I hope everyone is enjoying their week and were fortunate enough to have a shortened week thanks to Presidents Day. If you had to work I apologize I am sure you deserved the day off! I am not joking around when I say I think some of the hardest workers have some of the least days off. Kudos to everyone doing a great job out there whether you had the day off or not. Keep on grinding away. Keep on reaching for that dream you have and don't judge others. Someone working at what some would consider a "menial" job but has aspirations of earning that Corvette Z06 is just as valuable to this Earth as the CEO that just wants to tend to a garden in their spare time. I am not saying don't try to better yourself if you can and want to, but what I am saying is that sometimes we get down on ourselves because we don't feel "Good Enough" (I will tie this back in later.)
The first job I remember wanting was to be a train conductor. I mean to me they were so cool, being probably 4 or 5 and seeing these machines, and they were so massive! Back then a lot were still steam engines which I still love. My dad bought me a conductor hat that day which I wore all day. We took a scenic tour and I would lean out the windows on the train because you could catch an angle to the steam engine into the engine where the fire was burning. Well, one time I leaned out too far and my conductor hat fell off! So we arrive back at the station, I don't remember exactly, but I imagine I was in tears, and because this is the way the world works there were no hats left in the store. We returned to the cabin we were renting and my poor father and cousin (shout out to Mark who has been there through the good and bad times!) walked several miles until they found that hat on the tracks. Thanks Dad! This last summer, my wonderful wife and newborn son (17 days old I think on that day) revisited that same train station. We didn't go a train ride that day because there was carnival of some sort, and lets be honest it would be wasted on a 17 day year old, but we did buy him his first conductor hat. We'll take that first ride soon. Of course, since I take the train the every day to work the idea of this job lost all of its luster, but the reason I moved on back then was because...
I was certain I was going to play for the Red Sox. Lets pretend that a 6 year old doesn't understand how the draft process works, let alone that he would have to go to college or play in AA or AAA baseball before even having the possibility of Majors. Let alone for his home town team. So off to the enrollment in the tee ball going forward. The three major things I remember about playing this year, One, some older dude trying to steal my glove. Two, being the guy that didn't want to use the Tee. Maybe to the detriment to the team but who kept count. Three, not knowing the rule that if you catch a fly ball you have to tag up rule. Learned the hard way that day. I'll forever remember that. I had never heard of that. I don't know what the next league was called it was like a transition league before little league. Man, I slumped hard for the first 3 or 4 games. I was "Not Good Enough" at the start of that season. I don't know what changed. I don't if I made more trips to the batting cages. I don't if I faced a poor pitcher in game 5 and just had a huge confidence bounce but the rest of that year I was one of the more reliable players on the team. I remember keeping the schedules and marking all the wins and how many home runs I had. (In fairness this park was HUGE a home run just meant hitting it past an out fielder and you could run the bases by that point). We didn't lose a game that year but did tie a few, good memories. At the end of that year I felt "Good Enough"
Continuing my pursuit of a professional baseball career, I tried out for Little League next spring. Not making the team would have meant going back to the transition team to hone the skills for another year. I remember starting the tryouts with a certain amount of swagger though. There were a lot of drills throwing from first to third and vice versa which I wasn't able to do a field this size before but was able to easily now. The batting practice went well, I hit a lot solidly into the out field, which was actually defined now to make the game competitive, I wasn't blasting them out but with some conditioning I felt I might be able to tweek some out, plus there was the bonus a free hot dog with ever homer. The season started and things became a bit more grounded. To bring this back to video games since that is presumably why you may be here for, it was like going from playing Metal Gear Solid 2 on Normal to playing MGS2 on European Extreme all of a sudden. Just to start the pitchers were now all 3 years older where before they were within a year or so, it was quite an adjustment. and strikeout, pop fly, missed catch, just chipped away at that confidence. "Not Good Enough"
Regardless, I made the All Star Team, which full disclosure, I HIGHLY suspect was the result a flawed selection system. A certain number of players had to be picked from each team. Regardless, I was back to playing in a pool of similar aged players and could build some confidence back up. Then the single defining moment of my sports "career" occurred. Up to bat, a ball comes in way to close, way to fast and hits me right in my left orbital socket. I don't know how long I was down for, but it was enough time for someone to run quite a distance and get an ice pack and my mom to walk from the out field stands to the dug out to get me. I knew where I was but was incredibly confused. I went to the hospital and luckily didn't have a concussion. I tried playing one more season. All my confidence had completely crumbled. I have no idea if there was anything that could have been done to save that "career" I know people have come back from worse. I know surfers have lost limbs and been back on their boards the next weekend. To be honest, there was probably something pulling me away from this career anyways...
I had owned an NES since 87 or 88 probably ( I don't remember the exact year) I liked games. I thought they were fun. For the part I thought they were way too hard. I remember the first game I beat ( don't remember the name but it was an over the head shooter where you played as a commando, not helpful I know) I beat it during the day, Then as soon as my dad came home I had to show him too. Well I died like 75% of the way through that run so I started over but beat it that time. Poor guy, he probably just wanted to watch COPS after a long day of work. I don't think I ever beat original Mario as a kid (Never knew about the hold A + start would bring you back to the world until I was like 32, jeepers) My Dad beat the US version of Mario 2 after a long night of fighting Wart only to get probably one of worst endings ever. I owned Zelda but never had the map that came with it which is very useful, so I only beat that when I was much old and could refer to it online. I played Ghostbusters because that was one of my favorite movies. That was a mistake. Though I did make it to the top once just to die. Festers Quest, died a lot. Oh, we had Zelda 2. I still can't beat that and thought it was not possible until I saw my friend Bill beat it on an actual NES with an actual cartridge. Sorry internet, I love you, there is too much emulation tomfoolery going on! :) Then other games like TMNT, Marble Madness, and so many others, just brutal. I never thought I'd be making games back then. There are a lot of classics, but as an inspiration for in terms of what I wanted to see it just wasn't there for me.
