Let's Talk with Barfo51

By Marc Hollinshead,
Hello all and welcome back to another Community Interview. This week, we have Barfo51, an American gamer who is a father and the holder of a very interesting accomplishment that many of us will be jealous of. We have no pictures this week, but fortunately, Barfo has some fantastic stuff to tell us. Let's give a great big TA welcome to Barfo51!

Marc: Gamertags almost always tell something about their owners. Tell us about yours.

Barfo:
I’ve used Barfo as my save file / character name for nearly as long as I can remember. The first time I can definitively recall using it is for the save file name on my NES Legend of Zelda cartridge. Alternately, I may have used it when playing Dragon Warrior. I definitely used it as the name of the main character later when I played Dragon Quest 4 and FFIV. I originally chose the moniker due to the obvious puerile implications, but over time (and repeatedly naming my RPG main characters it) it gained a personal significance (how could it not as it was the name I played under for basically every RPG that I played in my teen years and beyond), such that when the internet started to come around I defaulted to it as my online identity particularly for anything in the gaming space. One thing I particularly like about it other than the tradition of reminding me of some of my favorite gaming is the self-deprecating aspect of using it as well as the inherent contrast between such a crude name and the fact that my prose generally comes off as verbose and overly formal in nature (a trait which believe it or not I have actually softened quite a bit since the early days of my online presence). When time came to create a gamertag, “Barfo” was already taken (I took a long time to come to XBL, having skipped original xbox completely and not upgrading my PS2 to next-gen until a year after x360 was out) so I tacked on the “51” as a sly nod to Area51 (this itself is used in a self-deprecating sense as well).

Marc: How long have you been gaming? / Do you remember the first game you played? What’s your fondest memory of it?

Barfo:
I would estimate almost 35 years: my family got our first PC (an Atari 800) approximately in 1980 or so. As I would have been a preschooler at the time, the precise first game is likely lost in the mists of time, however I have very clear recollections of playing Space Invaders early on. We initially had a cassette recorder accessory (this was before 5¼ floppy disk drive was released for this system or else we hadn’t bought one yet) and it would take upwards of 5 minutes to load the game into memory every time you wanted to play it – Up until a few years ago I would make a joke here about how nobody these days should complain about long loading/install times, but we have gone full circle on this point as recently it took at least 10 minutes to install Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox One) onto my 360. Probably the actual first game I played on here was Super Breakout which was a cartridge that either shipped with the 800 or we bought at (nearly) the same time. I also have fond memories of Star Raiders (another cartridge game) from around this time. The first console I had of my own was the NES which I was very proud to save up for and buy with my own money when I was in 6th grade.

Marc: Do others in your family game, or are you a first-generation gamer?

Barfo:
Growing up my dad was a hobbyist programmer (one hobby among tons also including construction, hiking/nature, and all manner of arts and crafts) and he definitely played games all of my life. Though the ‘gamer’ identity is too new an invention for him to ascribe to himself (frankly it's probably too recent for me to self-identify), and he definitely never took to such an all-consuming dedication to it as I do, he definitely fits the spirit of the term at least as much or more so than your typical sexagenarian. Every once in a while he still brags to me that the lone game that I was never able to surpass him in is our old Atari 800 copy of Centipede. For the most part his tastes, especially these days, tend to lead towards PC gaming and simulations – Microsoft Flight Simulator and TrackMania (actually the Centipede thing isn’t accurate anymore as he is demonstrably better than me on all Trackmania variants) are more recent games that he has definitely been into. I have fond memories of playing the old NES submarine game Silent Scope with him in 2-player coop mode. One of the best purchases I made for him recently was last Christmas when I got him Kerbal Space Program – last time I checked his Steam activity on that it was well north of 500 hours.

Marc: What do your parents/significant other/friends have to say about your gaming? / Tell us about your home life – parents, spouse, children, significant other, animal companions?

