My friend, Todd.

This was originally posted a few of years ago, but in combination with the anniversary coming up and the fact my old blog kind of doesn't exist anymore, here is a "retro" post about my buddy, Todd.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

My friend, Todd.

Every year around this time, I start to feel helpless, sad and downright depressed. On the 25th of this month, it will be six years ago that one of my best friends died. I've been fortunate enough to meet some great people in my short life, many of them I have known for years. Todd (my buddy), was truly special. To this day, he remains the greatest person I've ever met. I only knew him for two years, but six years after his death, I still miss him as much as I did the day he died. To me, that speaks volumes about him.

I've progressed in life since his passing. I got married... bought a house... and moved on... but not really. Since the day he passed, I've never been the same... but I suppose that is to be expected to some extent. I lost a lot of weight, I gained a ton of weight, made some great new friends, lost contact with those friends, gained new meaning in my life only to lose it all and take several steps backward in life. I've battled with plenty of mental health issues since then... and let me tell you, it's been the toughest thing I've ever faced and tried to deal with.

I've hurt my friends and I've hurt myself over the last six years. To be honest, it all stems from that day that feels like it was so, so long ago and yet, also seems like it was yesterday. You see, the night before he died, he asked if I wanted to hangout. Keep in mind we work at the same place, and I have to open the next day. So, I told him that I didn't want to do anything because I had to open. I told him to take it easy and that I'd see him tomorrow. Well... I never saw him again.

The next day I opened the store and went about business as usual. I called him part of the way through my shift... for what? I don't recall, but he didn't answer. I thought nothing of it, he was probably sleeping in late, that was normal for him. Once it got a little past two in the afternoon, which was when he was supposed to come in to work, I was a little worried. Sure, he had been late before... but something wasn't quite right... I could just feel it. After several calls to his cellphone, which of course went unanswered, I panicked. I called his house, no answer. Finally, I called one of his closest friends... and his Mom answered. "Where's Todd?" I asked. She stammered for a moment, "Todd died." she said. I felt my heart sink, the world stopped and I was completely floored. Everything after that, kinda blurs together... a lot of crying, a lot of support from the friends in my life at that time and a lot of moping.

His wake and funeral came and went, his birthday (not even a month after his death) came and went... nothing seemed to matter. Over the next few months I put on a fake front that implied I was feeling better and getting things together and I managed to have some decent times during the first year he was gone. I met my future wife, moved into an apartment with her and had some good times with good friends. Long story short, my life fell apart because I was a mess and I've lost nearly all of those friends and really got into a funk with panic and anxiety. If it were not for my wife's patience, understanding and outright faith in me, I wouldn't be writing this today.

I have felt for so many years that it was my fault he died because I wasn't with him. If I had gone with him, he might not have died. The truth is, there was nothing I could have done, I had no way of knowing what would happen. I needed to accept this, and I finally feel I have... it wasn't my fault. There were things going on in his life that nobody (or at least not a lot of people) were aware of. There are things that I know, that nobody else knows and there were likely things other people knew that I didn't. He was a secretive little bastard. Todd had demons that he couldn't easily share, and clearly couldn't deal with... and it's really sad that bad things get ahold of good people and ruin them from the inside out. His end was unfortunate, premature and honestly totally avoidable. If you are reading this and you need help, please tell your family and friends, they will help you, if you let them.

I want to remember the Todd that was one of my best friends. I want to remember all the fun times we had in the short time we knew each other. Everywhere we went, somebody knew him, everybody loved him. He was just about the nicest guy you could ever meet and was always fun to be around.

I miss him dearly. I would like nothing more than to talk with him one more time, to properly say goodbye.

Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger is the G.O.A.T. for me (Greatest Of All-Time). Well, it's actually the G.O.A.T. along with it's sequel, Chrono Cross. They are tied, I just can't pick one over the other. Prepare for some major gushing, this is kind of a review of the game and a retrospective of the game's impact on my life. Chrono Cross will get it's own post because there is just too much to say for one post. Away we go!

The year was 1995, I had just turned ten that summer, my friend is coming over for a sleepover and he has brought something with him: Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo (abbreviated as SNES from this point forward). I was initially kind of not interested to play it, The Legend of Zelda series was as close as I got to RPG and Adventure game fun back in those days, I was more a fan of Fighting games. The music got to me first, Yasunori Mitsuda is the best composer in video games, you're argument is invalid and not accepted, sorry. That guy could score me washing dishes and it would be epic and emotional!

I liked the fact that while it played like a traditional RPG, you could dodge the enemies on screen if you didn't want to fight them, none of this random encounter nonsense! The story and characters. That's why it's stayed my favorite since 1995. There are six playable characters, with one optional playable character, and they are all fleshed out and interesting. The story while using time travel as it's core device to tell said story, is never confusing, it never loses sight of the goal. The goal is defeat the big bad guy and save the world. Everything you do in the game, builds up to that. Congrats Chrono (actually thanks Masato Kato) for making time travel NOT a migraine.

I borrowed my friend's copy for like a month, needless to say he kind of wanted it back. Hey, I was happy to oblige, I'm no game stealer, I just think it's telling that I played it for like a month, I never borrowed anything as a kid. So I got my own copy of the game and played it so freaking much that it was clearly becoming something of an obsession. Hey, at least it was a good obsession, could of been hard drugs or killing people.

It took five long years to get a sequel, but like I said, we'll talk about the equally as beloved (for me anyway) Chrono Cross another time. Chrono Trigger had some very good effects on me, I became genuinely interested in history and how things worked all throughout the history of mankind. I became very interested in time travel, though I've never experienced time travel done as well as it was in Chrono Trigger.

