2 Year YouTube Anniversary Blog Post! Sort Of...

On February 14th I celebrated my 2 year YouTube anniversary as a creator so to honour this, (and the fact I'm currently battling a virus and feel absolutely rubbish right now) I thought I would release the original script to the first ever video I uploaded discussing love in games and my love for gaming in general. Although as I look back on it the editing is rather basic and I'm not completely happy with the way it turned out, (that's the perfectionist in me sadly!) it's always interesting to see where you've come from in any creative format. At least I'd like to think there is an improvement in my work... but I guess you'll be the judge of that! My favourite part of the creative process is definitely the editing side, with being able to splice videos and pictures in to the script I've written to further accentuate the point I'm trying to get across being a most enjoyable endeavour, and the actual tangents I've been lead off on whilst trying to hunt down the perfect meme or video clip has opened up whole new avenues of thought I'd never even considered before... and websites no normal human being should view! (At least on purpose anyway.)

My only real regret when it comes to this first video is the fact I haven't been able to make more of them. The amount of time it took to even put together this relatively simple recording was ridiculous but since making it I do have a new found respect for anyone who does this on a regular basis; Ahoy and Jim Sterling being two of the people who I'm sure I've taken inspiration from and have two completely distinct ways in how to present their thoughts on screen. As a little YouTuber there is a fine line you need to balance upon between quality and quantity and it's fair to say I was bummed out big time after putting a lot of time and love in to that video and it having hardly any views, even today. (313 views as I write this!) To work so hard on something and not get the recognition you think it deserves can be a very frustrating/humbling experience and it was at this moment where I needed to decide on whether I was going to do this for the views and potential money making aspect of YouTube or because it's what I actually enjoy doing, and I think it's fair to say that after two years on the grind this has become my full time hobby and my passion for creating in any respect keeps me motivated to do what I do.

 I do however have this itch which needs some serious scratching right now.

As much as I like to showcase old and new games on the channel I feel the creative side of what I wanted to do on YouTube has taken a back seat from trying to keep up a regular schedule of content and although I won't go in to specifics right here right now, (VLOG incoming soon!!) I can see myself shaking up my routine soon with regards to the length of videos I upload and also what I actually choose to bring to the channel in order to free up some time for me to be able to put more creative works on to YouTube because let's face it, this isn't going to be a career defining moment for me; I'm not suddenly going to be earning a wage off doing this so I might as well be happy with what I choose to upload.

But I digress.

Below you will find the original script I wrote for that first video. If I have some witty remark to say about anything within the script or from that point in the accompanying video I will pop it in to brackets and italics to make it stand out. And let's face it, this is me so no doubt there will be some sarcastic remark earmarked in there somewhere!

And if you haven't seen my video you can check it out here:

                                                                               Thoughts of a 30-Something Gamer: Love in Games and for Gaming

Well, here you are:

So I've been thinking.... (The intro seemed to make sense at the time although it was filmed on a terrible phone camera... and yes, that has been dubbed over!)

About a week ago I found myself browsing through the Nintendo e-shop looking at all the old games available on the virtual console when I came across Super Mario Land, the very first game I owned for the original Gameboy I had as a kid, (well, apart from Tetris... EVERYONE owned Tetris) and I felt a pang of nostalgia I'd not felt in a very long time. As I sat there looking at the monochrome screenshots of those tiny sprites it suddenly dawned on me that Mario has been rescuing the same girl for a long time. (O.K. So in Super Mario Land it was a girl called Daisy... what can I say, the guy is a bit of a player when it comes to the ladies!) (So why include a pitcure A.C. Slater from Saved By The Bell? His name's Mario for Christ's sake! Sometimes I marvel at my own serendipitous luck when it comes to visual gags.. another reason why I want to do more of them.)

