What initially brought you to NA/VGS?

That’s a long story, though I’ll try to keep it as short as possible.

Growing up, my brother and I weren’t ever allowed to trade in our old games or gaming machines as my parents always felt that the trade-in value was not very good. As a result, there was never a period in our lives where we stopped playing the classics. Gaming favorites such as the Mega Man games, Mario 3, etc. were always being played alongside the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, etc. By around 1997 my family got the internet, and I started looking up information on Star Wars and the NES / Famicom. A few years later we ditched dial-up, and I ditched Star Wars for pr0n, though of course NES / Famicom websites stayed. I used to frequent places such as NES World and |tsr’s NES Archives a lot, as well as other long forgotten sites such as NESTimes, NES Player, Toot’s NES Shoot, NES Pit, Simply NES, etc.

I was just a teenager then, but around 2002 I decided to sign up to some gaming forums, including Digital Press. This was the big site for game collecting and discussions back in the day, a lot of old school collectors on there, a lot of shenanigans and drama as with anywhere. I also stopped by the NES World forums from time to time, though they never really gained a huge following; however, there were some folks that frequented those parts, which stood out.

There was a guy Stan. I believe he was a professor of sorts, brilliant man who was into fitness. He spoke Russian and Mandarin as well as English. Anyways, he had this dream of creating a comprehensive book about the NES game catalog. I remember helping him with it for a bit, doing some grunt work, but in the end it just never happened.

Another guy that stopped by sometimes was Memblers. He’s the guy that did the Garage Cart homebrew game. I was actually on the short list to get one of those, but backed out at the last moment as I didn’t really have the money to drop at that time. That’s the problem about being an unemployed teenager, I suppose!

Then there was a guy there named Giskard. He had asked the community’s help to scan images of some boxes for this NES database project he was working on. I remember applying to scan a few of the boxes that he was missing, though I can’t remember if it ever happened or not. Anyways, this database was sort of like Stan’s book, which I mentioned earlier. We had been hearing about it for a really long time, some folks claimed they had seen previews of it, but the project had been worked on for so long, it felt as if it were a project that had gone cold or perhaps the project even died. Anyways, it eventually gets released and as you may have guessed by now, Giskard was none other than Dain and that database was Nintendo Age.

I don’t exactly remember the jump between the NES World forums / Digital Press and Nintendo Age forums, as by 2005 / 2006 I wasn’t really collecting very much and was focused on my university studies; however, I did sign up for Nintendo Age in 2006 or 2007, though I was not active at all.

By 2011 I moved to Taiwan and got drawn back into game collecting. By this point Digital Press was more or less a fragment of its past glory, and Nintendo Age was the place to be, so I reset my password and became active there until its demise.

Story behind your username and avatar?

My username is not very interesting. In the circles I often frequent, people refer to the Famicom as the FC. Then throw on the word “gamer” as I am a gamer, so fcgamer. This avatar is quite boring, and I might change it sometime in the future. This is just a weird bootleg Mario toy I found locally, I thought the pose was hilarious.

Top 10 favorite games of all time?

In no particular order:

-Super Mario Bros. 3

-Rockman 2

-Little Nemo: The Dream Master

-Castlevania III

-Vice: Project Doom

-Huang Di

-Final Fight 3 (Hummer Team Famicom port)

-Final Fantasy VI

-Super Mario 64

-Smurfs

Pets?  Past or present.  Or future…

We always had pets while I was growing up. Over the years we had a variety of dogs and cats, but I was admittedly a dog person as a child. When I moved to Taiwan, I wasn’t planning on having any pets, as I just didn’t want the responsibility when living so far from family. I also figured I’d only be living here for a few years, before going somewhere else!

I believe it was in 2015, when I got my cat, Richard Miao. As it happened, I was acting like a douche one weekend the girl whom I was dating at that time decided to leave and go up to Taipei for the remainder of the weekend. I followed her up to Taipei and we sorted things out. The next day we decided to look at some kitties that her friend had seen in an adoption center. I told the girl that we were just going to look, but as soon as we walked in, I saw her melt, and I knew we were walking out with one of the bastards. Richard’s sister and I got on quite well, but luckily for me she didn’t get on with the girl. Richard got on well with both of us, and before I even really understood what had happened, I was trying to comfort him in his carrier while riding a bus back to Taichung. He’s been with me ever since, through the good and the bad times.

