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I might actually be becoming a vampire… As I write this, it’s after 3 a.m. and just about every sane person that doesn’t have to be awake has long since gone to bed. Why am I awake at night and sleeping during the day? Despite my strong aversion to the works of Stephenie Meyer, I may be becoming what I most hate.

As far as I know, my skin doesn’t “sparkle” in sunlight yet, so that’s good.

If another person calls my house asking if it’s GameStop, we’re going to have a bone to pick. According to people that know me, though, it isn’t really much of a stretch. What can I say? I love video games. I even remember the first one I owned. It was a little dinky handheld dinosaur game from radio-shack and I loved every second of it.

Now you may be thinking “Oh, dinosaurs! It was educational!” Um, no. This was the early 1990s we’re talking about. This thing was awesome. You controlled some type of robotic, fire-breathing T-Rex that stomped around using his flame-breath to destroy other robotic dinosaurs. I think the story supposedly involved time travel or some such on the back of the box, but who cares?  ROBOT DINOSAURS…THAT BLEW FIRE. It was like someone surveyed me on everything that I thought was cool at the time, put it into a blender, baked it until golden brown and placed it in my hands.

It blew my mind.

Ever since then I’ve loved gaming and never looked back. Sure I may have been prone to slipping into the fan boy side of the spectrum at some points (who hasn’t?), but these days I try to remain neutral and just enjoy the games themselves. I have no qualms with getting others hooked on gaming as well, to which my girlfriend can most certainly attest. (I shed a tear of pride the first time she beat me in Tekken). I can rarely turn down a good discussion about games (and more recently, comics), so my inevitable lure to the world of games journalism really shouldn’t have taken me so much by surprise. I’m all for anything that lets me share one of my favorite hobbies with the rest of the world.

Heck, I even went to art school to eventually get a job in the game industry. I’m often just as fascinated by the creation of games as I am with playing them. There are so many people that are involved with so many different little pieces that come together to create these things that we play and experience. Although rare, I love getting glimpses of the inner workings whenever I can. Their hard work isn’t lost on me, and I make it a point to sit through the credits of every game I beat out of respect of the people that donated their time and energy into bringing it to life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish leading a rag-tag group of misfits on a quest to save the world in Final Fantasy XIII. I hear there’s even a robotic dragon that can be summoned. That’s right, a dragon. Fire breathing is practically guaranteed.

This might be my game of the year.

For Archie’s bio, make sure to check out https://padsandpanels.com/?page_id=2