It's a good time to be a gamer.
Portal 2 has finally been released to fanfare rivaling the second coming of the Messiah, of which I am woefully missing out on due to my accursed lack of funds. E3 is on the horizon, with Nintendo expected to kick-start the next console generation. The National Endowment for the Arts now legally considers video games an art form.
Aside from a few buzz-kills - I'm looking at you, Sony - the future of video games has never seemed brighter.
Sadly, it's in this time of great rapture that my tenure with Gamer Bait is coming to an end. For my last edition of Gamer Bait I wanted to talk about some of the games that I cherish and turned me into the gamer I am today.
Final Fantasy IX
Released: Nov. 14, 2000 for Playstation
One of the few regrets I have concerning Gamer Bait is that I never had the chance to talk in-depth about RPGs, a genre that has influenced me immeasurably as a gamer and nerd. This underrated gem from the Golden Age of RPGs showed me how video games could be used to tell an epic story with larger-than-life characters.
What other artistic medium can combine a lecherous thief with a monkey tail, a gluttonous frog creature of ambiguous gender and a rat-knight and portray them as fully dynamic and real characters?
This game blew my mind when I was 10, and it still blows me away today.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Released: Nov. 23, 1998 for Nintendo 64
Every boy dreams of saving the world and being granted a sword, a shield, a princess to save and evil to conquer. As the morning sun rose over Hyrule Field and I set out from my childhood home, having already slayed the first of many foul bosses, I knew that my dream had been fulfilled. Up until this point gamers never had such a huge three-dimensional world to explore with untold wonders waiting to be found.
I explored every inch of this world on the back of my noble steed Epona, finding every Heart Piece, ammo upgrade and Golden Skulltula simply because they were waiting to be found.
From the day this game was released, it became a legend unto itself, and legends never die.
