Another time when gaming screwed me...and not in a good way

NOTE: I posted this on 1up and felt that it really needed to have a home here as well.

I have to rewind the clock twenty years, when I was 15 years old.

Back in 1990, gamers were not looked at the same as they are today. In high school, if you told someone you were heavy into gaming, they would look at you like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds and yell in a deep voice, "nerds!" So, to be a gamer you either kept yourself in the proverbial gaming closet or you stuck with the other geeks and enjoyed your dateless evenings with your Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

One day, I was playing Dungeon Explorer on TurboGraffix-16 and was just playing around when I walked up after the King left and sat on his throne. Right then, as some of you may know, I was treated with a special alternate ending. I had found a trick that I never read in any of the magazines - us geeks followed them all. I told my friends, they thought it was cool but there was no Internet to share my find so I more or less just forgot about it.

Later that year, I was hired by FCI to be a game counselor and that happened to be the same office as EGM. I became friends with some of the EGM guys and we would talk gaming. In high school, as a geek, this was it - the top tier of nerddom. I shared my trick with them and they said they wanted to print it. I would finally get some gaming cred. My name was going to be printed in EGM. I was going to get the free game. Those who didn't believe that I worked there would see the truth. My name would have been in lights.

I sat down with Martin Alessi and Ed Semrad and we went over exactly what had to be done. All I had to do was wait. One of the best perks of working there was I got copies of EGM way before they went to print. My issue had come out. I found it sitting in the office and turned to the tips section. There was my tip but not my name. WTF! Martin came in later that afternoon and told me that Steve Harris, EGM's publisher at the time who had retaken the reigns this year, said since I worked there I didn't get my game of choice or to have my name printed. I didn't work technically for EGM, I worked for FCI - the cheap bastard just didn't want to give me my game. That was fine, I didn't care much about the game...I wanted the credit. But still, a no go.

In the end, none of my geek friends still believed that I worked at EGM and hopefully lots of TG-16ers got to enjoy my trick that I never got credit for. I moved on. Steve Harris, now that you are back in charge of EGM, you still owe me a game damnit!!!