Symphony

First I played was Space Invaders for the Atari 2600, I think.

First game I bought with my own money was Mighty Bomb Jack. Not a great game but it was cheap (not like I had a lot of allowance money when I was 5 ;P) and the comical artwork on the box appealed to my naive 5-year old eyes. Though looking back at the box-art now, it's pretty hideous >.>

Huge round of applause and a big thank you to the GB crew! I definitely enjoyed all of the videos, articles, interviews, podcasts, and microcasts they supplied. There were times I refreshed the main page in my browser way too many times to count just waiting for the next item to be posted (namely podcasts ;P). Loved the background as well! Looking forward to next year's E3 :D

"hell, they have a shakespeare quote that they consistently use, about two opposing families, etc.   Seriously, just call it Final Fantasy: Shakespeare"

Yay for replying to an old blog post but this totally caught my attention -- They already used that premise in a lil game called "Final Fantasy Tactics" ;P

Anyways, I agree tha Lost Odyssey had the mature JRPG story going for it, though unfortunately feel through a few plotholes and was inconsistent at times (eg. "We're immortal... but this time I'm not so sure..." Wait, what happened that makes you not so sure you'll live this time? Did I miss something? or Mack just being completely suicidal throughout the game and no one sitting him down and saying "Listen Mack, your mom is gone. Stop running off into haunted forests and hijacking trains to try and see her").

Those sorta things aside though, it felt mature and tailored for an adult audience and did a great job. I'm definitely looking forward to more JRPGs that tailor towards an audience of our age -- the ones who were kids when they made FF1 but are all grown up now.

"Layner Barsett" should be spelled Lyner Barsett

Isn't it obvious? They're bringing the Tanooki suit to the Zelda franchise!

Ahh deathbed confessionals. Gotta love em -- "I'm gonna tell everyone off and never come back so I don't have to take responsibility for my actions!" The Internet is wonderful like that, isn't it?

I actually found myself pretty excited about all three conferences, and I'm an old-school die-hard-Nintendo-fan-turned-deserter / old-school-Sony-fan-but-still-waiting-for-PS3-to-have-more-games. So the GB crew found them a bit underwhelming? So what? Of course they're biased! They made this site so they could voice their opinions without having to watch what they say for fear of ad execs getting on their case, etc. Gods forbid they exercise their freedom of speech and glaze over areas of the show they didn't care about.

As Lies said:

I tend to get startled easily, but I wouldn't really call that scared. For example, loud shrieks will make me jump but then I'll shrug it off and move on. Being scared, to me, is having a lingering sense of foreboding.. you know, like things that will come back to haunt you in your nightmares. I could list tons of games that startled me -- the Resident Evils, Dead Space, heck, even Gears of War.

But I think the game that left me with lingering thoughts of dread would have been the original Silent Hill... I was young and it was a new style of game for me at the time. Sure I had played Resident Evil, but RE was moer of a "scaring through shock" type of game that started me rather than left me with lingering goosebumps and nightmares. Silent Hill's horror aspect came from the dark corridors, the creepy radio noise and never really knowing what to expect. There were definite nail-biter parts for me that I was afraid of playing through.

The unfortunate side-effect of that was I quickly became desensitized to that sort of horror and I no longer feel the same impact from similar games, such as subsequent Silent Hills or Fatal Frames. I still get a kick out of playing those kinds of games from time to time, but I don't experience the same level of the fear of the unknown that I did with that first Silent Hill.