5 Fandom Friday

Another Friday, another post for The Nerdy Girlie and SuperSpaceChick‘s awesome linkup! This week’s theme:

Characters I’d Love To Dress Up As

I haven’t actually done too much dressing up in my adult life. I did have one year where I went all out with a Rocky Horror costume, which was both terrifying and liberating all at the same time. But other than that, there haven’t been many! I’d really like to change that in the coming years, especially as my daughter is now old enough to really love dressing up. I would love to do family Halloween costumes!

1. Princess Peach
My love for Princess Peach has nothing to do with the Mario games. I developed a love for her thanks to Super Smash Bros. Melee, where she debuted as a playable character. There is something so inherently satisfying about kicking ass in a poofy pink dress and heels. And let’s not forget my favorite part: smashing someone in the face with a cast iron frying pan. As a housewife/SAHM, I just find a cast iron frying pan hilarious as I can see using one as an actual weapon if necessary (those bad boys are so heavy!).

2. Dark Elf/Drow
This would probably be the most challenging to ever do. My biggest concern: How the heck would I darken my skin without being completely (yet unintentionally) offensive?? Plus, many of the costumes have a lot of complex armor elements of which I have no clue how to make. But I’ve always loved the Drow and think it would be awesome to portray one someday!

3. Aerith
As one of my favorite characters of all time, I’d love to dress up as her! My friends and I want to have a Final Fantasy themed Halloween one year, where we each pick our fave FF character to portray, so I think this one is doable at some point

4. Wizard from Harry Potter
This one is definitely doable. My hubs and I both want to dress up as a wizard (he’d be Ravenclaw, I’d be Gryffindor) and we have our little miss be our owl!

5. Link
Even though I love the Legend of Zelda series, I don’t really have a desire to dress up as Princess Zelda. I’m all about Link! Plus, I’d have fun making different items from the games! Ideally I’d make this a family costume, but I’d have to do some serious convincing of the hubs. Though I think he’d make an awesome Ganondorf. My little could either be Princess Zelda (she would love that) but I’d really like her to dress up as Tingle! I think it’d be so cute! And in case you don’t know Tingle, here’s a pic.

Seriously, how cute would that be for a four year old?! Though I’d probably leave off the goatee. 😉

Video Game Blog Challenge: Questions 1 – 3

1. My First Video Game

My very first two games are some classic oldies. Centipede for the Atari, and Gorilla Basic for DOS (does anyone remember DOS for computers?). I was probably five or six years old, and my dad taught me how to play both.

I loved Centipede, and in my six year old head I kicked ass it. In reality, that’s highly doubtful.

Gorilla Basic was harder, but I still liked it. Here’s a basic layout of the game: Two gorillas are on opposites ends of a city atop skyscrapers. They throw apparently explosive bananas at each other in an attempt to blow the other gorilla up. To throw your banana, you have to calculate the velocity and angle needed to hit the other gorilla, taking wind speed into account. Clearly this was not math I was doing at age six, so I do remember my dad giving me a jumping off point, and then I took over with trial and error. Missing was just as much fun, as you ‘blew up’ giant chunks of building in great 8-bit graphics.

I still have such clear memories of playing Gorilla Basic. The triumph I felt when I blew up my brother’s monkey. My delight at his annoyance. That game probably started what would be years to come of sibling video game rivalry.

Centipede and Gorilla Basic were fun, but they never felt like mine. They were on my dad’s computer (and Atari), which we were not allowed to use without my dad’s permission. The first system that truly felt like mine (even though I had to share it with my brother) was the SEGA Genesis. It was bought just for US. I still remember booting it up and hearing the wonderful SEEEGAAA!! voice blare out. First games for that: Revenge of Shinobi (ridiculously hard), Sonic (ridiculously awesome), and X-Men (which kicked off me reading the comics).

2. My Favorite Character

It pains me to have to pick favorite characters in video games. It’s like trying to pick your favorite character out of all the books you’ve read. There’s just so many! In so many genres! And they’re all great for different reasons! But, I narrowed it down to two, from two games that 100% defined my gamer life.