And that got me wondering... from a real life perspective what was his motivation? What could the reason be to give this little plumber the drive to continuously put himself and his brother in peril? At first I thought about the financial gains. There he is, running around the mushroom kingdom picking up coins carelessly left all over the place, unclaimed by anyone, who wouldn't pick them up? He collects A LOT of gold throughout each game, surely enough to be able to hang up the tool belt and live at a comfortable level? And then it hit me, it couldn't be about the money. You see, the thing about being motivated by material gain is you eventually get to the point where the accumulation of those materials outweigh the effort needed in order to accumulate them. In other words, when you have enough cash to see you good for the rest of your 3 lives why bother carrying on? He could slap that gold into a high interest account and live off the interest from his mansion in the Bahamas. (I did think about maybe going down the route that some girls just like to be chased and love to live a life of drama but I couldn't think of a good way to wrap up that thought process.)

So what else? Could it be his sense of justice? After all, Princess Peach is the head of State, the leader on the Mushroom Kingdom, surely it would be the right thing to do? The fact of the matter is the “right thing” is purely subjective here; when you break it down can you really justify the hundreds, if not thousands of creatures killed by Mario just to get to Peach? Note I say creatures, not enemies, these are the natural inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom. Take a look at almost any level in the Super Mario series and you will see that the majority of dangers featured are animals and vegetation just going about their day. They're not actively seeking Mario out to cause him harm, they're just out doing their own thing when an unknown presence enters their personal space and they react accordingly. Now from a real world perspective if you noticed a snake in the garden and it saw you it wouldn't automatically head in your direction to mess up your day, but if you go within a foot of it and start pogo-ing around like a lunatic there's a good chance it's going to try to fuck you up. And that's even before you start tackling Bowser's minions and traps in each castle who are after all, only trying to protect their boss on his property from an intruder. And then once Mario has been identified as a threat after that first level, (he has been breaking and entering after all, or at a very minimum level trespassing on private property with a pinch of vandalism to boot) they will go to any means to stop him... or at least what they are ordered to do by their employer.

So if cold hard cash and a sense of justice at any cost are just by-products of Mario's motivation to keep rescuing Peach over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... well you get the picture, this leaves as far as I'm concerned one feasible possibility: LOVE.

And that got me thinking: A lot of narrative-driven games that I've enjoyed over the years that have stuck with me because of the story have had the subject of love as their driving force for the protagonists. In The Secret of Monkey Island (one of my favourite games ever) Guybrush Threepwood is initially driven to become a mighty pirate but soon his priorities change when he meets the governor of Melee Island, Elaine Marley and falls madly in love with her. Sadly for him the ghost pirate LeChuck is also enamoured with the governess and decides to kidnap her, at which point Guybrush decides to try to rescue his beloved. Double Dragon also follows the same narrative with the player becoming Billy Lee, out to release his girlfriend Marian from the possession of the Black Warriors gang and their leader, Willy, with more than a little help from his twin brother Jimmy. Well, in 2 player anyway. A more modern take on the same tale can be found in Super Meat Boy, where Meat Boy is trying to avoid all sorts of dangerous obstacles in order to try and save his squeeze Bandage Girl from the evil clutches of Doctor Fetus.

These three examples recycle the original principle of the brave knight attempting to rescue the stricken maiden from the grasp of whichever evil person suites the ebb and flow of the story, though there are some games that have put an interesting spin on the classic formula concerning family rather than for an opted loved one. (that Lego clip was one of many I could have chosen from but to fit it in to the section I had to do a very subtle but extreme trim of several scenes in order to show what I wanted) In Fallout 3 the main drive behind your character is to find your father, who one day leaves the underground vault you have grown up in for the outside world and you, the player, ventures into the unknown of the capital wasteland in order to find him. In Fallout 4 the tables are turned as you are now the parent, and after being witness to a personal tragedy at the start of the game you vow to avenge for your loss and find your missing son, Shaun. In the same ilk Sid Meier's Pirates! (possibly my favourite game ever by the way!) has the hero scouring the Caribbean for his lost relatives, who were sold into slavery to pay off a family debt owed to the ominous Marquis De La Montalban when he was still a child. That and to make a ton of money... and maybe bag himself a governor’s daughter in the process. For a further twist on this aspect of family you could look at Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1, where although the central character Lee isn't directly related to Clementine at the start of the game they soon form a co-dependant relationship which benefits them both throughout the story, and by the very sad but predictable ending the connection between them is so absolute it hits you right in the feels. Even a game like Altered Beast has love as it's driving force, and not from the player character. He is just a pawn being used by the God Zeus, who resurrects a fallen Roman Centurion and bestows bestial powers onto him in order to rescue his daughter Athena, kidknapped by a demon god called Neff. (As long as he collects 3 power orbs within each level, no free rides from the King of the Gods, you have to earn that shit.) (All the above examples are a pretty standard affair but I was mighty proud of that Altered Beast reference as I don't think it's as obvious a point as the others... I had to do a bit of research on that one believe it or not! Well, consult Wikipedia to conform my thoughts anyway.)

