This is a long story...
When reviews of the Xbox version of Psychonauts appeared, my interest for the game grew. Though the previews before the release made me think it would be an average Platformer. Nevertheless, I kept my eye on it, but thought this game would never triumph my all time favorite Platformer, Mario 64.
As more reviews for Psychonauts popped up with excellent scores, my interest grew even bigger. Then I got my hands with the Official Xbox Magazine demo and was surprised with the gameplay and characters. That there settled it, I HAD to buy the game when I had the money. Well... I never did have enough money to buy it and soon enough my Xbox broke. My fault too since I fist pounded where the DVD drive was because of constant freezes. I should have just opened it and clean the lens.
So at that time Xbox 360 was close at hand, so I decided to save up money for it. I figured why buy an Xbox when I can get an Xbox 360 which would more than likely be backwards compatiblie with Psychonauts. So I got a Xbox 360 (still have it) and had been patiently waiting for Psychonaut to be backwards compatiblie.
Months passed by and I kinda forgot about Psychonauts. Then the latest patch came out and lo and behold! PSYCHONAUTS!
I uploaded the patch and went to find the game. I went to most of my local stores to hunt for the game and after several searches I found the last copy at Best Buy for $30. I quickly nabbed the game and went home to enjoy it. Several days of playing made me completely fall in love with the game. The cast of characters, art direction, gameplay, level design, story and music blended so well together that Mario 64 was dethroned from my all time favorite Platformer game ever!
What an awesome game. This was like 2 months ago by the way. I loved (still do of course) it so much, I did some research on the game and who created it. I knew before hand of a developer called Tim Schafer, but didn't search info on him till my love for Psychonauts.
I read about him online and what people would consider his best game ever created... GRIM FANDANGO.
I thought, if I loved Psychonauts and many claimed Grim Fandango to be his best, why not give it a shot. I went to Ebay to see the bids. Not many listed as its about 10 years old. Though I didn't see any sealed US copies. I'm very picky with games. I will usually never buy game unless its factory sealed. I figured evenutally someday a sealed version would pop up on Ebay.
A few days passed and I was talking to my brother on MSN messanger. Somehow I mentioned Grim Fandango to him while he was on Ebay and he sent me a link to a sealed US copy. Sad thing was that I didn't have Pay Pal, but the seller accepted money orders.
The next day, I create an Ebay account and placed a bid. I HAD to play this game to see what all the fuss was about. Then my brother logged in his MSN (He's from Arkansa and I'm from Texas by the way) and I told him I made an account and bid on that particular Grim Fandango he linked me about. He then offered to bid for me since he had Pay Pal. He would get it and then ship it too me while I'd send him a money order to pay him back. It'd be much quicker this way.
So 2 days later the auction was comming to an end. I told my brother to place the maxium bid of about $31 dollars at the last few seconds. I was nervous and excited as the time came close at hand. My borther had won it! HA! I now had it! My brother won it for me for $28.88. That same day a few minutes later, I took the bus to my local grocery store to get a money order and mail it to my brother.
So as I waited for my bother to get it and then he in turn mail it to me, I figured I'd do some more research in the Adventure genre, to become more familiar with it, since the last Adventure game I had played was Myst for Sega Saturn. I then remembered of an old Adventure game called Maniac Mansion, that a lot of people seemed to mention every now and then through out my life.
I decided I'd try to find a downloadable PC version of it (ARR MATEY! heh... If you know what I mean). This should hold me over till I get my hands on Grim Fandango as well as familiarize myself with this genre. I then performed a search which led me to a link. I got the Deluxe verion and played it. Had fun, but still being new to this genre, some of the puzzles were hard. I got a bit fustrated and looked at a guide towards the end of the game. Thats when I had even more fun becuase I knew where to go next.
During the time, I went to a gaming forum and learned that it wasn't an illegal game download, it was free. I thought that was pretty cool. Eventually I beat the game. I wanted to play another of the same genre, so I went back to the link and went to the Adventure freeware games link option. There was quite a few. One in particularly caught my eye.
A Tale of Two Betrayals had nice art, so I downloaded it and played it. Shame that it was a very short game. I believe this was the first of the point and click Adventure games I had beat without the use of a guide. I ended up beating it and looked at a guide afterwards. Thats when I learned I got the bad ending. Heh.
After that, I downloaded 5 Days A Stranger. That game had me hooked! It took me a little over 5 hours to beat. Every bit of it was captivating. I loved it and went to Yahtzee's home page and found that 5 Days A Stranger was part of a series. I immediately downloaded the remaing three of the series. While looking at his site, I stumbled into a link that lead me to Adventure Game Studio's web page.
I thought "WOW" this site has a lot more free games dedicated to Adventure games than the other site I found Maniac Mansion Deluxe on. For three days, I was downloading the games with scores of 80% and higher (also a few below 80%). Having a modem takes a while to get them downloads, but it was worth it!
I now had downloaded 36 of these games after three days. The next day I finally recieved Grim Fandango! Now I am focusing on beating Grim Fandango. Once I beat it, I have 36 others to keep me busy for a long time! Its kind of nice being new to this genre and having found this site because right now I have a lot of gaming ahead of me to catch up. Its like I found a treasure!
All this would have never happened if it weren't for Psychonauts. I will never forget how this game opened a new world of gaming to me. Also, I thank the community for these games, without them we'd have no such site.
