Justin Amirkhani

Back in the early parts of winter 2005 I was in high school and starting to get more and more drawn into the video game subculture. I’d always played games and enjoyed them, but I had never interacted with the community that surrounds games at large. There were friends I’d play with regularly, but it was a small group that existed in between the rest of life; video games were not yet a defining element of my social and professional life.

At the time, Microsoft was preparing for the launch of the Xbox 360 and social media was beginning to take shape. After the success of the ilovebees alternate-reality game for Halo 2′s launch, the marketing folks started experimenting with something similar for the console launch. Messages were sent out to be decoded into GPS coordinates where folks could go and find invites to a hidden storefront where the system would be playable well before release.

I don’t remember exactly how I came across them, but after deciphering the messages and finding the location I forced my dad to pack my brother and I in the car and head downtown. We parked just outside the Much Music building and started looking scanning the area for clues to where the invites were hidden. While my brother and I froze our fingers looking at every sign, billboard and scrap paper at the intersection, my father — who’s much more clever than I — simply walked up to the nearest homeless man and asked him.

It turns out the legless beggar sitting outside the convenience store on the north-east corner didn’t have too many places to go and had watched the whole thing unfold as the Microsoft folk came, hid their tickets and people came looking. None of the dozen or so people he saw looking all over the place had thought to ask him, which once again goes to show how much smarter my dad is than the average bear. He pointed out exactly where we should go and he was spot on. We gave him a little something for his trouble and headed on our merry way.

The invite got me into the storefront, where they had tournaments playing Perfect Dark Zero. While I’ll never be the best at a game once it’s released, I have an incredible knack for picking up mechanics very quickly which has always given me an advantage when I’m facing people in a new game. With the scoreboard dominated, I won some swag and an invite to the official launch party which would be the gateway drug to my current professional career.

You can look at life and blame a million things for any one outcome if you want to go back far enough, but it’s surprising how many times my personal history has been punctuated with odd anecdotes. Sure, there were plenty of other factors involved in how that story ended, but it’s perplexing and a little humbling to think that without that legless homeless man I might not be the video game journalist I am today.

Writing a reviews all the time it can be easy to fall into a dulldrum pattern where things start to blur and everything you write sounds the same. Once in a while it’s good to break things up by doing something different, but my most recent attempt at this resulted in a really clever but really weird review of Ms. Splosion Man. As a piece written more for people that had already played the game than those looking for a synopsis or explanation of if it was good, my editors naturally rejected it.

However, I didn’t want it to die and after showing it to the guys at Twisted Pixel they thought it deserved to be published and threw it up on their blog. It’s not perfect but it’s a fun, metaphor-riddled dissection of this year’s best XBLA platformer.

I walked into the coffee shop with no idea what to expect. Usually I’m not the type of guy who’s willing to go on a blind date, but it had been an uncharacteristically dry summer and I was desperate for a hook-up. Plus, it wasn’t really all that blind; I’d met her brother a few years back and we got along well, plus all my friends insisted she’d be just my type.

As I stepped past the shop’s counter – stocked with their almost universally adored doughnuts—my eyes scanned the room looking for my woman in a yellow bow. She was sitting in the back, flipping through a magazine (Vogue or Cosmo, I think) and sipping an espresso. I took a moment to steel myself and went over for to introduce myself.

Now, at this point I failed to notice the stockpile of empty cups stowed in the corner of the table. This woman wasn’t casually drinking the espressos, she was pounding them back. Again, I wasn’t paying enough attention to get a good count on just how many she’d finished before I arrived, but the small mountain of cups in my hazy memory was certainly big enough to justify what happened next.

Without pause for breath, a handshake, or hello, my pink-clad date dove out of the booth and assaulted me with a full-force, full-body hug. I’d gone out with affectionate girls before, but there was something about this reception that just felt so warm and inviting. It was immediately clear she wasn’t interested in tiptoeing around the usual conversation barriers and I was more than okay with that, nobody likes waiting through drawn-out introductions.

We sat down in the booth and the waiter, a hefty bearded fellow, came over to take our orders. Wanting to impress her, I reined-in my usually piggish eating habits and ordered a chicken salad sandwich; she ordered an entire honey-baked ham.Now, chicken salad sandwiches are a fine food, but they’re a little predictable. Nobody expects a honey-baked ham. I was caught off guard with her lack of convention but not offended. In fact, it was kind of awesome to finally meet a girl who wasn’t going to compromise satisfaction for composure.

