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Introduce Yourself / Kindo

« on: March 26, 2007, 03:29:02 pm »

Greetings. My real name is Dennis and I live in a medium-sized (by our standards) town called Östersund in central Sweden. I am 22 years of age since last Saturday, and I am currently taking a course in Science that is focused on chemistry and organic life, after which I intend to take University-courses in either History or Psychology, whichever is more available. I believe in friendship and fair treatment of people. I do not tolerate racism or any crime done against women. Either makes me want to go on a vigilante killing spree. I should also add that I tend to work toward perfectionism in certain cases, which is why this introduction looks the way it does. I have a fanaticism of 'completion purposes', and could simply not do it half-way.

[Click for picture]


Gaming
Just like most other people here, I am all about the games and, more often than not, role-playing games. I was very young when I first was introduced to games, when my grandfather brought home a Commodore 64 (or was it an Amiga?), causing me to get hooked on such games as Frogger, Pac-Man, and Star Paws (and many, many more), often irking my father and uncle as they kept coming home from a hard day's work, only to find that all their high-scores had been beaten. Later on, my father bought an NES, which came to be my first real gaming console, I suppose, with a hundred or so games (it included one of those fancy, pirated X-games-in-one cartridges). It lead to an addiction of the Super Mario Bros.-games together with a childhood friend of mine. My father preferred Arkanoid and Tetris.

After an upgrade to Super NES, and my father mastering Pilotwings before I did, followed Nintendo 64 and an admittance to the 'loser-group' in fifth grade (who wants to be cool, anyway?), together with an interest in land-hockey. We spent the days playing said hockey or talking about games we would be playing when school was done for the day. It was either late sixth grade or early seventh grade that I was first introduced to proper Pen and Paper role-playing (I had played a pseudo-version back in the third grade), and my group of friends shifted radically (still not being considered cool, mind you). We played GoldenEye 007 in multi-player mode as we were waiting for people to finish creating their characters, and pretty much every waking moment was dedicated to either planning or playing adventures or our new, super-awesome characters.

It was around this time that I first tried a role-playing game. It was Final Fantasy VII. I played it simultaneously with a friend and we loved it to bits. We also found the wonders of emulation, leading us to the glory of Chrono Trigger and other old-school games which had not been released in Europe. Along the road I was also introduced to the computer-RPG's, with Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. The latter I played through about eight times straight, because of how much it fascinated me. There was a devastating addiction to Diablo II as well, which kind of led me onto the path to on-line gaming. It did not have much of a community, but as I started playing Neverwinter Nights, I soon started having my very first on-line friends, using chatting programs to keep in touch. This all begun in a magical module, administered by a small but dedicated group of people, under the name of Dysotopia.

Dysotopia was a wonderfully tight-knit community, ran by only a handful of people, with a very loyal fan-base that kept helping to pitch ideas and suggestions, as well as being involved in the in-game world's events, taking a lot of initiatives themselves to bring more life into the lands. I was given the honour of moderating both the forums as well as the in-game issues, and was even promoted to DM for a while near the end, which was a lot of fun, but my interest in the game had started dissipating. We all loved it, but the scandals were numerous, and the level of out of character-drama had no limits. Dyso is no longer, but I will never forget the amount of friends (and some enemies) I made during my time there. The only one I have managed to track down, however, is our very own Witch Hunter. I have no clue what everyone else is up to these days.

Modern games do not hold much interest to me, nowadays. I hold a few games from my past in a higher esteem than others, re-visiting them every now and again. Especially some of the role-playing games have proven qualitative and fun. Bioware and Black Isle Studios, for instance, have proven time and again that they know what it is all about, with masterpieces like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Planescape: Torment. As for the Japanese RPG's, there are few which I do enjoy. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy IX will all maintain a special place in my heart for being fabulous games. None of the new releases from Square-Enix have caught my eye. I also love the old Monkey Island-games, and certain console titles by Nintendo or Rare, with their obvious classics. Another somewhat underground game-series I value highly, is the Thief-series. With an unsurpassed atmosphere and sound environment, playing those games is one of the most immersing experiences I have ever had in a game. I feel that many game developers have lost sight of what it is to create a game with excellence and depth, which is often why new titles do not impress me as often as old ones do.


Music and Movies
After writing such an annoying biography about gaming, I suppose it's difficult to imagine that I have other things on my mind. That's quite close to the truth, actually, seeing how my interests are quite narrow. I always love to hang out with my friends, of course, and it doesn't matter what we do, but music is one of the two main things I care about. I love listening to all kinds of music, depending on mood and current preference. The only genre I have problems with is hip-hop and the like. Other than that, I can go from purely instrumental dance/techno by Daft Punk to pure emo-rock by Joakim Thåström or Kent. One of my all-time favourite musical artists is definitely Michael Jackson, however. A more skilled dancer and musical genius you would have a hard time to find these days. Game music is also great, if done right, and my favourite composer of the genre is unsurprisingly Nobuo Uematsu with all his great work on the previous Final Fantasy-games. My favourite instrument is the piano, and therefore I absolutely love listening to the Piano Collections of said games.

My favourite visual entertainment. I enjoy films that contain heart and soul, that want to say something but without being boring (Requiem for a Dream and V for Vendetta are good examples and two of my favourite titles), and I also enjoy films that do not necessarily bring up an important issue, but are outright fabulously fun to watch anyway. These do not include lame movies about boobies and teenager-sex, but rather films like X-men and The Pirates of the Caribbean. Naturally, I drool when I think of The Lord of the Rings. I am currently looking forward to 300, Spider-man 3, TMNT, and Transformers to show up at our local cinema. As an addition, my favourite TV-series is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for its great take on good and evil - right and wrong - and how it's not as black and white as other shows sometimes portray. It has been discussed briefly in an attempt to hijack this thread.


So that's a bit about me.

Kindo