Trixter

Along with Brian Hirt (whom I've known since 1985 and was best man at my wedding), I'm the co-founder of MobyGames.

I was born in 1971, and I live in Illinois, USA with my wife Melissa, and my sons Sam and Max. No, they weren't named after the Sam and Max game/comic/show, although it is a neat coincidence. Another coincidence is that all of our names have the letter "M". A third coincidence is that all of our names can be entered into any arcade game's high-score table (JIM, MEL, SAM, MAX). Okay, maybe those aren't coincidences...

My day job used to be an internet security engineer, but is now back to my first love (Unix systems administration).

My gaming preferences? I am a sucker for bootable and racing games. I have respect for anyone who attempted to support the Tandy/PCjr sound devices and did a good job.

I am good at several games, but only a few would I consider myself very good at. I can hold my own in the original Mortal Kombat 1 coin-op. I can play Punch-Out on a single quarter until I get bored. As for games I hate, I am quite terrible at real-time strategy games, and sports games don't interest me.

Obviously I love all games, but the arcade games I grew up with (and am particularly good at) are:

• Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out
• Crazy Climber
• Robotron
• Mortal Kombat 1 and 2
• Street Fighter II (the original release, not turbo, hyper, etc.)
• Red Baron
• Cliffhanger (laserdisc)
• Tron
• Sinistar

But my favorite game of all time is Hack. Not Nethack, but the original game it was spawned from, Hack. I don't normally like most other rogue-like games, but Hack was a special case in that it was the first game I ever played on my shiny new IBM clone back in January 1985. Hack surprised me by being free (!) and had a lot of depth that I didn't quite expect. It also taught me VI keystrokes long before I knew what VI was -- maybe that's why VI is my favorite text editor :-)

If you've read this far, you get rewarded with these little nuggets:

• I was one of the founding members of the "Abandonware" concept -- I was also the first site ever shut down by the (then) IDSA in 1997. For the most part, I'm not particularly proud of what I nurtured; it has evolved in directions I never intended.
• I was active in the PC demoscene for some years, and have created video retrospectives of it (and other) demoscenes. Check it out at www.mindcandydvd.com.
• I helped nurture an organized software collecting hobbyist movement, including creating a standard for grading software items.