined by one design choice?

I read the Star Wars: The Old Republic boards pretty regularly, as I’m obsessed with the game and have more free time at work than I should. A lot of it is just people discussing the game, getting opinions on character classes and generally just passing the time until launch.

I’m mostly on the board for the Sith Warrior class, as it’s the class I’ll be playing and I like to see what other people are saying about it and keep on top of any new information. When I made the decision to play an Imperial character so I could play with friends I knew I’d be in for more than my fair share of immaturity from teenagers who are all about being GRIMDARK and listening to songs that make their mom mad, but sometimes what’s said on the boards is simply appalling.

A lot of people talk about things like how evil their character is going to be. Okay, fine. You’re playing a Sith and you want to be evil. That’s not the way I’m going with my character but you’re free to make those choices. Some of these people, though… I feel like I need to alert the authorities so they can get some help.

For example, a regular poster started a thread about “Will you be situational or absolute?” about how deciding to go completely dark or light with you choices makes for an unrealistic character. Here is the opening post in its entirety:

“As launch approaches, I expect that people (well, those who care about things) are going to begin to flesh out how exactly they plan to play their characters. A lot of us are going into this game with a set ‘idea’ of how we want our Sith to act, and obviously we all have very different approaches to the issue.

For example, I have talked to a significant number of players who have determined — from the outset — to choose every single dark side option presented to them, no matter how ridiculous, callous, or even stupid it is (many of these people are also extremely concerned that too mant light answers will cost them the Darth title, which I guess is fair, given how little we know).

On the opposite side of the aisle are the total lightsiders — those who plan to stack light side points whenever possible.

To be honest, while I am not going to begrudge personal choice in this, the most personal arena in TOR, I’m going to respectfully disagree with those totally devoted to either side.

What gets lost in the mix with these characters, regardless of where they stand in terms of faction and morality, is that they are people (not necessarily human, but close enough), and that even the the darkest of dark people have a lighter side. As an example, Adolf Hitler loved dogs. As much maligned as the guy was/is, he had a deep, honest soft spot for canines. Abraham Lincoln, much-beloved scion of modern America, suffered from deep depressive bouts (and, let’s face it, if your wife was a lunatic and your kids were dying, you might be depressed too) and probably could have never been elected today. These character attributes don’t serve to diminish either Hitler or Lincoln from their overall evil/good natures — they merely deepen who they were; complicated, flawed personas.

The point is, good or bad, people have their failings; their strengths, and are almost all not 100% bad or good. I’d bet money that even Darth Sidious had some attribute or another that could be labeled a positive, even if it didn’t get screen time. And when you look at the good characters in Star Wars, they’re riddled with faults. Luke caves to darkside temptations more than once, and makes out with his own sister (). Han Solo has a greedy streak that’s a mile wide. These people clearly are good guys, but they aren’t 100% good.

Personally, I’d like to be situational with my Sith, even if it costs me at the end of the road. I want to tackle each problem as it comes and develop my character through it. Her experiences with early choices will affect what she does later on. She will be merciful when she feels like it, and tyrannical when she wants to go that way. She will be devoted, violent (especially towards Vette), caring, willful — a mixed bag of emotion, compassion and rage. And I think she will be a more believable and deeper character for it.

So how do you plan to approach the game?”

This is a good post! Intelligent, well written and thought provoking. It’s the perfect way to start a good discussion.

Here is the first reply:

“I’m gonna be an evil sith bastard. I kill and spit on the corpses.”

Ugh.

Here is another choice post, from the thread “Why a Sith?”

“Why choose Darkside over Lightside?”

.-Me stares down the foolish young Apprentice. With a soft movement of my hand i reach for the lightsaber

“Because my boy, there is no place on the world for the weak. And you have just expired!”

.- With a lightning movement i pull out the lightsaber and at one swift movement i both energise it and at the same time cut down the Apprentice from waist to elbow.

The body lies in two pieces of cooked meat, and i smither:

“Hesitation proves your weakness and weakness betrays you.”

