Hey There!

This is my first blog post. To be honest, I was a bit pensive about joining an "online game community" as I
have been scarred for life for the times I would look at the rabid fanboy-ism and sheer stupidity on sites like
GameFaqs... I liked what I saw so I figured what the hell. I have another online blog but to be honest I can't
really express my love for gaming to that reader base as it doesn't really mean anything to them. But Yeah!
Introductions! My name is Jon. I'm 23 and I just graduated from Ithaca College in '08, I studied Televison
production and even went as far as producing a Video Game related program for the School's TV station
called "Game Over". I just moved into Queens but with today's job market...times are tough. Thankfully,
games exist to help past the time. Gaming has always been a part of my life, since I was 3 and pointed at the
family coleco vision to attempt river raid and pitfall. So with Christmas upon us I wanted to talk about one
memory that will always be with me but I have to preface it...

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Let's face it, we were all kids. stupid, impressionable kids that were able to be wowed by anything
resembling tmnt, thundercats, robotech, transformers, etc. Not to say those things are bad but we were
more likely to want games based off franchises that we "knew" for example - wanting "Ghostbusters the
game" over say, "Crystalis". We see it today with children at the store grabbing games like Spongebob and
Hannah Montanna over something like Drawn to Life or Kirby Super Star Ultra, I saw it everyday back in my
GameStop days and it was painful.

Our generation was just like that, and while we had companies like Capcom and Konami giving us gems like
Duck Tales and TMNT 2,3,Time etc... the NES days were a cesspool of cheap game cash-ins but with the
lack of the internet and gaming journalism at its conception, buying games was a gamble.

Somewhere in the caverns of my garage lies a home movie christmas tape of me going ape shit over 1
game, that was...



Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies of all time. Always was, always will. Being a small kid and
ripping off that wrapping paper to reveal the panicky expression of Marty McFly looking at that wrist watch
with the fiery tire tracks just screaming at you for an interactive journey through time and relive the magic of
the movie.

Chrono Trigger it was not.

I'm sure everyone has their own stories about how you dealt with getting bad games as gifts, but the
moment of the game pack exiting the packaging and into my console was about as fast as my smile turning
upside down and led to asking questions like "Why is this music nothing like the movie?", "Why is mount
rushmore on the bottom of the screen?" and "Why is the hula-hoop girl trying to kill me" and then it turned into
sheer frustration when I came across that DAMN milkshake throwing minigame, which I can't beat to this
day.

Not trying to be ungrateful about it, I did thank everyone but soon after christmas my parents noticed that I
have not touched the game at all, the whole experience was kind of a revelation for me when I finally
understood that sticking with games based off franchises is not the way to go and since then I've stuck to
games like zelda, mario, mega man, castlevania, river city, crystalis etc. My parents had trouble grasping
this concept though, you know, since games were that new thing and were all the "same".

Getting bad games as 'surprise gifts' on christmas. birthdays continued with hot gems like dick tracy and
ghostbusters and one time when my parents 'surprised me' one day after school with a copy of Home Alone
2 for SNES. I love my parents, but that game had attacking luggage and bell boys that would strangle kevin
complete with haunting music!

After working at gamestop for 5 or so years, I learned that most kids just have to learn the hard way if they
really want to get into gaming, I have seen kids turn their noses up at games like Klonoa, Katamari, Mario
Galaxy (!), Kirby and all the other hits for things like Hanna Montana and Corey in the House DS. Honestly,
It's a painful cycle for everybody except the evil executive at THQ laughing manically who orders these
cheap uninspired games out to the masses.

Woo! First blog post, maybe the first of many!

- I'm aware of this strange formatting issue, I type this all in the dtoid window and it came out like this. I saw
this issue on another blog too... I don't understand. don't judge me! -