For right now, I don’t want any other pets. Over the years I’ve thought about adopting another cat, but expense (such as when I go back to the States) would be a nightmare. Furthermore, growing up as a single cat, I am sure Mr Miao would probably go into a rage and scratch up my home, or spray the place, to show his displeasure.

If I get married someday, I’d have no issues with getting a small dog of sorts. Dogs are a lot of work, especially in Taiwan as nobody has a huge yard; therefore, you need to take them out for daily walks multiple times a day and whatnot. I have a friend who’s from the States, and at one point, he ended up accumulating about ten different dogs of different sizes! A lot of the dogs have passed on and by now he just has three left. It’s crazy though, and like I said, this friend’s life in Taiwan is a lot harder than it needs to be just because of having so many dogs. Like I said, if I had other family where we could share duties, then a dog might be in the picture.

Favorite book?

I was an English major, so I had to read a lot of literature over the years. My two favorite books are Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. I felt that both of these books were amazing, unlike anything else I had ever read, yet at the same time, I could never really figure out why I enjoyed both of these books so much. In some ways, I guess some superficial parallels could be drawn relating the two books, as they both dealt with upper-class society and the opulence experienced therein.

Movie?

Good question. I think I’d have to go with the original Star Wars trilogy or perhaps Lonesome Dove. These are both epic stories, and are things that I could see myself watching again from time to time. I also really enjoyed Lola Rennt and The Spanish Apartment.

Aside from the movies mentioned previously, I’ll rarely watch anything more than once, hence it is hard for me to choose a favorite movie. These days if I watch movies, I generally watch Asian horror films.

TV show?

Death by Zero and Alice in Borderland. Not sure if these “count” or not as they are more like dramas, but this is the closest to TV that I’ll watch. I really enjoyed both of these stories a lot, and plan to watch them again in the near future, perhaps this fall while I’m unemployed. I bought the manga for Alice in Borderland as well and hope to work through it, but it’s in Chinese, so it’s been a slow progress.

Song/album/artist?

I don’t have a favorite song, it’s such a complicated thing. As a musician, there are songs that I enjoy listening to but hate playing (maybe the song is incredibly boring and repetitive to play). There are also musicians that I like as classics, those I like for the nostalgic feel despite the music being mediocre, etc. I don’t have a favorite album either, though I’ll only listen to albums when listening to music. Skipping songs from the album is also an issue for me.

Some artists I’ve been listening to recently in no particular order:

-Tragically Hip

-Better than Ezra

-Counting Crows

-Ledbetter Heights

-Brooks n Dunn

-Martina McBride (first and second albums only – really don’t like her later music)

-Fire.Ex

-Ashes of Pompeii

-Spiderbait

-Avril Lavigne

-Blof

-Powderfinger

I guess Brooks and Dunn (pre 2000s) and Powderfinger would be two of my favorite bands of all time. Although Powderfinger is amazing (I own almost all of their albums), it always gets awkward when people ask me who my favorite band is, as no one knows them aside from Aussies.

What do you do for a living?

If you asked me last year, I’d have to answer that I’m a teacher. I’ve worked here in Taiwan as a teacher for about fifteen years. I work closely with kindergarteners, and elementary-aged students. The thing is though, I finally applied for permanent residency earlier this year, so now my resident status is not dependent on my job / visa. I decided that I would finish out the semester, which coincides with the graduation of my kindergarten students in July, but from that point forward I will step away from teaching.

Prize piece in your collection?

It’s gotta be my Gowin Game Boy games. That company is what got me back into collecting video games in 2011, so these just hold a special place in my heart for this reason alone. The homebrew stuff would also be up there. I have a Game Boy homebrew Christmas game, for example, where the developer only made five or ten of them. It’s such a fun game and I always get in the mood for Christmas when playing it, and I’m friends of the developer too. There’s another one called Super Dr Mario Bros. This was a game hack of Super Mario Bros., but again a good friend of mine put together a development team, used some source material (i.e. comics and manga and stuff from back during the early 90s) to assemble this game, which was dreamed up due to an experience my friend had as a kid. Then there’s the Slow Mole PCB, the Kubo Famicom games, Skate Cat, etc. This stuff all means a lot to me, as it was done by people I know and have chatted with in the community. That postcard Ferris Bueller sent me was pretty neat too, as well as the Circus World Tour Famicom cartridge, Contra Banda lighter, etc.

