Yesterday, I did two things. First, I finished Peace Walker properly with the real ending; second, I discovered that I have not actually posted anything which would give anybody more than the slightest indication of what sort of person I am, what games I play, and other such information that tends to act as useful on a gaming-oriented website. So then. Prepare for a somewhat lengthy, self-centered blag. While I'm not keen on writing this sort of thing, it will be important five years from now when I look back and go, "What a self-centered wanker!" and resolve not to do it ever again.
My name is Fusionmix, or Mix if typing the full mess out becomes too tedious. It's a name I have kept consistent over all my accounts for three years. I was 'Fusionmix' back when the name got zero direct results on Google. But two or so years before that, I still browsed the Interwebs under a myriad of other disconnected titles. My first net handle was 'Zon3r', and there are probably a few of those floating about on sites I've forgotten. Next came a few cases of 'Redzion' (occasionally with a few x's or 3's or 7's thrown in for ub3r c00lne55), 'Dark_hunter77', or 'Jase666' (because when you are fourteen, satanic references instantly take you a level in badass).
Things first changed upon the badly-HTML-formatted pages of a now longsty-defunct writming website, where I wrote under the name of 'athenas_ragnarok', a handle whose deeper meaning confounded various angst-ridden teen authors of dreadful Evanescence-imitation poetry on the site. The truth was that it had no meaning; I had simply thought that jamming mythology-related words together sounded cool. At one point when a friend wanted to join, I named the account 'Fusionmix' on a whim, and my admittedly ADD associate never used it. The name itself ended up stuck in my head for weeks.
Since then, Fusionmix has become my official internet name. If you notice a Fusionmix, TheFusionmix, The Fusion Mix, or other such permutation, it's most likely me, unless you discover it writing smutty yaoi porn on some furry fandom forum, whereupon it probably isn't. I'll go ahead and admit I typo'd my age here, as my birthday ended up registered as taking place in 1991, which it was not, and bugs me, because I was actually born in the year Clinton first took up the reins, iD software released a shooter which caused several conservative groups to experience spontaneous combustion, Brandon Teena met a sorry endo, and Spielberg made a movie responsible for countless cases of velociraptor phobias. In short, I was born in the year of democrats, demons, dogmatists and dinosaurs; the answer to all of which is circle-strafing and a shotgun. :P
My birthday itself is February 3rd, making me 100% Aquarius. Anyhoo, I'm bored talking about me, so let's talk more about me, except this time relating to my gaming history, shall we? Yes we shall.
As a kiddo growing up in Santa Monica, I had no television or other such media in the house. I'll be eternally grateful to my parents for this, because it made me spend my time climbing trees outside, 'operating' on stuffed animals, and building bizarre laser guns out of TinkerToys instead of watching Power Rangers and Pokemon with friends. My incredible grandparents, however, owned a TV with cable for the sole purpose of spoiling their exuberant little grandchild silly, and when Mom's USC studies and Dad's codemonkey work schedules collided, I got to stay with said epic grandparents.
I remember the first Super Nintendo commercial I saw in between trying to avoid poorly-dubbed anime (it was the age of Sailor Moon S, if this gives any perspective). More clearly I can recall the first Genesis commercial, and wanting one of those machines quite badly (the controller looked cooler for the Genesis than the SNES, besides, 'genesis' was a cool word). Strangely, a few weeks later at a church friend's house (at age three), I encountered Sonic the Hedgehog. When my friend's brother got up to go to the restroom, I shanghaied his controller and began dumping Sonic into pits in a fit of fascination.
And thus it began. When I expressed this interest to my parents, my father began allowing me to act as 'gunner' when we played Descent (and later Descent II and the '98 Combat Flight Sim). After a couple years of this the notion of Descent perhaps being too violent for my innocent mind occurred to him. It probably was, actually, given that when you're five or six years old it's fun to run around, flying and imaginary spacecraft, and making finger guns worthy of 4Kids censorship at passing individuals through car windows while shouting, "Fusion Cannon! RRAWAWRRRARRZZZZZZZZZJJJJJJJFFFHGGGHHT!" and other unnerving approximations of laser cannon noises. Yes, in fact I WAS that special child who sat in the corner drawing pictures of giant robots, being made fun of (and not realizing it!), and generally acting like a socially-inept ****
The allowance of video gaming ended in my house, and remained ended until I was about seven or eight, which was when I met a girl who owned an N64, and by attachment, Super Mario 64, which utterly blew my preconcieved notions of video games out of the water in between my awed murmurs of how amazing the graphics were.
This is taking too long.
Parents got the first TV in the house when I was 9, my brother was 2. Still a ban on consoles as well as non-educational PC games, until at a garage sale one day I discovered a GBC for fifteen dollars, a garish shade of purple with that godawful turquoise Pikachu case. It had no games with it, so after a chat with parental units I bought a used copy of Pokemon Gold from Gamestop for twelve dollars and ninety-nine cents, and went on to clock 57 hours in one file and 214 in another. Burned out the battery while battling a friend, so at least my 'mons went out with quite the bang (lvl 100 Feraligatr sweep against my opponent). Eventually the GBC was forgotten in favor of a red GBASP.
This is taking even longer.
Stuff happened. The girl with the N64 gave it to me when she moved, so while everyone else played 'next-gen' systems, I still rocked me some Star Fox and Donkey Kong. A bad case of die-hard Nintendo fanboyism stuck around for years as I got a Gamecube and then DS, until I realized the only reason I hated the PS2 was because there were no more games on the GC I wanted to play. My first PS2 game was Ratchet & Clank.
The close-minded video game dogmatism has left me, as I recently gave up my fierce devotion to the DS Lite as the greatest handheld EVAR and purchased a PSP for the main purpose of playing Peace Walker, though there are quite a few other titles which pique my interest. I also deeply enjoy older games (providing the gameplay holds up), and own absolutely zero current-gen home consoles unless a gaming rig that runs the Crysis demo beautifully counts. I intend to play the full game someday, but only when I can buy such a derivative, devoid-of-art-direction game for something less than $20.
Meh. What else.
Oh, I have two dogs. And a kid brother. And in the real world I enjoy Tae-Kwon-Do, reading, writing, working my scrawny physique into some semblance of fitness, various scribbly attempts at art, long walks on the beach, and candlelit dinners.
I'm sure there's more, but this is introduction enough. Hello Gamespot, meet Fusionmix. Fusionmix, say hi to Gamespot.
Y HALO THAR.