My (Michael Cusack) Personal Video Gaming History in a Time line Format.
Created by Carpetfresh on Sep 27, 2010
Last updated: 09/27/10 at 12:22 PM
Tags: Michael Cusack's Personal Game History
Question 1: Why was this game important to you? Answer 1: Final Fantasy 6 was important to me because, it was a game that had a great story line, and some cool cut scenes. Also, it had enjoyable characters, and the first truly iconic villain that you wanted to see beat for what he did to the world. Question 2: From a Design Perspective, What made the game fun? Answer 2: This game taught me, to always believe in myself and stay true to what and who you are no matter what the odds are and what others say and think about you. Final Fantasy 6 also taught me to never give up and stay determined to finish what ever I start to the best of my ability, and that friends can help over come any obstacle. the best of my ability, and that friends can help over come any obstacle. What made this game fun was its customization, ability to use all the characters, collecting all weapons/armor/accessories/etc. The Moral to this game was great, the story was great, the designers really made you feel for these characters and the past, present, and future.
Question 1: Why was this game important to you? Answer 1: Final Fantasy 8 was important to me because it is really the first game that I truly had the mental ability to appreciate such a game of its stature. It had awesome music, stellar graphics, beautiful cut scenes, and characters that could have been living in the real world. It also doesn’t help that the main character Squall, is basically me personality wise and height wise. If Final Fantasy 8 didn’t have maybe the easiest final boss battle ever (in the Final Fantasy series) then this would probably be my favorite Role Playing Game of all time. The characters actually seemed like real people. The way they acted, talked, thinks, and interacted with each other was just great. Everything save the final battle was absolute perfection with FF8. Question 2: From a Design Perspective, What made the game fun? Answer 2: This game taught me some very important life lessons that I truly hold dear to even today. Some intertwine with Final Fantasy 6. The story, told me a lot about friendship and doing what is right even if you get in trouble. The game also taught me about hard work, and that fate can be changed. Don’t listen to what other people tell you, do what you have to do, even if that means going against the fold. FF8, teaches you to be yourself, and stand up for what you believe in. Look at the relationship between Riona and Squall. The story about the world in FF8 was those sorceresses were bad, and evil and must be either sealed or killed as though they were the plague itself. Riona was traveling with Squall for the entire game and wasn’t a Sorceress until the very end. Squall (who 100% of the time just followed what he was told) finally decided to go against the most technological and advanced and biggest nation in their world, just to save the one he loved from being sealed because she became a Sorceress.
Question 1: Why was this game important to you? Answer 1: Star Craft was important to me because it is the best game on the PC/Mac (or was until Star Craft 2 came out just recently). SC had a great plot, great voice acting, great graphics and animations. It even came out with a campaign editor where the user could create maps and share them with the world. Not to mention the ability to play against other humans and play with your friends. The only difference with a game like Star Craft and say Star fox 64, was that with Star Fox, you had to have friends come over to your house, but with Star Craft, you could play anyone anywhere at any time. Question 2: From a Design Perspective, What made the game fun? Answer 2: This game taught me a lot of real world things that you would not expect from a Real Time Strategy Game. Micro managing your resources is like handling your time and money. Scouting and creating effective counters and knowing when and how to attack the enemy is the same as doing homework and studying for class. The ability to chat and play with your friends/random people builds up social skills, teamwork reliability and dependability. Star Craft is all about being the best, being the top dog, with the ladder system that Blizzard made for ranked matches. Also, you had the ability to save your games and then watch the replay and see what you did and how fast compared to everyone else.
Question 1: Why was this game important to you? Answer 1: Star Fox 64 is important to me because I spent a lot of time playing this game. It had voice acting, graphics (at the time), game play, and local battle. The story wasn’t bad, and it was a pretty difficult game. It also had boss fights, and different enemies that weren’t the same but with different colors on them. Question 2: From a Design Perspective, What made the game fun? Answer 2: This is a competitive type of game. You wanted to master this game, because it’s game play was addicting. It was all about your skill, your hand eye coordination. Unlike other games, there wasn’t an aim assist in it; it was just you, your ship, your controller, and the enemy ships. Did I mention that the boss fights were actually hard, and not “just there for the sake of a boss fight”. The feeling that you get when you do something awesome was in this game for about everything that could be done in this game (like dodging missiles, blowing up enemy tanks, gunning down and enemy fighter, defeating said boss without getting hit, beating the game without losing a life, and beating it on the hardest difficulty.)
Question 1: Why was this game important to you? Answer 1: Duke Nukem 3D/64 was a fun game. It really had no story or plot development at all. It was just fun, and well-balanced First Person Shooter. I barely played the PC version and primarily played the Nintendo 64 version with my friends. This was before game like Golden eye and Perfect dark, but I think Duke Nukem is and was a better FPS than Golden Eye 007 was. I liked this game because I could play it with my friends (4 player split screen) and have a fun time. Question 2: From a Design Perspective, What made the game fun? Answer 2: This is a fun, good times type of game. It’s also very competitive. Also it didn’t have that much competition (Doom, Marathon) so this was really the only game to play if you wanted to play a FPS. What made Duke Nukem fun, was it’s easy to use, difficult to master game play. Also it helped that Duke would say a bunch of funny catch phrases when he killed an alien or another player. The last part of Duke Nukem that was fun was it’s ability to play with your friends and kill them and prove that you were better than they were in terms of reaction-time, hand eye coordination, and power weapon respawn counter (it’s nice to always have a rocket launcher while your friends/enemies only hold pistols.)
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