001: Shiny Treasure or That Time SoraRabbit Blogged a Blog

Hello internets and people crawling on the internets. Welcome to my blog! Several things have brought me to start this thing. First off, several years ago my then-girlfriend now-wife suggested I try my hand at blogging about video games. Her reasoning was that she likes listening to me talk about the games I’ve played, so maybe others would too. I gave it a shot (more on that later) but didn't keep up with it. But now I find myself at a point where I can give it a more solid attempt. Almost two weeks ago the idea expanded and took hold and refused to let me go. So here I am now. I’ve got my coffee, my overheating laptop, the Final Fantasy IV OST playing for background, and I’m ready to blog the hell out of this blog. (I think that's the right terminology.)

So who am I? You can call me SoraRabbit. I am a father, a rabbit wrangler (now that would be a nice career, I should look into that), and most recently a husband. My wife will be referenced in here as Cocoashade, which is my favorite of her many screen names/gamer tags.

This is me, I guess. (Credit: Paint)

I’ve been playing video games since I was about five. (Why does this feel like an AA speech suddenly? "My name is SoraRabbit and I... am a gamer.") I grew up in the 80s, which really shaped my taste in the things I gravitate towards. I have fond memories of the Atari 2600 and Intellivision we had growing up. Good times. Somewhere in there my dad got a Commodore 64. We played a lot of crappy, pirated, poorly-made games on that thing. When he upgraded to an IBM we also upgraded our games. Zork, Phantasy, pretty much everything by Sierra. We had a never-ending stream of games. The games evolved as our tastes did.

When the NES came out, we were visiting an aunt's house for a couple of weeks. Our cousins had already amassed a good collection of cartridges. We got to try Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and several other 8-bit games. We were fully mesmerized. Who knew games could be like this? Games had gone from being little diversions to being immersive escapism. I also learned the joy of reading comic books by flashlight long after bedtime. All around, it was a transformative summer.

On the way home from the visit, my dad stopped by a store and bought us our first NES, packaged with the dual cartridge of Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, plus the Zapper. He also grabbed a copy of Zelda.

The Atari and Intellivision were quickly forgotten. I have so many fond memories of taking turns playing different games with my dad and younger brother. We would cheer each other on, give advice, and compete to see who could get the farthest in whatever game we were playing at the time. (Dad had an unfair advantage because he could stay up later.) Eventually my mom got into the gaming spirit too. Her favorite was Dr Mario. When my youngest brothers came along, they quickly became gamers too. I remember them excitedly watching me play whatever game I put in the console.

A lot of years have passed, but my passion for video games has endured. I’ve had the joy of sharing that passion with several people who I care about, starting with my brothers. This has extended to Cocoa, who’s become way more of a gamer than she was before she started dating me. (All she used to play was some online game with orcs.) I'm a good influence.

Fun fact time. One: If you're curious about my screen name, whenever I play games or need a user name for something, I generally go with SoraRabbit. (Sometimes with a 77 tacked on the end for my birth year.) I'm not entirely sure where this name first came from, but I was probably playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts at the time. (I play a lot of Kingdom Hearts all the time, so it's a pretty safe bet.) I identify with Sora. He's adventurous, determined, has a big heart, and he's a huge goof that will never fully grow up.

Me IRL (Credit: Disney and Square)

And the Rabbit part is just because I love the bunnies. I'm sure I'll talk about my bunnies in here. I talk about my bunnies a lot. My bunnies are pretty little princesses and I spoil them. One is named Izumi after the teacher in Full Metal Alchemist. (Partly because I like the name, but also because just like the anime character, my Izumi loves to kick.) The other is named Gwen, which is short for Spider Gwen. (Which is short for... Spider Gwendolyn I guess?)

Izumi is a pudge.

Don’t let her adorableness fool you. Gwen is a straight-up badass.