Turning around and embracing the shadows, the lightsaber retracts to itself and the shadow becomes a blot, and the blot merges the Dark.

THIS IS A PERSON WHO IS ALLOWED TO WALK AROUND IN PUBLIC. Nevermind the fact that “smither” isn’t even a fucking WORD, they clearly have issues.

I’m so, SO glad I’m playing this game with people I know and won’t be forced to PUG with people like this.

Fun fact: while Googling “Sith Lord” to find an image to use for this article I stumbled across that gem. Normally it’d be a cool costume, except he wrote his ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL’s name in Aurabesh (the written language in Star Wars) on it. I don’t think “Darth Malis” (yes I translated it) would have his name in HUGE RED LETTERS on his clothes, unless Darth Mom made them for him so they wouldn’t get stolen at Sith summer camp.

That headline is indicating that this post is about my gaming backlog.

I’ve never really thought that I had a backlog; I just played what I want when I wanted. As I was trying to plan out the games I was going to buy for the rest of the year, I realized that a lot of games I wanted weren’t “must-plays,” there were just games I wanted. I decided I was going to limit myself to three new games between now and Christmas: Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Super Mario 3D Land, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

I decided to use the time instead to go back and finish (or start) older games that fell by the wayside for whatever reason. I started my list while I was at work, and without even having my game collection in front of me it was over 20 games. It’s much more than that now since I’ve been home. Christina and I have over 850 games AT LEAST (this is what happens when two lifelong gamers get married) so going through our game closet brought a lot of games I had forgotten back into the front of my mind.

When I worked at GameStop in California and I worked with other people who actually ENJOYED games, I’d buy used games just about every shift I worked based on recommendations. As such I have tons of PS2 RPGs I’ve never even played. It’s time to fix that.

It’s worth noting that these are all games that I actually own; there’s nothing on here that I planned on going out and buying.

Anyway, here’s my list. I’ve sectioned it off by system as well as games Christina and I are going to play together. There’s a couple of games on my list that I want to replay because it’s been a long time since I’ve played them, as well as a couple of games I’m missing one or two pretty easy Xbox achievements in that I want to go back and get.

ONGOING
——————
Minecraft (PC)
Tekken 6 (PS3)
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (PS3)

XBOX LIVE ARCADE
——————————–
Prince of Persia
Sonic the Hedgehog (achievements)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (achievements)

XBOX 360
—————
Blue Dragon (replay)
Lego Harry Potter
Mirror’s Edge
Sonic Unleashed

PS3
——-
3D Dot Game Heroes
Final Fantasy XIII
Sly Collection
InFAMOUS

WII
——
Super Paper Mario
Dragon Quest Swords
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Disney Epic Mickey
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

HANDHELD
——————
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (3DS)
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (DS)
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS)
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS)
Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (PSP)

OLDER
———–
Breath of Fire III (PS1)
Final Fantasy II, V, VIII, IX, XII (various)
Dragon Quest VIII (PS2)
Disgaea (PS2)
Disgaea 2 (PS2)
Dragon Warrior (NES)
La Pucelle Tactics (PS2)
Phantom Brave (PS2)
Atelier Iris (PS2)
Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast)
Star Ocean Till the End of Time (PS2)
Grandia III (PS2)
Mega Man Legends (PS1)

WITH CHRISTINA
————————–
Final Fantasy III (Wii)
Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Wii)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)
Eternal Sonata (360)
Infinite Undiscovery (360)
.hack series(PS2)

Oof. I have a lot of work ahead of me. Honestly, after looking at this list I feel guilty thinking about buying more games. First world problems, amirite?

I’ve been thinking a lot about video games lately (cue “OH FOR EFF’S SAKE JOE NOT ANOTHER ONE OF THESE POSTS”, but hey, it’s not what you think!), specifically about if having access to each system is a good thing or a bad thing.

