dotHack flashback

I know it’s late, and I should probably be sleeping for all of the tests and quizzes I no doubt have tomorrow, but I can’t help but have a flashback to the semi-recent past. You see, I absolutely love video games. I play all types, action, adventure, full on RPG, FPS, Simulation, and Racing, all of them. The problem being that I’m not actually too good at them: I’ll get back to that in a minute. I now currently own several systems, spanning multiple generations of geekiness. For example I remember when the game boy color came out, and I played that for a full five years before breaking it and getting a VGA Gameboy. I was like seven or something.
But way back in the day it wasn’t my choice. My first actual console was an N64, which I saved up a full 100 dollars to a “get me and my sister a video game console” fund, and we got some cool stuff. This is actually one of my first remembrances of becoming a consumer of video game products, because I ended up going and buying the second controller (Red, my absolute favorite color at the time) and finding out that none of the fancy games I wanted actually worked on my model N64. I never played majoras mask or 007 except at a friends house once. very tragic, I know.
But when the PS2 rolled around, after I had gone through the Pokémon games and the racing games, all the PG rated crap; I was ready for some action. Go shoot some terrorists, blow up buildings, stab small helpless sewer rats. My Mom had other ideas. I wasn’t even allowed a squirt gun until my sister graduated high school (I was 11) and my first actually violent video game (return to castle wolfenstein) didn’t roll around until I was thirteen. Needless to say I got my fixes elsewhere.
One of my very first RPG’s was dotHack: infection. It’s a masterpiece, honestly, with such an involving plot and beautiful environments and soundtracks that I was blown away. The voice acting was excellent, the fights were engaging and energetic and the entire thing was tied together under the umbrella story of the dotHack universe. Did I mention that the game and story were made by the guys who did Ghost in the Shell? Oh yeah, it has to be good. And I was totally right.
But I wasn’t exactly all to patient a person, when I was little, and that translated badly into my leisure time. I could spend thirty hours trying to attach one Knex piece to a lego with no problems but I couldn’t focus on a game long enough to get past the first eight boss fights. Granted, that isn’t especially my fault: I didn’t actually own a TV or a computer when this came out so I had to share, then I got one and never really followed though.
You see I never understood the concept of strategy in these games. I still don’t, but I’m working on that. I would play as long as I could without dying, then meet a boss who I could very well beat at my current level, but with my idiot tactics of “run up, hit monster with sword” I died very often. I never realized that the stupid Ice swords I carried around were actually useful against the fire monster. Smart, right? I would spend hours getting to an ungodly level, wasting my time, my parents time, even the games time. I eventually started to get tired of it, and took many long, long breaks in between play sessions. Think months there.
DotHack was probably the first video game I truly beat and felt like I won in the end. The end video sent actual shivers down my spine. Afterwards I found out that they had recently released the third game in the original series of four, and after well over a month of doing what I could in the first game, infection, I quit.
I got involved with the Anime, which the original I could never really follow, mostly thanks to crappy adult swim late night dubs that were never in order, the bastards, and it was good for a while. Once I got into internet I started streaming more series, and I might do another one of these journal things later just for those series.

But I speak too much of the past, onto the delightfully crappy drawings up there:
First, I love Kite. Kite has a general disposition a lot like me or any truly shy and possibly very smart/strong kid ever. It was fun experiencing stuff through his eyes. The only problem I had with him is that he was too much like me in his actual relationships with people: I ended up dragging the poor other characters I met through hell and back without giving them so much as a present.
Helga is up there at the top because I remember the mythology surrounding the game and my first actual memory of cleavage, albeit anime or not. There was always a mystery about her, especially in the cryptic emails that you would receive. Is she a good guy, or a heinous criminal? Will she shank me in my sleep? Does she even exist? Why the hell is she more powerful than a god?
Haseo is over on the side looking emo because he is (and voiced by the voice actor for sasuke form naruto, to boot) but he isn’t in the first four games at all. I just like to pick on him. Even though he’s just about as awesome as kite is. Don’t quite me on that.
Blackrose is there because I love the idea of massive swords cutting through monsters, and because you spend so much time with her in the game you can’t help get involved with her life.
I tried to remember what bear/kuma looked like but I can’t except that he was like five stories tall compared to every other cast member except piro, or whatever the giant green dudes name was. I still really like his character, even if he exists twice in the same character cast (he shows up in the anime as well, and during their… special (?) the two meet and are confused as hell that in a video game with such amazing customization you find two characters who look exactly the same and have the same voice and the same group of friends, while the only thing different is their tattoos),
And the fucking shopkeep is there because I hate him so much: the idea that a GM would just play at the counter of the save store for fifty hours is just ridiculous just to watch you save constantly, as well as the fact that the beginning of Mutation has him telling Kite he’s going to ban him from the game. I just hate him so much. That fat prize giving bastard.

If you’ve read this far I applaud you. dotHack is possibly the sole reason I am such a nerd, and is the only reason I still play video games or watch anime/read manga today. I suppose this has become a sort of journal type deal, so I’m going to be bold about it and state that there will be another.
Possibly maybe next up: Trigun. Or something else from my life (oh god don’t let it be donkey Kong).