Dan Dan The Art Man

Videogame Memories 02

GUEST BLOG POST by Tim Ward

Two of the biggest video game influences that I had growing up were Super Metroid and Final Fantasy III. Super Metroid was a real challenge to remember and read maps, as well as engross my mind in a futuristic world. Summer break from elementary school chilling in my basement with my friends doing spin jumps and shooting missiles at doors was an unforgettable experience. Final Fantasy came a few years later, and was the most impactful in developing my appreciation for fantasy adventure. FF III was unique in that it became an instant obsession. A friend brought it over and we played all the way to meeting Sabin, but there were no empty slots for memory, so I made my Mom go out and buy it. This was in sixth grade, and I became an instant FFIII nut. I could easily go home and play till I went to sleep, then at school I brought my strategy guide and drew pictures of moogles. When my teacher confiscated the book, someone stole it off her desk and I made my mom’s boyfriend go buy me a new one that night. FFIII singlehandedly made me a Fantasy fan and I probably always will be.

I played that game for years and finally beat it one morning around 3AM in seventh grade. My poor little brother, whom I got to level up my characters when I went skateboarding, didn’t get to see me beat it, but eventually played from my last save point and beat it himself. Some of my favorite aspects of FFIII were: the secret characters like Mog and Guru (mimicking Sabin’s bum rush was awesome); Sabin and his blitz abilities, though the bum rush was kind of a pain to do every time; and how halfway through the game, the world changed completely and it was like two games in one; the esper magic system with unique level up bonuses; fighting monsters from the sky in your flying ship; the forest with the dinosaur that gave you like 3k exp every battle, but was deadly if I got greedy and didn’t bring enough guys to battle; plus the story line for each character really hooked me into the story like no other game since. You know you’ve got a classic game when you’d rather play it than a newer game with better graphics.

Tim Ward is a science fiction, fantasy and horror writer from Des Moines, IA. His current project is to edit his SF novel, The General’s Shadow, about a bounty hunter trying to stop a nanobiologist from turning his people into a mutant army. Tim is always looking for people to interview on his two podcasts, AudioTim and Holy Worlds Podcast. He has a few short stories submitted for publication and hopes to see them in print soon. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, or his website, http://timothycward.com/

Dan here - The blog post (http://timothycward.com/?p=413) Tim mentions at the end of his audio recording is great and was very interesting to me because I was one of the guys telling Tim he needed to read Nathan Lowell's novel Quarter Share. Go check it out and leave comments, it's a very interesting subject for writers when it comes to storytelling. The tension or action at every turn verses the everyman fiction where characters go about their business slowly "leveling up." I'd like to know what you all think about that as well!

Videogame Memories 01

GUEST BLOG POST by Jeff Hite

In the beginning, there was pong, or so I am told. I am not that old, though I am close. I have actually “written” code using punch cards, and played games that required all keyboard input because the joystick wasn’t really a real thing yet.

I was born in the 70’s and despite that fact I was pretty darn near 30 before I had ever played a video game that used a controller that didn’t look like an upside down “T.” I take that back when I was a teenager my brother had a first generation Nintendo, that he shared with me and yes the magic up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A select start does actually means something to me. Then again so do iddqd and idkfa. Despite that nearly useless knowledge, these are not my earliest video game memories. Those come from much earlier.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw it, that magic screen projecting device, but it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. It was two and a half hours away from my house, and it belonged to my older cousins, but my brother and I spent many a night talking across the room ab out how wonderful it was to play Pacman.

It didn’t matter that we never had enough play time to make it past level 1. It didn’t matter that every time we got our hands on the controls that we had deal with the hoard of screaming people in the room telling us which way we should go and how we should watch out for that ghost right there. Can’t you see it are you blind? You are headed right for it! It didn’t matter that one half of the controller set had been modified for a lefty and you had to play left handed or the fire button was just totally in the wrong spot. (Something I still thank them for since I can now do most things with both hands.) What mattered was that we got to play. And the stories we would tell each other about that time were no less than legendary.

You see my cousins where the first people we knew that had a video game. We had seen them at stores and begged our parents for quarters to play them, but this was an actual system in their home and you didn’t need quarters, you just needed to wait your turn. Sometimes the line was long enough that you could have earned that quarter, but it was always worth it to sit in that darkened basement and play the three turns you got being eaten by ghosts well before you could leave the bottom half of the screen.

After that, we did eventually get a “computer.” It was a Texas Instruments 80 with a sound modulator and tape recorder back up. We had three games at first, Hunt the Wampus, a version of space invaders and PARSEC! But there was that tape backup and it had to be used.

My father was an engineer, at the time working for the Air Force, and was the first computer nerd that I ever knew. He had a plan for us. We were going to learn to write BASIC code. He got us several books, and showed us how we could follow the instructions to write our own choose your own adventure games. He even taught us how we could take instructions from one program and put them in another program so that you could have a cooler more complicated game. It didn’t take long before I was writing my own very primitive games. Heck I even wrote one that used the joystick in a very limited way, but it used it.

That was many moons ago, and even though developers now ask me never to write code, ever again, it was how I got started in my current career field. (Thanks dad for turning me into a computer nerd.) Those were good times and we did move on from there. When I begged for a commodore 64, we bought an IBM clone. I learned DOS, and started my writing career. But it was not just for writing, it had games to you know. Kings Quest, Wizardry and early flight simulators took a large amount of my days. They might have been in black and green, the characters might have been stick figure-esque, and I never did figure out how you could gnaw and something a miss, but those video games were legendary things and, if you were patient enough and held your mouth just right, you could some times even save your game.

