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About Me

Oh, hi there. Didn’t see you enter. Anyways, welcome to my humble little blog. For those of you not familiar with who I am, the name’s Brian. I’m 24 years old and hail from Findlay, Ohio. I work at the local newspaper here as a copy editor, putting my four long years of college to actual use. Kind of. I think.

For those of you who might recognize me from elsewhere, I work as Assistant Gaming Editor over at Blogcritics Gaming and as Features Editor over at Tomopop. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it because I get to do a lot of cool shit with a lot of cool people.

I've been gaming since the relatively young age of around 3 and I've played plenty of games, both good and bad. I'm continuously expanding my gaming collection, which has become more of an archive in recent years as I'm focusing on collecting older, less well-known titles. You'd honestly be surprised on what people are missing out on in bargain bins...



Other than gaming, I love anime, manga, sports, movies, TV, and a whole lot more. I also happen to have something of a legendary love for Cammy, to the point that I am the site's unofficial official Cammy fanboy. And yes, I do play as her in Street Fighter and do so quite well, too.

Also, I am Chad Concelmo's B.F.F., my prize for coming in first in The Great Retro Quiz .18 - ActRaiser. Accept no substitutes. Not even Aerox.

Contact Info:

AIM: NihonTiger90
MSN: hurricane317 at hotmail.com
Skype: NihonTiger90
Twitter: brianszabelski
GMail: brianszabelski at gmail.com
MySpace: Click
Steam: NihonTiger




Mad props to Ghost for this amazing card!

Great Retro Quiz! Results

Punch-Out! featuring Mike Tyson


Star Fox (winner)
ActRaiser (winner)
Dolphins!!
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Street Fighter II
Super Mario Kart


Castlevania
Contra
Donkey Kong Country
Smash Bros.
Zelda II

Nihon's Gallery of Hotness:









(Yes, that’s one of Dtoid’s own, Hollie (a.k.a. phoenix-blood). I met her at PAX and she is awesome.)





(Ooooh, I think I found a new favorite :3)

Psst, more here.

Gamer Profile

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Mii: 1555-3898-0488-3828
Gamertag: NihonTiger90

Following (72)

BioWare's Hudson: If Shepard dies in Mass Effect 2, he isn't coming back in Mass Effect 3 Brian Szabelski | 9:37 PM on 06.17.2009 13 comments

BioWare's Casey Hudson has a new post up on the developer's blog at BioWare's Web site, and in it, he talks about the game's ending. You know, the thing that's been getting a lot of attention because of the whole Shepard dying at the end thing. He spends a bit of the post talking about what exactly that all means: "When we say that Shepard can die in Mass Effect 2, it’s not something that happens at points in the middle of the game. Yes, you can “die” in game play as normal but that’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s not a “Game Over” screen. It’s not a gimmicky thing where you make a choice, “die”, and reload to continue to the “real” ending. When you get to the very end of the story in Mass Effect 2, you will get one of a wide variety of climactic and satisfying endings. Depending on how prepared you were, your ending may involve Shepard making the ultimate sacrifice to accomplish the mission." Sounds awesome to me. An ending with real consequences based on how you played throughout the entire game? I can really get behind that. And as for the suicide mission Shepard's going on: "In Mass Effect 2, you (as Commander Shepard) are faced with what appears to be a suicide mission: taking a team into the heart of enemy territory where you shouldn’t have any chance of coming back alive. Your survival therefore is based on how well you’ve built a team – who you recruited, how well-equipped they are, and whether they’re loyal to you. Loyalty (and the things you’ll do to earn it) is a central part of the game, and it is critical to Shepard surviving the final mission." "Paragon / Renegade decisions affect a lot of things in the game – and will affect which how the game ends – but they are completely separate from your character’s readiness to survive the final mission." Those loud squeals of joy you just heard? Yeah, they're from me. Drew Karpyshyn, Hudson, Dtoid's Kitae and the rest of the BioWare crew are determined to take the best game I ever got for free (thanks, Target!) and make it ten-thousand times better, it seems. The original Mass Effect had several issues, a lot of them being graphical (curse you, pop-in textures!) and some related to game play, but from all accounts, these have been fixed and a ton more content's been thrown on top. Next year needs to come sooner so I can put down Forza 3 and pick up Mass Effect 2. Oh, and there might be some hawt alien secks: "As for whether there will be alien love in an elevator, you’ll have to play to find out." Tee-hee. :3