EPTHello teamliquid.net! If you haven't seen me around; I'm mG.Pokebunny, a 14 year old New Yorker with a big StarCraft dream. I'm one of the leaders of the ICCup team mG. , or Mannered Gaming, a somewhat teamliquid-based team of mostly North American players that has been around about a year and a half (including it's two predecessors). I started StarCraft at a very young age, as you're about to find out, and I have loved StarCraft for a large majority of my life. This series of blogs will take you through my StarCraft life and story, which I consider pretty unique. I've had a ton of fun with this game and it has become a huge part of my life, and with SC2 slowly taking over I felt it time to recap SC1. With no further ado, here begins my story
- If you don't care to read it, fine - just please don't make retarded comments without reading...[1999-2005] Part 1 - Sitting and Staring
Yeah, by now you may be thinking - "This kid is only 14, he's barely been around as long as StarCraft. How can he have such a story?" As ridiculous as it might seem, my StarCraft experience dates back to 1999 - yep, I was only four years old.
My dad has always been a computer lover. Since the beginning of computers (afaik), he has always been interested in games, hardware, and everything computers. As a WarCraft 2 lover, it was no surprise that he picked up Blizzard's next RTS release(s) - StarCraft and its expansion, Brood War. As he dove into this new game, I sat by his side - watching for hours at a time, just sitting and staring at all the units. Eventually, as he progressed in the campaign and fooled around in single-player, I began to understand the units, buildings, and storylines of StarCraft. Utterly fascinated by the game, I started to become interested in myself playing the game - probably around age 5. That year, I also dressed up as a Protoss Zealot for Halloween, with a mostly hand-made costume thanks to my mother. However, as a good mother should, my mom refused to let me just play a (then) M-rated RTS as a mere kindergartener. So, all I did for another long while was continue to sit and stare. I also got interested in messing around with the campaign editor - flinging heroes and units on giant maps and imagining what would happen if they battled. My fascination with StarCraft was still just that - an interest that couldn't be fully experienced yet, but I was content to watch from afar.
As the years went on, I slowly gravitated closer and closer to actually playing the game. At first, I would just watch the two armies of computerized units hack, slash, and fire at each other. Soon enough, I was enthralled in managing the game for myself - setting up huge enemy bases on large swabs of terrain for myself to destroy. I played around with the campaign a bit as well, diving into the first couple missions... although when I was 6, I had a nightmare about Jim Raynor being eaten by Zerglings after dying in Terran Mission 1 - I didn't go near that mission for another couple of years. Around the same age, me and my dad built a nexus made out of sand at the beach, just because I was bored. I still remember it to this day, although I don't believe any photos exist. When I was 7, I was playing a game against myself, running back and forth between the family computer and my dad's personal computer in his office. I asked my 5-year-old brother to take the controls for my dad's side as I thought it would be interesting - I defeated my brother TvP on a map with no expansions and just a bunch of scattered mineral fields near your main. My parents, however, woke up during the skirmish - and while they were upset that I had let my brother play the game, they agreed that it was okay for him to play - to an extent, of course. There were periods of time during my elementary where I would wake up at 6 AM (with my precise internal clock), an hour and a half before I needed to get up for school, just to FFA with comps on some oldschool Blizzmaps. At some point around this (7-8 years old) I had played enough to stomp my dad in a couple 1v1s, using different races. Throughout my elementary years I mostly played Zerg in single-player, over LAN with my dad, brother, and best friend - I was still oblivious to the battle.net world. To stop me from playing too much StarCraft, my parents made "tickets" - I got a certain # of 15-minute tickets per week that I could use when I wanted to play. This was only necessary for spurts of time where I was playing a particularly large amount - overall, my SC playing was very off and on. When I was 8-9 I used to imagine there being StarCraft tournaments like Chess tournaments - I was a competitive chess player for a few years and always imagined a competition with rows of rated players lined up at tables duking it out in a few fun rounds of StarCraft. The stories go on and on, as you can see - call me a StarCraft addicted child, but really, the fun had not yet truly begun.
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