Do you still hang out at Digital Press?

I occasionally stop by Digital Press, though not very often anymore. It’s just not the same as it was years ago. Some of the members have sadly passed on, a lot of members have moved on, etc. Even the collector’s guides, which seemed like a huge deal when they were released, are long outdated. It’s fun to go back and read through some of the early posts for the memories, but it’s something that feels irrelevant now, as everyone has moved on.

Walk us through a day in the life of fcgamer

I try to wake up around 6:30 or 7:00. Through the week, one of the first things I do aside from feeding the cat is take the garbage out. One of the weird things about living in Taiwan is that the garbage trucks will come to certain places around the city at certain times (generally once in the morning, afternoon, and evening) and then you need to manually take your garbage out and throw it into the back of the truck. The same situation occurs with recycling. It’s annoying, but I’m always working in the afternoon so it’s the most convenient time to dispose of it.

I head into work around 8:15. I live about ten minutes away by scooter. If it is raining, I’ll alter my schedule slightly, as generally there will be a lull in the rain from around 8:00-8:20, at least in the area where I live. This holds true about 90% of the time when it’s raining, so then I’ll leave slightly earlier so that I don’t get drenched.

I work until 11:30, then things start back up from 14:00 until 16:30. At that time I’ll go home.

The reason we have such long lunch breaks is that a lot of people will take naps here over lunch. I’ll occasionally nap after lunch, but generally I prefer to work on my own projects. I just don’t like wasting time as I’ve always got a lot to do.

After work, I’ll generally work on my own projects until eight or nine at night. At that point, I cut myself off and try to wind down for the rest of the night, either by reading, playing guitar, or perhaps playing a video game. I’ll sometimes go on dates through the week, and I’ll often have music gigs on the weekends. Things kind of go in cycles around my place, but that’s how I get a ton of things done in a short amount of time without feeling burnt out.

Hobbies outside of gaming and collecting?

I have a lot of hobbies, some of which you may have seen me reference throughout various threads on VGS. I’m a musician. I play guitar and was classically trained in piano. I also sometimes fool around with ukulele. I enjoy writing, painting, and I like art. I like to cook, if I have guests visiting, and also enjoy doing pour-over coffees and preparing tea the “gong fu” method. Cycling is another activity that I enjoy, and I was lucky enough to find a new cycling partner for this season.

I guess two of the more unique things are I enjoy listening to opera music, and I am also interested in psychoanalysis.

Google tells me a cycle trip around the island is called "Route No. 1."  Ever done it?

I’ve only done a portion of this trip, from Tongxiao to around Longjing or so, which is all along the coast and relatively near where I live. In the past, the issue has always been that my riding partner and I both worked at the same school – as such, although we both always wanted to do the loop together, trying to take off work at the same time for two weeks (or even solo) would have been a nightmare, one of the reasons why I am getting out of the teaching industry once my contract is up. By the time my friend and I both got visas where we didn’t have to prioritize our jobs, my friend got married, had a daughter, and promptly moved back to England. I recently found a few new cycling partners, and I suspect that within the next year or so we will make the trip together, or some other loop around the island that is similar.

As Taiwan is a tropic / subtropic environment, the climate here is perfect for cycling most of the year. During April or May we get hit with the plum rains, and then come autumn there are some typhoons, but generally we have nice, warm temperatures and sunny days making it easy to cycle as much as you want. Here’s an interesting tidbit too: when traveling into the remote areas, you might stumble across a random police station in the middle of nowhere, and wonder, “Why is there a police station here?” Apparently one of the services that these police stations offer is assistance to cyclists who are riding out in the extremely rural areas.

Where did you originally hail from?

I’m actually only about an hour or so away from where @RegularGuyGamer hails. I messaged him about it before and we chatted, the area where he hails from (Lebanon, PA) is also the area where my father and his family / my grandparents are from. I grew up near Gettysburg, PA. The area is quite agricultural, and is known for apples as well as the battlefield.