These are all in essence based around the same influence, the recovery of something that is lost. There are some games however, that have a unique view on the subject of love and how to interpret it in an interactive form. The Sims series lets you kiss, date, marry and “woohoo” (the sigh was real) anyone you like, young or old, male or female, and it seems with each iteration the options for gender, sexual orientation and sexual freedom keep getting bigger, and rather than it being restricted by the technical side of the software I think it's more to do with what is widely accepted as “the norm” which in itself grows larger with every generation. (or even since I made this video one could argue)

This brings me to one of my most favourite gaming characters of all time... Larry Laffer. (Last of the true men I tell you!) The Leisure Suit Larry series are the gaming equivalents to those sexual coming of age films you grow up with as a child; American Pie, Revenge of the Nerds and Porky's to name but a few. This 40 year old disco suit wearing, cheesy talking schmoozer has a heart that's bigger than his brain and although he always seems to end up in bizarre sexual escapades all he's really looking for is that perfect partner, that one true love.

The subject of love can span all genres of gaming, from platformers to puzzlers, first person shooters to beat-em-ups, and although unoriginal in premise the subject never gets old.

So why do I bring this up? Well, despite it being Valentines Day, (which seemed like an appropriate time to do this) seeing all those retro games available for the virtual console on the e-shop had me contemplating what gaming has meant to me throughout my life. (I'm getting old... I'm allowed to be retrospective!)

This year I am celebrating 25 years of being a gamer. (27 years now if anyone is keeping count) Schools, friends, jobs and even other hobbies have come and gone but gaming has been my one constant. (I typed "jobs" on a Google image search and Steve popped up and although it can be construed as bad taste it did give me a chuckle so I decided to keep it in) I have been privileged throughout this time to witness this leisure activity grow from a secretive, seemingly unhealthy, misunderstood pastime stereotyped by spotty nerds and middle aged men in their parents basement to a mass media outlet, enjoyed by everyone, young and old, male and female, sometimes together, and other times by yourself, but through gaming forums and websites, Youtube and Twitch, you're never alone. An outlet which today rivals the behemoths of television and film, both in money invested into the industry and money spent by the end user on the hardware, software and accessories required in order to enjoy this hobby to it's fullest.

Don't get me wrong, like any child growing up gaming has had it's teething problems, and some would say over the last few years gaming has been going through a very rough period; from software companies and distributors bleeding us dry with full games being sliced into pieces and distributed through DLC, season passes or as episodic content (and now loot boxes... *sigh*) to the actual content of the games themselves being certificated and vilified by people unable to grasp the very essence of gaming as an interactive experience and see it as a threat to the traditional forms of media and so criticise it at every available opportunity. And we don't do ourselves any favours. Over the past few years we've had fellow gamers turning on each other through the acts of “swatting”, (the act of getting armed police beating down the doors of popular streamers while they're streaming live on Twitch) for no reason other than jealousy to gaming “purists” outright verbally attacking people who are trying to shake off the stigma of what it means to be a gamer in some sort of twisted irony which seems to be lost on the attackers themselves.

