My Quake Biography

        It began in Thailand, in my first days of being an actual gamer. I remember clearly going to my usual software store to check out this game called "Quake" which was supposed to be awesome, and had been played by a few of my friends. So I found it, all brown and nasty cover, but with that cool "Q". So I asked the guy for a copy(it was a pirated store, nobody sold real games in Thailand...), and he said it would be 350 Baht, 100 Baht more than I usually paid for a game. Obviously I was like, "wtf, dude?" and he opened the case and said, "look, special gold disc, more expensive." So, being the completely naive computer user I was, I was like, "oh, oh, ok..." So I got home later, and loaded the baby up on my trusty Dell (PII 266, 64 Mb RAM, 24x cd-rom, 4 mb ATI Rage pro), only to see that this game was crap! Everything was...brown! Chunky brown guys shooting at me, chunky brownish black dogs jumping at me...but I did give it a chance, I played single player for awhile, but I was playing with my original Doom config, up, down, left, right, control, space, alt. So I thought it sucked, in other words.

       The next summer, I was staying at our good family friends house in South Africa my good friend William, who introduced me to Red Alert, the summer prior(I spent over 5 hours in my first skirmish against the computer, you should have seen my base, it was untouchable...beautiful) had hooked up his friend's computer to his in his room, and they were playing quake, but with a twist. Of course I had no real knowledge of "mods" back then, but I now know that it was called "Painkeep Arena!" Oh, it was awesome, the beartraps, the gravity well, sweeeeet! I loved it, but I was pathetic, because I still played with the keyboard(i think they did, too, actually). Oh yeah, the most important part! When I first sat down, for my game(we played winner stays, with 3 ppl) William(aka: Raistlin, at the time) said I needed a nickname. So he suggested "fuzzball", messing up my hair while saying it. So from there it has stuck, with an interval, however. When I got back to Thailand I didn't go right out and do Quake multiplayer, for one good reason: I had a 28.8 K modem, I was more than a half hour drive from the ISP, and there were no Quake servers in Thailand! Basically it would have been pointless.
     So around that time, Quake 2 came out, and I only knew these things because of the wonderful PCPowerplay, an Australian magazine that I'd been reading for a long time. Apparently Quake 2 was awesome, so I headed over to the same software store, bought that, and installed it. I was limited to single player, again, so that didn't last too long, as you could have guessed.         Somewhere before here I discovered Diablo, and spread the word to the other semi-gamers in the area. I remember the first night I got it-it wouldn't run on my 486!! (this was before my Dell), so that sucked, and I went over to my friend Gio's apartment, and after we had installed there was no looking back! He started a Rogue, and we took turns playing, always with the other screaming over the player's back. We ate in his computer room, and eventually I called my mom and told her i was staying over for the night. I don't remember going to sleep, but this was my first true gaming experience. I think this must have been before my first mentioned summer with Red Alert, I would have to check on the release dates. That night was the last time I got to play diablo with Geo, though, he bought the game off me, because he was leaving. He was South African, too, btw, and was going back there. I went back to that software store and bought another copy for myself, and once I had my brand spanking new blazing fast Dell, I played Diablo as a Warrior, and spent many many hours in the computer room, simply gaming and listening to music(I particularly remember Sugar Ray songs, from the first album). Anyway, that was a little tangent, but it's all gaming!

