Etymology

According to Wikipedia:

In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time. This game was called "Polybius". The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects—amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and suicide appearing as having been caused by the game in various versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist.


Mission Statement

To edutain.


Contributors

Stephen Swift

Profession: Web developer (EAT THAT, CREATIVE WRITING DEGREE)
Age: 26
Weapon: Yelling
Height: 6'3
Birthdate: November 20 (which I share with Yuffie)
Blood type: A
Residency: Boston, MA
Favorite Game(s) (Current): Animal Crossing: Wild World; Peggle; Picross; Persona 3; Vib Ribbon
Favorite Game (Overall): Mega Man II

Personally Memorable Video Game Experiences
1) Becoming heartbroken, at the age of eleven, upon realizing that Irene Lew dies in the first thirty seconds of Ninja Gaiden III, meaning that I was never going to get to marry her (probably)
2) Working my way through the entirety of Chrono Trigger for the first time while part-time housesitting (which involved pausing a battle with Lavos to feed medicine to a sick kitten)
3) Realizing that I can still somehow recall the level select code for TMNT II: The Arcade Game, which I have never even owned (B A B A U D B A L R B A Start)
4) Solidifying my friendship with my best friend by scripting and trading homemade, sophomoric QBASIC text adventures in the seventh grade
5) Playing Street Fighter II in the Nintendome at La Ronde on sixteen giant TV screens, at the precise age between child and teenager, totally whaling on some Quebecois guy with Chun Li, and feeling the sweet and fleeting scent of victory, victory, glorious victory

I have been a judgemental loudmouth about video games since I was four and called bullshit on the lack of an automapping feature in the Commodore 64 version of Bard's Tale. To my discredit, it is my personal belief that videogames hold a very real potency within them, and that their potential is being constantly hammered into the dirt by the very industry that produces them. I had originally co-started this website with Matt as a means to be insouciant about untranslated Japanese console games, but it turns out I have a whole lot more to say about the state of the industry and the occasional gems which it manages not to grind into a milky paste than I do about side-scrolling SNES games only made unintentionally funny by my own lack of bilingualism.


Matt "Matt Garber" Garber

Profession: Research Assistant/Student
Age: 25
Weapon: Cynicsm
Height: 6'1"
Birthdate: 1/26/1982
Blood type: A-
Residency: Amherst, MA
Favorite Game Now: Civilization IV, Disgaea, Brain Age
Favorite Game Ever: Suikoden II

Songs from video games I get stuck in my head, seemingly at random
A note: this list was really hard for me to compile, because after I thought of one song, I had to wait ten minutes for it to stop repeating on loop.
1. Mega Man II - Metal Man Stage. Really, all the early megaman soundtracks are great, but this one has always been the catchiest. Thank you, Yuukichan's Papa.
2. Katamari Damacy - Lonely Rolling Star. Delicious chippy pseudo-pop? Sure, let's do it.
3. Yoshi's Island - Make Eggs, Throw Eggs. Maybe just because the melodic line is easy to whistle or something, I don't know.
4. Wind Waker - Overworld Theme. Do you know what is fantastically amusing, if you have the sensibilities of a three year old? Being in the supermarket, running and then riding on a shopping cart, and listening/humming this song. Right up until you hit some old lady or something.
5. Final Fantasy 9 - Overworld Theme. Which is too bad, because it's kind of an annoying game, but hey, one has no control over these things.

There is a video of me in my parent's house, where I'm about five, and I got an NES for Christmas. And I freak out, and jump backwards, and start pumping my legs like I have to pee or something, and I scruntch my hands up in my face, and make little giggling noises. It's adorable, if you're not me and completley embarrased by it. I rarely get as pumped as that nowadays, but it's still there, in a muted adult form, when I have a spare hour or two to play some shiny piece of electronic ephemera.


