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Community Discussion: Blog by HarassmentPanda | Unsung Heroes: Conrad ZimmermanDestructoid
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It's undeniable that the cblogs have brought a wealth of talent and a wealth of stupidity to the Destructoid community. While the stupidity is often acknowledged with hundreds of spam comments, many times the better cblogs go ignored or unnoticed for a long time. In this sporadically updated series (hey, I can only update when someone is consistently good and unnoticed) I will feature these unsung heroes of Destructoid.

The decision to write this first Unsung Heroes was not an easy one. Not because there weren't any deserving community members, but because of the inherent danger of writing about this month's choice: Conrad Zimmerman. You see, Conrad is known to a few of us as "Destructoid Kryptonite." He has gained this title not only because his cblogs fail to garner much attention regardless of how well they are written, but because any cblog written about him typically goes unloved. For instance, when Necros posted a cblog about Conrad's RetRose Contest, it received only two comments until I tricked some IRC guys into commenting that Necros is a racist. As you can see, the popularity-sapping power of Conrad is strong and posting about this man is akin to playing with fire while being strapped into a cock guillotine.

"Well, Panda, what about Conrad makes him worth taking this monumental risk? Why is this Conrad fellow awesome?" you ask. Well, dear reader, that is what the rest of this feature will be about. The most obvious reason that Conrad is one of my favorite cbloggers is that he has two excellent and consistently updated features: RetRose Tinted and On the Table.



RetRose Tinted

RetRose Tinted is a weekly feature (updated on Tuesdays) that looks at games of the past through the eyes of a modern gamer. In Conrad's own words:

"Aside from being an amazingly witty play on words, RetRose Tinted is an attempt to look back upon retro video games without the cloudy haze of nostalgia. Each week, I play a game that I remember enjoying in my youth and see if my memories are justified."

Essentially, RetRose Tinted is similar to Rorschach's wildly popular Why the Hell Should I Play it? series with a few notable differences: (1) RetRose Tinted focuses on games the author has played before, (2) RetRose Tinted has been running as a series for nearly two months, and (3) no one seems to read RetRose Tinted. Games covered in RetRose Tinted range from The Lost Vikings to Rygar to Zombies Ate My Neighbors and all of the stories are written well enough to be interesting even if you've never heard of the game. And, if games you've never heard of get your pants tight, you'll love Conrad's other series of articles: On the Table.



On the Table

On the Table is a weekly feature (typically updated on Saturdays) that discusses those things that people used to play before video games. I believe they were called board games. Again, in Conrad's own words:

"On the Table is a series of board and card game reviews. Each week, I focus on a different piece of analog entertainment with coverage of basic gameplay, a little critique and passing mention of any digital versions I find of it."

"But, Panda, NVGR!!" you cry. Well, buck up and quit your whining. I happen to like both this series and board games and Conrad has provided some perfectly compelling reasons as to why we should care:

"Board games are fun, for starters. And with the popularity of games like Carcassone, Catan and Eye of Judgement, I felt there was an interest in this type of game. And it's my blog, so there."

Not interested in board games? In the words of Thuper Hardcore, "No likey ...? Don't fucking read it." However, by skipping this series you're missing out. Like Conrad's RetRose posts, all of the On the Table series is well written and interesting even if you're unfamiliar with the subject matter. Additionally, many of the games have freely available PC iterations that Conrad discusses in his blog. Hell, it might even do some of you good to have some non-gamer friends over to down some brews and play some board games.

The Rest

In addition to Conrad's regular series, he randomly posts interesting stories, events, or game reviews. In particular, two of my recent favorites were his recount of seeing The State Reunion and his brief impressions of the Metal Gear Solid cell phone game.

Well, there you have it. A brief glimpse into the world of Conrad Zimmerman. I hope you've enjoyed this first edition of Unsung Heroes and I encourage everyone to leave comments or PM me with suggestions for future cbloggers to feature.



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Legacy Comments (will be imported soon)


I <3 Conrad and have since he joined. He immediately won me over with his zombie banner and wity additude. His presence is very notice, and I hope he continues to grace us with his Red Rose Tinted blogs. Srsly, I love those.

(when does the contest end? End of March, right?)
noticed*

BTW.. his gaming setup attracted alot of attention, and just goes to show what good tastes the man actually has.
Omg...I am crazy jealous of his gaming setup
I don't normally pay much attention to the CBlogs on the weekends so I usually miss is On the Table feature. But I could have swore I commented on more than just the Karnov RetRose Tinted blog.
Good series, there needs to be more stuff like this.
I want a signed pink DS :(.
I can't be too praise worthy of him. He has higher scores than me on all my favorite games on the leaderboard. It incites a jealous rage deep within my soul.
I know who he is, and have read quite a few of his blogs. However, I do not always comment on every blog I read.

Also, I agree with Butmac.

Sure as hell beats my setup
Conrad is a god among meng
Also, EDS fails for whoring
I have been reading some of the articles from Conrad, specially Retrose.

This series looks good, keep 'em coming.
This is a great idea for a feature. Helps cut through some of that spam and fail fat on the c-blogs.

All meat baby.
I always thought Retrose was about things that concern Scooby Doo =(
Conrad’s setup was amazing.
necros is a racist!!
Wow. I'm at an unusual loss for words here. Thanks for making a guy feel warm and fuzzy.
*In a totally non-gay way.
Congratz Conrad
This makes me warm in a gay way. What a nice idea.
The RetRose contest runs till the end of March, correct? I think I'm going to follow through on that and pump out a RetRose contest entry. Of course, if I were to win I'd probably donate the prize to someone else.

Now to think of which memory to write about.....
Thuper: I even quoted you! Don't worry... the next edition is for you.
You put the "I" where his wiener should be! tehehehe
Can we just go ahead and get a early hammer for Thuper CTZ?
Conrad:Win::Thuper:Fail

I knew those the SAT would come in handy down the line.
Awesome. Any time good writers get there stuff shown off here is a good idea.

Why all the hate Thuper?
great write up man.
!COCK GUILLOTINE++

Also, trolling and failure are both grounds for a ban. Thuper, you're not welcome to the Jam.
Well I've read some of his blogs ( couple of the 'On the table' ones and I think one or 2 of the retrose listings ), and I do agree that he's generally a great contributor :-)

I think lots of people suffer from this problem... Like I made a blog about a game I'd like to see happen, but when I submitted it and went back to the listings-page, it was allready down 5 places due to 1-line- and video-blogs...

Constantly do I ( and prolly everybody else ) see great pieces falling down the listings without too many decent comments while flamebait-pieces and troll-pieces easily get 100's of replies ( like WiiSucks or Thuper Hardcore )...
Conrad is the best, around! Nothing's ever gonna keep him down!

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