Right now I’ve got a Wii, a DSi, a 3DS, an Xbox 360, a PSP, a PlayStation 3 and a pretty solid gaming PC. There’s NOTHING I can’t play right now (my PC even runs Crysis pretty good!). It’s a good feeling, knowing that if a game that I’m interested in comes along I’m not going to miss out on it because I don’t have the hardware to play it on. Unfortunately, this comes with a whole new problem: I have TOO MANY games to play.

Right now I’m playing Torchlight on Xbox 360, Bleach: Soul Resurrección on PS3, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX on my 3DS and I’m trying to explore Final Fantasy XIV on PC. I was also just gifted Minecraft by my super rad friend Matt a couple of days ago which I haven’t even really tried yet, and Christina’s playing through EarthBound and I’m trying to spend some time watching her play that. Not to mention we like playing games together so we usually have a couple of rounds of Soulcalibur IV or Marvel vs Capcom 3 in there as well. This is on top of all my other responsibilities like working full time, cooking dinners and other general chores, writing this here blog and trying to stay current with The 90’s Are All That on my DVR because I’m too old to stay up until 2am every day.

I’m not saying this is a huge problem or anything, because really, I’m able to live in a country where people like me are allowed to piss money away on expensive toys because we don’t have to worry where our next meal is coming from.  This is not a “problem.”

The first time I was able to have all the current systems was last gen, when I started with a Dreamcast, then got a GameCube, followed by a PS2 and finally the Xbox. I loved being able to play whatever game I wanted because my command center was equipped with the latest technology. I decided from then on having all consoles was the way to go.

Console bias is a stupid, stupid thing. Hating a video game console and yelling at people who play it is, as Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw would say, “pants on head retarded.” It doesn’t make you look smart or the people you’re arguing with dumb. It makes everyone look like stupid kids. If you ARE a stupid kid, then I guess it’s just par for the course for you.

What console bias is, in reality, is a defense mechanism. When you can only have ONE console, you need to constantly reassert to yourself that you made the right choice, and trying to convince others is a step towards convincing yourself. In one of their Downloadable Content podcasts, Gabe from Penny Arcade echoed my experience in the 16-bit wars fighting for the Sega Genesis: “I had to believe that what I had was better than anything they had on Nintendo. I had to tell myself that Zelda wasn’t cool, that Metroid wasn’t rad.”

While I have hated on Sony a bit this generation, it’s mostly because I think their business practices have been pretty shady since they’ve mostly just been copying what other companies have done and then slapped their logo on it and called it innovative. Yet there my PS3 is right alongside the other consoles in my entertainment center.

While console bias is an ugly thing, the brighter side of it is that you feel like you’re a part of that console’s community. When the Wii came out and all my friends had one, it was really great having that shared experience. Later when I realized that the Wii, while awesome, wasn’t really satisfying all my gaming needs and I got a 360, I really got into the Xbox “culture.” I remember when I went to the live recording of the Major Nelson podcast at PAX East in 2010, the sense of community was incredible. Everyone waiting in line was talking about their favorite games and swapping Gamertags, and when we went inside and Major Nelson, e, lollip0p and Stepto were talking about all the cool Xbox stuff that was coming out, it just felt GOOD. It felt WELCOMING.

So where I’m at now with no game off-limits, I can play everything, but I can’t help but feel that it’s at the cost of really APPRECIATING what I’m playing.

When Christina and I talk about the games we played growing up the games we talk the most about are games that we really explored. Games that we beat over and over and over, games where we explored every nook and cranny in the game’s world, games that we put hours and hours and hours and HOURS into. We don’t get that experience anymore. I can’t tell you the last game besides Pokémon that I put over 20 hours into. That bothers me.

Well, World of Warcraft. But that doesn’t count.

Nowadays there’s just SO MANY GAMES that you feel like you need to rush through one to get to the next. Not only that, but we have a lot of older games that we never finished that we want to go back to. I’d like to beat every Final Fantasy, but I still have II, V, IV, VII, IX, XII and XIII to see through. I have a bunch of old PS2 games I bought cheap when I worked at GameStop I never got around to and half my Wii library hasn’t seen the love that it should have (Super Paper Mario and Dragon Quest Swords, I swear I will beat you both someday!).