Barfo:
Well the jokey response here is that my wife says “Get off that game and spend some time with your damn family” but it's not really true. She's actually really understanding about gaming as a legitimate hobby and pursuit. On some gaming subjects (retro 80’s cRPGs such as Wasteland, Baldurs Gate, Bards Tale, Wizardry and Ultima) she is much more conversant than me (PC-wise my family went from Atari to the first Macintoshes and I completely missed the DOS-based gaming scene until Win95 era). Our playstyles (and tastes) in games are very very different, and so we often don’t really game much together, though sometimes we play the occasional couch coop game such as Diablo III (back in the day we had a LAN playing the first two games).
My daughter of course is hugely into videogames and will try and get the whole family into playing Minecraft or LBP. Her taste in games runs towards the very creative sandbox games and of course like every 10-year old Minecraft is a huge deal for her, but lately I've also been able to spark her interest in rhythm games somewhat. Hatsune Miku Diva F was very helpful for this. I am still working on getting her interested in RPGs – I made some progress with Bravely Default but it didn’t really stick - I'm not entirely certain she knows that Final Fantasy is anything other than a rhythm game series on her 3DS.

Marc: Oh boy...better sort that Final Fantasy issue out quick before you get a mob of angry fans coming to the door laugh

Assuming you’re not a professional gamer, what’s your day job?

Barfo:
I am a Chemical Engineer working in battery R&D in the start-up space. It probably sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is but at the end of the day I am pretty lucky in that I have a solid career path in a science field that really challenges my mind to stay sharp. I am very lucky in that some of the same skills that I need in my day to day job – using mathematical techniques to understand and study and hopefully optimize complex systems prepare me well for the sort of games I like to play where I am always trying to go beyond the surface level and understand the interplay of the systems that underpin the games as well.

Marc: What other hobbies do you enjoy?

Barfo:
I have always been drawn to the standard panoply of nerd pursuits – books (mostly sci-fi and fantasy – Brandon Sanderson is the best new writer of at least the last decade or more), music (70-80s post-punk and new wave, 80-90s goth, and 00’s futurepop/ EBM/synthpop), board games (light to medium Eurogames mainly these days though I went through Avalon Hill and Steve Jackson phases in my youth). In terms of sports fandom I follow my hometown teams the 49ers and the World Champion San Francisco Giants. In the last few years I’ve also caught pretty hard the anime and manga bug. As far as less nerdy outdoor activities I try and keep myself in approximate shape with ice skating in the wintertime and disc golf during the part of the year where the skating rink is not open. It's pretty important to me to be conversant in a diverse range of subjects but 9 times out of 10 gaming is a very strong #1 on my list of hobbies and the thing I am going to try to do with my free time.

Marc: Of what real life achievement are you most proud? Would you give us some details?

Barfo:
Unfortunately I don’t have any cool stories to share of any amazing real-life accomplishments so I am going to fall back on the sort of standard canard of saying raising my daughter. No other activity really can compare to that inside or outside of gaming.

Marc: I was almost going to say "But you have a daughter!" and then I read on. Raising a child really is a great accomplishment.

What’s your favorite game of all time on any console? What makes it special?

Barfo:
Not to discount the last decade or so (which have produced some very quality games), but I am always going to be locked in on questions like this with my nostalgia-tinted glasses and my longtime passion for jRPGs. As such I have to go here with Final Fantasy VI, which to me was really the pinnacle of jRPG craft. It innovated the form in a lot of ways and particularly it is one of the all-time best RPG plots particularly the fact that the build up to the end of the first half so expertly manipulated my genre expectations before turning them on their head. A close second to DQ5 and CT though, if DQ5 had seen NA release such that I had played it contemporaneously with FF6 (and CT) rather than many years later in fan translation with an emulator it might knock everything down.

Marc: If some evil spell allowed you to own only a single game for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why?

