I fucking love the bosses in Hyper Light Drifter. Everything else is ok.

As my new roommate Arjun is all too familiar, I’ve been playing Mega Man X on my SNES classic for the past few weeks. In these memoirs, I recount my perilous adventure. Before I begin, I’ll let you in on one important detail — I beat this child of Lucifer, this devil of a game. However, as the story unfolds, it behooves you to ask yourself this: at what cost was this foe beaten? Was it truly worth it?

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Brought up as a boy in a traditional, proudly American household, I’ve played games my entire life. It’s what I’ve been told boys should enjoy, and luckily enough for me, I did. However, not until now have I actually thought about why I play so many games. Why am I drawn to pursue such a time consuming, unproductive hole in my wallet?

Despite what my previous blog post might’ve led you to believe, this year’s DreamHacks at Austin had more than just a ton of intense Smash games. There were Street Fighter battles, but who would watch any fighting game other than Smash? What? Who said I’m elitist? There were Starcraft II tournaments with gigantic lights flying all over the place. It also could’ve been an NFL half time show, I didn’t really check. There were Hearthstone matches, which I got way more into than I expected. How can I get so excited at people literally playing cards!? Maybe it’s because all the cards explode when they die… I am easily entertained.

Yesterday was one of those days when Elton John really got to me. The tunes of Rocket Man strike chords in my heart like no other song. And what’s the main message of this heartfelt classic? To appreciate your life and loved ones while you can? Obviously, NO! It’s that flying is fucking awesome and everyone that’s stuck on the ground is a loser. And what better way to get the euphoric high of flying than by playing pokemon? Ah yes, clicking that button that says “Fly” and teleporting to a new in-game location really gets my blood racing. But alas, since Professor Bambo doesn’t think letting a 10-year-old fly on the back of a pigeon-sized monster across the country is a good idea (yet), I had to look for my aerial escape elsewhere.

Remember how I said I would eventually make a blog post about Smash? Well I didn’t think it would come so soon…

As I alluded to in my past blog post, I’m fairly into Smash. And I don’t mean the Super Smash Bros. game you played at your friend’s house in middle school, with bombs and pokeballs flying around the screen in a 10-player free-for-all. I mean Smash. Competitive, one-on-one Smash. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, you’d be surprised to learn about the massive competitive scene, including several different iterations of the game. Still yet, you’d be further surprised to learn about an obscure subculture of Smash players that play frequently and love the game despite being absolute trash at it. Well… Can it be a culture if I’m the only one in it?

I play a lot of games. I also really like to talk about my experiences with those games. Unfortunately, most people don’t like being bombarded with the details of my recent Zelda quest or being subjected to my opinions on the current Smash meta. Fortunately, the internet exists :D This is my first blog post (hopefully of many) where I’ll be talking about my recent gaming experiences while throwing in some comments on my life along the way.