Beyond the Valley of the Stephanie: 3/22/09

i read this quote today and i think it really pinpoints something we have all felt before.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."- Neil Gaiman

i screwed around with this list on facebook today but after more introspection these are my final top 20 favorite video games of all time:

1. Tetris

Tetris will ALWAYS be my favorite video game and no matter how much trash you talk i will ALWAYS kick your ass at it. i often sleep and dream this game. seriously-even still.i can't remember the highest level i ever got but it was definitely between 50-60 something range (i wonder what the highest level there is?)i remember my family actually holding off dinner and cheering me on and flipping out incredulous at how high a level i had gotten.
the songs constantly get stuck in my head at random times and as a personal tip never go with song b- if you are on a higher faster level or when the blocks start stacking close to the top that tune will panic you and induce the most stress and cause you to lose.

geek confession #1 (and this is a doozy!): i've actually toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo on my back of cascading tetris pieces.

2. we heart katamari

i don't know why this game is so addictive but it just is.rolling weird objects up into a giant ball. totally weird. totally japanese. totally fun.
geek confession #2: a few years ago a friend and i talked about being katamari characters for halloween. i can't remember why we never followed through with it.

3. guitar hero 3

ok so i know how to play actual guitar. and that's great but honestly when it came down to learning how to play guitar hero i was at a disadvantage because i would keep saying "that's NOT how you play it!".(i probably would have fared better doing this) it's like playing a weird version of simon with better songs. my brother and i played the game until we beat it. literally for about 11 hours straight. we didn't even pause to eat. the only "breaks" we took were to have an occasional cigarette (though most of the time we would just let the cigarettes dangle slash style from our lips while playing) put eyedrops into our extremely red eyes that were about to fall out. there are songs that i always *hated* before playing the game that i've grown to somewhat tolerate and in some case even actually enjoy a bit now through guitar hero association. i was kind of bound to love any game that has sonic youth's "kool thing" on it (though admittedly i think the songs i am probably best at on it are dead kennedys "holiday in cambodia", smashing pumpkin's "cherub rock")

4. california games

as a kid i remember going to kiddie city with my dad and brother with my report card in hand and getting to pick a video game as a treat for being on honor roll- california games was my choice.
loooong before tony hawk's foray into video games came california games. it included not just skateboarding (well halfpipe only) but also hackysack (or freestyle footbag as they called it), bmx, rollerskating, surfing and flying disc.

depending on your score you could get "sponsored" by the cool name brands of the time like ocean pacific, santa cruz, kawasaki, casio.
i swear this choice is not even remotely influenced by the fact that athere's a shark in the surfing competition.

5.burgertime

i don't know why but i was really obsessed with burgertime.i also had a board game that i was obsessed with called build a better burger. it's amazing i never wound up working at mcdonald's or something.

6.baseball stars

the forefather to any of the mlb or espn games, this was probably one of the first video games that you could actually make up your own team and players.

7.super mario bros 3

superior to the first two mostly only because you could turn into a raccoon and fly.

8.a boy and his blob

i don't know that i ever really figured out how to play the actual game but i was fascinated by the multi-flavored jelly bean aspect to this game.

9. megaman 2

bubble man, heat man, wood man, metal man, air man, quick man, flash man and crash man. this was a game i was reeeeeaaaaallly into for a long time.

10.paperboy

i can't remember why but *everyone* was totally into paperboy.

11.maniac mansion

to be honest i don't think i ever understood how this game worked but i think it was almost like a choose your own adventure type story. my favorite character was the trampy redhead punk razor naturally (she had a band afterall "razor and the scummettes").the game vaguely had something to do with horror or sci-fi and so i played it for hours on end.

12. the legend of zelda

this is most likely where all role-playing video games started-which i honestly never got much into after zelda.

13.donkey kong

most classic. really what else can be said?

14.mortal kombat II

i knew *maybe* about 2 combination moves on any mortal kombat game. most of the time i would just randomly furiously pound the buttons as fast as i possibly could.i don't know how but i won quite often this way.i would play boys and they would talk trash that i couldn't play because i was a girl.somehow i could always manage to hustle and subsequently impress in this game.

the game was kind of controversial at the time for its violence-you can decapitate people- but by today's standards it's probably suitable for a four year old.

15.duckhunt

i will always always always think of the dog giggle.

16.contra

i couldn't even tell you how many fights started between my brother and i playing this game. it usually had to do with being in a two player game and moving ahead of your partner and not fighting and just letting them get killed instead of helping...ahem. but it was good times!

17. street fighter

a few of my friends recently got the new versions of street fighter for nostalgia sake it seems. if i could partake in online gaming i'd probably be right there with them. fortunately though i have a life ;)

18. pong

so simple yet so hypnotizing.

19. teenage mutant ninja turtles

i was always april or raphael for the most part. more than on the NES i remember having to stop at the corner store for my mom with my brother and with whatever change we had from buying a loaf of bread or whatever we would play the tmnt arcade game they had there.

20. pitfall on intellivision

this was the second video game i can remember playing on intellivision.

honorable mentions:
the math fun electric company game on intellivision.

my very first video game! i remember there being a purple gorilla and it taught me math;
othello; ms. pacman;dead rising (though i only got to play that for a short period when an xbox was temporarily staying in my apartment), crazy taxi (though the arcade version was way more fun), sonic the hedgehog, castlevania, blades of steel, dig dug II, qbert, kid icarus and excitebike.