I haven’t counted in a couple of years (although I’m planning on doing it soon) but our gaming collection is over 800 something  games. In Xbox Live Arcade titles ALONE we’re at something like 85. There was a time when I would just BUY BUY BUY because I had disposable income and loved buying games, but that’s slowed down considerably lately, so it’s not like I’m buying them faster than I can play them. Anymore. >_>

That picture at the top of this post? That’s our gaming closet. You can’t see the bottom shelf of stuff, the CD rack holding our PS1 and Dreamcast games or the bins holding all of our NES and SNES games. Oh, yeah: those shelves you DO see are three rows deep AT LEAST. Also the doors don’t even open wide enough for me to get a whole shelf in frame!

Christina and I have been talking about the Wii U and our plans on buying one. We’re a bit skeptical after Nintendo’s stumble with the 3DS launch, but we decided that if it’s $300 or less we’ll get one at launch, otherwise we’ll wait.

When we discussed the possibility of only buying one console next gen, we didn’t really see eye to eye. I said we should just stick with Wii U because I can’t imagine not being able to play a new Mario or Zelda game. She said she’d prefer to see what the new PlayStation will do, but I think that if we’re not going the Nintendo route then I’d like to stick with Microsoft because I prefer the 360 to the PS3.

So there’s a whole new conundrum. What can we do? Buy all three, I guess.

The first is a piece of fiction that I’ve had kicking around my head since I was a junior in high school. I’ve always had a loose concept for it, but I could never really think of the right hook for it, the right pieces to make it a story actually worth telling. A couple of weeks ago I thought of one change to the foundation and everything clicked, and since then I’ve had ideas coming to me every day. I’m not terribly good at writing fiction, but I do enjoy it, and it’ll be nice to finally start working on something that I’ve had in my head for ten years.

I got another great idea for a story not too long ago, but right after I thought of it something else was announced (I’m not saying what it was) that seemed to have a vaguely similar premise, so I’m putting it on the backburner until said product is released so I know if I’d actually be ripping it off.

I’m going to write it as a novel, but honestly I envision it more as a comic or movie. I’m just not good with any kind of visual media. I might post a few snippets of it here, but I think I want to try to finish it and pitch it around and see if I can get it published.

The other thing I’ve been wanting to do is write a nerdcore rap album. I can’t sing, but my wife tells me I sound pretty good when I rap (not HARDCORE rap, but like, 311-style) so I thought I’d try to put some songs together. I have about six song titles already and they’re pretty funny. I can’t wait to write them. I have one already done, I just need to make some beats to go with it. My sister-in-law is a great keyboard player so I’m going to have her help me out with the actual music part. When they’re done, I WILL be posting the songs here.

I wish summer meant I had tons of free time like when I was a kid so I was able to put more into these projects, but I’m excited to work on them with whatever time I can manage.

I’m a huge Dragon Ball fan, and I have been for 17 years. You probably don’t know this because I’ve never talked about it. I haven’t talked about it because I don’t know how to do so without sounding like an elitist prick.

You see, Dragon Ball was something that I discovered in 1994, right after I had graduated from fourth grade. My best friend lived across the street from me and he had a teenage older brother. One of his friends brought over a tape once that he had gotten of some Japanese cartoon called Dragon Ball Z. We watched it, not knowing what was going on since it was all in Japanese with no subtitles. There was some guy with yellow hair fighting some big green bug-looking guy. We were hooked.

We watched whatever tapes he could get his hands on, which meant episodes were never in order. My friend imported a Dragon Ball video game for his SNES from one of those mail-order places from the backs of old video game magazines (the game turned out to be Dragon Ball Z Super Butôden 2, which I still enjoy playing to this day). They later went on a trip to Hawaii and came back with all kinds of awesome Dragon Ball stuff.

A few years later, the internet started getting popular so I was finally able to read about the show and figure out what was going on. Around this time, the dub of Dragon Ball Z started airing, and I watched it for a while, happy to be able to understand the characters but knowing something wasn’t quite right.