Thank you 16-bit Era. I know we can render down town LA in exquisite detail like GTA does. We can simulate future World Wars like the Call of Duty Games. Those games are great. When it comes to top three for me though it has been untouched for about 20 years at
1. Chrono Trigger
2. Final Fantasy 6
3. Zelda Link to the Past
Just in the interest of people not calling me jaded here are other games that rank very high on my all time list that go beyond that generation in no specific order.Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7, Shadow of the Colossus, Half Life, Star Craft, Bayonetta 1 and 2. And many more but it isn't about making a list. I just love a lot of games. What the 16-bit Era taught me though is that you could balance your games a bit better for a more enjoyable playing experience and also tell a story. That is where the career portion of this post leads to. I was certain I would be a game programmer. I got heavily into tech. Everything I had I had to take apart to see how it worked. (unless they had a weird screw head. Funny follow up story to come). That meant taking apart CD players, Sega Genesis, computers and worst of all my friend Bills SNES. You see Bills SNES had a nasty habit of turning itself off. Being young and naive we figured that it must be broken. So we asked his mom if we could open it since it was seemingly broken. She said that was fine. Welp, we flip it upside down and of course it has proprietary screws. not be deterred we quickly located a ball-peen hammer and got that thing open. It's broken right so no big deal right? I don't know how we diagnosed it but some how figured it out that it was actually the like $6 power supply cord that wasn't connecting correctly and the SNES was fine. To my recollection we did the only thing that made sense to us. We found some brown packing tape and taped up the sides. Next time I was over he had a new SNES. I guess his parents took it pretty well. Way to go Bill and Alice!
In the mean time the family computer we have all these boring family games on the computer like Wheel of Fortune, think games like that, your really only trying to break high scores. While it isn't coding by any means, it is still me foraying into computer trickery (not to mention the trouble I got into for changing all the windows sounds to Spaceballs .wavs on my sisters College laptop) so every time anyone set a new high score I would go in and set it so I would have a high score of exactly one point higher. I was playing Quake I had no time for sure nonsense! Around this time I also heard of a game making program but when I looked into it looked really rough and hard to use so my dreams of being a game programmer really still sat on the back burner.
Times passing, I am seeing awesome fan stuff, awesome Quake 2 mods, perhaps the biggest thing ever, Counter Strike just came out and I am thinking, ya know if these people are doing it why can't I? You know who had been doing it? Rob. He had been making custom StarCraft Maps for quite a while. Unfortunately, I believe these may have all been lost over time, he still taught himself invaluable skills. He's incredible. I know he had been working on an RPG campaign in that engine but I am not sure if it ever got posted. I will try and see if I can get him to post on it. He showed me some stuff on it and I was really impressed with the stuff the engine could do that was never used in the game.
During all this passage of time, I had finally reached high school where they taught C++. I was really excited. I did solid the first time I think I got like a B+ "Good Enough". Then personal things were occurring in life and studies took a major hit and honestly everything about learning how to program bored the shit out of me. I took a good long step back from ever thinking I would ever be a computer programmer because I was certainly "Not Good Enough" and lacked the passion to do it. What I did retain was the vision for a project, how I think it should be structured, and how I think some of the pieces can fit together. All while of course listening to other peoples input and using the resources we have best.
Now here we are and I feel like the project has moved on from "Good Enough" to "Amazing". The inspiration for this post which you will from the picture I will post below is the narration from the Chance the Rapper song "Good Enough". It struck a cord with me with this project. He said he wrote 50 songs after after he was rejected by a record label, I was going to count up how many game ideas I have unofficially started but there are several stenopads in different places that I would need to gather together to get that number. Here is an excerpt from the song:
[Break 1]
When me and Justin were in our sophomore year of high school, we were, um, approached with a proposition from one of the friends of Jay Brown, who's a huge producer at Roc-a-Fella and me and Justin were completely excited, got together all of our music, sent it into him and, so excited, he listened to the first two tracks and said "We weren't good enough." It stings when you have in your head the idea, the thought that you're inferior, that your music or whatever you put your heart into is not good enough. We revolt against that thought.This is a product of a revolution
[Break 2]
Since that time, me and Justin have comprised over 50 songs for our third album, Good Enough. We want not only to free ourselves of that thought, but to let everyone out there who has ever heard that know you're not just good enough, you are simply amazing. So I want everybody, who's ever had that thought to find whatever person, whatever group society or person over you. I want you to grab that person and ask them, look into their eyes and ask them "Am I good enough now?"
So why did I write this all out? I created the first draft of what our logo may look like. Unfortunately, I can not share that right now. Unfortunately, it comes down to legalize and trademark junk, basically we have to make sure we lay claim to the name and logo before some one else can say they created it. I think the Beatles and Apple got into some legal battle a while ago over the Apple logo. So, just trying to avoid that, we will share when we can though! :) Until then, here is what was going through my brain as I was getting ready to start designing. Quick note. I am terrible at spelling, you should see how many red squiggly lines I have to fix in this post before I publish it! Forgive my grammar. Also sometimes my brain works faster than my pen and and thoughts get slightly jumbled as my thoughts have passed what I am writing. :)
Best!
JP
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