What brought you to Taiwan?

While in university I had studied computer science and business, but after taking a few German classes on a whim, I realized that I was much more interested in languages and writing. This led me to dropping my comp sci and business studies about halfway through, and I then got degrees in German and English. Around the time of the switch in studies, I knew that I had wanted to go abroad and teach ESL, though I ended up in Taiwan by chance.

Originally I was hoping to land a job in either Bosnia or Croatia. A refugee friend of mine helped my contact some friends and schools from the old country and although I chatted with some school owners on the phone and on Skype, things just didn’t work out as the regions were too poor and the schools just didn’t have the budget to hire a foreign teacher, even an inexperienced one as myself.

I then started looking at jobs in South America, as by that time I also had a few Spanish classes under my belt and felt that by working in South America, it could propel me towards some sort of fluency in Spanish. A professor friend of mine from Columbia tried to land me some jobs at a university there, and I also found a few posts in Argentina and Peru; however, everything just felt too sketchy for me. It was one of those situations where if I had actually been residing down in South America, it would have been a much more viable option than trying to line something up from my parents’ house in Pennsylvania.

By this time I had been done with university, and I was just sending off resumes and doing sub work at my former high school to earn a few dollars, while living with my parents and brother. As my bank account quickly decreased, I knew that I had to find a job, and fast.

One day when stopping by a local winery where I used to work during summers, I ran into a former colleague friend of mine, Jean. Jean is about twenty-five years older than me, but we quickly became friends when we were colleagues, as we both could speak German and so we used the time to practice. Jean’s from Taipei though, she chased a boy to Germany, then later married an American and settled down in rural Pennsylvania. She suggested that I search for a teaching position in Taiwan, and within a week of doing so, I was having a job interview online. The boss asked me if I could be in Taiwan within two weeks, I told him that it was impossible but that I could arrive in three weeks time and that was that. Three weeks to pack everything up, say your goodbyes to all of your loved ones, and take care of paperwork too! It all happened very fast.

How did you meet @OptOut?

We met each other through NA. He started appearing on the forums and that Taiwan flag caught my attention. Then I started seeing him posting game shop finds from shops that I was familiar with. It freaked me out a bit, so I messaged him and found out that he was living one town over. From there we ended up meeting in person. He’s a great guy to go game hunting with. There were a few times where we were literally wrestling around amongst dusty boxes in an attic scrapping over old games, but generally we complement each other and help each other out. He has bigger balls than me, so I let him go snooping through the shops opening up all of the random cupboards and everything, trying to sniff out goodies Then I come in an assist, pleading in Chinese so that no cops get called and so that we don’t get banned from any shops 

What member of The Breakfast Club are you?

A combination of the nerd and the basket case. I’ve always had a ton of nerdy interests growing up, though when in high school I was one of those guys that just did my own thing and was able to slide seamlessly throughout the different social groups.

Wine, liquor, or beer?

Beer and wine, with liquor on very rare occasions socially. Wine holds a special place in my heart, as I sometimes make my own, and I also used to work at a winery; however, in more recent years, I’ve started getting nasty hangovers the next day if I drink too much store-bought wine, so if it’s not homemade, then I rarely indulge.

Beer’s always been my favorite. I really started appreciating beer while studying for a semester in Germany, and then when I moved back home, the craft beer movement in the States just started taking off, at least in my area. I’m the guy who goes into the supermarket and has the whole beer selection memorized. Anytime I see something new come in, I’ll buy a few cans or bottles to try.

Coffee or tea?

This really depends on so many factors. On a normal day, I’d say coffee. If the weather is cool or the establishment is running AC, I prefer to drink hot coffee. I feel that being heated brings out the finer delicacies of a quality coffee. If it’s a really hot day though (as it is for about eight or nine months of the year in Taiwan) then I’ll opt for a quality cold brew offering. That really hits the spot too. Coffee is something I reserve for lunchtime. I also have a friend who has a coffee shop across from where I live. We have a lot in common, and so I’ll stop by Fridays after finishing up work for the week, to drink coffee and chat. If I weren’t working, I’d be in there more often, but I’m not going to bother the owner and take up space there during lunchtime out of consideration of my friend, since his shop is small and it generally gets crowded then.

