On this date seven years ago, I signed up as a member on this great website about video games. I was looking for a new video game website to lurk around after leaving Gamespot due to a number of reasons. I was made known about Giant Bomb peeking at my brother watching a video at the site. As soon as I found out that Ryan Davis and Jeff Gerstmann were running the site (I wasn’t keeping up with gaming sites at large back then) is when I signed up. Though I enjoyed the video content the staff back then, I was more engrossed with its wiki. I did what I could to help improve the wiki in any kind of matter, whether it was inserting a release date to a game, to filling out a full game wiki page from scratch. I would later branch out produced a bunch of game lists, post a few reviews, and joined up in a few community run events.

Sadly in the past couple of years, my output has considerably decreased due to a number of factors. I always lament that I could not produce as much as I used to, and hence whatever recent output has come about from strong conviction to power through and get a blog, list, or review done. It’s been hell for me to get this blog done, but as we are closing out on the 2010 decade and the mindblowing revelation of being at this website for seven years, I decided it would be nice to look back and highlight my favorite contributions to Giant Bomb.

Favorite Wiki Page Work

Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm

Looking back, I’m not proud with any of the wiki game pages where I was a top or significant contributor for. Out of the few wiki pages where I put in significant work into, I would choose my work on the Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm page as my finest effort. It was one of the few pages that I created from scratch and covered the basic game information into some detail with the development history and game mechanic sections. There are other wiki pages where I put in much more effort and information into, but I prefer the tight, straight to the point information I wrote into the Yatagarasu: AoC page. It’s all the information you want without the fluff, which I feel hurt my bigger wiki page efforts since I felt the pressure to pad out the page to feel “full”.

Favorite Review

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]

I do not consider myself an excellent writer by any means, but I hope that my recent reviews were decent reads. Whenever I have the sudden inspiration to write a game review, I always challenge myself to write the best review that I can. It’s been hard to maintain the thoughts and the limited time I can work on getting those thoughts written down into an electronic document whenever I had the chance. Out of the ones there I published on Giant Bomb, I’ll give the slight edge to my Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] review as my best review, though The Last Blade 2 review comes at a close second. (And I’m still disappointed how that release turned out, even though the technical issues that I noted were eventually fixed with patches.)

What I liked about how my UNIST review turned out was portraying a level-headed appreciation of how well that game turned out. I did my best to highlight the numerous things the game did well and why those things personally impressed me. I gave big focus to the game’s tutorial mode, as it’s one of the few fighting games to really dig deep into top-level fighting game techniques and implements within the context of its fighting system. I also did my best to describe how engaging the fighting is, even with all of the mechanics in play. Although I forgot to spotlight a few outer edges of UNIST’s overall package, I was happy on how the length of my review turned out. I felt I wrote enough on my UNIST was great but not too much where it looks like I’m digging through every little detail to justify my enthusiasm for it.

I written a number of other video game reviews during my early years with Giant Bomb but shied away from publishing them here for the odd reason that I didn’t want to overload my profile page with reviews. You can read those other reviews here: https://rurikida.wordpress.com/category/reviews/

Favorite Lists (Not Counting GOTY and Games Finished)

Favorite Games of Generation 7

I recall there was a lot of members publishing their favorite games of Gen 7 lists around the time of the XB1 and PS4 release back in late 2013. I drafted up this list pretty quickly and got it out there as soon as I can to join up with the other lists going out. I’m shocked looking back to it on the low number of games I picked and half of my list consisted of Nintendo DS games. I probably would add a few more games and include Wii U games if I had to redo this year, but the seven games I listed all the way back on 2 January 2014 still stands in my heart. Those seven games helped me provide awesome, stand-out gaming experiences as I was starting to feel the deep crunch of years as a full-time office worker.

Favorite Fighting Femme Fatales Female Fighters

I have to make one big clarification about this list… there are no actual “femme fatales” characters featured on this list. This list is simply a list of my favorite female fighting game characters. I thought the “Favorite Fighting Femme Fatales” title sounded cool with the F alliteration wordplay. Nonetheless, I still like this list because I think all of these characters are really cool, especially in a genre where back in the day most fighting game casts were majority males. I had planned on doing a new list updating where these characters stand since I published this list back in 2014. It’s interesting to see where some of the characters from this now stand.