Barfo:
This is actually a pretty tough question as the criteria for what my favorite game would be as in the above question are somewhat different from what makes a game objectively the best. You want something that has a lot of replayability and depth, and the question has some timeliness built into it as you might want to consider something you haven’t already played to death. As such I would probably go with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for this as I've always had a soft spot for the TES games (well at least since Daggerfall, I never played Arena) and the freeform structure allows for more player creativity and if I was playing over and over the same game for the rest of my life I’d want that. Plus the problem I always run into with the TES games is that I only ever get halfway through them (or less) because I go so deep into them that I eventually get pulled onto other games and as such this would be a lemonade out of lemons type scenario as it would actually improve my ability to focus and fully play it. Second choice would be probably one of the Rock Band games, if you could toss in all the DLC and instruments that never break down (or infinite supply of replacements). If you cheatingly reword the question to what game ‘series’ would I restrict myself to, I'd probably go with Final Fantasy hands down as there is such a large opus that individual game replayability becomes much less of an issue.

Marc: What part of the world do you live in? If I were to visit, what sights would I have to see?

Barfo:
I'm living right now in a small town in northwestern Montana (well all of MT is small towns pretty much). Sadly there isn’t a lot to see other than the Rocky Mountains, some trees and a whole bunch of snow. But on the other hand there is a lot.

Marc: Compared to where I live, that sounds picturesque!

Any games you regret putting on your gamertag?

Barfo:
I am probably sort of unique (among the subset of hardcore achievement hunters) in that I don’t tend to see my gamertag as some sort of outwards facing status symbol but rather as an inwards facing sort of electronic diary of my gaming history. As such I think regret isn’t really a relevant emotion at least w.r.t the gamer tag per se. I definitely don’t see it as a sacred and inviolate shrine, one of my favorite parts of the year is essentially desecrating it during the Bean Dive and often times I don’t even make a serious effort to finish some of those games if I found I didn’t enjoy them. Instead of as a shrine I see the gamertag as a living document of my playing history - an automatically updating diary of sorts. Even for a game that at the end I don’t enjoy or turn out to dislike its great that it is on my gamertag as someday I am sure I will see it on there and go wow I can’t believe I wasted 5 hours (or a weekend) playing X. Glancing over my gamercard quick candidates for ‘X’ in this scenario are (in reverse chronological order): BioShock Infinite, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Shadow Complex.

Marc: That's a really interesting way to look at it actually, and I agree with you! Mentioning both Batman and BioShock in this question will definitely raise a few eyebrows, though laugh

Tell us about your gamer pic. Why did you choose that one?

Barfo:
When I first got a 360 I went through and downloaded all the free/promotional gamerpics etc and was especially drawn to the psychonauts pack (mainly because most other gamerpics were dumb looking), and that particular Raz artwork specifically. Now I’ve had it so long that I would never think about changing it – it has acquired value in and of itself simply due to longevity, and in fact I even switched over my Steam profile to psychonauts background to keep it consistent. Like with my moniker, it’s a case where random choice breeds familiarity leads to self-identification.

Marc: Do you have any particular gaming pet peeves?

Barfo:
It drives me crazy when a game starts out with a too-intense beginning that is like a supercut of all the gameplay mechanics, as it always seems to me like the devs are being too earnest in thinking that if they don’t immediately hit you with a whole bunch of bombast you will immediately lose interest in the game (usually it is done to cover up some deficiency, though sometimes it's in games (ex. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (Xbox 360)) that would start out perfectly fine they completely cut the bogus opening). In media res is a perfectly serviceable narrative technique which can be effective, but it does not map to gameplay progression like some developers think it does. On the other hand going too far in the other direction also drives me nuts, such as when a game tries to hold your hand with too many tutorials (especially when they limit player options artificially) or by doling out new gameplay at a too slow pace. With the most elegantly designed games, a tutorial is unnecessary – any player (sufficiently versed in the prevailing gaming conventions of the time) should be able to discover how to play and optimize their play through feedback with the game itself in its natural state. If the player can’t do this the more times than not it indicates a problem with the underlying game design, rather than something that should be papered over with an overly wrought tutorial scheme. Final Fantasy XIII is the clear example of this being taken too far where the first 2/3rd of the game is drawn out tutorial.