Regarding tea, when I drink it I generally go over the top as has been seen on sometimes on VGS through my brewing pictures. I have the whole setup including the clay pot, the tea pet, a gong dao bei, etc. My love for tea wasn’t always such, though.

Years back I was subjected to spending every Sunday brewing tea with my friend’s father, while discussing the subtle flavor details together in Chinese. Aside from feeling obligated to do this, the other major problem was that I just had very little knowledge of tea, so then being expected to discuss it in a foreign language was just extremely stressful and it put me off of the whole thing, especially as these tea sessions would last hours.

Last year a friend of mine came to visit me in Taiwan, and he’s a tea expert of sorts. So we went touring around the area and afterwards he showed me how to brew a perfect batch of tea, taught me about how to properly taste tea, etc. It really changed my thoughts on tea and now I also look forward to the times I get to brew tea with the other friend’s dad.

Some of the finest teas in the world are grown in Taiwan. One of my favorites is a black tea known as #18 or Ruby Red, though I’ll try anything and everything. Last weekend I was on an internet call with my buddy and we each brewed up a batch of tea using leaves I had sent him from a region known as Songbolin. This was an oolong, and despite being cheap, the tea was really good, having notes of peaches and cream.

Can you tell us about some of the games you've created?

Sure! Well it was always meant to be a one and done really. I think that creating your own Nintendo game was on the bucket list for many people from our era. Sometime after NES Maker came out, I saw it and decided to purchase it. I thought to myself, “Oh, I have some knowledge of computer programming, am a musician, and also am an abstract artist, albeit a mediocre one. I could surely put something decent together.” Then I started seeing a lot of hate and fear from the “from scratch” community about NES Maker and n00bs, and it felt that there was a bunch of gatekeeping going on. I knew that any first game release that I created would never be able to compete with some of the games that others were making, so at that point I decided to go the completely opposite direction and purposely create a kusoge, named Cross Strait Independence. I envisioned this to be this generation’s Hong Kong ‘97.

The game was quite provocative. You had the chairman and Taiwan’s (former) president facing off against each other on the title screen, and then some of the enemies were based on news events at the time. For example, Taiwan had started prohibiting the import of pork in 2018 or 2019, due to swine flu, and then around the same time China started allegedly sending dead pig carcasses to Taiwanese shores. So one of the stages you’re flying over a port city and dodging infected pig carcasses. I won’t go into so many details here publicly, but my family were actually quite against me releasing the game due to safety reasons, hence why I distanced myself from the whole project and released it under an alias. I think I only sold about fifteen or twenty of the games, and I never even marketed it anywhere but in the west. The game is for all purposes discontinued, though in the future I might hack it and auction copies for a VGS fundraiser or something, who knows. It’s a terrible game, but I have so many fond memories from making the game. The game was created during a very dark period of my life, and was one of the few beacons of light during that period.

Independence was meant to be a one and done, but on a car ride down to Florida in January 2020, I got the idea to create another game, Peace, Love, Trippy Club, which was loosely based on an event that happened to OptOut and I involving a night out accidentally ending up at a brothel. After that, our major project was Hungry Ghost Night, a Zelda-esque horror-themed game. I actually released two versions at the same time with different stages, yet as a lot of people just shelved the game instead of opening it up and playing it, most didn’t even realize that there were two unique games. I would showcase this game last year at a local indie game development event, and it received quite a bit of praise; however, some (odd) design choices that I made coupled with a lot of the participants being young folks in their early twenties, it sometimes made for some odd questions and misunderstandings. That’s something I quickly learned, playing games does not mean that you can properly develop games – there are a lot of little things that people often forget about or don’t address.

The game that I did that received the most accolades was easily Mr Lee’s Alishan Tea Collector. I took some inspiration from Donkey Kong and the Game Boy ‘94 release when doing this game. The game is solely focused around collecting, brewing, and drinking tea. The difficulty and progression are right in this game – i.e. people have completed the game without issue, yet they had to practice as well. The game is fair in that regard. Shoot me your addy and I’ll get one out to you that you can try.