I’m not going to go into my history much further than this; it’s irrelevant. I’m a huge Dragon Ball fan, but I don’t watch the FUNimation dub. I don’t like it. I don’t care for the voices, I don’t like what they did to the characters’ personalities, and I don’t like the stupid changes they made for no reason other than for the sake of making changes (it’s “Freeza”, not “Frieza” goddammit).

To me, the Japanese version IS Dragon Ball. As far as I’m concerned there is no other version. What I really need to do is stop thinking that everyone needs to be the same way.

I get angry when people make fun of Son Gokuu’s Japanese voice and say “he sounds like a girl!” Well, he sounds like a girl because his voice is performed by a woman, a very talented seiyuu by the name of Masako Nozawa, who has been doing his voice since he was a kid in the original Dragon Ball series. Gokuu’s personality is not done justice with an overly masculine voice. He’s incredibly naïve and, honestly, stupid. He’s an incredible fighter, yes, but he’s an incredible fighter because of his pure heart and unwillingness to back down from injustice. Nozawa-san IS Gokuu to me, and always will be.

I could write a whole essay on Nozawa-san and how great she is, but I’ll cut that part short for now.

Now that I’ve been collecting the domestic “Dragon Box” releases (the DVD sets that contain the remastered video transfer from the Japanese releases of the same name, rather than the harsh “remasters” FUNimation has been doing for years, as well as defaulting to Japanese audio and including neat information booklets) I feel like I can finally stop fighting. I finally have the Dragon Ball release I’ve wanted for years. The picture looks amazing, looking like it did in the late 80s and early 90s (although cleaned up significantly) when it aired rather than having the contrast and brightness cranked up like on FUNimation’s other releases of the series.

I finally got what I wanted. That should be good enough for me to finally relax.

I’ve been reading Daizenshuu EX for years (from back in the day when it was called “Vegetto EX’s Home Page”!) and it’s become THE hub for Dragon Ball fandom on the internet, and not just for American fans. Mike (also known as “Vegetto EX”) has always presented the site as authoritative, but welcoming at the same time. The site focuses, as it should, on the Japanese original, because it’s the one version that can be enjoyed by everyone regardless of where they live. The site has a forum that’s bursting with active users discussion just about every aspect of the series and they do so while being respectful and courteous of each other, regardless of which “version” they enjoy (and considering over half of the forum users are from outside the United States, there’s a lot of versions!).

So anyway, I was tweeting about Dragon Ball a bit today (mostly because I’ve been watching a lot of Dragon Ball Online teasers and things… I want to play that game so bad!) and I tweeted “I don’t know how to discuss my Dragon Ball fandom without sounding like an elitist prick.” It’s true. I’ve always prefaced being a Dragon Ball fan with “But keep in mind I don’t watch the dub” like that made me awesome.

I got a tweet back from Vegetto EX (I follow him on Twitter… I’ve tossed a couple of jokes his way and even gave him Pokémon advice once, he was always nice in his responses) and he said “I find that if I simply do not acknowledge other dubs unless I need to and speak enthusiastically, it works out pretty OK. Maybe?”

Then I got an email. He was following me on Twitter.

It was a really cool thing, because a) I got great advice from someone who’s really THE authority on Dragon Ball fandom, and b) because one of my internet heroes was following me on Twitter.

I don’t really think much of “real” celebrities but I definitely hold people I admire in my geekdom in high regard. I kinda geeked out when I met Major Nelson, e, Stepto and lollip0p at PAX East, and I thought it as really fuckin’ cool that Vegetto EX started following me on Twitter. I mean, this is a guy whose website I’ve been going to for as long as I can remember, whose podcast I listen to every week, and now he’s interested in what I’m saying. It was just a cool moment.

I love Dragon Ball and I want to be able to talk about it with you guys. Thanks to some good advice, I think I will finally be able to.