Second fun fact: It's very fitting that I'm launching this blog on Friday the 13th. I love Friday the 13th. Both the day and the 80s horror series. (And to a lesser extent the low budget TV series and various video games.) But I digress. (I digress a lot. Which is, in itself, a digression. Neat.) I know there's a lot of stigma around Friday the 13th, but I think that's all silly. It's never been an unlucky day for me. It's always been my lucky day. Everything goes right for me. Friday the 13th is like having a few extra holidays a year for me.

Since this was Friday the 13th, I wanted to have a great day. So I read comics while the bunnies had a long hop, had a nice lunch with Cocoashade, and launched my blog. Later we will drink, play Super Mario Party, and then settle in to watch Godzilla: King of Monsters on bluray. (And take notes for my third post, which will be a review of that movie.) Great day. As always.

Third fun fact: The name of my blog. Originally I called this blog "Treasure Hunter", but I've changed it since that seems to be a very common blog name. Go figure. After much thought, I changed the title to The SoraRabbit Hole. I wanted my screen name in there somehow, but couldn't settle on a proper name for quite a time. This one was ultimately Cocoa's suggestion. She said it was like "going down the rabbit hole". (Which is actually a very good description of talking with me about anything I love.) Also I love puns. Puns are punny.

So why did I originally go with Treasure Hunter? Quite often as I’m playing a game, you’ll see me completely stop whatever I’m doing and make a beeline for treasure I’ve spotted. Treasure chests, enemy drops, power ups, whatever. It doesn’t matter. If it’s treasure, I forget the main quest, the plot, the dangers of the monster hordes, everything. Treasure is shiny. Treasure is good. I like treasure. Treasure is life, life is treasure.

Pretty accurate depiction of me. (Credit: Nintendo)

I want to share these treasures with you.

This guy is the man!!! I wanna know his story. Seriously. (Credit: Nintendo)

This is actually my second draft of this entry. I tried to launch this blog a couple of years ago, but then we went house hunting, got engaged, and then wedding planning pretty much pulled an entire year into a black hole. Now all that is done and I'm getting settled back in to my dead end job and thinking about what I'd rather be doing with my life, everything keeps pulling me back to this abandoned (but not forgotten) project.

When I first tackled this, I had several plans... I did one entry about Zelda Skyward Sword, and I intend to rework and repost that one eventually. It was pleasantly snarky. I also have a rather lengthy unfinished handwritten post for Dream Drop Distance HD, which I’ve been playing off and on since it was re-released. But I’ve decided to wait on that one. Today I’m just introducing myself and the blog and giving you an idea of the sort of ADD rambling you can expect when I start geeking out.

Speaking of geeking out, a great feature of our house is that we have a game room! It may not seem like much to some of you, but I never had the space for this in my old homes.

Look at this glorious haven. (Credit: My phone.)

The game room is a cozy finished basement where I set up all our board games, card games, and most of the video games. The newer systems– the PS3, PS4, the Wii U, and Switch... they’re all upstairs in the living room where the nice HD TV is. All the vintage systems are downstairs. The awesome part is that I can actually hook all my systems up at once. No more switching cords and unplugging things to swap them out. I just have to remember which button to press on the switch box. I had a heck of a time finding a decent screen for the game room. The problem was finding one with A/V hook ups. That was the main reason I couldn’t have my old systems set up before. New TVs are only HDMI. How can you call it a Smart TV if it can’t figure out how to run a PS2? (Heh. Stupid TV.)

Anyway, now I can have my PS2, XBOX 360, GameCube, SNES Classic, X-Box, and N64 hooked up. Shortly after moving, I went to a sale at one of our second-hand game stores and got an X-Box and an N64 to replace my old one that finally kicked it. If it wasn't for that sale, I never would have added those systems to my collection. They're surprisingly pricey for being obsolete. (The pre-sale price for the N64 was $60.)