Sound Check [01]

This list was pretty recent (February 2018), but it was a heavily inspired list of me personally noticing the growing recognition of video game music/soundtracks in terms of buying game soundtracks like albums digitally and physically. I don’t recall how I got the inspiration, but I quickly ran with it and compiled a list of some interesting video game songs that I liked that may not be the outright favorites for each game represented. The list seemed to land a nice amount of reads as I received a number of thumbs up, two comments, and even comments from my tweet on the list.

I did a second list in November, but I published this list during Extra Life weekend so I think this list got lost in a lot of the Extra Life noise. I also was a bit more lazy with my song selection descriptions as I was busy with work and had the urge to push this list through faster than usual. I liked the theme I had with the list and maybe a re-do would do that list more justice, for now I’ll leave it up for folks to read if they wish.

Favorite Giant Bomb Community Run Event Participation

Persona 4 Arena

I was so mad that I couldn’t participate in the first GB P4A tournament, as I recall it getting over 50 entrants and I think the top 8 was actually streamed on the GB’s main chat page. I participated in the subsequent tournaments, fought in the nutty GB vs. GameFAQs GB P4A battle, and year-end season bout all ran by FluxWaveZ at the time. Though I am terrible in the game (Chie main), I had fun with all the sparring, competing, and befriended a bunch of duders as a result of all the time spent with this game. There’s still a small group that stuck around after the P4A frenzy died down that I’m still a part of where we huddle in an actual ICR and the talk about games and such. It’s crazy how a fighting game spin-off of a popular JRPG and a website about video games would cultivate such a lasting friendship.

Fight Nights

MikeFightNight and Mace picked up the FG mantle after the Persona 4 Arena enthusiasm faded and held numerous fight nights open to the community. Most of the time the fight nights were casual bouts in Ultra Street Fighter IV and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, but they also threw in lesser fighting games from time to time to mix it up, like Arcana Heart 3, Virtua Fighter 5 FS, etc. I made a few more friends over the fight nights and they did their best to keep the fight nights going for a couple of years with casuals and small tournaments from time to time.

Giant Bomb FGC Discord

You probably notice the trend here that my primary participation with other duders in community have come in community run fighting games. Nowadays, you’ll find duders passionate in fighting games congregate in the GB FGC Discord. Folks are welcome to join in and ask other folks if they are open to casual fights and run tournaments. Discord just came in at the right time to house a community effort since the relevance of GB’s forums has diminished in recent years. I occasionally pop in whenever I can to get my fights in within my ever busy work schedule. You can join the Discord featured on the first post of this forum thread.

E-Mail Read on Bombcast

I sent a few e-mails to both podcasts and was able to have one of them read! My e-mail was read on Bombcast 473 and I thank Brad for pulling my e-mail during the segment. You can see in the video archive that when Jeff is speaking about the recent Hamster Neo Geo releases of SNK’s back catalog, Brad goes to his laptop to go through and find my e-mail about SNK’s business practices in having their back releases being handled by different emulating companies. Of course I freaked out a bit on the inside finally getting an e-mail read on the Bombcast and was a bit bummed to hear Jeff confirm my suspicions of SNK’s practices at the time.

Briefly Meeting Dan Ryckert, Seeing Dan and Jeff in Person at Anime Expo 2018

I was lucky to have the first day of Anime Expo 2018 fall within my week long visit to Los Angeles. I was not only eager to attend Anime Expo (the biggest United States anime convention by far for a number of years), but to also see Dan Ryckert and Jeff Gerstmann in person at their Crunchyroll panel. I actually got to shake Dan’s hand and briefly spoke to him when he was walking by prior to the panel starting. I thought the panel ran well with Dan and Jeff riffing on numerous 30-second anime clips submitted. I was a bit bummed to learn after the fact that Dan and Jeff hung around after the panel ended, but I had a commitment with the group I was travelling with so I bolted once it ended. Nonetheless it was awesome to see Dan and Jeff in person, something I never thought I’d ever do.

To Conclude

I would also take this opportunity to give my appreciation to the Giant Bomb members who continue to contribute great material, whether it’s the numerous awesome art pieces, the few video editors who clip great GB moments, and the ones who continue to work on the wiki, write blogs, reviews, and lists. I know community efforts haven’t received the brightest of spotlights as of late, so here’s to all of you.

As for me… I’ll just wait until the next sudden inspiration pushes me to produce a new contribution. For now, thanks for reading!