These dark times can't last forever, and I know with the fullest of hearts that these problems will work themselves out eventually. It feels to me that the very concept of what makes us gamers as a society is evolving at such a pace it's forcing all of us to adapt quickly or be left behind, and it's the people who think kicking and screaming the loudest will stem the flow of change on the horizon. But things have to change. They have to evolve. Evolution in it's truest form is done by an entity to develop itself, to improve oneself, and this can only lead to a purer, more fulfilling pastime for us all.

To conclude, I love gaming, and I love being a gamer, and I love that my favourite hobby has grown into something which is widely acknowledged, widely accepted and worth fighting for. (most of the time...)

Hang on. Maybe I've been looking at this all wrong. Maybe love is the wrong way to describe why Mario is continuously putting himself and those closest around him in mortal danger. Maybe it's because of OBSESSION. Let's just spin this on it's head for a second. Princess Peach is Royalty. Royalty tend to have security guards protecting them at the very least, maybe an army at their beck and call 24 hours a day. How could Bowser continually kidnap a member of the Royal family without the guards around her getting wise to his dastardly plot? And why aren't they storming Bowser's castle and rescuing her? Maybe it's because she doesn't need to be rescued!

Maybe that's why she's never in any of the castles in the first few levels, it's not that she's never been in there, she's just high-tailed it as soon as she's heard Mario kicking at the front door. And then by the end of each game she realises the only way to get this deluded guy to leave her alone is to play along with his damsel in distress fantasy before getting back with her true love, Bowser. Think about it. Peach, this eligible bachelorette could hook up with any guy she wanted in the Mushroom Kingdom. Does she go with Bowser, this muscular, independent, powerful guy who has plenty of money lying around and a very large property portfolio or does she settle for Mario, a middle aged, roly-poly plumber who still lives with his brother? I know who I'd put my money on.... (I was SO HAPPY to find that Playboy sketch summing up my thoughts so well and it's definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it! Don't worry, I was only on the website because of the articles...)

Well, that's my childhood ruined.

--END--

 So there you have it. Now I know technically this is a cheat week when it comes to original content, (and it's late!) but I hope you'll forgive me considering I'm not very well at the moment. The past week has been a real struggle and now I don't even have a video buffer for the YouTube channel which means I can't even drip feed you a new upload every couple of days to tide everyone over. Rest assured as soon as I'm up to recording a coherent video without coughs and sneezes throughout I'll do my best to get back up to speed as soon as I can.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


Check Out My Youtube Channel: www.YouTube.com/PalicoPadge

Let Me Introduce Myself Part 3: A Proper PC Upbringing

 I can't believe as a guy who makes YouTube lets play videos for a hobby on PC gaming has managed to get away with waiting until his third blog entry to actually address his PC history to anyone still sticking around to read it! But please, before you go clicking off this I'd just like to say that this is the last introductory blog entry I shall be doing so you can rest confidently now knowing my cynical and slightly sarcastic views and opinions on the world of gaming together with life in general thrown in will commence in the coming entries forthwith. I mean, Logan Paul... what a bellend. AMIRIGHT? But before we start upsetting the legions of unquestioning automatons regarded as his "subscribers", (never has the word fan been so appropriate... it would take a fanatic to be able to defend and justify that prick's attitude and actions towards other people in my humble opinion) we better get on to the subject of my love for the personal computer and gaming upon said item.

Now although I started this blog series with the what's and wherefore's regarding the Commodore 64 I feel the need to create a single entry to detail my history with the open platform gaming machine which is currently going through a bit of a renaissance over the past few years. I could have pegged all this together in to one super-blog as I suppose technically the C64 and PC are one of the same, at least in essence. The one thing which has always bugged me is the fact machines of old were recalled as being "Home Computers" as opposed to all modern iterations which are referred to as "Personal Computers". Why? Is it a price thing? One could argue that today's PC's out of the box is more or less comparable to what you were paying for a Commodore or Spectrum back in the day so I guess it's more to do with the fact back in the 1980's one computer per household was enough whereas today you'd be lucky to find someone who doesn't have at least one piece of technology on their being at any one time if you take in to consideration how advanced a mobile phone is alone these days. But I digress...

