PixlBit

I'm still having trouble with the whole brevity = soul of wit thing. I wanted to update my profile info as if I were a video game character, but got too carried away and wrote 1,955 words that cover a lot of bases as far as what games/systems I've owned/played and the context/time period in which I played them.

Think of it as the abridged version of that My Gaming Timeline series I kept wanting to do. Well, here ya go. It's written in third person like a character bio, but my voice is obviously there. I still think I'll update my gamer profile, just in much more abrupt fashion:

 

 A Dumbass Is Choked To Life

 Born with his mom's umbilical chord chocking him by the neck and turning his body blue, Joe Step's parents had bought several feminine baby products that were found later to be useless when his fantastic baby cock showed up on the ultrasound sonogram. That day was his first step to becoming a man.

A shy and reserved youngster, he attended both public and private/Catholic Kindergartens before moving to a private/Catholic elementary school, where his mom taught Computer courses. Often having to stay late with his mom, who was constantly asked to solve computer-related issues by other teachers after hours, he played several PC games available in the elementary school's computer (labs) like 3-D Dinosaur Adventure, 3D Body Adventure (in which you shot viruses Wolfenstein style ... perverts), Amazon Trail: 3rd Edition/Rain Forest Adventures, Vector Tanks, Learn the Alphabet, Myst/Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? (played each once or twice, hated them; Myst was pretty, though), Math Blaster (later 90s versions), Mario Teaches Typing (not that bad, in his opinion), Peter Pan (1993), The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary, Super Munchers, Super Solvers: Gizmos & Gadgets, Lemmings, Oregon Trail (a later version with buffalo and rabbit sprites to shoot at, which is the only part of the game anyone gave a shit about), etc., as well as some PC games at home, like LEGO Island, Wolfenstein 3D, JumpStart Typing, etc. Special thanks to http://old-games.com for the helpful list of edutainment games (though even more were not listed there).

While those PC games did keep him sane, they also kept him reclusive. They represent a bittersweet element of his childhood, in that they provided entertainment, but also became boring (the long list is due to the span of eight/nine years in elementary school; only a handful, like Gizmos & Gadgets and Oregon Trail, were played on a regular basis) and kept him indoors and away from other people his age much of the time; or, let's be honest, he wasn't popular, so really it was Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers he was being kept from, at least in the early years. Luckily, he was able to sneak onto the playground with the after school care kids to play wall ball or talk with other teachers' kids after school in the later years, so it wasn't all bad. Still not a very sexy person, though. Not yet.

Still, because of the bittersweet feelings towards PC games, he preferred playing on his older brother's NES and SNES. Sure, there were Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? and Chessmaster cartridges in the house, but mostly these systems offered pure entertainment, not edutainment, in the forms of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, Super Mario World, Street Fighter II: Turbo, Double Dribble, Toy Story, 10 Yard Fight, Anticipation, Videomation, etc., as well as countless rentals like Rise of the Robots, Robocop (his grandpa sarcastically asked if SNES was pronounced “sneeze” upon seeing the side of the Blockbuster rental box), Yoshi's Island, etc. Step also played games like Solar Striker, Monopoly, and Pokemon Blue on Gameboy.

Not to mention, arcades were still alive and well during this time period, and after every tee ball or soccer game he got rewarded for participating in and losing by getting a trophy and Cici's pizza to stuff his fat face with, Step loved also going to play racing games like Cruisin' USA, fighting games like Mortal Kombat, and especially light gun games like House of the Dead, Area 51, and in dedicated arcades in malls/elsewhere, Jurassic Park. Places like Speed Zone, Chuck E. Cheese, Dave and Buster's, Putt Putt golf courses, and bowling alleys also offered a variety of cabinets when you weren't go kart riding or getting into a gyroscope. Some of these places still do. Joe's favorite was always the free throw games with the moving baskets, since he was known for being a great shot when playing on the elementary school's basketball team.

Within this same time frame, hotels offered rental SNES consoles, usually with Star Fox and F-Zero to show off the Mode 7 capabilities, presumably. Blockbuster also rented consoles like Sega Saturn, on which Joe played Independence Day at his aunt and uncle's house in Omaha, NE, and Virtual Boy, which Joe actually really liked. Joe also liked Tiger electronics games like Mega Man 2, Empire Strikes Back, and … well, he WANTED to like the R-Zone Batman Forever, etc., so his opinions during childhood should be taken with a grain of salt, as indicated by that Hanson tee he won from Eggo waffles. And the CDs. And that one VHS tape rental from Mickey's Movies, a mom-and-pop video and game rental store in DeSoto, TX back then.

His older brother would later turn from Nintendo to Sony Playstation when he was around age 13 or so, and Joe Step would receive an N64 with Star Fox 64 for Christmas 1997, at age 7. He seriously believed Star Fox 64 was the launch title, not Super Mario 64. He liked Mario, and rented it a couple times, but wasn't as impressed as others, having entered the system's lifespan with the impressive-looking Star Fox sequel and not being as wowed by the ability to play in 3D.