So here’s a thing. I’m pretty cheap when it comes to buying games. I prefer to get them used or the $20 greatest hits version. Except in special circumstances. I could probably count on one hand the games I’ve pre-ordered. Let’s see, Kingdom Hearts 2.5 and 2.8, South Park Stick of Truth and South Park Fractured But Whole. I waited a long time to pre-order Kingdom Hearts 3, because enough let-downs I was pretty much convinced it was mythical. (I'm glad I was wrong.) I did also pre-order the PS Vita and Wii U, which is kinda sad considering how little game time I’ve logged in those systems compared to my Playstations.

Now there is an exception to this cheapness rule. Nintendo games that my brothers snatch up as soon as they come out. If I hear them talking all excitedly about the latest Nintendo game, I get a tad... impulsive. So in the past couple years I’ve shelled out $60 each on Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, and Super Smash Bros Wii U. (Oh, and Pokken Tournament, but that was mostly because there was an awesome video playing at Gamestop for that and I’m constantly searching for two player games to share with Cocoashade.) I got some play time out of all of them, but not enough to warrant such a steep price tag. I'm always so far behind on my backlog of games that I can be patient. We got a Gamestop gift card as one of our wedding gifts, and we immediately spent it on Super Mario Party. No regrets. Mario Party is the shit. And games I can play with Cocoa are even better. I could play Mario Party every day. Combining two of my great loves, video games with board games? Yes please. Also the stars are shiny. So shiny.

Soooo shiny. (Credit: Nintendo)

Which brings me to my next point... I mentioned my treasure fixation. Shiny things take my focus away at a moment’s notice. That extends to games I'm playing too. I have a cupboard full of games in my entertainment center that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and a couple shelves devoted to games I started and never finished. I’m trying to get better at that, but I backslide often. For instance, last week the Steven Universe movie aired and I impulse bought Steven Universe: Save the Light for the Switch.

Once again I’m distracted from a game by something new and shiny coming along. Oh well. I was doing my critical run anyway on DDD and it’s become a bit of a grind. I could use an RPG interlude. I’m sure I’ll do a post on it once I get further into it.

I have a lot of material to ramble on about. And as I retooled this blog, I decided to also expand the scope. Why limit myself to just video games? I have all sorts of eccentric interests. I know what I like and have the ability and drive to talk endlessly about those things. So if I widen my scope, I'll be more likely to keep on doing this. You can expect plenty of posts about Godzilla, Ultraman, Spider Gwen, Marvel movies and comics, board games... This was a big year for me, entertainment-wise. Godzilla 2, Spider-man 2, It Chapter 2, Detective Pikachu, Captain Marvel, Avengers Endgame, The Dark Crystal, the Steven Universe movie, Invader Zim. Kingdom Hearts 3 finally. The last Star Wars is looming ever closer. That's all just off the top of my head... I know there are more things. I can talk about all of it. Whatever takes a hold of my imagination and makes me happy. It's all treasure, and as has been established, I'm always making a beeline for the treasure. Now I can bring you along with me.

I'm hoping to make this blog entertaining, positive, and fun. The tagline for this site is: “Pop Culture Positivity”. I feel like we have too much negativity in our world and we need a counterpoint. I can try my best to counter at least some of your daily negativity. Maybe you'll find some new treasures of your own. Maybe you'll gain a new perspective on things you never gave any attention. Maybe you'll find a kindred spirit in me for some random or obscure thing you didn't know anyone else liked. I want to make this a place where you don't know exactly what to expect. It'll be an adventure. And I'll be your 8-bit old man guide.

Sigh. Where’s my old man in a cave with a sword? Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? (Credit: Nintendo)

And with that, I wrap up my first post. Beginnings are awkward, but I did my best. I hope you enjoyed my rambling. If so, please comment, follow, get the word out, all that fun stuff. And if there's anything you'd like me to cover, let me know. At the time of this writing, I'm at various stages of completion for seven future posts with notes for many more. The flood gates have opened! I’m sure I’ll be back very soon to post up some of my thoughts on Godzilla in preparation for my post about Godzilla: King of Monsters. Until then, happy treasure hunting!