TMNT post! Before Greg!

Ok, that was more or less to worry him. He chose my main childhood squeeze, the turtles, and claims to soon post about them in all their glory. Upon reading this I of course felt like the neglected younger brother jumping up and down wanting to show mommy and daddy that I did it too! Only to be upstaged and left behind.

So, with that, I wonder what would be my next obsession that I can post about? When asked, the first thing that jumps out is Goldeneye 007 for the N64. I can go back beyond TMNT, but those memories often get blurry. Entering middle school and leaving my childish ways behind, I moved on to, that's right! Video games! My sega saturn went out of business and stopped making games. I was lost and looking for a soulmate. I remember standing at Target and playing the Goldeneye demo on the N64 for hours on end. Goldeneye was the one and only reason I begged and pleaded and eventually received my new gaming console. I was officially back to the NES platform.

It was also the first point in my life where my obsessive compulsive competitive nature began to show light. I don't remember too much of running through campaign the first couple times. I do, however, remember the repeated speed runs I ran for hours at a time trying to get the fastest record time or to achieve a "cheat". A small group of 3-4 friends were equally obsessed with the game and getting faster and faster times. I had to be the best of these friends so I played and played. We eventually collected 100% cheats, and had gotten pretty good at multiplayer too. I can't brag much for other gametypes, but if you picked Power weapons, Control, and License to kill, oh Boy! I think it may be why I enjoy instagib so much with Quake. 1 hit kills, with a RCP-90. I don't know why we loved those settings so much,(I guess we were fed up with armor hogs and pistol fights ending in someone running away) We would all side-ways strafe-run around the levels perfectly cutting each corner. One eye watching your screen, the other watching your opponents screen as you sped towards each other, milliseconds before the moment of collision you would both stop, choose your angles, and the showdown would begin. Spray some corners to see if someone stuck out too far. Then zoom-aim and hit your right or left bumper to quickly peek. Fake someone out, wait for a slip up or a reload. Then, quicker then a blink of an eye you would tap the peek and fire simultaneously and you would be back behind cover before your opponent's body hit the floor.

And no, I don't think I can actually brag and say that we were the best, with no online opportunity to prove ourselves. But I will share a quick story to gauge how obsessed we were. Our Biggest, Greatest, Discovery. A discovery which ultimately ruined and ended our playing together. I still remember the day Scott, my best friend and only real competition to be the best, invited me over for something big he found in the game. Something he didn't necessarily want to let me in on, but didn't want to keep to himself. Long story short, he cracked the spawn pattern. Each level has a series of spawn points for everyone, once you die, you get placed in the next spawn point, as long as there isn't someone within 10 yards of it. If someone is too close, you get moved to the next spawn point that is open. With this knowledge we soon went to memorizing the pattern for our level, Control. V, Bridge, Ramp, Red, Bottom. Each word symbolized some defining point of the area. Now with this memorized, and the 5-10 second respawn timer, one could get a kill, sprint to the next spawn, stand within eyesight but far enough away, and spam your RPC-90. The player would spawn seeing red and hearing the Duh-duh-duhhhnahhhh.

As you can imagine, our fun, competitive games of playing together soon turned to "Are you counting spawn points!? You said you wouldnt! YOUR CHEATING!" We stopped trusting each other and it was the ultimate downfall of the game. That was years after its purchase and I have honestly played 007 longer then any other single video game (halo actually may have surpassed if you count its whole franchise as 1 game).

Even though it ended on a bad note I think some of my greatest gaming moments, friendships, and memories are bound forever to this game.