Trixie360 Interviews Jake8bitJoystik

Published July 1, 2009

He's a video game blogger for a major newspaper, and has been playing games since the days of ColecoVision. Give a shout out to Jake8bitJoystik!

trixie360: What's the story behind your Gamertag?

Jake8bitJoystik: I run 8bitjoystick.com and wanted the Gamertag "8bitjoystick" but you can't start a Gamertag with a number, and I ran out of letters and had to take out the C. Oh well. I asked The BIGVIP about it but it is hard coded in Xbox LIVE®.

trixie360: Numbers are the devil. Where do you live?

Jake8bitJoystik: I live in Bremerton, Washington across from Seattle on the other side of the Puget Sound. Xbox LIVE helps me stay in touch with my friends in Seattle and around the world.

trixie360: What do you do for work/school?

Jake8bitJoystik: I write and edit software technical manuals for a living but I blog about video games at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website and 8bitjoystick.com as a pretty serious hobby. I've been running 8bitjoystick for seven years now. I want to try and cover local video game companies in the Pacific Northwest since we have always had quite a game development scene here. I love how Seattle culture and nerd culture overlap. I use Xbox LIVE to connect with my readers and having a link to my Xbox LIVE account lets them send me messages over LIVE. However, readers will check out your achievements and keep your ego in check.

trixie360: Yes we can, and you phoned it in on Guitar Hero® Metallica®. What's the worst or weirdest job you've ever had?

Jake8bitJoystik: My weirdest job, I was a laser light show designer and I spent a lot of time alone in the dark with pulsating lasers.

trixie360: Creepy. How long have you been on Xbox LIVE?

Jake8bitJoystik: Since I first heard about fighting games like Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO on the original Xbox. The idea of being able to connect to someone to play an arcade game against them was just too much to pass up. Xbox LIVE is a global arcade that is open 24/7.

trixie360: Do you have an archenemy on Xbox LIVE, and if so, who?

Jake8bitJoystik: My friend Noah and I have been playing videogames together for over a decade and he has surpassed my Gamerscore despite me getting an Xbox 360 first. When you review games, you never have enough time to play a game and get all the Achievements you want before having to write your article and move to the next. Noah will sit and play a game for as long as he wants while I will jump from game to game to keep working on the next review.

trixie360: What's your Xbox setup like? Big-screen TV? Surround sound?

Jake8bitJoystik: I have a nice old metal desk that reminds me of the one my school teachers had, and I play on my Samsung T260 widescreen 1080P monitor via HDMI. It is the same monitor I use for my computer and I just hit a switch to go over to Xbox. If you have a spare input port on your computer monitor, the Xbox 360 makes one heck of a fun computer accessory. I like to keep my gaming on video game consoles and use my PC for work. Besides, I have a Mac Mini (with Windows 7 via Boot Camp) and so I can't play a lot of PC games due to the graphics chips. I have a set of Tritton AX Pro 5.1 surround sound headphones. I also have a D-link DNS-323 Network Storage device with 2TB of storage on the network. I have a lot of digital movies, TV shows, and music on it, and I use my Xbox 360 as digital media player instead of watching normal TV. The Xbox 360 makes me feel like I am living the future of digital media, TV, and games NOW!

trixie360: Take a breath. What's the best feature of Xbox LIVE?

Jake8bitJoystik: Having real friends on your friends list can't be topped. My pal Noah lives over in Seattle and I live in Bremerton so it can be hard for us to get together on the same couch without an hour ferry boat ride, so Xbox LIVE helps us get together online during the week. I'll call him up and schedule a time for us to both be online and throw it down.

trixie360: What do you think is the best game of all time?

Jake8bitJoystik: The original Donkey Kong arcade game pretty much changed my life I begged my folks for the ColecoVision version. All modern gamers should see King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters. I am in awe of both Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe.

trixie360: Rock Band or Guitar Hero?

Jake8bitJoystik: As a singer, I love Rock Band 2 and I love The Beatles and am counting down the days until LEGO® Rock Band and The Beatles: Rock Band. I do like Guitar Hero: Metallica and find it a good way to work out frustrations by singing online.

trixie360: What's the funniest thing you've ever heard on Xbox LIVE?

Jake8bitJoystik: I was playing Rock Band co-op with a drummer over LIVE, and he actually snapped his drum pedal in half by rocking too hard. We didn't finish the set list but it was one of the most metal things ever!

trixie360: Caution: Rocking too hard may result in peripheral damage. What is your greatest Xbox LIVE moment?