This game opened up a lot of opportunities for me though. I can’t say too much yet, but I’ve gotten some messages from former industry people, as well as some hobbyist folks that were involved in the hacking / music scene in the late nineties, wanting to participate with recent projects I’ve been leading. I’m really excited to see where this leads.

Ever miss the US?  Or get wanderlust for other parts of the world?

Yeah, I’ll always love the US, as it’s my home country; however, I don’t think I could ever move back there permanently. I have no interest in politics, but (as someone living abroad and just reading news articles and chatting with friends and family back home) it always feels as though people are walking on eggshells over there, with risk of offending someone by something one says or does. That’s just not for me personally. A lot of my friends have moved away from the area where we grew up, too, so when I head home it’s mainly about visiting my family.

I’d love to explore Asia more, and also want to head back to Scandinavia again. Hopefully in the next year or two I’ll get a few trips lined up.

Not to get too political, but what's the general mood over there in regard to China and any of their potential provocations over the years…

It’s just normal business here, life goes on. I have a few friends from the Philippines who have been living in Taiwan 40+ years – they say that the situation is more or less the same as it was when they first came here, i.e. their families back home worry but that the locals aren’t worried at all about any of it.

While the tensions have risen quite a bit since I first arrived here, I don’t think anyone on either side wants a conflict. From my experience, the rich generally want to maintain closer ties with China to protect their investments and money, whereas the younger people have their own identity. For these people, it would be akin to if the British insisted that Americans are culturally British, despite the fact that our cultures have diverged so much over the centuries.

When pro-China presidents are in office, relations generally get better, whereas when pro-Taiwan presidents are in office, China generally refuses to sit down to have talks and negotiate. We just had a new president sworn in today, another pro-Taiwan candidate. So let’s see what happens.

I’m not particularly worried about war or an invasion or anything; however, if something does kick off, I imagine it will be due to a miscalculation sort of like how WWI began. A plane with a rogue pilot will fly over Taiwan and then just go nuts, for example, with the pilot thinking himself some kind of hero. That would be my fear. The people running the show , they’re all too smart for that sort of thing, it’s just a bunch of saber-rattling.

Dream vacation?

Norway, Finland, Iceland? Maybe somewhere up there? Or perhaps to Japan again, but to some more rural areas. I have a friend I’d like to go traveling with, as I think we’d be good travel partners. Roughly plan things out, but not too rigid, just see what happens as we arrive. See where the adventure leads us, that’s the type of traveler I am. I hate rigid itineraries.

First game you ever owned?

This one is a funny one. I believe that first game that I ever owned would be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. I remember picking it out at the store. I had gotten it for my birthday. When I was growing up, my parents always had a hard time buying birthday presents for me, as my birthday is at the beginning of February. Back then, at least in our rural area, the stores would always be picked over from the Christmas rush, so finding a popular toy or whatever was a nightmare. Sometimes my parents would purchase some extra items during Christmas time and save them for my birthday, but that opened up a different set of issues, such as forgetting where something was stashed. As my father was still building his career at that point too, another issue was possibly the burden of more spending at Christmas time to accommodate the upcoming birthday gifts. Anyways, one year I was able to pick this TMNTIII out for my birthday. My brother and I had a blast with it!

That said, although this was the first game that I ever owned myself, I don’t really count it as such. The first games we received were Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, and Rescue: The Embassy Mission. The family received these games and a Nintendo in 1990 as a family gift from “Santa Clause”, so I sort of count these as the first games I ever owned, despite sharing ownership with my family.

Upcoming game you're looking forward to?

I’m honestly not sure, I guess I’d have to say whichever homebrew / indie / aftermarket Famicom (or NES) game I grab next. By now, these are some of my favorite games, and I have a bit of a routine set up. What I’ll do is I’ll occasionally order a couple homebrew games, maybe a couple every quarter or when I have extra money sitting around. I’ll forget about them then, something that I’ve gotten quite good with since moving abroad. Then a few weeks later when the parcel does arrive, I’ll open it at work in the afternoon, thumb through the manual, and think about the game for the rest of the afternoon, until I get off work. At that point I’ll stop and grab a six pack on the way home, and I also might spring for a pizza. I’ll spend the rest of the night gaming. Even if I ordered two or three games, I’ll usually just open one, and save the rest for other consecutive game nights in the upcoming days.

