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About Me

Anything PS3, PS2, Old-school Mac (Dark Castle FTW).

My name is Mark, and I work in finance.

I am a nerdcore individual, and have done pretty much everything I've ever wanted to do in life. I've owned a comic shop, written for GamePro (one article w00t), traveled the world, played a couple CCGs professionally (and actually made money at it), owned 3 other businesses, romanced the most beautiful women and done it all with friends.

I have a blog over at http://www.gamersledge.com/wordpress where all the friends I pick up over the years like Katamari Damarcy hang out and we discuss nerdgasm things. Always looking for interesting people to join us.

There's a bit left on the old to-do list, but I'm pretty happy at my current job because I'm helping people.

I'd call myself a hardcore gamer; I started with el pong, although I was pretty young when it came out. From there I got a 'tennis' game (i don't think they actually had another name), my folks got me an Intellivision for Christmas and that was it; it was all over. I knew I could never get enough. (I get bonus points from all my friends because I still carry a He-Man intellivision keypad cover given to me by a great friend, in my wallet. The cover, not the friend.)

From there, my folks moved to the Ozarks, in the middle of BFE and Nowhere. I learned about the NES and eventually started stealing games from Wal Mart and Toys R Us, back before they had learned. Eventually I got caught stealing em at a video store, and I never did it again. But I bought a SNES from Wal-Mart my sophomore year in high school. Final Fantasy II made me an addict to RPGs. I returned my SNES to wal-mart in its original box and styrofoam my junior year of college. Because I had the receipt, original box and all styrofoam/equip, they gave me full price LOLz. I used that to buy a PSOne. It was that system that really drew me in and Final Fantasy VII and VIII and the original Persona destroyed any chance of me ever losing the RPG bug. I had a friend from Brazil while I was in college, and he was independently wealthy. Every week we would go and buy a SNES game or computer game and play it together and beat it. We were both great at fighters as well, so in my sophomore year I started doing the competitive circuit around KC, and always walked away with money. I've given up fighters mostly now; Tekken, VF, SC, SNK vs. Capcom2.. I play them for fun now; I don't have the time/energy to try to always win anymore... I won't forget the first time I walked into a Japanese arcade... I got 20-hit juggled with Cervantes. I cleaned up on SNK v. Capcom tho, and Virtua Fighter. I fared on tekken as I did on SC LOL.

Anyways, after college I started travelling for work, and was bringing in big bucks as I was gone all week/every week. I got a DC and every game/peripheral made for the system, in fours. I had a projector that I used for work, and when I was home 1-2 days a week, I'd throw parties like Mario Party as a drinking game, or Bushido Blade while drunk. It was great stuff. I picked up 5 ps2s on launch day, and let my friends buy them from me for cost. I got 2 ps3s on launch day, but 1 got cancelled, so the friend I had promised the other two let me get it. I was afraid I was going to be shot/mugged on the way out to the car with it. But it was awesome.

I am a Rhymes with Bony fanboi through and through, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate Xbox or Nintendo.

I did a 50-episode podcast on videogame news/reviews at my website http://www.gamersledge.com/rssfeed.xml

I think it was hellafun and good, but scheduling conflicts with my partner and I led to its ultimate demise.

I produced that podcast, and was putting like 4-5 hours a day into it. It was too much with work; I'm beginning to think that a roundtable format with no sfx is a much better idea LOL.

Anyways, my gamertag on the PS3 is balth feel free to add me if you want to play some warhawk or super puzzle fighter hd turbo remix alpha hyper king kamehameha spirit bomb genshiryoku shin reppu shao koken II.

The only thing that really sucks about having moved back to the 'Zarks is that there are not really any educated nerdcore type people here. I have no friends my age here, so online gaming is pretty important to me.

RPGs; Persona 3, Every Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest VIII, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, R:FOM, Warhawk, White Knight Story when it comes out.

Gamer Profile

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PSN: balth
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Following (31)

M.A.S.K. - Quality Saturday morning joy. balth | 9:40 AM on 10.18.2007 4 comments

Snaileb's power rangers post got me thinking about what one of my favorite shows was growing up, and it would be M.A.S.K. Mobile Army Strike Kommand if I remember it right (and you thought Mortal Kombat did it first with the K thing, nope!). They had around 70-someodd episodes if memory serves (no I was too lazy to try to wiki it, plus work is busy.) Here is the intro: Feel that rockin' opening song? See what would happen was Matt Tracker (aka generic Aryan leader) would listen to the computer drone out who was best for a mission, and we'd see hilarity ensue as these guys would just drop whatever they were doing at the time and run off: One of the interesting things was that unlike every other female voice used in cartoons at the time, the voice actor playing the computer would actually drop the end of her codenames like males do in their inflections while speaking. On purpose to get males to identify more with it? I'm not sure, but it's interesting food for thought. You probably also noticed that the mission team was a sausage fest, that was almost always the way. Women were either damsels in distress, or evil, which is probably where I developed my taste in women. Thanks, M.A.S.K.! Then, after immediately appearing in their secret bunker after leaving their 'mundane' lives behind, they'd get their supercharged MASKS and roll out: The best part is that Bruce Sato, the asian, spoke like he was in a Kung-Fu movie. I really thought this was how all asians spoke when I was little. These guys would fight Venom, who also had transforming vehicles, and of course the good guys would always win. The leader of Venom was Miles Mayhem, who I believe, owned an oil company and a FUPA. Fat people are always evil, especially if they're rich! His vehicle, however, was the coolest one on the show; it was a helicopter that would turn into a jet plane. Pimpage. He would always yell, 'I'll win, next time!' and then they'd have the obligatory-and-sometimes-vague moral of the day: No matter how many times I watch that, I always feel bad for wanting the truck to splatter him across the pavement like paint across a Van Gogh canvas. The shows were never too serious, the right mix of tech/sci-fi and action, and generally amusing. For your enjoyment, the entire first episode: Part 1: Part 2: I say this is light years in quality over Power Rangers, and it came out like 12 years before it. What do you think? that is all.