Hi, I lurk a lot of forums but never really have much to say, but this is the first forum I've kept up with in a long time where I feel like I really fit in. So, I wanna start posting and I guess this is as good a start as any! I hope you don't mind me opening with a little nostalgic babble... (Which I hope isn't too off-topic)

Like many of you, my obsessive gaming habit began in 1987 or thereabouts with the NES. As I evolved into the 16 bit era, I began noticing the "What's going on in Japan" sections of the game magazines, mostly EGM's "International Outlook" section. It was around the time the Super Famicom/ PC Engine CD ROM games were first being covered- the imagery in the cinema scenes, all those glossy, brightly colored characters looked so cartoonish (I've always loved cartoons) but they had the dynamics of the comic books I was reading at the time. They would cover games like Ys Books I & II, Valis, some wacky new thing called "Ranma 1/2" about some guy that turns into a girl, and the panda... I would just drool over that stuff, even the little character artworks they'd display in the article was nothing like the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld art I was devouring with comic books. But being a 13 year old kid import gaming was way out of my reach, I was lucky to get enough money for a domestic SNES game. Reading reviews for Japanese games in '90-92 combined with some research in the comic book previews magazines I learned of anime, or "Japanimation" as we called it then...

Japanese animation was so damn hard to find back then, I would only read about it, but with fierce interest. Then one fateful day, as I was visiting my aunt/cousin out of state, I went into this small comic shop. Lo and behold they had a whole SHELF of Japanese animation... for rent! All of those titles I recognized; Project A-Ko, Dirty Pair, Fist of the North Star (A Nintendo game!), even the elusive Ranma 1/2, all there on video tape, right before my eyes. It was like finding Atlantis. I rented stacks of them, my cousin and I lurked in the garage like cavemen crowded around this little 13 inch TV/VCR combo. It was like another world, all these years of watching He-Man, Transformers and Ninja Turtles, and now THIS.. Fist of the North Star, Project A-Ko, GunBuster... BUBBLEGUM CRISIS!! The dynamic animation, the foriegn mystique of the Japanese language, the risqe violence, and *gasp* NUDITY? In a cartoon? some of them, (Dirty Pair, Outlanders and IczerOne) weren't even subtitled. But they still blew me away in spite of not knowing what the hell was goin on.

From then on when I'd go on a trip to my aunt's house, I'd bring my VCR and copy all the tapes I rented (We didn't have Suncoast and MediaPlay back then, the only way to buy it was through mail order)and watched them obsessively. That began my journey into Super DieHard Otaku land, which sort of died off at the end of the 90s. Since, I've become an anime fan heavily oriented towards old 80s stuff, much like my classic gamer habit. The new titles that are coming out rarely interest me, much like the video games of today. It's wedespread popularity hasn't helped either. (Produce crap that appeals to the lowest common denominator for the biggest profit, etc. You know how that stuff works.)


Thanks for reading all that. Can anyone else here include Japanese animation with their classic gaming memories?