Jess Burke

Profession: Graduate student; teacher of college English; professional snob
Age: 24
Weapon: A wit alternating between self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing
Height: 5'4"
Birthdate: 10/25/1983
Blood type: AB+ I AM THE UNIVERSAL RECIEVER GIVE GIVE GIVE
Residency: West Orange, NJ
Favorite Game (Current): Vandal Hearts
Favorite Game (Overall): Final Fantasy VII

Top Five Video Game Levels, Ever
1. The final level in We Love Katamari. Rarely have I experienced such a joyous progression through a level than in the first moment that I realized I was going to roll up all of the countries of the world. Also the North Pole.
2. The sewer sequence in Xenogears. So frustrating! So endless! So many deathblows! Games don't usually mingle in me quite as much hatred with passionate love as Xenogears.
3. The prison battles in Vandal Hearts. After the third try with the giant defender guards, I finally understood the magic of choke points, and my tactical skill has never been quite the same.
4. A bizarre but perfectly-remembered desert-style chase scene with the Millenium Falcon in Rebel Assault 2. I can still envision the pitches and yaws it took me hours to memorize.
5. Rainbow Road in the SNES version of Mario Kart. I blame this game for my disgusting reflexes and horrible, horrible astigmatism.

When I was about nine I began running with a family of four brothers who owned every video game system there was to own, shelves of comic books and Nintendo Power, and had a supremely stocked fridge. I went there every day after school and played until my curfew when the street lights came on. I haven't stopped playing since. So began my subsequent lifetime as the rose among thorns, a geekette among geeks, clutching a book about fairy princess horse ladies in the one hand and a blue/black Magic deck in the other. My life since then has been about finding a balance between femininity and total nerdery, and I'm pleased to report that it is possible, if you can weather decades of cries of "Girls don't play videogames!"


Dan Morgridge

Profession: Indie Radio Music Director; Music Media Advertising
Age: 24
Weapon: Bubble Butt
Height: 6'3
Birthdate: July 23
Blood type: B
Residency: Chicago, IL
Favorite Game (Current): We Love Katamari
Favorite Game (Overall): Solo: Super Dodgeball; Group: Super Smash Brothers Melee

Arbitrary List of Five Things Related To Videogames
1. In grade school, I specifically recall being part of a board game company started by fellow 4th graders like myself. We made bad knock-offs of Mega Man, Star Trek, and some bad cartoon that was basically Pokemon with Knights. We named it Polar Bear Games, after this kid Dennis Quilentang, who wasn't really contributing but he once drank holy water and screamed a lot about it in church and thus we made him president. We called him Polar Bear because he had black hair. (This was hilarious at the time).
2. I didn't own a video game system until I was 9; I then received a Game Boy with Tetris cartridge. Luckily, my best friend was adopted and owned every system as it came out. I have fond video-game formulative memories of:
- TMNT II the arcade game (always jump kick, only jump kick)
- Mega Man 3, (mostly just the Top Man stage, as our walkthrough told us to do)
- Jurassic Park with all the cheat codes on (flying all over the damn place!)
- Mike Tyson's Punch Out ("How could ANYONE stop Great Tiger?" we asked, wide-eyed)
- beating the shit out of each other ten steps into level one of Battletoads.
3. The Dragon Warrior series improves tremendously when you play them as ROMs at 500% speed.
4. My junior year of college, I was finally suckered into playing Warcraft/Starcraft/Age of Mythology/Diablo/Command & Conquer. These are "the dark years".
5. There was a time when I was moving Pokemon Puzzle League blocks in my sleep.