Favorite gaming memory?

Good question! I could be cliché and reference one of the times playing games with my brother during my early childhood, but to be honest, whereas I have a ton of nostalgia for those games, I can’t say that I have one particular memory that stands out. Therefore I think I’d like to choose a few other special memories from within my gaming life.

1. I was in junior high when my brother was a senior. The first semester that year, we both got straight A’s on our report cards, so my parents allowed us to pick out a video game as a reward. For reference, this was in 1998. We opted for Mario Kart 64, and after getting the game, we had to endure the rest of the trip running errands with our folks. We were checking out the manual as our parents were shopping at Lowes, etc. By the time we did get to play the game, we were blow away!

During my entire time in high school, my brother and I played that game. He was going to a community college at the time. Basically every night, we’d get a snack consisting of Mountain Dew or one of its varieties (we really liked Livewire as well as the purple one) as well as a pie / cake / cookies / chips / whatever, and then we’d play MK64. We’d first play through all four cups, and then we’d do the mirrored courses. We’d play through on the 150CC mode.

I don’t know how it came to pass, but at one point we’d be playing Mario Kart 64 while listening to various Brooks n Dunn albums. We put a ton of time on that game, and although it hasn’t aged very well, it’s something that I wish would get a modern remake.

Because we liked Mario Kart 64 so much, we eventually decided to buy Mario Kart on the SNES,. Despite trying, we just couldn’t get into the game. We felt the same way about Diddy Kong Racing. We even considered buying that Crash Bandicoot racing game but that never happened. When the Game Cube Mario Kart came out, we got it immediately. We had fun playing that with a friend of mine from high school, but we just felt the game wasn’t as fun, as by then Nintendo started that whole “rape you at the end, despite having been in first place for the entirety of the match” thing.

2. This also occurred during my junior high or high school days. The Game Axe (a portable Famicom clone) had been circulating around for sale on eBay and some Asian websites for a few months, and so after saving up some money, my brother and I decided to go halfsies and buy one together. When it arrived, we bought some AA batteries, and of course loaded up on snacks. Later that night we went out to the old play tower house in the back of our yard, and we fired the thing up. I remember the two games we played that night were Super Mario Bros. 3 and Castlevania 3. We were running NES versions of these games into the handheld machine, so of course we were using a converter so they could play on this portable Famicom. This created a “tower of games” that was quite wobbly...one wrong move and the game would freeze up. We still had a blast though, and to make things even more memorable, it was in the middle of winter and there was snow on the ground.

3. When I first came to Taiwan, I had dated this one girl for about three or four years. She was always receptive of my gaming and game collecting, and at times she even supported it. Anyways, one day she was in my apartment and she saw a game titled “Lin Banned the Opium”, though of course the text on the box was in Chinese, not English. She was quite curious about it so we fired it up and gave it a play.

The game itself is a top-down game, I guess you could consider it to be an adventure game of sorts. There’s a bit of text to the game, so when we were playing through the game, she’d translate and then we’d go about completing whatever tasks we had to complete. Although the game doesn’t look like much, it is quite fun, and there’s a variety of unique gameplay elements, such as spying on enemies.

We’d also play through the Famicom port of Final Fight 3 together. I think we may have played through it a couple of times, as we enjoyed it so much.

4. Oh wait, that’s another one I should mention! There was one time when I met up with a Chinese guy in Changhua to complete a trade. Then Optout and I took the games back to his and had a gaming date. I forget what the game was, but we had spent a couple hours playing through a really crappy game made by a Chinese company. It was quite fun though, as it was the sort of thing that I wouldn’t have actually sat down and played if it hadn’t been for Optout playing it with me. Some games are so bad but can be fun when played with others.

Can you tell us about the books you've written?

I wrote a lot of books over the past few years, though it was all thanks to my friend Leon. For years I had talked about publishing a book titled Family Bits, which was to detail every Famicom / Famiclone game known to exist. While such a task is impossible to do, my intention was to write a comprehensive book / catalogue that showcased not just the authorized games, but also the unauthorized ones. I did a ton of research and wrote a fair amount of the book, but eventually I quit the project, sometime around 2017 or 2018. At that time I was trying to make a Kickstarter video as I had plans to use KS as a means of releasing the book, but the videos I was creating were just not going well at all. It was then that I also realized that releasing a full-color book of over 2000 pages was just not feasible. Therefore, I shelved the project and let it silently disappear from everyone's memory.

