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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)

Michael Turner's Passing. (NVGR, Comic related) balth | 3:02 PM on 07.08.2008 11 comments

For those in the know, yes, this is slightly old news, but dammit... I'm a busy guy. Building walls, running 4E games, Playing Civilization and Naruto Demos... Anyways, Michael Turner was a comic book artist with a rare bone cancer that passed away a week or so ago. I just wanted to share a personal experience of mine with the man. You may not know who Michael Turner is or was, but when I ran my comic shop, I can tell you that his variant cover art books sold literally off the wall as soon as we would put them in a bag and board. Some of them were priced at $200 or more, and they flew off; you had to buy 50 copies of a $3.99 book, and people would preorder them like nuts. A few examples of his work: She's a wonder... I would gladly give over the access codes for you. Limited edition print on wall of this? Check. CGC graded copy of book on wall? Check. See, he does more than cheesecake. I just happen to LIKE cheesecake. This is a favorite, as an ex of mine dressed up with this costume for halloween, and then I played Darkseid and used her for my evil machinations. So that will give you an idea of his work. Three years ago, at the Baltimore Comic Con, I was there attending a Diamond (the national comic distributor) Workshop scheduled to coincide with the con. One of my employees, a most excellent friend who shall be referred to as TrialAccess, couldn't make it to go with us. And he LOVES MT, more than I do. So I thought, since I had some free time at the Con, that I would stand in line for one of his signings and do something special for him. You see, where I was living at the time (Omaha, NE) is devoid of Chick-Fil-A. TrialAccess and I had a standing pact that whenever we went somewhere there was a CFA, we would bring a sandwich or nuggets back for the other. 3-day CFA is still better than NO CFA. Everyone knows that. So I hatched a plan with the help of my friend Dave, and we went and purchased a CFA Sandwich. Now take a close look at the wrapper here: As you can see, the logo is written across the middle in the front, and the back. The rest is white space. So, before the line actually started moving, I started chatting with Turner about TrialAccess and how he couldn't make it, and what my master plan was: To have every major artist and writer in attendance sign/doodle/draw on this bag for him. I told him I had just seen a questionnaire in Wizard with him about what the oddest thing he'd ever signed was, and I also told him now he'd have a new story. He thought it was hilarious, and drew a sunflower girl smiley face on the back with a quick quote: Mark didn't have enough money for a custom piece, so this is as close as you get! Epic! Michael sent out a message to several of the other artists for me, and I got rushed through several of the lines, since I had over 25 artists and writers to see. He even tried to help me get the Comic Guarantee Company (CGC) to slab it in glass and seal it!!!! (they wouldn't bite, pardon the pun) but we were laughing our asses off as we speculated if he opened the sandwich wrapper whether it would lose value. In the end, besides MT's original sunflower girl illustration, TrialAccess got a wrapper that had the flash streaking away by J.G. Jones with the caption (hate to eat and run!) and the sandwich falling to the ground, the Luna Brothers doing an illustration, Marv Wolfman signing the bag and writing an epic line about hunger, Jimmy Palmiotti doing a sketch and over twenty other signings and illustrations. When I gave it to him, he totally freaked out and bounced around the place for hours. I then warned him if he opened it and ate the sandwich, the bag would devalue. He looked like he was about to cry. Needless to say, it is actually under glass now on his wall. But that's my fond memory of Michael Turner, this guy who was deadly sick, still out pounding the pavement, colostomy bag hanging next to him; joking and laughing about the thing he loved to do with the people who loved him. I hope he's finally at peace.