I grew up with one close friend who nerded me up real well. He has since moved to Vegas to become a card dealer in a casino. Wow. That left me here, playing Magic the Gathering against myself in early high school. So I was doomed from the start, but that's okay! I still somehow manage to get laid! Lately I've had an interest in games that appeal to people without years of video game learning curve; Nintendo's catalog, Katamari Damacy, Rhythm games, and anything that you can pick up and enjoy from the very start, and come back in a year to have the same experience. I also have a sick fondness for intense RPGs that no no-gamer would ever touch, but loving that type of game is like art collectors who only buy things that are fifty feet tall or can fill a corporate lobby: it's just too easy. Or since I come from a creative writing background, those gigantic RPGs are like novels, easy to get sucked into, but sometimes relying solely on their heft and not necessarily consistently entertaining. What I'm saying is that I love them, but we need to get some of the fundamentals down first before we go off and write 200 hours of videogame. These short, completely intuitive games that survive continual plays present a perfect little core of video game: stack up a lot of these, wrap it up in a plot, and then you can make a longer game worth playing, such as Grand Theft Auto. For every Esper collection or Blitz combo I gleefully learned in FFVI, I also cringed remembering how items were essentially worthless due to their value: my fear for their rarity made me a nearly itemless player until the final battles of each of those games. I could talk about game dynamics forever, but there's also the consideration of soundtracks, graphics and the uncanny valley, AI, in-game socialization, game production, markets and consumers, and even philosophy in gaming: what I'm saying is, I seem to care a lot about this sort of thing, and shit dawg, it's a good thing we've got a blog to cover all of it.


Elizabeth Rossiter

Profession: "Between opportunities"
Age: 25
Weapon: Death Stare, not to be confused with Doom Gaze
Height: 5'2" (this is a generous estimate)
Birthdate: 11/21
Blood type: O
Residency: Yuppie-town, Chicago, IL
Favorite Game (Current): Twilight Princess, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Mario Galaxy, Final Fantasy XII, even though I kind of hate it
Favorite Game (Overall): Super Mario World (I could say something cooler but I would be lying, in my heart)

Top 5 discarded Top 5 list ideas:
5. Top 5 Banjo-Kazooie sandcastle cheat codes: "NOW YOU CAN SEE A NICE ICE KEY WHICH YOU CAN HAVE FOR FREE", I will spare you the rest
4. Top 5 most unsatisfying console RPGs: Final Fantasy VIII (more like, Final Fantasy HATE!), Star Ocean 3 (yeah, I used all those tears of Aphrodite and still got the goddamn default ending), Star Ocean 2 (same, except it was like 900 times harder), Xenosaga II (which was unbearably stupid, so stupid that there wasn't even a money system), Ys (all of them, they are pretty dumb)
3. Top 5 Mega Man X stage songs: Storm Eagle, Spark Mandrill, Armored Armadillo, Launch Octopus, the boss music
2. Top 5 Final Fantasy summons: Fat Chocobo, Fat Chocobo, Fat Chocobo, Fat Chocobo, Knights of the Round
1. Top 5 sexist RPG equipment items or outfits (not default or cutscene outfits, and NOT sexiest): Karin's dating outfit from Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Jessica's bunny suit from Dragon Quest VIII (do we sense a theme here?), Peach's frying pan from Super Mario RPG (although I love this thing), everything in Final Fantasy X-2 (this game is basically a pro-ana FFX fanfic come to life), sorry, FFX-2 counts for entries 4-1000 in this category

Growing up, I thought my video game habit was a shameful secret, sort of like the Robert Jordan novels I always hid under the bed when my friends came over. If they ever found out that all those times I said I was "too tired" to go to the mall I was actually working on defeating Smithy or collecting heart pieces, surely they'd ostracize me forever! Then I realized that they were gonna ostracize me anyway. So, I started doing openly nerdy things like fencing, going to band camp, and, of course, embracing my love of video games. Sure, I went a little overboard and once moderated a classic RPG e-mail list in the early 2000s, but I'd still say that my life is richer for it. A lot of video games are lame and not worth the 40+ hours you pump into them, but for every one of those there is one that is indescribably rad. In college I even realized that the critical study of video games could actually be interesting and rewarding. Not only that, but knowing about stuff like Jet Force Gemini is like being in the Rosicrucians, i.e. some of the people are crazy but it is still awesome.

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