Greetings from Dixie!

[cross_bearer_02]

Hello retrogamers!

cross_bearer_02 here, although I might as well have an alias of "Mississippi Mike". As you might guess by that, I hail from the state of Mississippi. I'm a software developer, and by day I work for a regional healthcare provider as a programmer. In my spare time, however, I'm often working on my own personal projects or just gaming and enjoying country life to the full.

I keep promising myself that one of these days I will buckle down and turn my attention toward game programming, as that's always been a dream of mine. With the advent of mobile platforms, the field is ripe for that sort of project. Perhaps someday soon.

All that being said, I've been a retrogamer all my life. My older brother owned both an Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, and later we graduated to the NES (and I received an Atari 7800 one Christmas as well). After his untimely passing, I inherited his Atari 2600 and C64 collection, and have continued to grow it down through the years into what I have today. It's a meager collection, and nowhere near the massive collections you see online, but what I do have is a whole bunch of games that I thoroughly enjoy playing, and I regularly rotate systems in and out of play on my television (modern and retro alike).

I've been listening to the podcast fairly regularly since July 4th weekend, and I am currently up to episode #40. I thoroughly love the format, the content, and the interviews. It's all very interesting information, and quite a bit that I did not know. Looking forward to listening to all the rest of the episodes and catching up to the most recent podcast, and I'm looking forward to participating more in the forums here and getting to know all you fine folks as well!

So again, greetings from Dixie. And I'll answer to just about anything, whether it's my handle (cross_bearer_02), "Mississippi Mike", or just plain Mike (although I gather that might throw a bit of confusion into the works).

Cheers!

[focusrs]

Well Howdy! Hey, Scott is looking for a programmer to do a Marvin Milk game

[SubaruBrat]

Hi Mike, where in MS are you? I'm from Oxford myself.

[cross_bearer_02]

Not too far away from Oxford at all, in fact. I'm from New Albany, although I work in Tupelo. I'm also a graduate from Ole Miss (Hotty Toddy!). I spent four of my six years of college there at Ole Miss for my Masters in Comp Sci.

[SubaruBrat]

No shit, I did my 3 years of my undergrad at Ole Miss, and of course grew up in the town. I know Tupelo and New Albany well of course.

[cross_bearer_02]

Being from New Albany, I'm a little closer to Tupelo, of course, so I'm more familiar with Tupelo than I am Oxford, even though I went to Ole Miss all those years. All three towns have changed over the years, though. I'd say New Albany and Pontotoc have probably changed the most around here, primarily due to the new Toyota plant that opened just a few years ago.

As for Tupelo, it's remained pretty much the same except for a lot of growth around the mall area, and they've done a lot to the downtown area to make it quite nice. Around the midtown part near the hospital, not a lot has changed, except they're still reworking the old Tupelo Mall into a mall/medical park type thing, and where I work is actually in what used to be the old Sears store in the mall.

So it's a bit strange. I have all these fond memories of coming to this mall with my older brother when I was very little (probably around 3 or 4 years old at that time). I remember we would go down to the arcade every time we'd make a family shopping trip to Tupelo (usually every Saturday), and I remember distinctly being held up to the Space Shuttle pinball machine so I could see enough to play it. Good times and good memories there. And yet now, here I am in 2013, working in the very same building.

Incidentally, a pizza shop now occupies the space that used to be that old arcade. I'd rather that the old arcade were still there.