There is a very genuine sadness when it come to this game. That sadness is that there will likely never be another game in the franchise. There was a sequel that was exclusive to Japan called Radical Dreamers, it was a text based game, and of course there was Chrono Cross for the original PlayStation, which received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and most fans and it sold very well. After many years, Chrono Trigger was ported to the Nintendo DS, with a new translation and added content. Again, great reviews and it sold well, but apparently not well enough. In 2009 Square Enix Senior Vice President Shinji Hashimoto said "If people want a sequel, they should buy more!"

Buy more? I've bought every incarnation of the series that was ever officially released, and so have many many others. The Chrono series has made Square Enix a ton of money, is it too much to ask for a freaking sequel? Apparently it is too much.

Let's not end on a sour note. There may be little to no chance of a sequel, but Chrono Trigger and it's proper sequel, Chrono Cross live on! Through fan fiction, fan games, and even fan sites, heck I'd even consider www.chronocompendium.com to be THE Chrono website to go to if you want to explore this franchise in glorious detail. Chrono Cross is available on the original PlayStation and as a digital download for PlayStation 3. Chrono Trigger is available on just about every Sony or Nintendo device available, SNES, PlayStation (as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles collection), PlayStation 3 (as a digital download), Wii Virtual Console, Nintendo DS, Android and iPhone, iPad and I'm sure I'm forgetting a device or two.

So if you haven't experienced this game, I feel legitimately bad for you. As with anything, it's not guaranteed to be a hit with everyone, but it's as close to video game perfection as it gets.

Final Score: 100 out of 100 talking frogs with swords.

Fable III

Spoilers, obviously.

Fable III is an interesting game. Just looking at the fan reaction when the game came out in 2010, I believe, (Yeah, I don't really fact check much, have fun correcting me) was quite... well, interesting. The game was rated very well among a lot of video games websites, but got mixed reactions from fans. Some loved it, some felt like it was "meh" and others hated it. I guess I can kind of see it from the more negative perspective, but I really liked Fable III. Like a lot.

One of the biggest gripes I hear is "the game was too easy!", that's fair, but I like easier games (especially when it comes to adventure games and RPGs) so the difficulty didn't really bother me much. I also heard plenty of folks saying it was too easy to have a "good" alignment, and that there weren't enough "evil" choices in the game. I don't know, I found it pretty darn easy to be evil. In retrospect, I guess I really don't get the negative perspective. Anyway on to more Fable stuff.

So the whole point of Fable III is to start a revolution and save your kingdom from the coming darkness/apocalypse stuff. Your brother, King Logan makes you choose some people to be executed, because he's just a jerk like that, and your mentor, Sir Walter and butler, Jasper lead you on a journey to take down your bro, the king. So long story short, you recruit the help of various towns and villages by making promises to their leaders/respected citizens and eventually you overthrow your bro and claim the Kingdom for yourself, but not before a brief encounter with "the darkness" that promises it's going to come back in exactly one year (?) and destroy your world.

At this point, you get to the best part of the game in my opinion, making decisions where you can keep your promises to those you made promises to, or you can break the promise and be a butt. Anyway, you make your choices, you face the darkness, which turns out to be Walter and that's that. The story is decent, no more, no less.

The gameplay is very simple, as it should be. Nobody wants to go to school for many years to get a degree in how to play the game you've just bought. the x button is melee attack, the y button is ranged attack and the b button is magic attack. Simple. No complaints, moving on.

Graphics are up for debate (well, everything is up for debate) Some were/are upset the game doesn't look more realistic, but I like the fantasy cartoony-ish look to the characters. Though they can sometimes make the most bizarre faces. The sound is spot on, great music, the sound effects never seem off putting. Overall, good job. The game isn't very long, it's not like Elder Scrolls or Final Fantasy where you start playing the game when you're 14 and you finish the game when you're 38. 15-25 hours, depending on how much you like to meander. Personally, I find that preferable to games that require hundreds of hours, which is funny because I've put in hundreds of hours into each of the original three Fable games.

Wrapping up, Fable III has great humor, a great fantasy look, simple gameplay, a decent story, reasonable complete time and great music and sound effects. Why were fans so mixed on this when it came out? I'm not sure. I guess it just wasn't what some people wanted, can't please everyone.

Final Score: 4 chickens out of 5.

Introduction to stuff.

Okay, this probably isn't the best way to start a blog, but I'm going to be honest with you: I have no idea what this is going to be about. Not just this post, but this blog as a whole. My name is Scott and this is where I ramble about stuff, hence the name "Scott's Stuff". I want to talk... er type about things that I enjoy. Comic books (mainly Spider-Man), video games, movies, just kind of whatever I'm currently messing around with. I'd love to say I have some kind of structure, or some kind of plan, but the truth is I just don't. Hopefully not all my posts will be this spacey, but I'm just kind of winging it tonight.

I'm interested in reading and reviewing a bunch of classic Spider-Man comics and I'd also like to review the main series of Mortal Kombat video games. There's a bunch of other things I want to do, but those kind of stick out right now. So pretty much don't expect to learn anything here, but hopefully you will have fun reading my thoughts on some cool classic things. I mean, I'm sure I'll talk about modern stuff too, but right now I'm really getting that retro feeling.

Cool, so next post will be... let's see... ah, I know! A review/rambling about Fable III. Definitely not one of the things I said I was wanting to talk about, also it's a bit weird starting with the third installment in a franchise, but hey I'm currently replaying it. So yeah. Fable III. Next post.