I'd like to tell you that after my initial introduction to "home computing" via the C64 I was savvy enough to continue my interest with these modern contraptions all throughout my life but with taking half a decade out due to the convenience and speedy loading times of consoles when I finally did decide to re-introduce myself in to the multimedia extravaganza that had become "personal computing" I didn't have a fucking clue. I'd like to say that after doing intricate research on the matter I had enough understanding of the technology to know what to purchase and what I could expect to get out it for applications, (and games) but as a teenager that was never going to happen! So what amazing application or game charmed me enough to warrent me to try and convince my parents in to spending a sizeable amount of money on yet another games machine as far as they were concerned?  (I'd just like to say at this point that yes, I did play the "it'll be for homework!" card and thankfully they fell for that hook, line, sinker, rod and copy of the angling times.) Could it have been the interactive marvel that was Encarta 95 with those grainy videos and crackly sound bites? Was it the very business orientated and professional look of the desktop in Windows 95? I'm afraid not. I can honestly say in all seriousness it came down to a screensaver based on a Guinness advert.

In retrospect it does seem kind of pathetic to think that what has governed my social and professional life for over a quarter of a century all started with a screensaver for a popular brand of Irish stout, and to be honest it isn't even the best advert they have ever come up with. If you have clicked on the above link you've already seen that the advert itself is just a man doing a silly dance in order to kill some time while waiting for a pint of the black stuff to settle properly but for some reason as a screensaver I thought it was a interactive marvel. I mean, LOOK AT HIM!! He's dancing on my screen whenever I want him to! Well, as long as I don't touch the keyboard or mouse for a predetermined time frame anyway. Now before you start to think of me as being a complete imbecile you need to remember that this was at a time when the most sophisticated thing I'd seen on a computer before this was animation in a Commodore 64 game and this guy was grinding around on the screen JUST like he did on the TV. And I think that's why it struck a chord with me, it was the first time I had seen a computer be able to reproduce a picture like I had seen in another more acceptable and at the time vastly superior format. If I thought more of myself at the time I would say it was because it was at that exact moment that I realised the future potential of the PC and how one day it would rival television, radio and newspapers in it's everyday use as a multimedia platform... but it was only because of a man doing a silly dance for a pint on the screen in order to not have the desktop image burned in to it's surface.

So I got my first official PC! A 486 DX2-66 with 4 megabytes of RAM, a VERY basic sound/video card and a 250MB hard drive. (I think anyway, I'm not too sure on the HDD to be honest.) It wasn't the most up to date computer by any means at the time and I'm pretty sure the guy who built it, (called Mike who I ended up working for eventually) built it out of  "re-purposed" parts but I never had an issue with it from the day I got it until the day I upgraded the machine beyond the original components and case itself. It was at this point that any friends who had secretly been PC gamers came out of the woodwork recognising me as one of their own due to the pale complexion, bloodshot eyes and strong wrists... but that could be any teenage boy I guess. As I stated in my last blog entry the tribal mentality of console gamers ruled the playground, to the point where the very small clique of nerds who preferred a computer to a PlayStation for their boyhood jaunts of gaming would not even bother to defend their steely software platform for fear of being drowned out by a bunch of neanderthals not sophisticated enough to recognise the advanced power hidden away in those mini-towers. (PC Master race FTW!) But with a raise of the eyebrows and a nod of the head I was welcomed in to the coven that was the "I.T.ists". These guys, (and a single girl as we're all for gender equality in our forward thinking group who were desperate for any female attention at that age) opened my eyes to the many different genres unable to be properly showcased on a console. Point and click games, strategy and simulation games became my favourite types with Settlers 2 and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, (VGA version of course!) being two of the first and most loved games I played. Although FPS games can have diverse themes the base workings remain the same but with more story-intrinsic and broadly different mechanics the games I discovered no matter how old they were they still felt fresh.

