(Just who the hell am I?)
(Just who the hell am I?)
When I finally decided to make a little corner of this site with a definitive explanation of who I am, I really had to think about it. I mean, how I would present it was important. I played with the idea of making a Q&A page. Eventually, I decided that I would write it in paragraph format, due to the fact I tend to ramble and swing off topic. You know, the answers might not really suit the questions if I was to start talking about something unrelated. It's just less hectic this way.
Anyway, before I stray too far off topic, I'll try to stop myself by blabbing about the basics. My pseudo name is, of course, the Old-School Gamer, or OSG to my friends (or anyone else, for that matter). I am also known as Fred, thanks to Tom, who is also known as Rakim. It gets more confusing, I'm afraid. My real name is Phil, or Philip Charles Phil, if you're going my my University application. I am also known as Philbo, Philbot, and Crazy J (don't ask). Now, I'm sure you can pick your favorite name and call me it, but if you are going to talk to me about this site, OSG will do just fine.
Next, I'll ramble on about where this name, Old-School Gamer, came from. Well, in October of 1998, I started to plan a website—an NES website to be precise. Now, I'm usually a very creative fellow. I thought I'd use NES in the name of the site in a clever way. NEScience was the proposed name of the site. As you know, that was annexed and later reused as the title of a section about my relations with NES game characters. Anyway, the reason I did this was because there are lots of sites out there with NES in the title. I wanted to something different. Of course, one month after releasing my site to the general audience (November 28, 1998 to be exact) I found out about the existence of the Nintendo Old Skool. I felt like an idiot, but kept the name regardless. That doesn't exactly explain the origin of the name of the site, though. Old-School Gamer was originally supposed to be my name. OSG would be the webmaster of NEScience. Get it?
If you'll allow me to reminisce for a moment, I'll tell you my older NES sites. First in line was DPgames, which made its debut in early 1997. If any of you don't remember that site (which is all of you) it offered a few ROMs and a few hacked ROMs that I made. I only have one or two hacked ROMs left on my hard drive. Maybe I'll re-release them someday. The remains of DPgames can still be found, here. Don't expect to find much there. If we rewind to early 1996, I had a personal website called WTF, which later evolved into something completely different, called WTF?. Anyway, in the early days, the site had a section devoted to Gargoyles Quest II, and a huge section called "Everything you wanted to know about FF1 but were afraid to ask". I was going to recreate the monstrous manual, but found it to be too confusing and cumbersome. I spent 12 straight hours getting it ready, but only made it as far as Matoya's cave, linearly speaking. Besides that, I ran a website which featured my high NES scores. I can't remember its name, or the date it ran. It might even still be out there. Who knows?
If I was to tell you about the history of me and the NES, I would either give you a brief summary which was virtually identical to that found in Candy is Better than a Kick in the Face, or give you the whole story. Here's the whole story.
In October of 1987, I received a used NES. My grandmother bought it for me for my birthday. I woke up on that fateful morning, and my mom and dad were playing Super Mario Bros. We had the NES, two controllers, and the SMB cart. Thus began a saga. At this time, my best friend already had a nice amount of games (most of which I own now). He lent me the Legend of Zelda sometime early 1988, and I was hooked. In October of 1998, I got Zelda and Zelda II for my birthday. I'm spoiled, I know. I would look forward to christmas and my birthday because I was always assured at least one NES game. The most crushing time in that period was when my grandmother called NES games "too expensive" and stopped buying them for me. I must admit that in 1992, due heavily to that and the SNES, I stopped getting new NES games until 1996. And, from 1996 to now, I have gotten roughly 100 new NES games.
I cut it short, because I have been typing for a while. yeah.
As for the Editorial Candy is Better than a Kick in the Face, I was pissed off when writing that. I hope I don't seem to be pompous. I was reading that a little earlier, and realized that I had called myself the "real deal". Ha ha ha. Please don't quote me on that. I'm not really that evil and angry. Actually, I'm generally calm and rather pleasant.I don't tend to blow my own horn, and I don't tend to make fun of things like that. Well, other than the N64.
And as for my sense of humor. Uh. If you don't get it, you just don't.
Uh, I'll stop now. I think that this is long enough. This is the OSG, ending his broadcast day.