I liked being part of the BnB staff but it just got to be too much. I’m a married guy who works full-time, so when I’d come home each day and have extra responsibilities, it just got to be a bit much for me to handle. My phone was always going off with email alerts and there was always something to do. That’s not inherently bad in and of itself (in fact, were I a few years younger, I would have relished it), but it got to the point where I didn’t even have time to play the games I was writing about and I wasn’t spending nearly enough time with my wife.

Another aspect of it was I realized just how apathetic I am towards the “industry” side of video gaming. I don’t care what this company’s financials are, I don’t care what this CEO said, I just don’t care. I like playing video games, and even then there’s a specific group of video games that I like, and I just didn’t have the interest to keep going into things that were just irrelevant to me. I thought I wanted to be a games writer, and I don’t think that’s true anymore. I certainly enjoy writing about video games, but only the way I do on this blog… typically tongue-in-cheek, informal articles written by a guy who just likes video games.

The last part of it was that I just missed this place and I felt guilty for not having the time to pay attention to it. I’ve written for PK Bloggin’! for over a year and I really enjoy talking to the people I’ve met along the way, whether it’s on the forums, in the comments, or on Facebook or Twitter. Coming back, it seems a few people have left and I really regret that.

I started PK Bloggin’! because I liked writing and I wanted a place where I could write the things that I wanted to write the way I wanted to write them. I don’t have a formal writing style. I write the way I talk, and I rarely go back and re-read what I’ve written before I post it. I prefer to think of my writing style as just me putting up half of a conversation.

The team at BnB was great to work with. They’re an extremely talented crew and I certainly wish them the best, and I’m still keeping in contact with them through Twitter and Facebook.

I’ll be re-posting a few of my articles over here just so I have them in my personal archive, so don’t think I’m being lazy when you see them pop up. It’s mostly just for my records. I mean, I got to interview one of my favorite gaming “celebrities” and personal nerd crush Laura “lollip0p” Massey. I want that on the record here!

So now that I’m here full-time again, I’m re-commiting myself to writing SOMETHING every weekday. It doesn’t have to be huge, and it doesn’t have to be related to video games, but it will probably be funny and hopefully entertaining.

If you stuck around for the dry spell, I thank you for that. I hope you enjoy what’s coming up.

I’ve known for a long time that I would eventually grow up, but I also knew I would never grow OLD, the extent of which I’m still trying to figure out.

I like a lot of things that I’m outside the age demographic for. I mean, c’mon, the only reason I ever go into a bookstore is so I can buy manga. As a 27 year old man, though, I’m also a fan of things I’m outside the GENDER demographic for.

Christina and I have been really hardcore back into anime lately (thanks in large part to how awesome Anime Boston  was this year) and she’s been buying up a ton of stuff from Right Stuf, which has all kinds of series on the cheap.

Right now I’m kinda hooked on K-On!, an anime/manga series about high school girls in a band.

I swear to GOD I’m not a creeper.

But in all seriousness it’s a ton of fun to watch. It’s really wacky and silly in a similar vein as Lucky Star, something else I enjoyed far more than I really should have. The characters are a riot and although they’re largely anime archetypes the way they interact is fun to see. The music is really good too… I must have listened to “Don’t Say ‘Lazy’” (the ending theme) about five or six times on my walk home today.

It’s something I’ve had to deal with as I’ve gotten older; my interests haven’t changed. As a teenager I’d watch Azumanga Daioh with my (ex) girlfriend and it wasn’t much of a big deal, I was 19 years old. Eight years later and I’m still watching the same things.

The other thing is cosplay… I have a great time cosplaying at Anime Boston but I do have to wonder if I’m starting to get too old for it. This year I went as Gin Ichimaru from Bleach (Christina went as Rukia Kuchiki) and the Bleach photoshoot was a ton of fun, even though I was one of the older people there. I was by no means one of the oldest cosplayers there, but one guy was probably in his 40s and hanging out with teenage girls… I don’t ever want to be THAT guy.

All of this will be easier when we have a kid and I can just blame it on them.

It’s no secret I’ve been scarce since I started writing for BnB a couple of months ago. I’ve been trying to keep up with writing for both blogs, which oftentimes is a Herculean task with all the other things I have going on every day. I haven’t written about BnB yet over here, and since it’s a big part of my life now I felt I should document it not only for myself, but to give you guys an idea of why the scales are tipped the way they are.