A few years later I became acquainted with another expat here, Leon. He's also an intellect, and he showed me a book that he had written and published. From there I just sort of realized that I probably could figure out a way to get my book published, and I eventually did, via Amazon KDP.

I have outlines and materials prepared to publish about ten or twelve books in the Family Bits series, and by now I realize that the project will easily exceed the originally estimated 2000 pages. The first book focused on all of the original, unauthorized games made in Taiwan. For me, this was the most important of the series to release. The other books featured things such as bootleg copies of Japanese games, common multicarts and lists of what games they actually contain, etc. We're up to volume 7 by now, though volumes 2 and 4 are still in the works. Some of the material is too detailed for the average person, but I just wanted these books to be as comprehensive as possible, as there's just not a ton of information on these games. 

Within days of the first book dropping, I was contacted here by a famous publisher of retro gaming books. We met up at a Starbucks and we discussed him publishing a (traditional) Chinese language version of the first book. I was really pumped about the project, but after awhile I just stopped hearing from the guy so nothing ever happened. I might reach out to him again about it though, sometime in the future.

I've written some other game-related items, but I figured I'd mention a few of the other non-gaming stuff I've worked on, as people might find it more interesting.

A few years back I wrote a novella titled Tormented Love. It is set in Taichung, where I live, and it follows the stories of a couple high school students here. I'm not going to say that the writing is "good", as there is a lot of ambiguity here and there, but then again, I'm someone who enjoys reading literature. I think the story needs to be read a couple times to unpack everything and truly understand the story. In January of this year I decided to expand on the universe a bit by releasing a Famicom game, Desolate Love, which follows some of the same characters.

A former colleague and I also wrote a series of ESL books for kindergarten-aged students titled "Champion Readers". There are six books in all, and then we also wrote a few phonics books to accompany the readers. 

A lot of the private kindergartens in Taiwan use severely outdated books in their ESL programs. A lot of the managers can't be bothered to change books, and as a result we end up using books that are twenty or thirty years old. I remember one time I was trying to explain records and cassette tapes to five-year-old Taiwanese children! Another problem is that the books used are either coming from the States / UK, or are made locally by non-native speakers. This has lead to times where I was again teaching Taiwanese children about the White House, George Washington, and American coins. The coins situation I really hated, as the Taiwanese coins are called "dollars". Then with the other situation, if the books were made locally, they often contained weird English grammar or odd vocabulary words.

This led my colleague James and I to take the initiative to write the Champion books. We included some topics that were relatable to Taiwanese, and also tried to include fun stories for young kids. We also tried to include a lot of the Cambridge words in the book, so that those who would later take the Cambridge test would have an easier time with it.

Finally, I am directly involved in assembling and formatting a series of children's stories called The Legend of Poo Panties the Cat. After moving to Taiwan, my brother (who is on the spectrum and therefore still lives at home with my parents) and my father began orally telling fantastical stories about a ginger cat and his friends. At first I thought the whole thing sounded silly, as I really can't see my father as a storyteller, but after hearing him and my brother tell me a couple of the stories, I suggested that they take the next step and actually publish the stories.

My brother and father really don't know how to do this sort of thing though, so when it is time for a new book to be released, I always assemble it and format it in a word document, before uploading the manuscript and publishing it. After that, I'll design a cover and off it goes. I think we are up to about twelve or thirteen books now. Some of the books are holiday-themed, some have the characters attacking robbers, and in one story, the protagonists go on a cruise. My brother even goes to local book shows to sell his books, and I think it has been a positive thing for him, giving him a sense of self-worth.

With all of the books I've written, they have been self-published and released on Amazon KDP. I do all of the formatting, so if something looks off, I'm to blame. I feel that the royalties going this route are not particularly high, but then again, at least regarding the books that I am writing, I just do it for fun, as a hobby, and the Family Bits  books I am doing as I think other collectors might find them useful. As such, I'm not particularly concerned about the money.