Every story should have a beginning, middle and ending. For example, today we got to see the beginning of the war of the United States of America for the Precious Moon Water (PMW). I only hope the skills I have been acquiring over my career as a gamer will save me and my loved ones (maybe even….the world) in the coming battles. To our mysterious enemies I have this to inform you, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for PMW, I can tell you I don’t have PMW, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long video game playing career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let NASA alone now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I WILL PWN YOU!

File footage of me on the left and my mentor, Ripper, on the right telling me all about X-com circa 1996

This edition of the Retro Confessional will serve as a warning , as I inform you faithful readers as well as the threat on PMW, of the games that made me the warrior I am today (or in other words the games that kept me going all these years).

Hoth certainly is colorful!

There was once this movie about some Empire striking back against some guy with goofy hair. More importantly a game was spawned from this movie. The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600 was released in 1982 and it made me crazy with excitement. The game itself was a side scrolling affair where the player controlled a snow speeder against an endless wave of AT-AT walkers to destroy. Eventually you would get the force and really tear things up. I really got into this game due to my imagination and of course the encouragement of my beloved mentor Jack Ripper.

Skills acquired:

• Ability to enjoy repetitious tasks
• Ability to get pumped up by John Williams music
• Ability to see snow colored Hoth as a multicolored wonderland

Are those cars driving on the moon?

The next stop on our time line of my training is Racing Destruction Set (RDS) for the Atari 800. This game got me through the dark times after the fall of the console games. RDS was published by Electronic Arts in 1985. It was a split screen competitive racing game that also included the ability to customize your own tracks. This customization included the ability to alter the shape of the course, terrain type and most importantly…gravity. The player could also select from several different vehicles and customize those vehicles as well. These vehicle customizations included but were not limited to engine and special tires. Also this game was on a 5 1/4″ diskette.

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to throw a computer diskette in anger
• The desire to customize things to the way that works best for me
• Ability to look at multiple screens
• Ability to operate in zero G

Domo Arigoto, Miyamoto San

Console games were dead to general population in the USA. It was 1987 and PMW was only on the minds of the time travelers. I was in high school and my family thought my incessant playing of Jungle Hunt was disturbing on my Atari 800 (A skill I have that does not relate to the PMW war is vine swinging).  A friend invited me over and I got to play the Legend of Zelda on NES. CONSOLES WERE BACK TO ME BABY! I did not care if my family thought me childish, I did not care if half of my friends had no time for video games, I did not care that Glen Close was stewing rabbits to get even with Michael Douglas. I wanted to go to Hyrule. I hate to say you might be on the wrong web site if I need to describe this game to you.

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to not care what people think
• Ability to hear a song when I discover sought after items
• Ability to know when I am unharmed I can shoot my sword
• The confidence to wreck and burn everything in my path to achieve my goals
• The knowledge that fairies can be kept in bottles.

I took this guy out with 3 hadokens

In the same year that I was saving Hyrule, I lead a double life as a mall rat. For a more detailed report on that please consult this, my future enemies and readers. One of my favorite proficiencies to develop were my level 12 super hands (+5 vs blistering saving throw). I did this by playing the original Street Fighter (SF) arcade game, a lot. The giant pressure pads did wonders to power level my hands. Tho other trick of playing this version of SF was the manic wiggling of the controller to pray for a fire ball or uppercut. Eventually the pads were replaced with 6 buttons. This was intimidating at first, but we persevered. The odd thing about this model of SF was that the speakers must have been broken because all of the music and characters sounded like they were mumbling, yet we could understand them. There was head to head play, which built up one’s competitive spirit, however an even bigger driving force was the scoreboard. You see sometimes, strange initials would pump you from the top spot. DAMN IT, WHO ARE YOU CUP? (Ripper said it was one of “them.”)

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to hit pressure sensitive pads
• Level 12 Super Hands
• I leveled up to use 6 button controllers
• Ability to recklessly wiggle a controller
• Ability to understand garbled voices out of a speaker
• Ability to get competitive on a scoreboard with unknown people, or were they? (Damn you, Ripper!)

Is it safe?

I had lost touch with Ripper during my first couple of years of college, but we reconnected at the very beginning of 1994, when he made my girlfriend break up with me so that I would buy a Super Nintendo (SNES). He said that this was for the best. He also went on for a while about the value of grain alcohol. At any rate, my SNES came with Super Mario World and I was cash strapped so I played that a lot. Sure I rented games a good deal but doors always seemed to close, due to something written of in the ancient scrolls, called “late fees.” I hope everyone reading this has played Super Mario World, because it does not get much better than this title. I learned to combine my training in two arenas: Playing video games and playing drinking games. This had mixed results at first but eventually I gained the necessary symbiosis.

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to operate multiple controls while intoxicated
• The knowledge that not all dinosaurs were trying to kill me
• Reinforcement of the ability to recognize the good mushrooms
• The terrible knowledge that ghosts only attack you once you turn your back on them
• Trial by combat with grain alcohol

The ride of the future?

Over the next two and a half years Ripper and I drifted apart again and new consoles with wonderful new training tools were on the way. Ripper had developed (ok it was Microprose) the ultimate teaching device for the free thinkers which was on the PC. It was called X-Com: Ufo Defense. I of course knew nothing of its existence so Ripper had to get it ported to the Playstation. His mission was multi-faceted. Ripper had to get me a Playstation, but that proved pointless due to my terrible Super Mario Role Playing Game addiction. After that got on something called the Internet and he gave me some tips to beat the game, and that cleared me right up. Then I was ready to take on X-Com. To this day I refuse to attack Cydonia. It’s complicated. X-Com was a great mix up of turned based strategy with management of resources rolled into one. The general premise was that the player was in control of a group of soldiers, scientists and engineers that were to defend the Earth against an alien threat (sound familiar?). You built bases, back engineered alien technology, and so much more. That game was truly scary at times. This application lead to many of my friends also buying Playstations.

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to shrivel in terror when I hear about the arrival of a Cyberdisc
• Ability to grin broadly when I hear about the Blaster Bomb
• Ability to see who of my friends could be trained for the future
• Ability to feel compassion for my little pixelated pals when they died

This guy dreamed up the next two games.

Two more essential pieces of my training in the retro world were SOCOM 2 (PS2) and Halo 2 (Xbox). Each of these incredible games brought their own charms and droves of fans (trainees?). I played SOCOM 2 for over a year with the same clan. This was a squad based shooter taking place in contemporary times. The Navy SEALS against the terrorists. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed when our opponents would play like crap in non-competitive play, yet destroy us due to glitching in “official” matches. Halo 2 needs no description. What I think it really brought was a revolution in Rambo style play and ease of connectivity for friends. Halo 2 was a great way to learn that vehicle draw the fire power.

Skills Acquired:

• Ability to banter with deranged children and develop/deliver possibly illegal insults
• Ability to wear a head-set and not freak out
• Ability to operate in a squad and play my role
• Ability to know where the weapons appear in the battlefield
• Ability to wait for my turn to speak
• The knowledge that the big loud vehicle will get you killed

So now I sit waiting, wondering when they will show up for me to defend us form our Precious Moon Water seeking enemies with my deadly arsenal of video game playing skills. Until that time, I will try to figure out these things: Is Captain Calamity really Jack Ripper? Is that why we play Rock Band 2 all the time? Will Hailsux skills on the guitar translate to firing the Wave Motion Gun? Finally, why doesn’t the 60 GB HD for the 360 come with a transfer cable? It’’s them I just know it.