Warning, though, this is going to be a bit more personal than my usual “this is how I feel about video games” post.

When I was in high school, I used to write for the school newspaper. That’s where my interest in writing originated, and it’s where I forged my personal “style” that I still use today. I was never a news writer; I preferred to write from my own point of view, writing things out the way I would say them, hopefully to make people laugh or get them thinking. The truth of the matter is that people just aren’t as interested in reading the way that they used to be, so I wanted to develop a more conversational style of writing that didn’t speak AT the reader, but rather speak WITH them.

Anyway. I took Journalism 1 my first semester as a freshman (the way my high school schedule worked was we took four classes for half the year, then the second half four new ones). My journalism teacher liked my style so much he asked me to drop one of the classes I had planned on taking the second semester and instead join the newspaper production class. I did, becoming only the second freshman in school history to write for the paper.

Even though I was the youngest person in the class, I was immediately made to feel at home and welcomed into the group. This wasn’t just a class, this was a group of friends. Everyone helped each other. Everyone was constantly joking around. We were working hard to put out something that we could all be proud of, but at the same time we made sure that everyone was having a great time.

I stayed part the newspaper staff for all four years in high school. I saw a lot of people come and go, but the vibe of the class never changed. It was always a fun place where we could create things with friends. By the time I was a senior, everyone I had learned from was gone. I was appointed editor-in-chief, so I kind of made it my own personal mission to myself to make sure that the first-timers who were just joining the staff had as good a time as I had had when I first started.

(I’m thinking back now and realizing that I started writing for that newspaper at the end of 1998. Good lord, I’m getting old.)

High school ended, though, as it always does, and I didn’t do anything with my writing after that. I didn’t take college very seriously (it was like high school 2… I didn’t want to take math or science or history anymore. I wanted to study writing, I was a journalism major after all) and as a result I didn’t finish (although part of that has to do with the whole “moving across the country to eventually marry Christina” thing). I didn’t like the college newspaper at all. It was unprofessional, juvenile, and frankly, it looked like no one who worked on it really cared about it. My professor in my journalism 101 class seemed like he was just phoning it in every day, and he probably was, since he wasn’t REALLY a professor, just an old retired print journalist.

As I’ve mentioned on the site before, in the back of my mind I had always wanted to be a game journalist, ever since I picked up a copy of Electronic Gaming Monthly #58 in April 1994. I had tried a few times to start blogs (even before “blogging” was really a thing) with little success. In a word, I was lazy. I wanted success to be instant. I tried a few more times to start gaming sites with friends, but they didn’t last long. They weren’t writers and trying to get them to keep up with it just didn’t work.

Finally in 2009 I decided to take matters into my own hands and commit to a blog, and PK Bloggin’! was born. I was finally writing again regularly for the first time in seven years and I loved it. I even managed to get readers! People I didn’t know were commenting on my posts! It was awesome!

Looking back on it now, though, I was going about it all wrong. I had ad space on my site, thinking that I was going to make money. I really thought that it was going to get me noticed, people would want to pay me to advertise their stuff on my wildly successful blog, and I’d be getting paid to do what I loved.

Of course, it didn’t happen, and I think the highest bid I ever got on one of my ads was $.02 a day. I removed them not too long ago (after revamping my previously god-awful color scheme) and the site looks SO MUCH BETTER now than it did.

I don’t remember how the correspondence started, but I somehow fell into contact with a guy named Martin who was running a gaming blog called “The Gaming Enigma.” He asked for a link swap and I happily obliged. His site had good content and I was always willing to help another guy trying to make a name for himself.

At some point, I got a message from Martin asking me to change the link, because he had merged his blog with a few others to make “Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming.” I checked out what they were doing and I was immediately jealous; he had put together a small team that was pumping out content, and QUALITY content. I had toyed with the idea before of turning PK Bloggin’! into a team effort, but whenever I thought about it I decided that I wouldn’t be happy sharing something that was so personal and changing what it was.