That’s not to say she wasn’t well put together though; she clearly knew how to dress herself and whoever picked out her lightly colored outfit knew what they were doing. Bright colors played well with the diner’s lighting making her a magnet for every wandering eye in the place. Her odd choice of meal didn’t help obscure her any either.

As she dove into her giant slab of meat I couldn’t help but look down at my chicken salad sandwich and wonder why we didn’t all order honey-baked hams all the time. Watching her pound forkful after forkful into her mouth it became obvious that she was here exclusively to have fun and that was instantly endearing. Noticing I’d barely touched my suddenly inadequate sandwich, she pushed her plate into the middle of the table and let me share her fork. In my experience, sharing food can be a tricky proposition requiring a delicate dance of co-operation and can fall apart if either party gets greedy. There was none of that here though; she made it really easy for both of us to have a good time sharing, which made me fall for her even more.

We finished eating and I suggested we take a trip down the boardwalk together and talk; up to this point we’d barely had any conversation. She agreed but headed into the washroom to get refreshed, which took long enough for me to begrudge her a bit for delaying the date. Of course, women naturally take forever getting ready for anything and she probably wasn’t any different, but we were having such a good time the absence was distracting.

Pacing down the street together we started chatting casually about movie stars and music, but before long she ramped up the complexity of our exchange exponentially. Her references started getting more obscure and challenging to follow, before moving into high-brow comments on feminism and the nature of woman. I was quickly tossed out of my league but I desperately wanted to keep up because we’d clicked so well at the beginning.

She was clearly a woman with conflicting views; one minute she was spouting boy-crazed confessions, and the next she had the forceful convictions of Rosie the Riveter. I had to carefully time myself at every juncture just to keep things going, making for one of the most frenetic and elaborate conversations I’ve ever had on a date like this. She was complex and detailed, lacking the vapidity but not the buoyancy of more shallow women I’d dated. I had fallen for her.

All good things come to an end though, and I thought about just how much I’d enjoyed myself on our little outing and how much I’d like to see her again.

We walked back to her home, and stood on the porch to say goodbye. Looking into her big beautiful eyes I contemplated for a moment spending the rest of my life with this woman and I tried my best to muster up the courage to ask her out again. Before the words could even escape my lips she dove at me for another hug. Losing myself in her warm embrace I knew she was the one.

Then she kissed my cheek and exploded… I did not survive.

I don’t often buy music, but there’s something undeniably convenient about the way bandcamp.com does business. I’ve found a couple great albums I absolutely love through the service and I’ve never hesitated purchasing because the money goes right to the artists. Among the albums I’ve purchased, there have been a few video game soundtracks that I’d like to take a moment and highlight for you.

Ska Studios Collection

In addition to being a talented artist/programmer, one-man wrecking crew James Silva is also a wicked-talented musician. Doing the scores for all of his Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Indie games, he’s produced some tracks that rock far more than your typical indie background music.

While my personal favourite is the Vampire Smile: Missing Solos album, Silva’s probably most recognized for I MAED A GAME3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1. Most of his songs are dirty, electric and energetic but Z0MBIES takes the cake with the over-the-top vocals.

Like a good starving artist, all the albums are pay-what-you-want, including the high-quality FLAC and AAC files.

dB Soundworks

In the indie game scene it’s hard to find someone with a better track record than Danny Baronowsky. Producing soundtracks for games like Super Meat Boy, Gravity Hook, and Canabalt — all games that were made by their scores — Danny B has earned his place amongst the indie-gaming elite.

There’s something so complimentary about dB Soundworks’ high-energy tracks that just make their games so much better. Would Canabalt really be the same without it’s futuristic, frenetic theme music? I don’t think so. Almost every thing this guy produces is pure gold and well worth a listen.

If awesome game soundtracks aren’t your thing, Danny also has a chiptunes remake of Rebecca Black’s Friday. Naturally, it’s available for free like (almost) everything else he’s produced.

Jim Guthrie – Sword & Sworcery

Mystical, magical and a little classical, Jim Guthrie’s Toronto-produced Sword & Sworcery LP – The Ballad of the Space Babies is a perfect musical companion to the iOS game of the same name. It’s equal parts entrancing and relaxing but never loses it’s epic adventure undercurrent.

There are few game soundtracks designed to coincide with it’s playable counterpart a well as Sword & Sworcery does. Each track plays a pivotal role in the game and being able to listen and re-listen to the MP3s broadens an appreciation for the work. These are detailed tracks with a lot of love put in them.

In addition to the $7.99 digital album, Guthrie offers a real-life physical 12″ vinyl edition for $30. It comes with a limited edition print of the game’s fantastic pixel art and will be releasing near the end of the month (May 2011).