We’ve been a gamer since we shared a room with our dad as a child back in the 90’s. We were heavily into RPG’s with the only one we could have competitive in being Pokemon.
Around the turn of the century our dad marries our stepmom and we now have 3 step-siblings and a soon to be half sister. Being the second oldest, we and our eldest step-brother would be somewhat competitive in games and co-op’ing in games like Crash Bash. But ultimately we didn’t have anyone who just gamed as much as we did.
MLK:
This changed in 2006 when we enter high school and met a fellow avid gamer who we will just call MLK. It all started with New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. We’d have some pretty heated Mario v. Luigi matches and we were equal is prowess and passion.
Out rivalry would amplify when we both got our hands on the Nintendo Wii the following year; August 7th, 11th or 14th of 2007 for us. We raced to see who could beat Super Mario Galaxy and even SMG2 the fastest, including Luigi’s route which he beat me since I was getting into japanese, Pokemon D/P/Battle Revolution and our writings.
While we were somewhat competitive in Mario Kart Wii outside of our clan; Elite X, our next true rivalry started with the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl. Eventually it boiled down to:
Team Heroes of Nytundo; which consisted of Mario, Yoshi, Lucas and Sonic.
=Versus=
Team Smash-a-thon; which consisted of Mario, Link, Ness and Sonic.
We enjoyed talking smack to one another and when the time came, we settled the score using dail-up internet…at least we did until we got DSL a few months later(NOTE DATE OF DSL FROM “WII WANT A CHALLENGE). Otherwise when we had a free period at school, we’d Brawl then.
Our last true rivalry ending with Super Street Fight IV on the 3DS which was our first foray into the technical fighter genre. We created a Facebook page called the 3DojoS but never really used it. Since we were out of highschool at this point and focusing on work and school, it was only natural for us to drift apart like we did. In a sense, LMCA and be a free-teen was the glue that allowed us to foster such a strong rivalry and friendship. We’ll always cherish those days even though they are now long in the past. From time to time, we reminisce with our old buddy and hang out every few years or so with the other seniors of 2010’s.
While MLK was our high school rival, a new challenger approached during our college years, one who would challenge not only our love for Ape Escape but our J/RPG roots. That friend went by the alias Fading Zer0.
Fading Zer0:
We meet in community college and we want to say it was us bringing Ape Escape on our XPS along with our other Wii stuff that allowed us to connect and nerd out. We then meme on him letting us borrow his xbox to play Blue Dragon when we finally got to play almost a decade later lol.
What can we say about him, he really challenged how we approach our tactics when it can to RPG’s. While we go for maximizing damage in waves after buffs/debuffs using what we liked, he using optimize his strats for overkill and pacifying bosses. Reflecting on this, our battle lasted longer and we had to set up if we were disrupted while he when in with ailments to crush the boss in half the time. It’s a bad habit as older RPG ingrain the fact that while you can debuff bosses you can inflice ailemts on them but that has been changing recently.
He’s and optimizer while we’re a Go-with-the-Flow-er.
With that said, me and him bond over RPG’s as we enjoy discussing strats with our recent replay being Bravely Default II & Octopath Traveller while reflecting on older gems from our high school years like FFIIIDS & Blue Dragon amongst other RPGs.
