The Awkward First Post
(Text below typed originally on Saturday, July 20--I was interrupted before posting)
Good Morning! It’s an early morning for me, not quite six a.m. now. It’s quiet and comfortable inside, and storming outside. It’s a good change; it’s been too hot and muggy and miserable. The cat’s flitting around, mewing, and stroking my legs—she’s suspicious of my motives. And behind me, in a small picture frame, march a procession of Space Invader monsters. Mrs. MacFrankenstein cross-stitched them for me.
Okay, so this is the awkward first post, in more ways than one. I’m completely new to this: I’ve been a lurker, content with using internet resources to listen and learn. I joined one forum, not an unfriendly one, about ten years ago. I posted once, realized I had nothing else to say, and deleted the account. So, no Facebook, no Linked-In, etc.; this is all new to me. I probably haven’t even written a proper letter in years. If this were a Sam Cooke song, you’d be hearing something like, “Don’t know much about NET-i-KIT/ Don’t know much about the things I typed…” Please expect and accept missteps.
I’ve been gaming, on and off, for about thirty years. Growing up, my gaming opportunities were limited as I grew up in Middle-of-Nowhere, Ohio. (And we know all about Ohio, don’t we?) When and where I grew up, there weren’t too any malls or arcades, and few quarters to spare on arcade machines anyway. My younger brother and I eventually got hold of first an Atari VCS and later, an NES, and we played the hell out of the games we got hold of.
One Friday night at college, I challenged the future Mrs. Maggie MacFrankenstein to a two-player game of Super Mario. I played first. After not-quite-an-hour, I had played through every stage, no warp zones, with one Mario, and I handed the future Mrs. MacFrankenstein the controller, and I said, “Your turn!” To be fair, I don’t think I could do that again, but I won’t let Mrs. MacFrankenstein forget about it. But then, Mrs. MacFrankenstein won’t let me forget how she got the Knights of the Round materia in Final Fantasy VII, and I didn’t. She’s been gaming for at least twenty years, but she’s not really into the retro scene, preferring Japanese RPGs. She once told me she figured that she logged in some 500 hours in a game called Disgaea.
I’ve been listening to the Retrogaming Roundup, I’d guess, for about two years. I found RGR because I was looking for something like it. Mrs. MacFrankenstein and I were experimenting with software like Game Maker, trying to build games on a strictly hobbyist-level. I like immersion in a subject, and I was reading video game histories, taking in gaming-related videos on YouTube, and I’ve probably watched The King of Kong more than I’ve watched Star Wars. I listen to a lot of movie podcasts anyway, and I wanted to find a good gaming podcast. I did: I found the Retrogaming Roundup and became quickly hooked. We haven’t touched Game Maker for awhile, but I’m still listening to the Retrogaming Roundup. The RGR opens doors, new potential avenues of gaming that I hadn’t seriously considered, and new ways to travel these. As I said, I didn’t see too many arcade machines and classic computers, but RGR allows me that experience often for the first time. I played Intellivision (on DS, to be fair) for the very first time a couple of months ago, after having listened to the interviews with Keith Robinson, and having heard the Intellivision Top Ten. I rescued a used public library PC, and turned it into a combination MAME/PinMAME/DOSBox device, and I’m seriously thinking about taking up soldering and some electronics work now, but it’ll be some time before I take up that set of projects. I’ve experimented with a Raspberry Pi, but that’s mostly in the category of puttering. It isn’t all about the learning--I laugh a lot when I listen to the Retrogaming Roundup, and that shouldn’t be understated, either. I’ve been having a damn good time listening to you guys!
Lately, I’ve been playing Kid Icarus: Uprising on the 3DS, and it’s an incredibly fun game, if sometimes awkward in terms of control. I’ve been revisiting Warcraft 2. This is the game that really pushed me into installing DOSBox. I found a copy of the Warcraft Battlechest at a second-hand store, and the discs were in excellent shape. I played the game years before on a borrowed Sega Saturn, when the Saturn was still comparatively new, but I never finished the game, and now I mean to. I’ve logged about seventy hours in Skyrim, but I’ve set that game aside for awhile—I’ve reached a saturation point for now, but I like Skyrim, and it’s a game that’s designed so a player can take the time to savor the thing. Skyrim is really about the journey and not the destination. I think XCOM: Enemy Unknown is brilliant. I’ve groused for years that someone like Tom Clancy should write a good alien invasion story and I think the XCOM story is pretty close, and the game play is suspenseful, brutal and addictive. I like to knock out a couple of rounds of Phoenix and Time Pilot every so often. I picked up Adventure on Atari for the first time in maybe twenty years, after having watched CGE Adventures play-throughs, and I had forgotten how much fun Adventure is to play.
I think I’ll close up this awkward thing here—I think I risk being TL;DL’d off! I’ve already typed more here than I typed at that other forum, and I hope to type a bit more here.
(Above typed Saturday morning, July 20, 2013—Postscript typed Sunday Morning)
Okay, I admit it: I time-shifted this month’s live news. I don’t want to get into the details, but it’s been an eventful and stressful couple of days here in MacFrankensteinLand, and last night, it was good to hear Scott and SoCal’s mini-Vegas bar-crawl. (When I left the house, there were three guests listening on the feed—I might have been the last unregistered Ustream listener standing!) I still can’t believe the news producer of that TV station has a job—those people got it so wrong! (Did I spell that last word right? Okay, good!) I can’t touch the alcoholic stuff much anymore, but I raise my bottle of cranberry juice to you, gentlemen!
And I promise, I won’t tell anyone about that incident with Tricia…
Take Care!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Angus MacFrankenstein
Bookmarks