Dear Destructoid,

I suck.

I stumbled upon this fine community a little under a year ago, created an account about half a year ago, and since then, I have done nothing but quietly lurk without saying much. And frankly, I'm tired of idly reading community discussions without getting involved, or watching everyone else post Monthly Musings without contributing one myself. So I've decided now that my class schedule is lighter, I'll try to post on Destuctoid more. Consider it a late new year's resolution.

Hello! My name is Hank Peters (not really), and I am a video game and music fanatic. I am a senior in High School right now, and I have plans to go to the University of Alabama Birmingham for a major's degree in Music Technology. I've bee playing guitar for five years, bass for three years (my bass rocks gold strings bling bling), and I'm starting to learn how to play piano.



I've been playing video games for about fifteen years, starting with Excite Bike, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, and Mickey Mousecapade on the NES. Until I was 6 or 7 years old, the only way I could get any video game action was through going over to friends homes and stay there for hours on end. The Nintendo 64 was the first console I ever owned, and despite the sad truth that it's probably the worst Nintendo home console (Virtual Boy excluded), I still love it very much. Once that was done and over with I saw the Dreamcast for the first time at a Software Etc. store. They were running an imported version of Sonic Adventure, and my mind was blown. I knew that I had to buy it the SECOND it was released, so I asked my parents if I could organize a garage sale to get the money to buy the system. It worked, and on 9/9/99, I was the happiest kid in the world.



These days I own a SNES, a Genesis, a (broken) Playstation, N64, Gamecube, PS2, DS, Wii, and Xbox 360. Thanks the recent opening of Play N Trade stores near my area, I've become somewhat of a retro collector. Just a few days ago I bought a first generation 3DO in pretty good condition, and I've ordered an extra controller to see how well it handles Street Fighter II.

Music is the best. I have a CD collection of more than 200 albums; some bad, some rare. My favorite artists include Frank Zappa, Faith No More, Carcass, Ornette Coleman, Ween, Kraftwerk, John Zorn, Black Sabbath, Devo, and The Residents.

I really hope I didn't over-do my welcome post, and if I did, I'm sorry in advance. As I've stated before, I suck, so please try to forgive me. I don't want to do it wrong.