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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.
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.
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Steam:
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I checked the back of my box to be sure, Y0j1mb0 and I both definitely have
on the back of our boxes; and as such, I'd like to discuss a problem I've found I've had for the last several years: Game Completion. First of all, this isn't an emopost™. I'm not complain-posting about how I have a life and I don't have time to play games yadda yadda. I'm stating that I am an adult with very large time constraints put upon me by my own doing. I am VP of a credit union, I have a side business doing website design. I DM and play in 2 D&D games per week. And I have to sleep in there, too. So there IS a limited amount of time that I can dedicate towards a game. And that may or may not be a contributing factor to what I'd like to discuss today. You see, I have had an odd tendency over the years: I don't replay videogames I've beaten. I find, once I've beaten a game, that it is very difficult for me to muster the gumption (that's a euphamism for sex in Louisiana, in case you didn't know. Tell your friends. Muster the gumption.) to pick it up again. 
I used gumbo here because gumbo shares the first three letters with gumption, and isn't gumbo really just sex in your mouth with seafood? I think we all know the answer to that. Let me use a recent example: 
Demon's Souls. I cannot extol the virtues and rewarding gameplay of this title enough. I contend that it's perhaps one of the greatest games ever published in North America within the last 10 years. AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO GET EVERYTHING THE FIRST TIME THROUGH. And herein lies the rub for me. It took me 37 hours to beat it. My skill is WAY up, and I rarely die 'stupid' (on my part) deaths anymore. I'm a heavy-duty character, and my confidence in my demon-slaying skills is way up there. But I find myself burdened by the fact that I know what I have to do now to get the things I missed; which is start at square one once more and retrace my steps for the entire game. And that really doesn't appeal to me. It seems like a heavy burden as opposed to something I look forward to. Another example: 
I imported this game from Japan and played with the Japanese client in Japanese for 3 years. Then, my compy crashed and I had to get a new system. I switched to the PS2. I couldn't migrate my account to the NA servers. I played for two more years, never coming close to reaching where I was initially; again the burden of having to do the same thing over surmounted my enthusiasm to play the title. A final offering: 
I started playing CO on day one. In exactly 30 days, I max leveled a character (lvl 40). It's still a launch MMO, so other than grinding monsters for character costume parts that would only unlock on the character I have already perfected (hence, no desire there); there's no endgame content yet to speak of. I LOVE the game, and I have 7 other characters around level 20. But do I really want to take them to level forty; just doing the same thing again? No; again, the burden of knowing exactly what I have to do surpasses my enthusiasm to play the game. Generally I try to invest in games that have infinite replayability, like Call of Duty 4 (I never did get the gold cross, it was too much!). Or I'll just take forever and NOT beat the game (FFVII, FFXII, Burnout Paradise) until I really have exhausted EVERYTHING there is to do. I don't watch movies a second time (unless I REALLY love it), and I don't play videogames again after I've beaten them, unless there is some online component that makes it different. But even then, sometimes I don't, unless I feel like I'm making progress and the gameplay is just blow me out of the park. (Call of Duty 4 is a gem to me specifically because I beat single player, I achieved double rank prestige in multiplayer, but the game is just.that.fun. that I keep on playing, even today, even tho I'm not gaining anything.) So like I said, this is not 
emo-post™ central. What I am interested is hearing your opinions on whether you replay games and/or why you do/don't. It's cawfee..let's tawk. Discuss. that is all.
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Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
As for everything else you mentioned I am your polar opposite. I do replay a LOT of games. Not just for completion's sake either. Just because I want to relive the original feeling I had when I played the game. Though typically unsuccessful, if the game is indeed a special affair I get some of it back.
As a huge movie buff, with a massive collection, I watch a LOT of the same movies too. Like books read and reread for an even richer experience. I'm not bogged down by what's going to happen next because I know what will happen. Now I can just chill and enjoy the ride. I guess that can be said about everything.
Also I have had two blogs to make live in your site forever. Maybe a year from now I'll actually put 'em up. ;)
I also find it hard to replay games, but at the same time, there are a lot of games that I've gone through a second time immediately after finishing. I did this with Metal Gear Solid 4--I didn't even think twice about it. It was the sort of game that was the perfect length to allow for another playthrough. A giant JRPG, though, I'll never be able to do, as I just can't justify that sort of extra committment.
I'm nowhere near finishing Demon's Souls, but I'd love to think that I'll have time to replay it once I'm done. The reality, however, may end up being a lot different. As I look at the upcoming games schedule, I have to worry about finishing them all even once.
... it's usually a matter of "a new game" that I want to play (oh, look! Something shiny!) or a preference for online play where the game is always different.
Long live the Dragon. :)
With gaming as expensive a hobby as it currently is, with my want to play four titles this holiday season totaling up to $240 (YIKES!), I just can't afford not to return to old experiences. Of course, that might just be where we differ. We'll see if my outlook changes as time wears on.
Games I can replay more often, depending on the game. An FPS can be played many different ways, even though the same levels, and as long as they're fun and satisfying, I'll play them many times. Half Life 2 is a good example. Rpg's, on the other hand, I find myself in the same boat as you; once I've done something, I have hard time going back and doing it again without leaving it for a long time. I've lost save games now of both Oblivion and Fallout 3, and have not touched either since.
Take Bioshock for example, it has different difficulty settings and I didn't get everything on my first play through, but I'm probably (almost) never going to play it again, despite the fact that I loved its story.
Books are a different type of beast all together. Books are my ultimate hobby so I'll re-read my favorites over and over.
Great blog though/
"Epic" games of today are a little less appealing to trudge through over and over again, thought there definitely are some exceptions (Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4).
1. Saturn Bomberman
2. Guardian Heroes
3. Radiant Silvergun
4. Super Mario Kart
5. Burnout 2
You'll notice all these games are Arcade style, games mean for replay. My Saturn died on me from overuse. Cry for me, my Dreamcast is making angle grinder noises and Crazy Taxi and Power Stone 2 would have made the list if it were longer.
The thinking, as Holmes noted, that games now days need to be epic often leads to them having large parts which are drudgery; Who the hell wants to replay drudgery even in classics like Half-life (series).