Marc: What upcoming game are you most looking forward to?

Barfo:
This would probably be The Witness, Jon Blow’s upcoming game. Braid really blew me out of the water, and I’ve been very interested to see what he can do next, plus adventure games have long been one of my go-to genres from the old infocom ones through the graphical lucasarts ones and the more modern fps-style ones (Antichamber was one of my fav games of the past few years). I was at PAX14 and I got really interested in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (funny to say but this would be the system selling Xbox One exclusive title for me, probably) and Miegakure as well. Somewhere along the line I guess I stopped getting very excited about AAA games and moved more into a mode of just getting to them eventually.

Marc: What game(s) are you currently playing? How are you finding it?

Barfo:
I tend to find myself in the middle of a few games at once. Right now I would consider myself actively playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on the 360 side (Hatsune Miku Diva F 2nd on the PS3 side). KoA really surprised me as I was expecting a pretty paint by numbers action-RPG. I had that in my backlog for a long while, but undeservedly as once I finally got going on it I found it really enjoyable, especially the density of side-tasks and quests that you can do. In contrast to the big sprawling empty spaces of your TES/Fallout games (which I also really enjoy) there is something to be said for just making a really fun combat interface and then packing your smaller RPG spaces with just loads upon loads of things to do. Oh I shouldn’t forget among this list playing Theatrhythm Curtain Call on my daughter’s 3DS which I am probably the ideal target audience for as I am obsessed equally with rhythm games and FF lore. On PC (aka Steam) I’m playing (and loving) SpaceChem which is as close as a game has ever gotten to precisely trading off of the same set of skills as I need for my actual job as a Chemical Engineer (is it sad that this is a positive selling point to me?).

Marc: What game are you most proud of completing? Why?

Barfo:
Thought about this for a while and in the end I’ll have to go with my highest ratio completion, Hexic HD . Not exactly a sexy completion (and the ratio is without a doubt inflated by the free pack-in nature of the title), but I actually spent a bunch of time researching and getting good at building Master Grids in order to complete the final pearl flower achievement.

Marc: What single Xbox achievement are you most proud of? Why? / Do you have a “claim to fame” in gaming? If so, what is it?

Barfo:
The obvious answer to both of these questions is:
Guitar Hero: Warriors of RockNauseous NumerologistThe Nauseous Numerologist achievement in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock worth 27 pointsBeat any song with a final score of 133,337 (QP+, Competitive)

In order to explain why I need to digress somewhat. I’d dabbled in rhythm games before Guitar Hero (Guitaroo Man, occasional DDR at arcades, rhythm minigames within larger games, etc), but when the first Guitar Hero came out I was instantly and irretrievably hooked. I got to be involved with an excellent scoretracking site (scorehero.com) and as is my bent one of the things I immediately did was really start trying to understand the underlying systems involved. I was the first person (on SH at least) to determine the scoring formula for getting five stars in GH2 had changed from GH1 (from 3X the base value of the points to 2.8X), and worked with a bunch of others to empirically prove the precise scoring setup for the various in-game tracks. Through this work I became intimately familiar with the scoring system and specifically methods to achieve a particular “exact” score. Somewhere in that a friend on the forums for the site put up a picture of where he had scored (by accident) 133,337 points on a song and made an “I'm so 1337!” joke. This is when my aptitude and understanding of scoring in GH2 (and later GH/RB games) transformed into a calling – within about 1 hour or so of seeing that post I had reposted in reply pics of me getting 133,337 score on 5 different songs. GH2 had been out for some time, and I eventually managed to get 133,337 on about 2/3rd of the list (PS2 version). Later when GH80s expansion came out I played through the entire setlist and got 133,337 on every song (30 songs). For GH3 I stepped it up and got an entire setlist full of 133,337, except for one song (Mississippi Queen) where the maximum possible score was not high enough to achieve that and I did 113,337 instead. When Activision bought out Guitar Hero (beginning of the end in a sense) they were kind (and deep-pocketed) enough to invite a few of us out to tour Neversoft (the studio that took GH series over after HMX went off to do Rock Band) and demo/give feedback on the game, and they continued this for actually most of the releases (GH3, GH4, Metallica game, GH5, GH6) though later on it was mostly just a PR thing to have us at demo events so there were some people who actually were good at the game along with all the game journalists. My most impressive feat was in front of a bunch of other guys from scorehero to start up a particular song (which I had previous prepped on understanding particularly well), pause it it and ask for a number from the other guys around (within an achievable range of about 200k spread), and then proceed to unpause the song and achieve that exact score (I did this twice, once on Red Lottery in GH2 and once on Bulls on Parade in GH3). Anyways pretty early on I was suggesting to them that achievements lists for the GH games (and RB too) were pretty boring and that they should add in an achievement for trying to get an exact score. It took until GH6 (when the plastic music fad was past its prime and they were going out with one last hurrah) for them to actually make the achievement. Thus my claim to fame is being able to get any precise score I want on any (well, most) songs on any GH title (and to a lesser extent RB series where the lower scoring makes 133,337 less possible and I never practiced it as much), and the single achievement I am most proud of is the Nauseous Numerologist achievement in Guitar Hero 6, as that is the only achievement that is named after me (that I know of, wink, wink).

