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Technophile

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I love technology. I have since playing with After Dark screen savers on my dad's ancient machine. It was on 3 floppies. Straight terminal input. I watched those flying toasters and I thought "damn, this is nice".

2d video games sort of capped at Sonic 2, lvl 2 part 2. Chemical zone. Jumping. Let me just tell you that all I did was drown my little blue spikey guy in that chemical ooze. The dramatic music didn't help. I was actually moving the controller around, like that would some how help. To this day, I have never beaten that. I faded from playing games myself to watching others.

This continued, this voyeuristic practice, for years. Meanwhile, my interest in computers grew exponentially. Our first pc with an actual start bar was a revelation. Icons! Yes, thank you. The mouse took a while to adjust to. I'd play on paintbrush or on mah jong tiles for hours while I listened to the tv in the background, glancing up occasionally to squint at the explosions. I needed glasses but faked it for years. Being near sighted is tolerable.

Computers were on my x-mas list for years. I remember my first interaction with Aim. All the lame smiley faces, the typos. The bad fonts. I enjoyed typing though, strangely enough. This is middle school age, if you can picture a very young, awkward, bored me.

Then, pc games! Oh yes. First it was just puzzle games, sort this sort that. Which I would play with a cd spinning wildly in the poor cd drive for hours at a time, trying to beat that final level. Grim Fandango, which I loved despite its logic flaws, was an entire summer worth of great times. I would take screen shots of how beautiful that game was, and save it in the hopes that some day I could have a computer with an actual cool background, instead of goddamn default shit.

And Petz3. I mainly played Dogz3. You could breed them.... I mean.... Sheep dog + taco bell dog? I felt like a mad scientist. I also discovered thousands upon thousands of geocities websites where people had hacked the creature files so you could down load a "cloud cat" which would be just a small alteration of the eye color and fur pattern of say the maine coon. I loved the community that existed already on the internet for gamers, and the free download at your own peril attitude.

By highschool I got off line for the most part and mostly read constantly. Meanwhile I was watching, with envious eyes, as my hs bf's and male friends did impossible jumps, playing ChronoCross, the final fantasy series, Megaman, Streetfighter, Mario, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Banicote (ahh youth...) etc. I fell in love with the graphics and the music, but the idea of picking up a controller would just paralyze me.

No one actually made me play with them except for a few exceptions. 1st serious bf made me sit down and play Halo (of all things), Phantasy Star Online (squee) and actually bought me a few games for my personal enjoyment. I never mastered flying in Spyro, nor the triple jumps in Voodoo Vince (he died so much.... V_V). But PSO took over my life and as that relationship went downhill, I started playing that game more than anyone should. After the end of that, and the end of my X-box access, life went back to non gaming

...Till 2nd serious bf who played Star Ocean and Final Fantasy games. He never let me touch those, but he introduced me to Lineage II. PC based, not a great game but not the best. I was bored when it became apparent that all you do in the whole game is lvl grind or create (for a modest fee!) a crafting character. It was one of those couple things. Like "yah honey, let grind.... Ooo i'm getting 0.06% of these guys! score!" >_< We ended up getting in Final Fantasy XI. To this day I find the story lines to be so boring. It's like "ok, but when do I get to fucking kill stuff??"

I think I fell in love with that game. There was the lvl grind yes, but there was fishing and crafting and quests. So much fun stuff to do. Fish to get gil, use it to buy crafting supplies, create your own furniture, or armor, or food that boosts stats. Solo, party, duo, w/e. Get your reputation up to get NPC bought supplies cheaper. Unlock quests. It was the first game that really took my love of order, ocd, exploration, creation and of course killing shit to (forgive the pun) the next level.

Of course, 2nd serious bf was an idiot about this all and simply hung around one city slaughtering rabbits. It was like "but, airship pass sounds awesome! Lets go for it!" "meh, rabbits good gil" >_< baka. He was an idiot about most everything now that I think about it... So that ended.

3rd serious bf #1 Greatest Suitor alive (forgive me, I'm sick and he's buying me soup and it's really hard to not get all gooey eyed) got me into ... Final Fantasy Tactics for the psp. Little squares. Tactical, like a puzzle, except a puzzle of death. I took a group of randoms and unlocked every job, and maxed every skill out. And that was sooo fun. I still haven't finished it yet. I like the stars you get above their head when you master a job. Except stupid summoner. But that was the most fun I've ever had. I made charts. Then final fantasy tactics A2 for the ds, which is much more cute-eee, but the tactical part is actually a bit more challenging. There are 301 quests you can do. I've done them all, even the annoying chocobo hunt where you have to capture 7 different color chocobos. That was f-ing annoying.

I am sad to say, with my recent insane happiness at hearing about how good Phantasy Star Zero for the ds is, that I really am a gamer. It just took a while. And I'm back playing Final Fantasy XI now. On sylph. With super bf #1 and we just unlocked dark knight...

I like this. Playing my games in bed, or the couch or what have you. Now shopping for x-mas for me is more difficult than you'd imagine. Now for some audio implants so I can rock out with out headphones hurting my huge fucking ears.... that and better touch screen interaction for pc games.

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Comments

  1. Compass's Avatar
    "I like the stars you get above their head when you master a job."

    I'm way into little things like this. Some developers consistently get them right. So many don't.
  2. Geen's Avatar
    You have the best attitude and mindset for being a gamer - find what you like and enjoy every second of it. I think too many of us other gamers forget that simple pleasure.
  3. Cowutopia's Avatar
    how have you not played WoW?
  4. M's Avatar
    Serious ex #2 plays. Awkward....

    Also, it looks cartoonie.
  5. YellerDog's Avatar
    I played a lot of some Dogz 1 demo back upon a time, I think it was on a three and a half disc. I really liked it! Ton of personality.
  6. dave is ok's Avatar
    You should update this post after you play WoW with how stupid you were for playing FFXI.

    And then after that, on how stupid you were for playing WoW.
  7. Fe 26's Avatar
    FFT is pretty cool. I need to go back and finish it and FFTA

    I wish FFTA was all snow levels

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