      Being torn from my beloved Thailand wasn't pretty, let me tell you. Sleepless nights in Singapore when we first got here during Christmas holidays were due to the constant techno music 43 floors down in the park next to our hotel/condo. So uneventful Christmas went by, until we moved into our new house, where I got my computer back ;) I had bought no less than eight computer gaming magazines over the holidays just to compensate, and was suffering from withdrawel!
      So I had my computer up and running, the first day we moved in. Half Life was the big game, just then, and I was involved in some serious single player goodness. Then, PCPowerplay, the magazine I had read all through my time in Thailand, published an article on how to get up and going with online multiplayer gaming in Quake 2. Somewhere along the line I discovered a store that sold Voodoo2s, already a year old piece of hardware, but me without an AGP port was the only thing I could go for. So I got one of those for my birthday, early January, and, oh yes, I remember, fired up a game of Unreal. I was drooling from the opening sequence, where the flames at the entrance of the castle actually looked as if they were burning! Incredible, I thought. I went back to that article on multiplayer gaming as soon as I got my internet connection, which I decided would be the fastest available service in Singapore; Magix. ADSL was the most incredible speed I had witnessed, considerring I was comparing it to my 33.6 K connection in Thailand, where our service provider was a 45 minute drive away.
     I decided to try this ridiculous "mouse look" feature in Quake 2, on recommendation from PCPowerplay, along with the WSAD control scheme. Then looked around on some local web pages for servers, and started playing Quake 2 online. And boy did I play! Every day I would come home from dull, friendless school(the kids at the Singapore American School are very uninviting to new people, especially mid-year) and play at least two hours of Quake 2, using the alias fuzzball.
    After a few weeks in school, I tried a few clubs and organizations to get to meet people. Not that I didnt' have friends, but my friends were in school, only. One I was lucky enough to go to was a Christian youth group, as my mom had met another mom blah blah blah. So I ended up there, as an unpracticing Roman Catholic. I didn't really enjoy it, but there was a certain chick from the German school...hehe. By then I had discovered who the gamers in the school were-a small group of fellow geeks along with a few bigger badder juniors and seniors. But I had no way to contact them. What ended up happening was THE main guy to know concerning Quake was there: Pyrite.
     After we had finished praying and all that, we were snacking on various chips etc, and I overheard him and another guy talking about Quake. I approached him, and he liked my alias! I also met Boltbreaker, then, and i gave him my number. Then the next day at school he took me over to the other gamers, and all was well. By this time I had grown quite good at the game...nowhere near as good as the veterans, but I had a strategy, at least! That mostly involved strafe jumping all over the place, and to this day people have trouble catching me! For example, during a roust of Capture the Chicken on DM6 in Quake 3, at a LAN party, late last year, one of my fellow gamers yelled "How do you make yourself run faster?!?!" Mwahaha, fear the skillz.
      I ended up hanging with the group of fellow geeks who sat downstairs including Typhoone; the most all-round skilled who would later become my best friend of the group, Lt. Hicks, a bit of a crazy guy who we always made fun of, especially concerning his mother, Susan! Shredder, who was a total weirdo by most people's standards, and never stopped talking about animal porn(much to the delight of Hicks); Trigger Happy, a trombonist who was obsessed with sex and found any possible moment to throw in a comment(and later tried to pick up my younger sister...); and Sheel, who's alias I can't remember, who was a genius mathmatician. The older guys who would game with us and occationally make an appearance included Pyrite, the master and brains behind the infamous Cult of LAN which we were all members of; Nekrataal, Hick's older brother who we also made fun of, and who constantly beat on Typhoone; Viscar, who's dual Voodoo2s were admired by all; Maceman, who beat on anybody for any reason; Summoner, who also frequently kicked our asses...180 Proof, who was drunk when he ever did show up for a LAN; Damn Hippy who was usually the only one awake besides me at 6 in the morning, and was my usual Quake3 sparring buddy.
      The Cult of LAN included these members and some other non-regulars, and we regularly held LAN parties at whoever's house we could get ahold of-speaking for the group I say Nekrataal/Hick's was the most preferred for Susan's awesome cooking...there was always a feast for us to eat and snack on as well as breakfast in the morning! What a deal. Only thing was that the grounding wasn't quite right, in their apartment, so you couldnt' touch anyone's case while it was on!! Ordered pizza made up the dining for the rest of the houses...mmmm. The Cult webpage used to reside at www.lanparty.com/cultoflan, but was declared dead by Pyrite late 1999. To the Cult I give credit not only for great times but for honing in on my Quaking skilz. I actually remember my first LAN, at Damn Hippy's house, which included only 3 computers, during finals week!! It was only for the afternoon, but still pretty fun! Quake 2 and 3 dominated our game times, but we did play a bit of Counterstrike way back when it was progressing through the 3rd through 5th betas when not every single gamer on earth was playing it. Redline was another semi-popular one, although I could never get it to install properly on my computer, so I never played it. Some of the greatest games we had were the Capture the Chicken Q2 match we had at my LAN, a Devastation Q2 match or two at various LANs, which I hated at first since I couldnt' get it to work, but eventually loved it because I started kicking some major ass! The Capture the Chicken match we had on the Warehouse for Q2 was possibly the most adrenaline filled game I've ever played! And I was giggling like a little girl the entire time I had the chicken, too!!!
      The best thing that happened while I was in the Cult, however, was Q3Test being released! Oh how I loved it! I quickly became possibly the best Quake3 player in the Cult, and online I almost always placed first. Deathmatches were my speciality, especially DM17, the Longest Yard, my favorite map :) I remember the first time I went online in Q3Test the day I downloaded it. It was only me and one other guy on the server, and we marvelled at the jump pads, and killed ourselves laughing going back and forth trying to gauntlet one another! I soon started playing around with the map offline and discovered I could rocket jump from the Railgun pad all the way to the Quad platform! I never really used it, though. Rocket jumping in general was fun though! Because most people don't think about it, and if you run up to them and rocket jump right next to them, when the smoke clears you're nowhere to be seen because you're raining rockets from the air above them!! Great stuff. During my Junior year I think I only went to two or three LANs, for one reason-I had met Jennifer, the most perfect girl in the world-we were totally in love and every moment that I had free was devoted to her :) We'll skip that here, but maybe I'll add it into my regular bio, when i get that far.
    Quake 3 did come out, though, and I played it when Jennifer was busy doing schoolwork(i didn't really do my homework...). I went through the entire single player on Hardcore difficulty-including Xaero, the only person I knew at the time who had done so. Then started trying Nightmare, but there were only certain levels where the bots weren't completely impossible.
     Senior year, all the hardcore Cult of LANners left, Lt. Hicks went off and took AP Biology and became certain he was a doctor or something, and I deviated from the group to join the film guys. Typhoone and I were the only ones left, really, and though I always went home and played Rocket Arena 3 for an hour or two, not having LANs was pretty dull. I did host one, but only Trigger Happy, AzzKickr, Eil Atan, and Crazy(other gamers who we met) were available. It turned out to be a pretty stale night.

How I became a Quaker