So, I was hanging out with a friend a while back and he gave me a little present. You see, a long time ago I was a frequenter of BBSs, or Bulletin Board Systems. I myself ran one in Fort Lauderdale that ran on the WWIV software, custom modified since I've always had at least a little skill in programming. One of the things I always loved were the ANSI artwork done for warez releases back then, and after a while I actually got to be in one of the groups that did a lot of the work for those groups as well as other BBS's that wanted cool intros: iCE.

My friend actually found a lot of the art (or what we called art) that I did back then and compiled it into a graphic so I could remember those days gone past. I'm going to share it with all of you, because it's a neat bit of history for me and I really would like to know your experiences, if any, with BBSs and the like. I'm sure there's one or two of you out there that used TAG, or maybe Telegard software at some point for your own hi jinks. But without further ado:



Now, before you go: That's not all original artwork! I'd like to say that most of the time people wanted us to reproduce their favorite artwork from various sources. My specialty was reproducing comic book art. I would also like to say it's REALLY HARD to actually go in by hand and reproduce stuff with ridiculously ineffective tools, which is what we had. You could only work on one screen at a time, so those huge strips of stuff were done 24 lines at a time. So please understand that it was somewhat of an art to bring that stuff over into our medium: 16 color blocks of text based graphics.

Now, If I did it right you should be able to click the image for a slightly bigger version. Thanks in advance for any responses. I will be posting some original art soon.

So, at some point today I realized that I have been coming to Destructoid since January of this year and have been extremely pleased with this corner of the universe that embraces one of the things that I truly love. It had totally passed me by that I had never actually signed up with my normal pseudonym... which is irrelevant to anyone else, I'm sure, but it was bothering me. So Collette fixed it today and I am now "vonneuton" instead of "vn1977". Thank effing god.

I also realized that I had never properly introduced myself: Hi. Please let my thirtieth impression be a good first one.

First, I updated a pic over on my profile, so I'm not going to re-post one in here. Second, I'm going to warn you guys ahead of time that I may wax a wee bit nostalgic. Just a little. Hah.

Besides being in love with video games of all sorts and having played them since I was a wee lad, I am also a tinkerer. I love taking things apart, putting them back together, sometimes even how they went together in the first place. When computers came into the picture, I was in HEAVEN. My father has always worked on computers since he got out of the army (which was a long long looooooooooong time ago), and he made sure that I got the experience with them that I needed to stay technologically valid in this world. If that meant he brought home a Unix server when I was five, then he did it. It was amazing.


Holy crap, I actually had one of the portable ones. Got it years after I got the original from some little shop somewhere.

My first actual experience with games was on the Commodore 64, which was awesome. I will never EVER forget the music that played out of those games from that little computer. I've been so glad that there's been a revival of younger people using the SID chips for synth stuff in music now. Perhaps this isn't hell.

However, I wasn't truly excited about games until I started hanging out with my friend across the street. I still remember the first time we started up his NES and played Ice Hockey. It was so fun, it was mind bending. Not to mention eventually getting Blades of Steel... it was like the first taste of some awesome drug. In fact, I can basically remember the first thing I played on every console that I eventually got.



Please forgive me, but I have to list them. On the Odyssey2, it was Pick Axe Pete and Monkeyshines. The Aquarius had the arcade Tron game with the paddles and everything. For Coleco it was B.C.'s Quest for Tires. SNES was Street Fighter 2. Sonic was my first for the Genesis. Gameboy was Tetris. PS1 was Ridge Racer (along with some CD's to swap out and customize my racing music). PS2 was GTA3, since I couldn't afford it until a year later. Xbox was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, due to the same problem with affordability. The only one I forget is a recent one: The DS. There were just too many things that I got with it and I just can't remember.

There were a lot of games at arcades, as well. One of my favorite times, as well as plenty of other people I'm sure, was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons. We had both at a bowling alley that was fairly close to my house, and I would get my friends together and spend every cent of allowance. However, the last thing I remember playing was Tekken 5 in the arcade...

Anyways, I really wanted to do a longer post but it's getting late for an "old guy" and I have to work early in the morning. I just want to say thanks, even if no one really cares, it's certainly nice to be here.