Marc: Genuinely don't know what to say apart from...shock

In a slightly different vein, do you have a favorite achievement? One perhaps that you just really enjoyed attaining?

Barfo:
There’s (obviously) no achievement I enjoyed obtaining more than the above one, but setting that aside I would probably say:
Burnout ParadiseParty AnimalThe Party Animal achievement in Burnout Paradise worth 153 pointsComplete 250 online Challenges

This is one of the few online achievements that I actually used boosting sessions (on TA) mainly because I actually found the coop challenges (which are like short little tasks that involve cooperation and coordination from multiple people) really fun to do and organize. I did an analysis in excel of all 500 challenges and figured out an optimum challenge order to get the full set of challenges done quickly depending on how many players were in the session. Overall it worked really well and I had so much fun using and fine tuning my technique that I went well past the 250 required for the achievement and got all 500 done.

Marc: If you found yourself dropped into a video game, which video game character would you most want to have your back?

Barfo:
This is a tough one to answer, as probably there are a ton of 16-bit jRPG cahracters that would fit the bill very well (Nei or Alys, PhS series ; Celes, FF6), but I am going to go with Kinzie Kensington from the Saint’s Row series simply on the basis that she has a lot more polygons, and I am superficial like that (also Shaundi would clearly be too unreliable)

Marc: In the same scenario, what character/creature would you most/least like to see headed your way?

Barfo:
Diablo (Diablo II version). That red chain lightning attack was some serious bullshit.

Marc: Any characters you would like seen thrown into video game hell?

Barfo:
Well this is probably not a very popular opinion, but I'm kind of sick of Mario at this point. While I absolutely enjoyed the early Nintendo platformers, I think maybe ive just reached Mario fatigue. Im sure some sort of super-Mario otaku can tell me in detail how I am wrong, but I just don’t see all that much of a defined character there (maybe I just don’t follow Mario culture well enough?). Of course it will never happen but I wonder if it is time to retire Mario and use the brilliant content minds at big N to create some new properties.

Marc: Ever had any bad experiences online? How did you handle it?

Barfo:
Generally I find online with randoms annoying so I pretty much only ever go into online games in private sessions with friends or not at all.

Marc: Do you prefer single player or multi-player?

Barfo:
Single player definitely. I'm not really a competitive person by nature, or rather I am and have learned to recognize that its not a good place for me to go to mentally. I find that a single player experience usually is more calibrated to what interests me in a game. To wit, I tend to enjoy trying to outsmart and defeat the systems within a game rather than the actual objectives or other players within it.

Marc: So you enjoy trying to break the game basically? laugh Now that's something I don't hear every day.

