Well settling into this thing nicely.

I appreciate everyone that said hello. Yippie for the The GHost's seal of approval. I feel special. I also feel this will be great, especially after Athiestium clued me in on the incest. Being an only child, I missed out on all that. I can't tell you how excited I am for all the rape. Though I'll settle for more hentai impressions.

Already had my first real blog post yesterday recapping the games that are coming out in this week for North America and what I planned on getting. Thank you for the comments there as well. And I should follow up tomorrow with another posting. I desperately need to get back into the habit of writing every day.

Yes, I already had my introduction post but I figured I would go more into myself today just for reference.

I was born, raised and currently still living in Springfield, Illinois -- the worst of the fifty state capitols. Yes, Juneau is close as it doesn't have friggin roads connecting it to mainland Canada. But Alaska is a wondrous land of penguins, polar bears, hockey and glorious, glorious oil. Drill that shit. If you're worried about the polar bears, I have a big basement. I probably can house one or two. Too bad the power company keeps hiking the rates up.



So yes, Springfield is the capitol of Illinois -- not Chicago -- and its the worst of the bunch. Our arts and culture is near Neanderthal in scope, the Convention Center is a horrible venue, we can't attract any worth while events (outside of a monster truck rally occasionally and a circus that doesn't change year in and year out) and we've been home to numerous sports clubs that have ditched town due to lack of support or owners running off with the money. We do have Junior A Tier II US Hockey here, which is amazing. And it makes me warm inside.

They're attempting to add some vigor to our downtown again. But its still just bars and homeless. But what good are homeless if you can't ollie over them on a skateboard? Skateboarding I believe is outlawed here. It's pretty much been outlawed everywhere. Like smoking and thinking.

Of course our namesake is the 16th President of the United States of America, Abe Lincoln, who did something important. When the guy is plastered everywhere you kind of stop listening. Then again -- if you're on the Board of Tourism you only have two choices in what to highlight. You can either choose to plaster Lincoln all over our pamphlets or there's the glorious 1908 Race Riots that occurred here. I expect a huge celebration for the 100 year anniversary of that one. Start soaking your torches and sharpening your pitchforks. Come see the start of the NAACP!

Our main attraction is the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library complex, which is nice -- expect for the homeless who like to hang out there and bath in the sinks of the place. There's also a museum there that I suggest, if you're ever in town, to check out and promptly leave town. Unless of course you're here for the aforementioned rapes.



On to the good stuff. We do have a Toys R' Us but we do have, get this, 3 EB Games within a square mile of each other. One at the mall, one across the street from the mall and one down the road by Target. So much for business sense. There's a fourth location on the North side of town, right next door to where I work. The people there are pretty cool and I don't really get all the crap EB usually gets from the internet community. There's only one douchebag I've run into and he no longer works there. They know the answer to just about anything (unless its SNK related, which is one bummer) I need to ask, so that's cool. The one by me, unfortunately is right next to a Payless Shoe Store so they're practically babysitters too.

There's also a fifth location in the next town over and I actually live equal distance from the store over by where I work and that fifth location. 11 miles in either direction and I have a store to go to.

Now for the bad part -- we do have a used game store, a Game Xchange. But ever since the ownership of that changed it has gone down the shitter. The kids there are idiots and teenage punks. And if you're looking for a common PS2 or X-Box game then that's a nice place to go. However, no thanks, I bought Bouncer when it came out. In fact I think that is my old copy sitting there there with the coffee stain on the manual. Dirge of Cerberus? Yeah, that appears to be my copy too.

They do have a lot of NES games but nothing I'm NOT emulating or have on the Virtual Console already. There's also a couple import and 32X games for a $1 but its a rather under whelming place. Not as good as the Game XChange in Jacksonville. But with gas prices the way they are, I don't really have the time or resources to make the 45 minute trip both ways.

So gaming around here sucks. Most of the kids I work with are newer generation gamers or just not into RPGs; which is fine, RPGs aren't everyone's bag and some people just weren't fortunate enough to be born for the glorious 8-bit and 16-bit eras. We shouldn't hate them. We should pity them. And I do. I also pity myself for having to talk to them every day. I really have no desire to talk about GTA 4 or State of Emergency (which, one of them claimed was a 'cool game' once.) Feel my pain. At least Brawl has made the conversations not fail as much.

I did go to school here. I tell people I graduated from the University of Illinois. Which is true -- the diploma does say University of Illinois. But the Springfield branch and the main campus in Champaign couldn't be further apart in terms of culture. Though I did meet a couple gamers here, they've since 'gotten the hell out.' But not before I actually got a working four player match of Crystal Chronicles going one night; apparently it was only the sixth time that has ever occured.