First, Link from the Legend of Zelda series. To be perfectly honest, Link as a character is pretty shallow. He’s always kind of the bumbling hero, who just stumbles into the role of guy-who-must-save-the-world. But at nine years old, playing Ocarina of Time for the first time, I loved that. He was just an odd kid, who turned out to be the chosen one to save the world. And I remember thinking at the time THAT COULD BE ME!! I still love Link. How he pretty much always stumbles into the role of hero, and embraces being the chosen one. I also love that he’s never had a voice. It just fits.

The second is Aerith (Aeris) Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII. I adored her character. I wanted to be her. I loved her story, I loved that she was the healer of the party (I’ve always favored the healing classes) and I loved her character interactions. I spent hours leveling her, and obviously went the route of her and Cloud for the love story aspect. Needless to say, when she died, I was heartbroken. More on that later in the challenge.

3. A Game I Think Is Underrated

This is kind of an odd and old pick, but did anybody every play Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup for the Nintendo Gamecube? I loved that game! I loved it because A) you were playing freaking QUIDDITCH – what’s not to love? and B) The team special moves were so much fun. It was great as you could play as the Hogwart’s house teams (Ravenclaw all the way!!) and as any country for the Quidditch World Cup. I loved to play as France or Australia, because their team special moves were so cool looking, and Japan wasn’t too shabby either. Also, you could collect cards, just like in the books, for different teams/players/etc. Useless collectible unlockables? I’m in. They are a game weakness of mine.

However, this game certainly had it’s issues. It’s controls were a bit clunky; it took some serious getting used to to navigate. And also, there was no Ireland team. None. WTF?! If I’m being 100% honest, I can’t see anyone who isn’t a Potterhead enjoying this game. Being a huge Potterhead, and this being the closest I could come to playing Quidditch at the time, I adored it.

I’m using the questions from the Video Game Blog Challenge found here. All screenshots/photos you see are found via a basic Google image search. Copyrighted to their respective owners.

March NerdBlock Reveal

This was the first NerdBlock where I was 50% totally ecstatic, and 50% couldn’t care less. The awesome stuff was just really awesome this time, and entirely suited towards me and my hubs. Woo!

We’ll start with the ‘meh’ items first. End with the best, right?

This Simpon’s figurine goes in the ‘meh’ category simply becuase I’ve never seen the show. Plus, it’s a figurine of a guest star. . .not a main character of the show, which I could at least appreciate having played the crap out of Simpon’s Road Rage for the Nintendo Game Cube back in middle school with my BFF.

He went to my daughter, who immediately detached the microphone so all her Pet Shop guys can put on shows now. She tossed the guy aside, haha. At least she got something out of it!

Stickers! At least I knew that my three year old would love this one. And she did.

These were actually quite amusing to read through. Utterly random, but amusing. My daughter loved putting them together in a nice collage, with the just the right accents of crayon!

This is the only item that falls in  between the AWESOME and Meh category. I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad, but never really got into it. I was always way more into fantasy as a kid, and never really gave sci-fi a chance (which promptly changed when Farscape came around). So old school Star Trek stuff isn’t bad, it’s just nothing I’m crazy for either.

However I am really happy that out of all possible character options, I got Jean Luc Picard!! The Next Generation is the series I remember best, and seriously, who doesn’t love Patrick Stewart even in weirdo random skeleton form.

Now, we begin the AWESOME stuff.

A full size action figure from Assassin’s Creed?! Yes, thank you!! I’ve actually only played the first one of these games, and enjoyed the crap out of it, but I love the character and costume designs. Plus, I have a serious soft spot for action figures (let’s not talk about how many FFVII action figures I own. . .and how many more are on my wishlist).

Given that I opened this while the hubs was at work, I got the pleasure of being able to give it to him! He’s a huge Star Wars fan and of course loved the shirt. So far we have had awesome luck with these shirts!

The last item brought massive squeeing and dancing from me. I am a massive Legend of Zelda fan and collect any and all things Link related, so seeing this in there was so exciting for me! I didn’t even care who I got – it’s Zelda, I’m happy!

Turns out I got my favorite pick!! Ah, young Link with the slingshot. So many memories. Seriously though, I pretty much owe my interest and love for gaming to the Zelda series. The original was one of the first games I played on the NES at about age six or seven, and Ocarina of Time was the first game I ever fell totally die hard in love with. And still am.

April’s box is going to include a Transformers item in it – I’m pretty excited to see what! Sound sweet to you too? Click the NerdBlock button to the right and learn even more about the fun that is this monthly subscription box!

-Kayly