Do you have a favorite group of friends you like to play with? If so, how did you meet?

Barfo:
From time to time I play with a group of people that I met originally during my time in the Guitar Hero community.

Marc: If you could have a multiplayer session with anyone in the world, whom would you choose? Why?

Barfo:
Pretty tough question but I would choose to play Tecmo Bowl (original NES version) against Jerry Rice.

Marc: What other consoles do you own? What are your favorites on those platforms?

Barfo:
Set up and playable right now: 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS (technically my daughter’s)
In boxes but hopefully still playable: PS2, Play Station, GameCube, SNES, Genesis, NES.
Old game shoutouts (not otherwise mentioned in this interview) off the top of my head: The Guardian Legend (NES), Warsong (Gen), Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 2 (SNES), Wild Arms (PSOne), Harvest Moon Wonderful Life (GCube), Katamari Damacy (PS2).

Marc: Have you ever had a game you really looked forward to that you were disappointed in when it finally arrived? Tell us about it.

Barfo:
This happened to me a lot more when I was younger – with maturity I try these days to ignore hype and only get excited for things once they are already out in the wild and I can control my expectations. Buying into the hype and rushing purchases only to regret them later is a lot of what fuels the AAA marketing space these days. So reaching pretty far back in my memory banks I can remember getting very disappointed by Super Mario Brothers 2 (NA release, not the lost levels). I had bought into the hype and was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this for Christmas, amped up on Nintendo Power previews etc. I got the game, sat down to play it on Christmas morning and was met with.. something that was to my pre-teen brain something almost totally different than SMB and what I liked about that game (for those of you kids out there it actually was a completely other game in the JP release that had been skinned over with Mario stuff). In the longview I eventually came to really like it and it might be my favorite Mario game (close call with Super Mario Land – the first SNES one).

Marc: Tell us about your gaming set-up.

Barfo:
I tend to fall on the side of the austere when it comes to gaming set-ups. I don’t like big TVs so I have only a moderately sized one, I am extremely undiscerning when it comes to audio so I have no stereo system to speak of, my 360 and PS3 themselves are crammed in a probably too-small to get enough airflow IKEA entertainment cabinet with my currently backlogged and in-progress games scattered over, and really the only notably awesome part of the setup is the sweet Chrono Trigger poster hanging over it. Another thing that is probably not found in most setups is the large stack of Jr Legal pads which I keep around so that I can write notes and plans on, many of which eventually get transferred to excel spreadsheets later on.

Marc: Sometimes I think "the simpler, the better". If it works for you then there's no problem!

How do you use TA? Tracking, walkthroughs, solutions, sessions?

Barfo:
Really I think all of the above. The tracking and analytics aspect of it is really what makes TA special for me. I really enjoy being able to look at what achievements I have in a given game and view them sorted by ratio (as a stand-in for difficulty). And then of course having the guides right there is very handy. One of my favorite things to do is after I get some achievements in a game to look at which achievements I get sooner or later compared to the order implied by the ratios. Usually exploration or completionist achievements I’ll tend to get sooner, while main plot or multiplayer achievements ill get later on. I enjoy writing solutions as well but I only write one up if I really feel like I have something to offer much different than what is already up (and since I tend to get to games late there is usually plenty fine solutions already there). The solution I am proudest of is where I posted about a glitch in BattleBlock Theater.

Marc: How has your gaming changed or evolved since coming to TA?

Barfo:
In general going from PS2 and earlier to 360 I got much more driven to complete achievements, and since getting on TA that has stepped up even another order of magnitude. Particularly, being on TA and having such an easy way to view my gamer tag in more detail had motivated me to complete more games for sure and also specifically to go for more difficult achievements (playing at higher difficulties, completing extra add-on tasks in order to grab more high ratio achs) than I otherwise would probably do in previous gen days. Specifically, recently I managed to pull off a 284 days ach streak (+37 achievements over the minimum) which I never would have tried for without TA (or my friend’s 274 day streak to measure against).

