In Third Person

As far as I know, I am currently not a father. I'm not done living the "free" adult life at this point in time. However, at some point I would totally love to be a father. I don't really think that much about it, but when I do, I often think about how I would introduce video games into the life (or lives) of my future little ones.

When I first started thinking about it way back when, my initial stance was almost anti-video game. I had this idea in my head that I can somehow shelter my children from video games long enough for them to value such things as human interaction and playing outside. Realistically, that's not going to happen, considering that 99% of boys and 94% of girls nowadays play video games. If my kid is in the minority that doesn't play video games, I won't force them down their throat.

Realistically, I'm still going to be a gamer when I'm a dad, and I won't be able to hide everything I have. If my kid gets curious, how do I introduce this medium to them?


The "nerd-romantic" answer is, "Start them from the beginning." I'm just old enough that the first video game system I ever owned was a hand-me-down Atari 2600. For the most part, I've been able to experience this medium in its entirety. I love the idea of starting my child at the beginning and having them see where this medium came from and where it's going. That in itself is probably too much to ask from a child ages 3-4. The other advantage of starting out with the old stuff is that (to an extent), old games were simpler back then.

There are a number of holes in this logic though. For one, you wouldn't introduce your kids to film and music with early Charlie Chaplin works or Gone With the Wind. Why do that with video games? Also, the moment your kids see other children playing "Hot Game Y", it doesn't matter how old or new it is. They'll just want whatever everyone else is playing.


For me, the true magic for me happened when I first played Super Mario. Over the years, I have seen a number of kids begin their life-long journeys with later Super Mario games, such as Mario World, Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros Wii. While the Mario games weren't always the easiest to pick-up-and-play, millions of kids around the world made the effort to figure it out because the games were that appealing. I wouldn't mind at all starting my child off on Mario, but more what I'm trying to get to is the idea of starting them off on games that they find interesting. Mario is very much kid-friendly. I just cringe at the day when my child wants me to buy them "Disney Movie Tie-In Shovelware Game X".

Not to meander too much, but that last sentence brings up the idea of gaming taste. Part of the appeal of being the one to introduce your kids to video games is that you can (to a point) control what your kids play. I would like to think that my future child would have awesome gaming taste, but there's no stopping a determined child from playing "Shovelware Game X" at some point. Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.


Or how about going in a completely different direction? Nowadays, there are more kid-friendly educational options than ever. Maybe something like a Leapster would be the best way to go. In my day, I wouldn't touch the obviously kiddie stuff with a 10-foot pole, but if you get it in early enough, my future child could have a blast with it and ease their way into a medium I love.

I suspect that I won't have to make a choice on this for at least a few more years. Until then, I'll mull over all of the potential options and keep my Atari working in case I actually want to start my future child from the very beginning. Good luck with my copy of E.T., future kid.

*The post title may be exaggerating, a bit.

Rambo on the original Nintendo is a game I fondly remember for all the wrong reasons. Back when I was no more than 8 years old, I rented this at my local video store. It was the worst video game I've ever rented.

The problem with the game is that it starts out with the most obtuse and confusing hub world I've ever experienced in a video game. I found myself walking left and right across the screen, going into every door and I couldn't find a way out to actually play the game. Never before had I been so stumped as to how to actually start the game. Without the help of the Internet available to me, I never figured out how to get out of that hub world. What a waste of a two-day rental.

Many years later, I tried to play it again using an emulator. I said to myself I wouldn't use a guide to get through that hub world, just to see if I was a dumb kid that didn't know any better. Nope. I played it for a good 20 minutes and still couldn't figure it out.

If I wanted to go back now and actually play through it, I probably could. However, from all accounts I've heard about NES Rambo, they all say it's terrible. For all the things I've said about bad game design, in my heart I still think the Rambo hub world is the absolute worst thing I've ever encountered.

To most people, Air Fortress is a game they've never heard of. According to the Wikipedia page for the game (so the validity of this fact is questionable), only 385 copies of the game came out in the US. In any case, this is not a game anyone will mention, ever. This is a shame to me, because I think it's a pretty awesome 8-bit action game. The game also has a strong sentimental value with me, but first, let me explain what the game was about if you've never heard of it. I've included a video below as well to further explain.



