ABOUT ME

Who am I? Just a midlifer who's way too sentimental about "the good ol' days."

I was born in '87, and grew up in the 90s. Cartoons were wacky. Computers were still connecting to the internet via noisy dial-up. And video games were finally adding a whole, 3rd dimension. It was a fun, odd, and incredible time to be alive!

As for me, well... I haven't changed all too much since I was a kid, as far as my interests go.

As far as video games go, if I recall, I was introduced to them when I was 4 or 5. Our cousins had a Super Nintendo, and we would sometimes play Mario Kart with them. It's a shame that age kinda blurs the memories after a while, but I certainly remember it being a fun and exciting time. In the least, I remember that Yoshi was my character of choice back then, because I liked dinosaurs. It wasn't until I was about 6 or so that our family finally got a video game system of our own. My brother had convinced our parents to buy a Sega Genesis as a family Christmas present that year. The system came complete with two controllers, and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. And boy, was I hooked! It was the first, true turning point in my life that would cement my interests in video games forever!

As far as tech goes, I was introduced to computers when I was 9, when we had an old ESP computer, running on DOS. But my mind was too simple back then to comprehend what was really going on. It wasn't until our family got a Packard Bell M415 that my life truly began to change on the tech. My first interactions with the internet was on America Online, and I remember there was a Nickalodeon channel. At the time, Angry Beavers was my favorite show, and so I got to comment on the Nickalodeon social page about how much I loved it, and how Daggett was my favorite character. And of course, my older brother got me into a little game, called 'Age of Empires' on the PC. And boy, was I hooked on that game for a loooong time. But my interest in tech would truly begin until I was 10, when, lo and behold... Our CD-ROM drive went out! Our parents bought a replacement drive, and my brother was the one to replace it, as he had started becoming more familiar with computers in his time with some new friends. I remember watching with interest and anticipation, as my brother opened up the computer to replace the drive, and he pointed out all the other various components. "Here's the Memory, and underneath hear is the Processor," he told me. And from that day, forward, I wanted to learn more.

And then, there were the Toonami years! Yes, anyone and everyone around my age remembers Toonami. Tenchi Muyo, Sailor Moon, and, of course, Dragon Ball Z. Those would be the three shows to introduce me to the incredible world of anime. I loved American cartoons well enough, especially some of the Warner Bros. cartoons, like Animaniacs, Freekazoid, and Tiny Toon Adventures. But Anime was something completely different and fascinating! It had character growth, and it told stories. There was always some interesting plot going on. And it was even violent at times. As a kid, it just looked very cool, and very mature in a world where every other animation was just doing wacky, zany things. And, of course, who else, but my brother (he basically got me into everything I love nowadays) would start introducing me to other anime! Akira, Grave of the Fireflies, Ah My Goddess, Princess Mononoke, Love Hina! He even introduced me to IRC and FTP as he was trying to find ways to obtain more anime, so it fed back into the tech thing a bit, as well. And around that time, he also introduced me to JRPGs, so from that point, well... I became a bit of an otaku.

And that's a brief history of how I acquired my life-long interests. To this day, I still love all three. Of course, time changes things, and I find that I'm more interested in older comforts now than I am in newer things. This has especially been the case as the video game industry has turned rather questionable in the current day with things like micro-transactions, political ideologies, long development times, and relying on contracted work, rather than doing everything in-house. Tech has been going through a sort of "lost decade," with COVID, price-to-performance stagnation, and now, AI and war in the Middle East are hiking up the price of anything and everything. As for anime, well, I love waifus and fan service as much as the next guy, but everything seems to revolve around the waifu fantasy and escapism. Anime, as a whole, has also become a rather saturated market. I just can't seem to keep up with it, so I'd rather just enjoy anime as I remember it, with hand-drawn animation, as little CG as possible, and not every character having the tropy "sad backstory" every time.

And so, with the culmination of everything, and being a man who is quite possibly going through a subtle midlife crisis, I've gone back to just wanting to enjoy the things I grew up with as a whole. Anything, and everything retro. This also includes things I never got to experience back in the day, like MiniDisc, and Japanese City Pop. Sentimentality has a way of worming its way into people, especially as we start to analyze the world around us, and as the things we love start to get progressively worse from our point of view. When things are bad, we start to remember "the good old days", even though, had we been adults back then, well... Things might not have been quite as great as we remember them to be. After all, every period in time is filled with its own little bit of strife. But I guess when you're a kid, you're just not aware of it, so everything you enjoyed back then paints a much rosier picture. I guess that's not a bad thing, though. As long as you remember not to get so stuck in the past that you forget about the present moment, let alone, the future, it's fine to indulge in the things that take you back to a bygone era where everything seemed so much more pure. Always remember that you can rewind a clock, but you can't turn back time. But even so, you can still enjoy the many relics and wonders that time has left in its passing.