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As a kid that had read about the Promised Land of E3 in GamePro and EGM throughout the 90s this was a dream come true. This opportunity was huge, since it included trips to E3 to interview developers and write previews for upcoming games. Most of my high school and college jobs were in video game stores, which ended up opening a door for me to start freelance journalism for. So, in high school I did the only thing I could think to do I got a job in the video game section of Toys ‘R’ Us. There were no programs for it, and with the internet being so young there weren’t many resources to do your own research either. The path to game development wasn’t as clear back then as it is now. Capcom and Tekken Tag Tournament.Ĭan you share with us your journey as a game developer? I had another group of friends I would go to the arcade with, where I would get pretty competitive in Marvel vs. Sometimes it would be multiplayer games, but most of the time we were all playing our own single player games and just sharing the experience. But I had a group of friends that would do regular game nights, which involved dragging our consoles and CRT TVs to someone’s house to play video games all night. In the 90s and 00s video games were not as prolific as they are now - they were still seen as nerdy and childish by most high schoolers. In high school I made small groups of like-minded friends. Those games changed my life I was witnessing video games go from being a toy to a new storytelling medium and I knew I had to be involved. Final Fantasy VII was the first video game I ever preordered (thanks to the demo), and shortly after came games like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid.
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I acquired my own PlayStation about a year later and video games went from a hobby to a passion. We spent countless hours playing the included demo disc Warhawk, Mortal Kombat 3, Twisted Metal were the most frequent headliners. In 1996 that same friend bought a PlayStation.
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I ended up teaching myself how to make levels in Duke Nukem 3D, and my friend and I would play games of deathmatch on levels we had made over landline connection, tying up our family phones for entire evenings.
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My dad and I would also experiment with DOOM mods, and when Duke Nukem 3D came out, I used my allowance to split the cost with him. Mega Man was my favorite NES game, so I’d spend hours drawing my own boss and level ideas for it.
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Games were expensive, so I didn’t own many, but it was a weekend ritual to go to Albertson’s or Video Memories to rent a game.Īs I got a bit older, I started dabbling in (what I would later learn to be) game design. The GameBoy was my first console, but the NES followed shortly after.
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My dad was a software engineer and would bring home floppy disks full of shareware games (the 80s version of a demo) and occasionally took me to the arcade. I spent a lot of time camping, skateboarding, snowboarding, and biking, but I also had a love for video games. I was born in the early 80s in Idaho, so I was a fairly outdoorsy kid. Tell us about what got you into gaming and some of your favorite gaming memories?
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