The game was half side-scrolling space shooter, and the other half of the game was action-adventure. Each level started with you flying towards the fortress entrance, shootings enemies and dodging environmental obstacles. Once you were inside the fortress, you would travel around the environment in your jet-pack, looking to blow up the core of the fortress and escape on your ship before the whole place blows up.

At the time, I thought the mash-up of gameplay styles made sense and was highly inventive. In particular, I thought the fortress gameplay was really good. With the exception of the first level, you couldn't play a level straight through. In order to beat a level, you had to blow up the core of the fortress, then find your ship before it blows up. However, you don't want to start looking for your ship after you blow up the core, which forced you to find your ship first, then blow up the core, then try and memorize how to get back to your ship before its too late. It was a unique gameplay mechanic that added a lot to the depth of Air Fortress.

I discovered this game through my cousin. It was a game that grabbed the entire family based on its premise and fun gameplay. Not everybody wanted to save the galaxy, but everyone from my cousins to the parents would crowd around the television and watch whoever was playing. The only other game I think to ever capture my entire family like that was Wii Sports. We would keep a master list of all the passwords and even act as navigators to whoever was playing. Keep in mind that this game had no in-game map whatsoever, which made navigating through the levels pretty difficult.


Besides being a great, under-appreciated game and a family favourite, Air Fortress holds a special spot in my heart as arguably my very first video game achievement. I vividly remember the moment I beat the first level in that game, which was the first time I beat any level in any game on my own. I was so excited by my accomplishment, that I ran around the room uncontrollably and actually broke my cousin's Nintendo in the process. Oops. That moment might also actually be the reason my cousin isn't into video games today. I'm sorry.

The Metroid series of games have carved out a weird niche in my memories. I've always felt that the games were really cool and I've always wanted to play them through to completion, but I never do. In many cases, I never get far at all.

When the original came out, I rented it just because I thought the box art was cool. Keep in mind I was probably in Kindergarten at the time I first played it. Back then, I thought that being able to travel left, right, up and down was cool, and the ability to roll up into a ball was neat, but I never got the point of it. I was too young to comprehend how to actually play the game and navigate the world. To me, I ran around and shot monsters until I got bored.

It wasn't till I got older and tried Super Metroid when I finally understood what the game was about. I played through the opening sequence at some event with Super Nintendo systems set up and thought it was awesome. Having world maps also helped me out greatly. I still find it amazing that kids navigated through the entirety of the original Metroid without a map. I've even heard personal stories of people who would draw their own maps on graph paper in order to get through. I only got to play the game for a few minutes at that event, but I really liked what I tried.


I wouldn't buy my first Metroid game until Metroid Prime came out on the Gamecube. The reviews for the game were sky-high. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to jump into the series at the same time as everyone else. From what I played of it, I thought it was spectacular. I loved how expansive the world was and how air-tight the controls were. I really felt like I was a lone bounty hunter exploring the galaxy. What ultimately killed the game for me though was the same thing that stopped me from playing the first Metroid: navigating the world. Even with the map and the assists, I got to a weird point very late in the game where I had no idea how to actually get to the marker on the map. I would go on to buy the second Metroid Prime game, which I never even opened.

Since then, I have tried to go back to both the original and Super Metroid with no such luck. I still suffer the same problem that I do in every other Metroid game, even with maps and assists. I get lost to the point that I can't play these games anymore. Not to condemn the games, because I know many gamers who have loved and beaten these and other Metroid style games. Maybe I just suck at this style of gameplay that features back-tracking and requires a stronger sense of direction. However, I've beaten both Bioshock and Batman: Arkham Asylum, which do feature Metroid-style elements to it when it comes to navigating the world. Maybe Samus Aran and I just weren't made for each other.

Based on my Google analytics stats, virtually nobody reads this blog. The majority of the hits are from myself, making sure my posts are formatted properly and don't have any spelling mistakes. Every now and then I'll get a few hits from random parts of the world. But for the most part, traffic to this blog is a joke. I admit, I haven't tried very hard to promote it: I infrequently update the In Third Person Twitter feed, which has 0 followers as of this post, and outside of my girlfriend (whom I've kept this blog a secret for about 6 months) nobody I personally know even knows this exists.