Marc: What do you like and dislike most about the site?

Barfo:
Well the things I like are adequately covered in the above two answers and I actually really don’t have any huge complaints. The only real site pet peeve I have is when the only guide is just videos instead of comprehensive text descriptions, but I recognize that I am probably the old school outlier in mydistain for videos and much would rather read about the solution instead.

Marc: I'm with you on this! I prefer text solutions if possible as well.

How did you learn about TA? Have you signed up any friends to the website?

Barfo:
A close friend of mine from my GH/SH days turned me on to the site early on. Previously we had both been using another achievement information site and luckily as soon as he got onto TA he told me about it so I could join as well.

Marc: If you could have a game handcrafted just for you, what would your perfect game be?

Barfo:
Rock Band control scheme but RPG mechanics. Theatrhythm is a pretty close to this, especially Curtain Call which refines some of the RPG mechanics. The other alternative would be an RPG game with no combat where you spend all your time gathering materials and recipes and crafting things. The Atelier series is sort of close to this but it still has combat at the base of it.

Marc: Why do you choose TA over other gaming sites?

Barfo:
I don’t really consider myself as choosing TA *over* other gaming sites, I mean I still read plenty of other sites especially dedicated to gaming news etc, in both the console and the PC space. But TA is definitely my first stop and that’s mainly because of the broad functionality I get here.

****************
*Lightning Round*
****************


Favourite 360 game?

Braid, hon mention Rock Band 2

Favourite non-360 game?

(Among contemporaneous generations) : Hatsune Miku Project Diva F (or sequel)

Least favourite game?

Demon's Souls / Dark Souls

Favourite game developer?

Tim Schafer / Double Fine (non-indie category would go to Volition for making three games I love in three totally separate genres)

Favourite game weapon?

Cloud’s unnecessarily huge sword

Most hated game enemy?

That asshole cloud that drops those spiky mofos on you in Super Mario Brothers

Favourite game character?

Alis/Alys, Phantasy Star/Phantasy Star IV

Favorite game sidekick?

Frog/Glenn from Chrono Trigger

Favorite game ending?

Dragon Quest 5 (Favorite thing that seemed like an ending but then turned out it wasn’t the ending: FFVI's middle)

Most hated game ending?

Chrono Cross (seriously our big goal here is just to undo what we did in the first game?) or maybe BioShock (next time try ending game before you run out of ideas)

Favorite game environment?

Ikuto, Phantasy Star II

Favorite game music?

Opening riffs of Super Mario Bros always brings me back to my childhood.

Most emotional video game moment?

Death of Nei, Phantasy Star II (Aerith gets a close second, but PhS2 did it first)

Game that shouldn’t have had a sequel?

It's really the third game in the series that starts to suck: Fable II

Non-Xbox game you’d love to have achievements in?

Kerbal Space Program (probably they will eventually add them)

**********************
*End of Lightning Round*
**********************


Marc: Any shout-outs you want to make before we go?

Barfo:
Just wanted to give a shout-out to rabies for being a good friend and gaming partner and always consistently blowing me away with what he can accomplish with his gamercard. And for being probably the only person crazy (stupid?) enough to actually manage to read this whole interview down to this point.

Marc: Well I read it, so that's another person!

Well there you have it, folks. Thanks again to Barfo51 for sharing his own story with us. Join me next time where I'll be with my next guest, Lavindathar.

Come back to see me and, you guessed it... let's talk. wave

I'd like to remind everyone that because of the huge waiting list for candidates, I am currently not taking any applications for the Community Interview. When some of the backlog has been worked through, I'll let you know. ~ Marc
Marc Hollinshead
Written by Marc Hollinshead
To summarize Marc in two words, it would be "Christian Gamer." You will usually find him getting stuck into story heavy action-adventure games, RPG's and the odd quirky title when he isn't raving about Dark Souls and Mass Effect. Outside the world of gaming, Marc attends and helps out in his church on a regular basis and has a not-so thrilling job in a supermarket.
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