Hello Destructoid! I haven't given a proper introduction over these two years of browsing so here it is.

It was a cold winter in Finland and the year was 2007 and I was searching for a retro videogame podcast. That is when I came to find the greatness that is...RetroforceGO!. I thank thee Dyson, Chad, Collette and Topher (also Stella for the later episodes) for keeping me entertained during my military service. All the long drives, lonely nights. A smile came to my face many times as I listened the talks of the games that were, and are. To put it in one word, amazing. Destructoid has since become my favourite website to visit and I'm proud to be a part of this great community. Be it by commenting on news, posting on the forums or writing a blogpost on something in the future.

For starters I'd like to tell you some of my early gaming memories. When I was young we used to visit a friend of the family. There was a certain pinball game I used to play on the Mega Drive, Dragon's Fury. Or as in the US it's called, Devil's Crush. This was very surprising to me now that I think back to it. As they were deeply religious christians. The visuals, music the impeccable gameplay made an everlasting impact on me. I thank RetroforceGO! for reminding me of this game. Since then I've enjoyed playing many pinball machines over the years. It's sad that nowadays they are hard to come by. The first console I got was a Super Nintendo but the first time I played one was at the age of 6 when we were on a holiday in Kos. The only two things I remember from that trip are that it was extremely hot and I almost got a heastroke when sightseeing some ruins. The second is me playing Donkey Kong Country in a store near the town square. Further into the years I would acquire both DKC sequels.





Later in my gaming years I was introduced to the wonders of RPGs in the form of Final Fantasy 9 through my cousin who was living in Norway at the time. Since then I've played all the SNES Final Fantasies. Now let's skip ahead some seven years to meet my next gaming obsession. One that has become my jam. Rhythm gaming.

I had watched many times of the skilled individuals playing DDR and soon I too was in the possession of my very own dancemat. The first one was total carbage so next I got a metallic one. That broke down soon thank to it's dubious wirework. So I got another one. It's not easy with the closest DDR machine being DS: Fusion and the better arcades some 500km (310 miles) away. Soon I was introduced to the other rhythm gamers of the region and I got to play Pop'n Music and IIDX. Now I own both a homemade Pop'n controller and a USKOC for IIDX. A month ago we got a Pump It Up machine here and I've been learning to play that.

I consider myself also to be a retrogamer. But that has been put on hold with my gaming collection becoming consisting mostly of PS2 games. I plan to expand my SNES library in the future. Other consoles I own are the DS, N64 and a Dreamcast.



But now let's delve further into this package I got from my sister who is on exchange in Japan till January:



First we have here two Super Famicom games. Clock Tower and Chrono Trigger. Clock Tower is one of the first survival horror games with you moving inside a house as a scissor wielding maniac chases you with nothing but the enviroment as your weapon. It is heavily based on Argento's Phenomena(Creepers in the US) and Suspiria.



A couple of Touhou games. Bullet hell shooter featuring various humans and yokais decipted as young girls. Music is top notch.



Pop'n Music character book. Not much text but I like to watch the pretty pictures.





A Gurren Lagann Revoltech figure. One of my all time favourite anime series.



Arcade flyers on various rhythm games.



Mega Man t-shirt.



Metal Gear Solid artbook. This was a pleasant surprise as the text is also in english here.



I suppose the next mandatory post is the gaming setup. But now I'm off to play Beatmania IIDX 16: Empess.