Jake8bitJoystik: My friend Evilninja and I were playing Halo® 3 back after it first launched. He was guarding the flag, and I drove around the corner on a Mongoose at full speed and completely splattered him. I then rendered out a screenshot of the moment from a saved film and added the LOLCat caption ?OH HAI! I GOT U THIS MONG00SE!!? and then emailed it to him. It has been my desktop pattern to this day. More games need screen shot export tools.

trixie360: Who is your inner rock star?

Jake8bitJoystik: I am my inner rock star. If you go to Wikipedia and look up "Rock Band 2," you will find a photo of me rocking out at Penny Arcade Expo. I also used to be a play by play MC for Women's Roller Derby.

trixie360: If they made a movie about your life, who should play you?

Jake8bitJoystik: I would love to see Wil Wheaton play me in a movie. I have a photo of me seeing him at PAX.

trixie360: Were you all alone while pulsing a laser? Never mind, what's your karaoke song?

Jake8bitJoystik: You just can't beat Foreigner's "Eye of the Tiger." I know GHWT got Stan Bush's "The Touch," and the first game to get Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" will be the greatest music game ever.

trixie360: What superpower would you like to have?

Jake8bitJoystik: I want the psychic abilities to make spammers automatically reconsider what they are doing with their lives and go do something productive for humanity.

trixe360: If you could trade places with anyone for one day, who would it be?

Jake8bitJoystik: If I could be President Obama for a day, I would make some very memorable executive orders, request some landmark legislation from Congress, and do what I can to change things for the better but without his timing and tact. Angry Barry is my favorite Xbox Community Game.

trixie360: Build me a monument. What celebrity would be the worst roommate?

Jake8bitJoystik: I don't know who would be worse, Courtney Love or Jabba the Hutt. Actually now that I think about it, Jabba the Hutt would be pretty cool to bunk with.

trixie360: How many people are on your Friends List?

Jake8bitJoystik: Over 50 last time I counted. I like to add readers that send me friend requests, but I feel bad when dropping people from the list. I wish that you could turn off "USERX Signed on" pop up notices but keep all other pop up notices.

trixie360: Hot celeb you'd like to be stranded on a desert island with?

Jake8bitJoystik: The Mythbusters. If I were stuck on an island with them, I doubt we would be stranded there for very long.

trixie360: That is simultaneously the best and worst answer ever. If you could be any video game character, who would it be?

Jake8bitJoystik: My hero in Fable® II is living large, but it would be bad to have people try and kill you all the time.

trixie360: What's the worst food you've ever eaten?

Jake8bitJoystik: I love Thai food, but I can't stand the smell of pure fish sauce.

trixie360: What's the first video game you ever played?

Jake8bitJoystik: It was either Donkey Kong Jr. on ColecoVision, or PAC-MAN on the Atari 2600.

trixie360: What's the last book you read?

Jake8bitJoystik: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. It is a great creative book and a very creepy audio book.

trixie360: If you could go on tour with any band, which would it be?

Jake8bitJoystik: It would be cool to go on tour with Daft Punk and find out if they actually are robots.

trixie360: I've often wondered much the same thing of the Gorillaz. What do you predict will be the "next big thing" in gaming?

Jake8bitJoystik: We have seen more change in how we interact with video games in the past five years than the two decades of video games before it. I am excited by an increased vocabulary of how we humans can interact with video games and the Internet. I can't even imagine what kind of games we will be playing after creative developers have had their chance to make games with the Project Natal camera. I wonder how long we are going to still be calling video games "games." I think it is really exciting how Microsoft is continually working on expanding and redesigning how we can use the Xbox.

trixie360: What do you think is the best thing about Xbox 360?

Jake8bitJoystik: The cross-game player chat with an actual friend is pretty tough to beat. I have other game systems, but I miss this from other systems to the point that I prefer the Xbox, because that is the system my friends are on and I can hook up with them while gaming. It totally turns the idea of video games being a solitary activity on its head. I love how Xbox 360 can actually bring people together.

trixie360: What is the Xbox 360 Achievement that was hardest to get?

Jake8bitJoystik: It is the one that I feel the worst about. When I first got my Xbox 360, the first Achievement I really tried to get was Bloodlines in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I just could not beat Dracula without getting hit. So I told Noah about it while first showing off my console, and he just did it on his first try without breaking a sweat and got me the Achievement.

trixie360: What would you like to be doing in ten years?

Jake8bitJoystik: I would like to still be blogging and playing games and hopefully will finally have enough time to do both well enough.

Interview by TriXie