I haven't spoken to anyone from Desf proper in over a decade though, except Zeronova who was my friend in real life.

I think that was the tournament we lost to #CP# and Isolder bet Pallor a pair of her used underwear that we would win. I forget what he wagered. We had some weird cats in that clan haha.

I would say for most of us (not all, or course) our golden gaming days revolved around whatever we had available to us in High School and College, when we didn't have families and other obligations like work and bills blah blah blah.

Goodness did I ever play a lot of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Combat, & pinball (Twilight Zone I'm looking @ you). The bragging rights that came with getting your name on the high scores list on a machine... so much fun. So many quarters... so so so many quarters. :)

I still take the train down to Japan town with 2 or 3 bucks in quarters every so often. Play at the arcade, eat dinner, then go home. It's still a great time even though school is a distant memory.

So, in conclusion... Are there any other "aging" (I hate to use the term at 30, but in competitive video game years that is ancient) Bungie gamers who also look back fondly towards their youth?

I turn 30 this year. Right now I'm only looking back to learn where not to go moving ahead. The fact that I am completely outclassed nowadays when it comes to something like speedrunning is not necessarily a bad thing. I just discovered that overall, it's just not that rewarding of an activity at a high level. You DO have to put in crazy amounts of time, when man, there's so much better stuff to do with your time that you'll thank yourself for doing when you are 90, or else will flash before your eyes before you die at 35.

(With MCC and Halo 5 especially), I see SO MANY people thinking about the past and wanting to move backwards instead of moving forward and embracing change and the new experiences it brings. The worst thing is to live wishing for the past instead of being excited about the present and the future. The day I'd rather be in yesterday instead of tomorrow or today is the day my life would essentially be over.

I had some fun times, but those are behind and not coming back. Instead, different and better ones lie ahead.

Goodness did I ever play a lot of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Combat, & pinball (Twilight Zone I'm looking @ you). The bragging rights that came with getting your name on the high scores list on a machine... so much fun. So many quarters... so so so many quarters. :)

So, you would say that you are for the idea of pay-to-play aye? ;-)

Certainly not! In some ways it was much better when I was finally able to own those games on a snes (still working on acquiring a good pinball machine), although something was certainly lost with the final death of the arcades in the 90s. Watching other random people (IRL) and then, if you thought you could beat them, challenging them by placing your quarter on the glass... having a group of guys huddled around a cabinet where a couple really good players were fighting it out, the public cheers. There was just something to it. Tho' my pocket book was very grateful to purchase the cart when it was released :).

Found a tournament page that shows the names and symbols for my most prominent clan. The images are what really bring back the memories (Even if I was't in that particular tournament).

I never kept up with those guys after Myth. The next Bungie game was years upon years away, on a different platform, with no multiplayer. By the time I realized I might want to play with them again all of our earthlink/aol/hotmail addresses were expired.

I wonder if any of them come around here?

I heard the words that had never been spoken and would never be spoken again, "Damn, Kermit! You got mad skillz!"

I lol'd

I sometimes brag that I was competitive in Halo 2 for about a week. Really, though, if you play 4,000 games you're bound to accidentally own now and then. One match in particular was on Midship. The rest of my team quit so you might say I had a target-rich environment. I knew where all the sticky grenades were and kept myself stocked, and then used them very effectively. It helped that the other team kept bunching up on the ramps. This was back when everyone used their mics. In the lobby afterwards I heard the words that had never been spoken and would never be spoken again, "Damn, Kermit! You got mad skillz!"

Ah yes, the Dwarven Elite Strike Force :)
We only did slightly better than you in that tournament. We were always small and never did well either.

And yes, you are correct Voodoo used some kind of character combination for the d in his name that I can't quite recall what it was.

Desf was never really much of a threat in team tournament play either. We were just 7 or 8 punk kids of a WIDE range of skill and ability.

I remember in one tournament we gave a single wight to who I am going to politely call our worst player (and that is probably a generous way to put it). His mission was to focus completely on doing something useful with that wight. He ended up accidentally detonating it in a pool of water far from any enemy.

Myth TFL is probably one of the top 5, maybe top 3 best games ever made, and the multiplayer element was just wonderful. It was so perfect in part due to its flaws and its physics. "Cheating" was hard and required real skill, CB, CL, people who "cheated" were pros.

While I do think the athletic part of reflex does begin its inexorable decline, what does set in is experience, I don't know if that weights for "professional" playing. I don't pretend to be anything but an average / below average player, I do find that knowing the maps, getting people to follow you, the poker part of multiplayer I feel gives an edge to more experienced players.