This isn't the time or place to start listing my favourite games on the PC, (that will be in another blog entry when I can't think of anything better to write about!) there are a few games which really frame that time in my life, mainly due to the fact I was part of the "I.T.ists" at my high school. We essentially were the guys, (and girl) who looked after the network PCs, from standard laborious chores like cleaning them up, (inside and out) to having a go at rectifying any hardware or software issues that crept up from the pupils messing about on them during lessons with one very special Summer where we replaced all the machines throughout the school and helped configure them. Now, that might sound boring to anyone uninitiated in to the group but certain school responsibilities awarded certain perks, the main one being left alone for a couple of hours after school while the teachers finished up paperwork or prepared for tomorrows lessons which meant we had free reign on the schools computers in that time! As well as having a connection to the internet at a reasonable speed for the time, (ISDN as opposed to a 56.6k modem) the more important factor was having access to 30 computers all linked up together.

THAT'S RIGHT KIDS, WE HAD NETWORK GAMING SESSIONS!

In today's fibre optic landscape it's very easy to forget where the humble beginnings of the internet began. I'm not going to lecture you on how today's youngsters don't realise how easy they have it, I'd assume if you're reading this you too suffered the pain of a dial up modem with having to disconnect whenever another family member wanted to call someone while also putting your PC gaming mates on your friends and family list with your telephone service provider in order to get a discount for calling them so damn often because of playing 1v1 on Command and Conquer all the time but I'll say this; THE PAIN WAS REAL. So, having access to multiple computers on the same network for multiplayer sessions of Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom 2 and eventually the original Grand Theft Auto were a marvel and I have very fond memories for that time of my life. This was also a time where no real DRM existed which meant the sharing of 3.5" floppies and CD's with full games on them were common practice, and in the rare times where a game needed to have the CD in the drive in order to get the game working the school had a handy CD re-writer built in to the teacher's work computer and we were "trusted" with the password to it! Even back then it felt like what we were doing for those couple of hours at the end of every school day was something special, groundbreaking even, but I don't think any of us would imagine how much common interactivity there would be in gaming some 20 years later. From your standard PvP games to such simpler things such as having an online high score table to even being able to zap yourself in to someone else's single player experience just to fuck with them a bit. I'm looking at you, Dark Souls! For four years this was my life outside of the rigmorale of forced education and naturally these friendships I made through the PC gaming scene at school carried on outside of it too. Remember the guy I wrote about in my first blog about the Commodore 64? The kid who had a ZX Spectrum who amazed me with his little black box with rubber keys? Well he was in this group too and although I never acknowledged this at the time it would seem in retrospect I owe my love of computers and gaming in general to him... so thanks Pete.

When you're at school playing on those up to date computers everyone involved are on equal terms; everyone has the same specs, peripherals, screens etc. but towards the end of my school life my own computer started falling behind minimum specs for a respectable gaming rig. Games began to run slow or even not at all and seeing as this was a "family" computer and still very capable of performing the tasks asked by the other members of the household I noticed month after month the selection of games I could play were getting to the point of non-existence. At this point I have received a few upgrades from the 486 through birthdays and Christmas gifts - nothing significant enough to mention here, but with no way to finance any new parts for the big box in the corner myself, (I had a paper round where I delivered 300+ newspapers for just over £5 a week!) I had to turn to alternative methods of gaming. This was when I discovered the term abandonware. Abandonware in itself is a dirty word, supposedly any software not directly supported by the developer or publisher could be classed as "abandoned" and so open to free distribution and download. It seemed like a lot of developers were very open to their older games which haven't been freely available for a few years to be easily downloaded and played by people who wouldn't necessarily have played them in the first place, hell, maybe even have heard of them at all! But with the PC being such an open platform this was a very real possibility for anyone savvy enough to have a look on the old interwebs. Thankfully this was the beginning of the internet being a lot more widely recognised by the general populace as a viable way to project your passions to a wider audience and with a bit of digging around the wondrous treasures to be found under the heading of abandonware were mine for the discovering! Suddenly a whole world of older games which were uglier compared to their newer, better looking compadres but with no less gameplay to them had been sprung open to me and were there for me to poke and prod around with. There were games that I had heard of through conversations at school or games I remember hearing about from a few years before which I suddenly had access to and the only constraints to me playing them being the time I could afford to invest in them. This for myself was where my informal education to gaming came in to play and thankfully by having access to a potato of a machine I could now fill in the gaps from the 5 years I'd missed out on while hanging out with the cool console kids. But even better still was I could go beyond even that era, I could experience games from when I first had my Commodore and further back still. My catalogue had expanded so significantly and my choice was so varied now and all because I couldn't run the latest games my friends were playing... and I'm glad. Without this "ailment" I never would have uncovered old gems like The Oregon Trail, Jones in the Fast Lane, Street Rod, Lost Dutchman Mine, Sid Meier's Pirates and Rockstar! to name but a few and even today with every PC I build and/or upgrade I always make sure one of the first actions I do is to transfer my favourite games of yesteryear along with the latest version of DosBox on to the hard drive.