What was awesome was the Pokemon Snap kiosks where you could get your photos printed in Blockbuster, and again countless rentals like F-Zero X and Extreme-G, games played at friends' houses like Super Smash Bros. and Jet Force Gemini, and a total seven purchased or gifted owned games like Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, 1080 Snowboarding, Snowboard Kids 2, Donkey Kong 64, and towards the end of the console's lifespan, both N64 Zelda titles (Step had never before been a fan of Link to the Past/Zelda games, thinking they looked boring).

Of course, he also played games like Driver on his older brother's Playstation, and his brother played games like Duke Nukem 64 on his N64. Next door neighbors also had Tekkens, Bust A Grooves, and Twisted Metals, while yet other friends had games like Rival Schools.

This period marked the time in which Step's older brother's tastes started leaning more mature, with his older brother preferring games like Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Silent Hill 2, and Joe always wanting to watch him play these (and succeeding occasionally), but mostly sticking to games like Blast Corps, Diddy Kong Racing, Gex and Goldeneye 007 … so mostly less mature. Also, Joe still blames his second N64 controller's malfunctioning on his brother abusing it when Killer Instinct: Gold pissed him off.

In 2001, Joe started to become aware of certain family issues that necessitated him paying for most of the cost of a Gamecube at Christmas with lawn mowing money earned from his parents at age 11, minus tax and the game Luigi's Mansion. His brother got a PS2 for Metal Gear Solid 2. Joe loved his Gamecube. Wave Race's water looked incredible on it, as did Rogue Squadron. A rental of The Bouncer on PS2 had amazed him (yes, really), and owning a Gamecube felt like yet another step into the future.

Joe especially got excited about his GCN after the E3 in which it was revealed Nintendo would release a game from each of its Triforce of Titan Franchises, Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, for the system, and each had a unique gimmick that made it stand out. Joe was especially interested in Metroid Prime, because it looked amazing in EGM screen shots, EGM being a magazine he subscribed to late in its life after pulling it off store racks for years. He had also read Nintendo Power intermittently since childhood, and loved the demos that came with OPM.

As it turned out, Joe wound up loving the “Celda” style he was initially skeptical about, finding Super Mario Sunshine to be his favorite of any Mario (seriously; which is odd, cause this is the one Triforce of Titan Franchises GCN game he still doesn't own to this day), but found Metroid Prime incredibly frustrating upon first rental. This was due to the fact you were occasionally told where to go … too damn occasionally, once you got to a certain sandy area. “Seriously, where the fuck is the Z button prompt, I want to get moving but there's nowhere to go!” he said, not being used to Metroid's exploratory level design. Joe later bought the game and learned to appreciate it, but others in his school developed and kept antagonistic feelings towards it, even a classmate he'd unwittingly convinced to get a GCN from his constant praise of it.

In fact, Joe may as well have been walking around with Mario's dick in his mouth during this ultra-fanboy period of his life, which he shared with a select group of other less popular friends that were vehemently opposed to the XBOX the more popular kids were wanting. “Like seriously, Halo's good (Joe never played Halo until much later, mostly it was friends that played it at kiosks who said this, although he did concur to try to appear unbiased, at which he failed hard), but that's like, ALL it has going for it,” was a phrase often repeated within this nerd group, along with “but the PS2 is ok, I like it,” and “I saw that my parents hid Super Smash Bros. Melee in my attic and I played it and put it back before Christmas.”

Anyway, that classmate hated Metroid Prime, but thought Star Fox Adventures was awesome. Joe liked both. Star Fox Adventures is underrated.

Of course, Joe eventually got tired of constantly blowing a plumber who didn't mix things up as time went on. He always wanted to spend time with kids, which Joe thought was admirable, but felt like he couldn't do fun things he wanted because of it, like play Guilty Gear X2, Sly Cooper, or Psychonauts on his own system. He felt quite a bit more jealous of PS2 compared to GCN than when he had an N64 and his brother a Playstation.

Due to going to college and working “part time” (HAAAAhahahahahahahahah; no; the “assignments as needed” clause in that contract ain't conducive to that) as a CA (Community Assistant, RA/Resident Assistant on most campuses) with only an income of $7.25/mo (plus room and board being taken care of, but that's savings, not money in check/cash form), Step sat out the most recent generation of consoles prior to PS4/XONE until December 2013, when he downloaded Steam games for his current laptop, which was bought in Summer of 2012 with some money from painting certain spots of his parents' house and other funds from the few times his freelance job in Dallas called him. Gaming was put on hold by constant job searching and interviews and then a mental breakdown suffered from the first semester of grad school.

Granted, Step did have several other Nintendo portables not mentioned yet during the N64/GCN years. He had a Gameboy Color with Pokemon Pinball, which was apparently so addictive it's the only game he can find or remember owning for the device. He had a GBA with Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, Mario Kart Super Circuit, and Golden Sun, because he didn't yet get that 10/10 review scores did not mean his opinion of most JRPGs would change by the time he was age 12. He also had a Gameboy Player for the GCN that he got on his birthday, and a DS that he got for Christmas 2004, with every Castlevania for it except the first and apparently best one, the incredibly fun Elite Beat Agents, and others like Big Brain Academy and Korg DS that were more programs than games.

Joe's backloggery account: backloggery.com/josteph