Jeff Hite is primarily a husband and father, but when he is not at home playing with the ever growing number of kids he is an IT professional by day. In his "spare time" he is a writer, one of the co-founders of Flying Island Press (http://flyingislandpress.com/) and the managing editor of of Pirate's Cove (http://flyingislandpress.com/cove). He lives by the motto : "I am a pirate your rules don't apply."

Even though I don't have much time to play them these days with 3 kids running around and most of my free time devoted to writing, video games have played a major role in my life. I have many fond memories of playing video games. I chose my career path because I wanted to get into making video games. Space flight games were a big influence on my upcoming novel. I thought it would be fun to get some guest blog posts before my novel comes out from people on their fond video game memories. I've provided two of my own in text and audio below as an example. My first time seeing Super Mario Bros on the NES, and my first time seeing Mario 64. I could tell so many other stories, but these have always stood out in my memory as bright and shiny.

What do I need from you?

Email me your stories, or record your experiences and attach them as an .mp3 file. I'll write up your recording, or record what you wrote so both text and audio will be available in the blog post. Also write up a brief bio of yourself, and attach a photo of you and any relevant photos if you're comfortable with that. Of course supply any links to your website(s) that you'd like me to include so people can find what you're up to as well.

Here are a couple examples from me in text and audio format:

Hi. My name is Dan Absalonson, and these are a few of my video game memories.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was walking into the basement of my cousin's house and there on a huge big screen TV was Super Mario Bros. for the NES. At home I had an Atari. The joystick was pretty cool, but there was only one red button. The games were fun, but pretty limited as were the graphics. The graphics I was seeing before me however, just amazed me. All the bright colors on such a massive display, it looked so cool and so much fun to play. I did get to play it later that day, and eventually we got our own Nintendo Entertainment System. I never knew anything like Super Mario Bros. or the NES was even possible before that day. I couldn't have imagined it until I saw it. I didn't know there was more than Atari out there, so it just blew me away.

A very similar thing happened when the Nintendo 64 came out. For whatever reason, I wasn't a Nintendo Power subscriber till post 64, I wasn't aware that the 64 was out yet. I went to my friends house to hang out, and was told he and his brother were in the basement. Once again I saw Mario in all his newly realized glory on a big screen TV. Most people didn't have big screens back then, and when I say big I'm talking a screen as tall as I was. On this monster screen I saw them playing Mario 64. Everything was in three dimensional space. The character was actually walking through a real 3D world. Mario could do flips, and you could hear his voice; it was crazy! I remember the graphics looking so good I just couldn't believe it. I had to get it for myself. We bought a Nintendo 64 a little while later, and Mario 64 was the only game we had for months. That was just fine with us, because we played it for hours; getting all 120 stars and exploring all the secret things you could find in the game. It was so cool how Mario could run and dive and triple jump and do side flips and back flips, and dive into water and swim - all in a 3D world. So awesome!

You can send your emails to: danabso[at]gmail[dot]com

I look forward to hearing from you and posting your glowing pixel memories.

I was interviewed on AudioTim again with host Tim Ward. We talked about my first crack at doing a second draft on a novel, and about my novelette "His Last Day."

AudioTim Podcast:

http://www.audiotim.com/

My Info

Website:

http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

This is Episode 62 of Every Photo Tells - Fezdon's Mistake. This is a prequal to my first submission to their podcast, which was titled "Helsa's Secret Ingredient." Enjoy, and check out their podcast for more great short stories by other fine writers. Here is their blurb for this story: People make mistakes every day. When you’re a wizard, mistakes can be a little more… colourful. Every Photo Tells: http://everyphototells.com/ Every Photo Tells on Twitter: http://twitter.com/everyphoto My episode on the Every Photo Tells website: http://everyphototells.com/2011/03/episode-62-fezdons-mistake/ My Info: Blog: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

On January 6th, 2011 I had a chat with Chris Moody on his awesome podcast Podio Media Chat. We talked about how I write, podcast, get ideas, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Go have a listen, and after you listen to my interview, you'll find that he's probably interviewed all of your favorite Podiobooks authors, so there's a lot of great content in his podcast. Chris Moody Chris on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrispodcaster PodioMedia Chat Podcast Website: http://www.podiomediachat.com/ My Stuff: Blog: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

This is Episode 57 of Every Photo Tells. I submitted a story to them, it was accepted. Here is their reading of my story "Helsa's Secret Ingredient." Enjoy, and check out their podcast for more great short stories by other fine writers. Every Photo Tells: http://everyphototells.com/ My Info: Blog: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

Find out what happens to Jerry, and how Tom deals with the death of his wife and son, in this third and final installment of "A Second Chance." Website: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

Tom continues to try and cope with the loss of his wife and child. We catch up with him on the worst night of his life, where he has to go identify their bodies. Jerry, thier killer, is still on the run, but has run out of steam. He tries to find a place to park his truck and get some sleep without getting captured by police. Some background music was added to this episode to help capture the intense emotions of the characters. I hope you enjoy, and you may need a tissue or two for this short but powerful episode. Website: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan Promos: Patrick E. McLean | Unkillable http://patrickemclean.com/ Chris Moody | The Incident at Station 23 http://fiction.chrismoody.net/

Tim Ward, @timothycward on twitter, interviewed me on his writing podcast http://www.audiotim.com/. Though just getting off the ground, his podcast is great and I highly recommend it. I had listened to all of his episodes before being invited to go on the show; in fact I was invited to talk more about a comment I left him for one of his episodes. If you're a new writer, go check out the podcast. Tim is a great guy and I had a lot of fun talking with him about writing. During NaNoWriMo this year, he and I would often have word wars; posting our new word counts to brag that we had pulled ahead and egg eachother on towards more and more words. So have a listen, go leave comments on his site, and maybe you'll be interviewed next!