This is Me

Hello out there in Blog Land, my name is James aka Suraph aka King Cranky Cat (on occasion).  I'm new to 2old2play and I don't think I really know anyone here, so I'll just make this a general introductory post.

I was born and raised in Arlington, Virginia and, after brief stints in Falls Church, Fairfax and Richmond (all in Virginia) I moved my way north to Nashua, New Hampshire where I’m now attending Daniel Webster College to get my second degree in Air Traffic Management.

I’ve been playing video games ever since my parents (foolishly) bought me an NES for my fifth or sixth birthday.  From an early age I developed a fondness for RPGs, with my first ever being Dragon Warrior 3 (and still my second favorite game of all time).  As I grew older I worked my way through the SNES, Sega Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, Gamecube, PS2, all the generations of Gameboy/DS up to (but not including, yet) the DSi, and all three of the current generation systems.

The nickname “King Cranky Cat” came from my early days in Final Fantasy XI (the online one) when I was a leader in a Dynamis shell which had to coordinate upwards of 64 people for a twice-weekly event (you’ll pardon me if I chuckle at the people who complain about organizing 10 or 25-man events in World of Warcraft).  Because of the coordination required in Dynamis (in the early days) and the insanely low drop rate of high-demand items, the tensions in the linkshell (guild) were extremely high, and I quickly gained a reputation as an irritable leader.  Since my character was a mithra (cat-girl), the term King Cranky Cat was developed.  I’m much calmer these days, since I’m not a leader anymore, but the nickname still stands, and I tend to use it for fun.

The image I threw together quickly for my Blog Banner is of a Sadler Vampire – I hate the name, but love the plane.  I’m a private pilot, which means I can fly the small, single-engine planes as long as I’m current and my medical is up to date, and would someday love to own or lease a light sports aircraft.  The Vampire is currently in test phases, and I’m hoping that it will have been out for a bit by the time I can actually afford one (when it comes to planes I don’t like flying the absolute brand new stuff… I’d rather let other people test the long-term reliability thankyouverymuch).  There’s other stuff out there, but the Vampire is one sexy plane, so I hope it turns out to be a reliable LSA.  In any event, I'm not much of a graphics person, but I'm going to try to put together a more suitable banner at some point.

My favorite game of all time is still Final Fantasy 6, and I’m holding out hope for a DS remake of it ala FF4/Chrono Trigger.  I’ve branched out to also include the strategy RPG category of games, particularly those by NIS/Atlus (such as the Disgaea series) ever since I played Shining Force 3 on the Sega Saturn.  I really wish some of them would work their way over to the 360, too, but it is nice to know that my PS3 is more than just a blu-ray player.

I also play shooters, air combat games, racing games and the occasional Dynasty Warriors game – but my heart will always belong to RPGs and Strategy RPGs.  I have a special fondness for the Ace Combat series.  Any game made by Bungie also tends to be a love of mine, though I do wish they’d work on a new IP, or bring back Myth.  For a long time I was only interested in Mario Kart or F-Zero style racers, but I’ve recently developed a fondness for Forza 2 and that type of game (having a steering wheel for my 360 helps, I suspect).

No matter what genre I'm playing in, though, I'm a huge fan of co-op gameplay.  Unfortunately I have not found a good gaming group in Nashua as yet, which is why I've been turning to places like 2old2play to hopefully find some more people to play with.  I'm not much on competitive play, though I have recently been doing some Halo 3 and Red Faction: Guerrilla matchmaking.

I’m also a huge fan of books from just about any genre known to man, and have recently acquired a Sony eBook reader so I can carry tons of books with me at all times.  Formerly I was a giant fan of the cinema and television, but these days I have a general distaste for the entire Hollywood machine and pick and choose what I watch very carefully.

At this time there are a number of awesome looking games on the horizon that I’m pretty psyched about: Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins (still need to grab the book), Forza 3, IL-2 Sturmovik, and NHL10.

Thanks for reading :)