Farewell Edition
Written By: Roger Taylor

I am a gamer. I have been ever since I was born (my older brother bought an Atari 2600 shortly before I was conceived), and I will be until the day I die. I love video games. I love playing them and I love writing about them. I love telling you guys what is worth your money and what stinks; I love telling you about the upcoming games that I am excited about. Unfortunately, life has caught up with me. And between working my ass off at college, working to pay the bills, playing guitar in various bands and spending time with my girlfriend, I just don’t have the time for games anymore. I still like to sneak in a quick game of Donkey Kong Country now and then. And you’d better believe that I will be playing the new Zelda as soon as it comes out. But I am not the hardcore gamer that I once was and it is a sad, but true, fact that you readers could probably tell me more about the current gaming scene than I could tell you. Thus, I am leaving VGF. I had a wonderful time here and I hope all the staff and readers the best of luck in the future. But before I go, I’d like to run through my favorite memories of my time here, both as a reader and a writer:

5. My First Review

Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote my first review here as a member of the staff of Video Gamers First. Actually, the review (of Perfect Dark) was my sample that allowed me to get onto the staff in the first place. It wasn’t a great piece of writing, but it was an honest review, and that has always been the important thing.

4. Create a Wrestler Special

The Create-a-Wrestler special for WWF No Mercy was one of the first things I wrote after joining the staff and it remains perhaps my most unique and well received undertaking. After its first posting I was flooded with emails thanking me for the help and asking about how to make other wrestlers. These emails continued for months.

3. Winning that Free Game!

This is a memory I’m sure is only shared by two or three other people; about three years ago, before I joined the staff, I won a free game in a contest held by Video Game Heaven, the precursor to VGF. The only way to win was to submit an obscene amount of material to VGH’s amazing, still-unmatched interactive section. I crushed the competition, won my free game, and decided that I wanted to write about video games whether there was free stuff at stake or not (incidentally, there was).

2. Imitation of "The List" Concept

Soon after I started writing my "The List" columns, similar pieces began to crop up. Actually, the "Six Reasons for GameCube Success ...or Failure" article that I am thinking of was in the works before the first edition of "The List" was ever posted…but I can pretend. Imitation or coincidence, I still got a warm feeling inside when reading "The 5 Most Surprising Announcements of E3" over at PSGF, a part of me thinking that I somehow inspired a younger generation of video game journalists.

1. When I First Stumbled Across War Department

There was something magic in the air in 1998 at a little site found at http://www.videogameheaven.com. The interactive section of that site featured many great ideas, including various Top Ten Lists, Questions of the Week, and, above all else stood the War Department. The section pitted console fanboys against each other in a battle for supremacy and honor. A simple, but great, idea made better by the fact that the editors handed out points to whatever console you were defending and tallied them up week after week. Nintendo 64 defeated the Playstation in the end, thanks mostly to me, a guy known only as Coolsurferjt, and a few other loyalists. The PSX side was ruthlessly defended, however, by a number of very intelligent debaters, namely a guy known to most as Lurch [Ed: Now working at XGF] (who gained my respect after years of arguing), and also PSX316Rulz and DANMONEY. The last edition was posted August 5, 2000 (around the time that I joined the VGF staff, thus disabling me from arguing anymore), which is appropriate, as Jonas42 (my longtime online name) was pretty much synonymous with War Department for most of its existence. The War Department represented everything that was fresh and original about VGH in its heyday, and the magic of that time has not been recaptured by VGF, I’m sorry to say. All we can do now is sit back and hope that my replacement is a spunky young visionary (like J. Michael Neal over at PSGF) who has the energy to pull VGF out of its current funk.

By the way, I feel I should come clean about this: to anyone who remembers a ridiculously moronic War Department contributor known as legend_the@hotmail.com … well…my friend and I conjured him as a joke. He doesn’t exist. He really was too stupid to be true. [Ed: You can follow this link to see lege...errr...Roger in action.]

Wow. That felt good to get out in the open. I guess that completes the circle that was my experience here at VGH and VGF. I loved every minute of it, and I hope everyone I met here keeps in touch. Maybe someday, if I find the time again, I will return and do what I do best: write about video games. I am a gamer. Goodnight.

Posted: 10-15-02