With all that said, I love maintaining this blog. I don't write in this blog to get attention, or to engage in deep discussions with others about the medium, or to build a portfolio of work so that I can become a game journalist. I haven't told anybody I know because I don't want them reading this. They wouldn't care and would probably look down on me for it. More than anything, it's a place for me to vent my thoughts about a medium I love, regardless of who wants to read or comment on what I have to say. If no one does, that's fine. It's the act of getting these thoughts out of my head that makes this therapeutic for me in a way.

Ever since I moved away from my original gamer friend when I was 13, places for me to voice my thoughts and feelings about video games have been scarce. While a number of my friends play games, I don't really have anyone to talk to about how beautiful the mechanics are on Super Mario's jump, or how I disagree with what "person X" said on "video game podcast Y". The moment I begin to dabble in more deeper video game discussion is always the moment I weird people out around me. I'm thankful to have a girlfriend that puts up with me talking about video games, but I don't expect her in a million years to care about why I think Fire Emblem is one of the most underrated video game series of all-time. Nor would I want her to care about that, unless she got into that series on her own and loved it as much as I do. I'm totally happy with her being her own person, even if that means we don't like video games the same way.


That still leaves the Internet as a possible place to let it out. More than ever, there are outlets for people to discuss everything related to games. I often frequent other video game blogs and message boards to see what people have to say. However, I have no interest in joining these particular conversations because I don't like participating in message boards. I just like to lurk. I could even sign up for a video game blog on a site like IGN or 1up, but I didn't feel comfortable with that, either.

For me, this has felt like the best solution. I have run blogs in the past, but none of them were formatted to best suit video game discussion. With that experience, I've just gone all-out to say what I want to say about a medium I've had a life-long affair with. Over here, I can say my piece on my own terms. Having eyes on my writing is secondary. Just getting out of my head is what matters most to me. If others enjoy my writing though, you're more than welcome to continue following me as I spill my release some pent-up gaming thoughts I've held in my head for days, if not years.

1993 was a very big year in gaming for me. It was the year I got a Super Nintendo for my birthday and the year I read my first video game magazine. Both of those moments were key in making me the enthusiast I am today, for better or worse. I won't talk about the Super Nintendo experience this time. I wanted to write about that magazine and how it completely changed my media consumption habits.

On my birthday, my best friend at the time gave me a baseball cap and a copy of Gamepro magazine. It had Battletoads on the cover and featured a pull-out Street Fighter II Turbo guide. At the time, I didn't have a copy of any Street Fighter game nor could I even throw a Hadoken, but I poured over that guide for hours thinking about the day when I could actually pull off those sweet combos or implement this strategy into how I played that game. Truth be told, I never really followed through on any third-party Street Fighter knowledge until last year. In any case, reading about how intricate that game could be played opened my eyes to how awesome that game was.

From that point on, video game media became a part of my life. With a few dollars of allowance or birthday money in hand, I would head down to the local convenience store and pick up a video game magazine. For a while, I would just pick up anything. As my tastes refined though, I was all about Electronic Gaming Monthly. Unlike video game media of today, which is essentially a landslide of up-to-the-minute news, previews, reviews and features that come and go within hours, getting that video game magazine once a month was an event. I would often buy snacks to go along with my magazine reading and often go through the magazines together with a friend and discuss what games look hot in previews and what games we would check out based on their review scores.

In a way, video game magazines also helped me make friends and helped improve my ability to read and write. I never really got into novels, but my love of reading stuff in a magazine form has transcended way beyond video games.


Nowadays, I don't read video game magazines anymore. Heck, I stopped reading video game magazines regularly around 1998. I have been getting the majority of my video game media from websites and podcasts ever since. Often times though, I do yearn to sit down with a video game magazine and read through it. Every now and then, I would buy an EGM just for that experience, but the magazine closed down at the beginning of 2009. All the other magazines out there either don't speak to me or are really expensive.

When the magazine does return this year, will it be any good? What will it do to keep someone like me who gets the brunt of their information from the Internet interested? Whatever the case, I am looking forward to the magazine's return.