Introductions all around

After three and a half years of dumping the scrambled video game-related contents of my brain onto a page on GameSpot, I've decided it's high time I strike out on my own.  I've been linking my blog to a couple different sites and it recently occurred to me that people who aren't GameSpot members might want to throw their two cents in on occasion.  That, the continued lack of attention paid to some well-known and ridiculous site issues, and some downright bizarre auto-censoring have finally convinced me to start doing this thing in a semi-independent manner.

Now, as the great Austin Powers once said, "Please allow myself to introduce...myself."

Who am I?
As of this very moment, I'm a 31 year old career underachiever who schleps appliances around for a major retailer.  I'm married to an unbelievable woman who puts up with this nasty video game addiction I have and somehow maintains a smile.  We live in a small-ish Illinois town with our three cats and my fairly sizable video game collection.  I seem to have a knack for this using-the-English-language thing, so it seemed like a good idea to combine my powers for something that could be construed as constructive instead of just drooling down the front of my t-shirt while spraying pixelated lead.

Why am I here?
I'm an opinionated bastard.  I like video games.  I like to write.  That about sums it up.

What will you see here?
I have several ideas as far as what I'm going to do with this blog.  Here are some of the preliminary ideas for features.

Monthly reviews-My month-in-review updates will continue here just as they have on GameSpot for the last year.  They're generally a recap of what I've picked up, what I've finished, and what I'm going to do for the next month.  December's will run on GameSpot, but starting with January they'll be here.

Mailbag-Providing anyone actually reads this, I'll do a mailbag type of thing where I'll answer any questions (or a sampling of such, should it get too large...yeah) I get over the course of a to-be-determined period of time.  If you want to get a jump on that, direct your email to derrol.gamehorde@gmail.com.

Mini-Reviews-Many of the games I play are older and/or have been reviewed to death.  The last thing this world needs is another knucklehead waxing poetic on the virtues of Pac-Man.  Instead, I'll condense my impression of a game down to a paragraph and a letter grade (did I mention I was married to a teacher?).

Other random postings-The rest of it will most likely consist of stories, op-ed type pieces, and whatever else crosses my mind that I deem noteworthy.  There will also be a lot of items reposted from my original GameSpot blog, just for continuity's sake.  You have input on this too...if there's something you want to see, drop a line at that email address I mentioned before.

Now, it could be argued that calling one person "The Game Horde" is a bit presumptuous.  And you'd be correct.  Consider me ambitious, but I'm thinking that, should this take off, there may be another writer or two appearing at some point.  You never know.

We'll kick this thing off some time during the first week of January with my 2009 year in review.  Until then, I'm off to go try to figure out Photoshop...this place needs some decoration.  Until next time...