Another writer that I honestly don’t remember how we got in contact with each other, Chad, had just been brought on as part of the BnB staff(I knew him and Martin separately, I had no idea they even knew each other!). I decided that I wanted to be a part of what they were doing, and I noticed that there wasn’t a whole lot of Nintendo content going on. I emailed Martin offering my services (which I re-wrote about seven times because I kept thinking that I sounded pathetic) as a writer for BnB, if he had a spot open. He was happy to have me as part of the crew, and since then I’ve been an appreciative member of the BnB team.

I have so many things now that I’ve wanted for a long, long time. I have contacts at Nintendo. Their press releases get sent right to my BnB email and I have my own personal login credentials to their media site. The most important thing, though, is something that I’ve been searching for since high school: a team to be a part of.

BnB is made up of some extremely talented writers and I’m incredibly thankful to be able to work alongside them. We’re constantly emailing back and forth, coordinating projects and stories, helping each other out. It’s an incredible feeling.

The editors are also very quick to recognize hard work, too; it’s a really great feeling when I’ve worked hard on something and they take the time to email me and tell me that I did a good job. It’s something that I just can’t get from writing on a blog by myself.

I’ve taken control of the site’s podcast, Podbytes, and I’m having a blast with it. I love coming up with the topic ideas, writing the outline, and then talking it over with my fellow writers. I’ve gotten great feeback on the latest episode, and besides everyone loving the intro/outro theme I picked (“Jetpack Blues, Sunset Hues” by Anamanaguchi), Martin told me that I was a “natural host,” which was a better compliment than I think he realizes.

I know that my posts on PK Bloggin’! can be sporadic. I’ve made it a point to be on the forums more to make up for that, because what PK Bloggin’! gives me that BnB can’t is a chance to connect on a personal level with my readers, something that I’m very, very appreciative of. If I didn’t have you guys, I probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to pursue a spot at BnB in the first place.

Is PK Bloggin’! my priority? Sadly, no. That doesn’t mean that I enjoy it any less or I’m giving up on it. It’s my personal blog and it’s where I connect with the friends I’ve made as I’ve taught myself how to be a writer again. It’s not going anywhere, I’m still going to write for it, and I’ll be on the forums as long as you all are.

Bits ‘n’ Bytes is how I’m going to make a name for myself, though. We’re starting to get a lot of attention and we’re slowly on our way up. It’s incredibly exciting and rewarding, and I can’t say enough times how glad I am to be a part of it.

The other day Christina and I were at Target, since we’re adults and sometimes have to go buy things like household cleaners and storage bins and other things that aren’t really all that fun. Still, though, we have a routine each time we go in: we get what we need, stop by the action figures, swing by the video games and DVDs, and then before we hit the registers to check out, look at the trading cards. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a pack of WoW cards to try for a loot card, or we’ll each get a pack of the new Pokémon cards, or Christina finds an interesting new unknown thing to buy.

This time, though, we found something WAY more awesome: a pack of the Animal Crossing e-Reader cards. For the GameCube game. From 2002.

The cardboard backing was a little mangled, because they looked like they had been lost in the back room for years and someone had just recently found them and, not knowing what they were, just put them with the rest of the trading cards. Of course we had to buy them.

So we’re checking out and paying for all of our stuff and just like I expected, the cards didn’t scan. The cashier tried scanning them like six or seven times, all the while Christina and I are trying to explain what the cards actually are, how old they were, and that they’re probably not in the system anymore. She asks us what they were marked over on the card rack, and we try to explain that they didn’t have a price on them, because they’re FROM 2002, WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING, OH MY GOD. She calls her manager over and we go through the same song and dance all over again, until they finally decide to just charge us $1.99.

We haven’t opened them yet, we’re not sure if we will. How many unopened packs of these exist in the world? We’re not going to sell them, but as you know, Animal Crossing means a great deal to both of us, so they’re kinda neat to have as a souvenir from when fate decided to start its work.