Friday, June 11, 2010

Blown to Bytes

Well, where do I start? I’ve played video games ever since I can remember. We used to have a dusty old Atari that I would occasionally play Combat on when I was really young. However, my love affair with video games began with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Like many other cusp Gen-“Y”ers this is the game system that changed everything. To this day I never hesitate to pop Blaster Master or Super Mario Brothers 2 into that little grey box.

I loved games so much when I was little because it fostered imagination. I would sit and play Zelda 2 and think to myself, “I want to explore dark dungeons and slay monsters in the woods.” I would grab a wooden dowel that was my sacred weapon and I would go off crawl through a ditch or explore the woods. No adventure was ever the same and every time I went out to explore I would venture further and further away from home. It was one of the most fun times of my life.

Now I’m older and supposedly wiser.

Currently, school and work dictate my life. I did my undergraduate studies at UAB in philosophy and I’m currently working on a graduate degree in Public Health at the same school. When I’m not there I’m the Chief Operations Officer at the Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Central Alabama as well as one of their music instructors. I have a girlfriend, she has a dog and I just became an uncle. Essentially, I grew up but that doesn’t mean I stopped gaming.

Nowadays, I can wax philosophic about the games I love. I’ll talk for hours about how Final Fantasy 7 marked the Golden Age of videogames. Or how Katamari Damacy is one of the best indicators of incommensurability between Eastern and Western cultures. Sometimes I can be pedantic and esoteric. Sometimes I don’t make any sense at all. But sometimes I can find that connection with people and their experiences in gaming.

This brings me to Blown to Bytes.

Videogame commentary is saturated with subjective observations hocked as objective truth. Magazines and blogs place games on arbitrary gradients in an attempt to sell games, influence opinions or just look cool. Personally, I think it’s pretty stupid and I hate stupid things. Blown to Bytes is videogame commentary that is supposed to be cut of a different cloth and not stupid.

Blown to Bytes is about the toil of gil farming.

Blown to Bytes is about warding off evil sorcerers in the backyard when you were young.

Blown to Bytes is about that Epic Win.

Blown to Bytes is about my experience and hopefully your experience through the medium of videogames.

Jimmy Hrom

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