I seem to have neglected making an introductory blog post. Let's make up for lost time.

My name's Chris. I was born in Jersey, but spent most of my time growing up in Pennsylvania suburbs steadily further from Philly. I fell into gaming fairly early, with some light arcade and Atari 2600 exposure (from restuarants and relatives, respectively) in my first few years, and getting curious about stuff like Number Munchers and Oregon Trail on the Apple IIgs computers we had in the library's computer lab. Still, I'm more of a console gamer, and it started with the Christmas of 1987, when I got an NES.

Back in the day when the Zapper was still grey, and Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt came on the same cartridge in the box, I tossed all that aside and popped in the shiny gold game that we'd gotten as a side gift. Thus began my love affair with the Legend Of Zelda series, which continues to this day.

Years burned on, and I grew up Nintendo, getting the Game Boy, SNES, and Nintendo 64 for Christmas on the years following each system's release. Thankfully, my brother and I had friends with Sega stuff, so I developed an appreciation for both sides of the early console wars. It's a viewpoint that's helped a lot, given the evolution of fanboy rabidity alongside the growth of an internet that gives said fanboys more people to scream at.

Flashing forward some more, I ended up with a PlayStation not long after my N64, and from there, my system acquisitions were my responsibility. I've had a PS2, Xbox, every Game Boy besides the Pocket, and a Gamecube since then, with a Dreamcast thrown in there towards the end of its life, a Saturn tacked on waaaaaaaay after those died out, and a Virtual Boy that's mostly a display piece right now. I early-adopted when the PSP and DS first dropped, but beyond a DSlite, I haven't gone that far with the whole handheld hardware realm as of late.

I rock a 360 and a Wii when it comes to consoles, with a PS3 hopefully joining the shelf around year's end, now that the slim dropped. PC, I dabble in on and off, but I've mostly sworn of MMOs since two bouts of recovering from World Of Warcraft, and the last non-MMO I can remember playing remotely seriously was Age Of Empires III.

But what do I do outside of gaming? I'm a cook by trade, with a side job running trivia nights at the bar I cook for, and a hobby there trying to work through their rather expansive selection of small-label and import brews whenever I'm done for the night. Two cats, a steadily growing music collection, and the books and films people keep lending me tend to keep me busy most days. Besides food and drink, I like to dabble here and there with writing and doodling, and occasionally get sucked into cosplaying at anime conventions by my friends. Never dressed up to get better at any games at home, though. That's just weird.

I ended up finding Dtoid via HAWP, which I found delightful, but ended up sitting on my account for several months before actually posting in here or on the forums. I'm really glad I found this place, seeing as how my own weak attempts at game blogging weren't really anything or anywhere that would garner an audience, and the crowds from other places where I'm active weren't nearly as into discussing gaming in any depth as regular posters and most of the podcasters here tend to be. So it's nice to feel like I can ramble every now and again and expect some sort of discourse, even if it's people telling me to shut my typehole.

Here's hoping I can avoid boring or annoying too many of you to death. Pleased to be here.