I originally went for Computer Science but the classes sucked all the desire for game design out of me. Yeah, I know -- you have to start from the bottom, learn the basics and THEN get to the good stuff but yeah, I'd be programming in Q-Basic when I was like 7. My dad's whole life from the Air Force to his current job has centered around computers, so naturally it was just passed on to me.

I just bullshited some other courses and got my Associates in....Liberal Arts. And went off to focus on Literature for some stupid reason. Don't get me wrong, I loved my entire time in the program and met some interesting people and professors that I will remember forever, but I'm not the most studious reader and I have no idea what I want to do within the field and no motivation to apply any of it. I'm not too worried, as something will come along but man -- a quarter of a century and this is all I've amounted to really?

As a side note, I decided to go into Literature because of RPGs and mainly Final Fantasy IV. As a kid I read a lot (definitely more than I do now) and collected comics but it was Final Fantasy IV's odd story line (which honestly, in retrospect just fucking stupid and ridiculous) where I fell in love with the idea of telling a story, and my main reasoning behind taking the creative writing course that preempted my change to Literature. Yes, the Literature power house that is 'You Spoony Bard' molded me into the person I am today. And without it I wouldn't have Nabokov and Borges in my life. So score one for video games.



It's sad that in all that time you'd think story telling in video games would be light years ahead of where it was in FF4. But outside a few choice examples, most of them only recent, the medium hasn't gone anywhere. Or at least its gone on a snail's pace.

So all in all I'm a frustrated gamer. Very little outlets for the hobby except for online, where most people are douches. But I decided to finally give this place a try and so far so good.

As I said in the first intro, I've owned just about every console up until this generation. I did find a 3DO once in a flea market and it was actually one of the best $20 (with 5 games) I ever spent. Return Fire and StarCon 2 are amazing little titles. I sadly no longer have that, nor my Turbo-Grafx 16 which decided to die around Halloween this past year. IT was my first console death and believe me, I may have chose to hold off on a 360 because of the failure rate but its definitely not a feeling I ever want to go through again. But I guess it's like a puppy. You mourn for a while and then just get a new one. But occasionally, in the middle of the night you wake up crying, missing your old puppy...or console.

My favorite games? I probably should say but it might ruin the project I have coming up. It's much the same idea as manasteel88 had for his blog but it will rank my favorite games. I just need to write ahead to keep up and keep the work load down. But I think I've name-dropped a couple already. Over Christmas holiday I played through the original Mega Man titles in order and have started the X titles in order. I received Mega Man ZX Advent for Christmas and I'm the asshole that keeps buying the Star Force and Battle Network titles. So I guess you can say I'm a Mega Man fan above all else. I even have the damn comic book.

If you can't tell by my avatar and such, I'm all about the Tales of series. I think I'm more of a Tales fan now than I am of Final Fantasy. Although my handle isn't from Tales. A wonderful and official No-Prize to anyone who knows where it originates from. And if you ever get tired of referring to me by TYGO or the full thing, Jeff works just as well. Probably even better.

And two last notes before I leave you to wonder why you wasted your time reading all of this babble 1) If I ever make a grammar mistake (and I'm sure I've made about a half dozen or so just in this post alone) don't ever say 'BUT UR ENGLSH MAJORZ!!!" Grammar never excited me and with as much as I type for my blogs, I'm not rewriting this four to six times. Now, if I ever did an article for this site, it'll receive several rewrites and there won't be a problem. But on my blog, I'm not too worried about it. Even though I have Strunk and White's Elements of Style (I suggest everyone pick up a copy) on my nightstand.

2) This is a question probably best saved for the Forum but I've actually not traveled into that realm at this point, but where do most of you get your banners? As much as I <3 Luke its kind of stretched and sucks. Do most of you thief them? Or do you actually make them yourself?

I once had artistic talent. In like fifth grade. Unfortunately that "talent" was never fully cultivated and now my drawings are on par with Rob Liefeld. But I guess if he can make a living on his inability to draw the human body with proper proportions and avoiding to draw feet for twenty years, I could have too.

So making my own banner of art is out of the question. And I don't have Photoshop. I was an idiot and picked up Paint Shop Pro a few years back. I fucking don't understand a damn thing about how to use the program. I don't understand the layer system at all and everytime I hear 'layers' I think of that damn Shrek movie and onions. Fuck onions. Yes, the Onion Knights are cool (and ONIONK1 is my license plate, I will photo soon) but if you've ever had to chop up 20 pans of onions, you would dream of exterminating the world of onions too.

Oooh I thought I was down with the tirades. But yes, how do most people 'acquire' their banners?