Okay, so it's not technically Summer yet, but we're gettin' close to it. And I'm not in school right now.
However, I wanna reflect on something. I wanna reflect on a memorable summer vacation.
The summer of '01. As in June to August 2001.
My freshmen year of high school ended, and I couldn't be happier. (Gee, I wonder why.) During this summer, I had the house to myself whenever my parents were at work. And I had a computer with the internet. You know what this leads to, right?
"Internet porn? Bow chicka bow wow!" "Shut the fuck up, Tucker!"
Basically, it was this summer that I became an internet junkie. Granted, I have had the internet since 1997, but before the summer of '01, I only used the internet to go to the official Nintendo website, and Pokemon fansites. Real original, huh?
This changed. I started going to other places. I looked up games other than Pokemon. I looked up stuff in general other than Nintendo games. Sure, this was back when I had dialup, and not cable like I do now, and this was before the age of blogs, youtube, I wouldn't discover Homestarruner until late 2003, and I wouldn't start going to messageboards until early 2006, but, in 2001, I did watch a lot of (crappy) flash movies. You know what the best Flash movie I saw was? A parody of Counter-Strike for Half-Life, making fun of when one of the maps featured an APC for the Counter-Terrorist side. It was the height of Flash animation at the time, and even now, I still think it was awesome.
This was also the last time in my life I ever attempted to play games online. By the start of my sophomore year, I vowed never to play online again, for reasons too many to list. I remember this, for I made this declaration just before September 11, 2001.
It was also this summer that, after extensive research, I decided to buy a Sega Dreamcast. With Sonic Adventure. That game was like no other. True, it may not be my favorite Sonic game, (that would be Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the Genesis.) But playing SA for the first time made that summer real memorable.
Also, I rented and played through the last great N64 game ever made (in my opinion): Paper Mario. It's my favorite Mario game for the N64! It was easy as pie, but a whole lotta buncha fun.
I also listened to fan-made MIDIs of videogame music. This, being an era when I had dialup, meant I couldn't download much music, but since MIDI files are so small, I could play them off the website. I heard some awesome MIDIs of Sonic music and Megaman music. That was fun.
It was then I became a web junkie. And I haven't kicked the habit since. Stay here while I go watch a video of someone saying "IT'S OVER NINE-THOUSAND!" "THIS IS SPARTA!" and "All your base our belong to us." all at once. Oh, also, people were saying AYBABTU back in 2001.
P.S. Yes, I made a reference to Red Vs. Blue a moment ago. We didn't have RvB back then, but we did have people making stupid jokes about the sniper class from Team Fortress Classic back then.