I guess while you're at school you don't really have a lot to worry about other than homework, keeping your grades at a respectable level with only doing the minimum effort needed in order to achieve this and wooing any females gracious enough to show you any interest in you so time can be a very cheap commodity. It's not until you leave education and enter the world of full time employment that you realise that time, your own time especially, is precious. And with every year onward with increasing responsibilities through work and family commitments the value of that hour here or that hour there you can squeeze in for yourself never seems to be enough to accomplish what you would like to do. Even at the age of 17 I started to figure this out rather quickly when I ended my college course early to go and work full time in PC installation and maintenance. Here I was, working 8am until 5pm building and installing computers around the UK for large and small companies on networks compared to my friends who were sleeping in until 10am and going to college/university for a few hours and then going out on the lash on a weeknight. A WEEKNIGHT I TELL YOU!! I've never been a big drinker and although these days I can sink a few back sensibly and be alright the next day this was not a possibility back then as I hadn't drawn that practical line in the sand yet. If I was drinking I was drinking to get drunk. Smashed. Shitfaced. There was no in-between! But as I was in full time employment on a apprentice's wage, (not a lot but I was earning more than my peers at the time) and the fact I chose not to go out in the week as management "frowned" on turning up drunk at work more than a couple of times in short duration I decided to invest my time and money in to my own PC at home. It would be silly not to really as I built them by day, (so I could throw bits in to it and have it all configured pretty quick) and I also had access to all the suppliers who could supply me with multiple components at trade prices! So although the items I decided to buy were still expensive at the time they should have been a hell of a lot more costly than what I payed for them so I splashed as much money at my little box as I could rationally afford! This meant budget gaming for myself - finding good abandonware titles and downloading free to play games - became a thing of the past as I could play whatever new title interested me as soon as it was published! And although since then I have had times when PC gaming hasn't been at the forefront of my social life, (thanks heady twenties!) I have always strived to have a semi-capable PC so I can at least keep up with the computer culture pack and know enough of what's going on at any one time to stay in the loop.

Although I don't work directly in the computer trade now, (still dealing with electrics though!) and the fact I now have a long term and very forgiving girlfriend (who allows me enough time to myself each week to do YouTube as a hobby) PC gaming for me right now is back at the forefront of any spare time I have and I'll relish this time as much as I can in the knowledge that realistically the next natural step for myself and my partner is marriage and children and at the bare minimum time will become even more of a constraint than it is already. My only hope is that my love of gaming, PC gaming in particular will rub off on my spawn and they too will grow up in as exciting a time for computing as I was lucky enough to grow up in. I'd like to think that Padge Jr will one day write a blog when he is my age now, (if writing still exists and Skynet doesn't just read your brainwaves directly) and be able to comment on how he/she had the most amazing childhood playing in the new VR suite they had mum and dad buy so they could do their homework better... or something along those lines anyway.

So that's it! The early years covered at a very basic level. I'd like to think that by my writing you're getting an idea on the kind of guy I am and hope what to expect in future blog entries. I've only really skipped over the basics and have many other stories to tell from both this era and beyond but I'm sure they'll be time for that in other blogs... and don't even get me started on talking about my time with World of Warcraft.

 Thanks once again for taking the time to read this and hopefully I'll see you next time!

Scott.


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