Finally, you're 30 -- punk.

I believe I would be most recognized as:
Gandalf <KoA>
Which was my longest running clan.

I wish I could remember my actual ID... I think it was gandalfjrr, but I'm not sure.

I just tried to find some sort of record of my screen name in via google, but after a few minutes I failed. That's sad... Or good, depending on how much of what I left online was utter stupid.

Edit: Apparently I did adopt the name "Earendil" in Myth. I found a tournament record (Fields of Carnage) with my login and that name. Seems I only placed 60th in it though. I'm about to spend way too much time using google to dig up nostalgia.

Your glory days aren't behind you, good sir. Not by a long shot. You're just playing with a different purpose these days.

Goodness did I ever play a lot of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Combat, & pinball (Twilight Zone I'm looking @ you). The bragging rights that came with getting your name on the high scores list on a machine... so much fun. So many quarters... so so so many quarters. :)

So, you would say that you are for the idea of pay-to-play aye? ;-)

I too, am of the prestigious age of 30. I too, grew up with Myth:TFL and to a greater extent Myth:SB as my gaming career highlight. My clan (which I shall call all gaming groups from here to eternity) only ever did okay. We entered a few, held our ground against the first or second team, and eventually fell without notice.

What makes it the height of my gaming career was FFA, particularly KotH, CTF, and to a lesser extent LmotH. If the map was Proving Grounds, I couldn't be stopped, averaging 2 armies wiped per game. One of my best matches was finishing a KotH FFA game with the equivalent of 3.5 armies destroyed, and there were only 5 other armies. At my height, I made it to top 100 in KotH, and I did it playing 4-6 person FFA games, not that pansy 1v1 shit that players used to get to the top :)

I had a knack for predicting where players would go, what they would do. I could scout an area, see a single unit, and know what all was there and what they were likely to do. I could watch team percentages drop and know exactly what they had lost. I could goad and lure almost anyone to precisely where I wanted them. I wish mics were standard back then so I could hear them realize what was about to happen to them. I can't do any of that any more.

In the last few years I got into DOTA2 with my house mates. I used to play DOTA in College, back when it was a WC3 add on. With DOTA 2, even though I had a "team", it was obvious that I was not as sharp or as trained as my Myth days. I couldn't predict players so easily, I couldn't out maneuver them. Perhaps this is an advancement average player skill level over the years. No one (at least I hadn't) played a game like Myth before, it was new ground to master. Now popular games are more or less modifications of existing games and ideas. There are a lot more gamers, who have spent a lot more time, and they done it on games that are rather similar to the current stock.

I lost 3-2 in the finals to My Modem Is on Fire, for any vets who remember those people).

Yep, I know that name :)

In Myth 2, the biggest tournament close to the games launch was Trial by Combat. I managed to finish as a first alternate for the finals (7th place), barely missing the top 6 and entry to the final round.

I finished 2nd out of 6 in my semifinal bracket, just behind eventual tournament winner Voodoo.

I remember VooDoo as well, but it wasn't spelled that way? If I recall that was back when symbols were allowed in names, so many didn't stick to the strict 26 character alphabet.

So, in conclusion... Are there any other "aging" (I hate to use the term at 30, but in competitive video game years that is ancient) Bungie gamers who also look back fondly towards their youth? Are there any others who recall devastating defeats that left bitter tastes in their mouths? Any particularly thrilling victories that sent your adrenaline surging?

I'm aging, I'm not as good, but I also think that my "skills" don't translate so well to the games I play today. I'm not an aggressive player, which served me well in Myth FFA, but not so much in Halo. I pull in a positive KD spread in Destiny, but I end with 10-15 kills. The 10 kills without dying in Iron Banner was a pain for me to get :)

I don't think I had many devastating defeats, probably because I was never that good, such that a lose was a blow to my hopes and dreams. But Myth certainly provided some of the best wins of my gaming career. I should see if I have any of those old films still, and if I own software or a machine that will even play them...

Oh to find another game like Myth, instead of the FPS, RPG, and RTS games that I like to play today. Of course, I don't think I'd want to know that I'm no longer good at Myth :)

I would say for most of us (not all, or course) our golden gaming days revolved around whatever we had available to us in High School and College, when we didn't have families and other obligations like work and bills blah blah blah.

Goodness did I ever play a lot of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Combat, & pinball (Twilight Zone I'm looking @ you). The bragging rights that came with getting your name on the high scores list on a machine... so much fun. So many quarters... so so so many quarters. :)