Anyone who's taken the time to check out my "Owned Games List" here on Gamespot knows that I'm an avid collector. It's taken a long time to get to where I'm at in terms of my game collection. Given the circumstances, It's actually only been about four or five years at that, But It seems like it's taken me an eternity to amass what I have.

Five years ago I had nothing. Or at least It felt that way.. the only system that I had at that time was a Playstation 2. Certainly not bad, by any means, But this particular PS2 was out of comission. It didn't run DVD's at all, and with the advent of PS2 switching from proprietary "Blue-Back" discs to DVD- Finding PS2 games that worked in my defunct system was fast becoming more and more difficult. The only thing that made things bearable was the fact that my PS2 still ran PS1 games. This gave me a chance to revisit Final Fantasy 8, Brave Fencer Musashi, and experience new games that flew under the radar such as Front Mission 3. It was a good enough distraction at the time, But it's difficult to be limited to only a certain spectrum of games when everyone else is moving full steam ahead into the latest available software. Something needed to be done!

Luck had come my way and I had gotten an opportunity to work a job that would pay me up to Ten dollars an hour, With this sort of income (And no bills to pay) I was determined to begin building my collection up again. The first thing I did was secure a "New" slim model of the PS2, This gave me the chance to experiance all of the games I'd missed out on up to that point, (Silent Hill 3 and "The Room", Digital Devil Saga, MGS3, etc.) and opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. I still focused on picking up PS1 games, this was due to the abundance of second hand stores in the Eugene area. To my delight people sold of plenty of rare games, Probably not even aware that what they're getting rid of is actually quite hard to find (And also that they could undoubtedly make more money auctioning it off on Ebay) Still, they're loss is my gain. A large number of the PS1 classics I have in my library came from these second hand stores.

Eventually after about Two years with the company I finally got a pay raise, taking me from Ten to Fifteen an hour. This was great as at this point and time The Xbox 360 had emerged and talk of Sony's PS3 and Nintendo's "Revolution" had begun to circulate, Not to mention the introduction of the DS and the PSP as well. With this increase in pay I was able to afford a DS and an Xbox 360. Things were finally starting to come together with my collection... Unfortunately, about another seven months after the pay raise major changes in management were breaking things down with my Job. Eventually I had to resign my position and with it forefit all income that I had. I was going to have to rely on Unemployment to get by, and under those circumstances, You don't really have room to purchase items for entertainment, just things to get by. It would be another three months or so before another job opportunity came along, And even then It would only just be temporary work....

I remember quite some time ago (Back when I could browse the internet for hours.. the "Newness" of having a comp and the internet hadn't worn off yet) uncovering some japanese gameplay footage of SMT Imagine; Shin Megami Tensei's first forray into the MMORPG scene. While it likely isn't going to topple over stronger fare such as World of Warcraft, It's bound to make an impact with the SMT fans here stateside, Myself Included. As it is, I've been playing it for a little over an hour and half, and I can safely say that once you learn the system, Enjoyment is to be had!

I'll spare you all the specifics, as seeing and learning things for yourself is half the fun, But if anyone's interested in joining me My SN is BlackSamvara and you can get a hold of the game (Free, I might add) from the Aeria games website. The graphics aren't super intensive, so system requirements are quite low, Hopefully this'll persuede some of you to give it a looksie.. especially if you're an SMT Diehard like myself.

Now, If only we could get that Shenmue MMO they did... now that would be great!

Due to recent occurances, Gaming has been difficult as of late. A Debilitating Virus that for some reason seemed to yield only the outcome of a complete reformat.. Including taking us back to Windows Vista. Initially I thought that this would be quite the negative thing, But I'm happy knowing that I can use Gametap again, All I need to do now is upgrade to their subscription based "Gold" service. Onto the matters at hand though

When I went back to Vista I lost all of the games and save information that I had on my hard drive. I had the idea to go ahead and "Back-Up" my collection and even my save files on my flash drive, But when I had my friend look at my laptop he stated that the virus had spread everywhere.. Except for the pictures! Ok, So the thing that I'm concerned about is that if I load up my flash drive maybe the virus had already spread to those files, and now they're on my flash? I don't know, mainly because I don't want to risk loading it up and having the virus wind up Infesting my Laptop again.. Anyway, that wasn't the end of it.

For some ominous reason, The internet connection at my house wound up getting all crazy and extremely slow. It allowed me to play some games online on my 360 still, but for some reason an error always popped up at the dashboard saying that "Some content can not be displayed at this time, It will reappear when it is available." and I wouldn't have access to any of the marketplace.. Weird.. All the while my laptop was running at a crawl. Of course, with my paranoid mind I was thinking all along that perhaps the virus had somehow spread to the other computers and perhaps even into our network or something! Directly affecting our internet performance! Flash movies, Youtube, Music Players, None of it was working properly, This even prompted me to think that perhaps even though I've put Vista back on my laptop, it still wasn't functioning properly, So what if it was nothing to do with my Connection.. Just my OS?

An overactive imagination indeed, For in two weeks everything went back to normal. I don't know what happened, but everything is working well now. I'm finally going to get back to doing some more web surfing and game playing. Despite these minor setbacks, my resolve is strong as ever!