Hello, beautiful indie people
My name is Janio, Brazilian, 36 years old in this lifetime.
Before I even knew what a video game was, I was already attracted to the concept. Before I even touched a joystick, on the newsstand, when my grandfather told me to choose what I wanted, I chose a gaming magazine. Playing with broken joysticks that had been thrown in the trash by some neighbor, pretending to be playing some game, or flying a jet, I watched the advertisements of video games on TV as a distant desire, but I had fun.
I don't remember for sure if the first game I've played was Freedom Fighters (a shmup game in which the player had to rescue humans trapped in crystals, floating in space, bizarre but fascinating) in the Magnavox Odyssey 2 of a friend, in another city, or if it was the first disastrous attempt with Super Mario Bros. 3 in a clone of NES, in the building where my grandfather lived. I was fascinated by the games.
Then I played NES in the house of friends, or SNES in the rental companies that existed in that time, paying by game hour. The first video game I owned was a Master System, at age 13, with Sonic in its memory. What I really wanted back then was a Mega Drive (Genesis), but it was very expensive. I played all MS games I found in my area, some of them left me stunned, like Outrun Europa, practically a GTA of the time. Sega was very well represented in the country by Tec Toy, which invested heavily in marketing, including creating licensed games that were released only in Brazil and today are rarities for collectors.
A game that I hold very dearly to this day is Phantasy Star. It changed my way of seeing the games, both with their narrative and with their first-person view of the mazes and battles, in a completely different style than anything I had ever seen. In addition, it was translated into my native language, so I understood what was happening, what was written on the screen, which was a very rare thing!
Just two or three years later (which seemed very long for an teenager), when I started working in a supermarket, I bought a Nintendo 64. Leaving Master System for an N64 was a huge change, both of quality (and why not, of realism) and of paradigms. Because of the console, I was very much a fan of Rare-Ultimate. I love Perfect Dark, I love Conker's Bad Fur Day, I love Banjo-Kazooie. I discovered my favorite game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and also my favorite series. I played a lot of multiplayer with friends on the N64.
After that I bought my computer, playing a lot, and updating myself with everything I had missed, then I also got the new consoles, including portables. Today I still play on the PC, PS4 and Switch. Today I can say that, aside from some game releases in recent months, I've played virtually everything I was interested in, for all the major consoles already released. I have known all the games that are praised, which are famous, unknown, or cult, finishing most of them.
Other games I love are Last of Us, Witcher, Portal, Journey, Mass Effect, Yakuza, Uncharted... I used to like Street Fighter (and fighting games in general), to date, with SF5, not so much ... But I will stop here.
Thanks in large part to the games, I learned the English language, and also became interested in programming and chose to study it at university, which is ultimately the reason for my job, providing my livelihood and my family's.
I have created a lot of small games, but that are known only by our friends. Together with a friend, we created an engine of 2D games using the Java language back in 2006.
I am also a completely amateur guitar player and musician.
Uh, I have made a mobile online RPG using augmented reality and GPS back in 2013, as my graduation thesis/work, before Pokémon Go was out, not that it means a lot. Check out the photos below:
Soon after my graduation, started to wrote a book, in a way philosophical and profound, addressing Spiritism and moral issues, which is now awaiting evaluation for publication.
Working as a programmer in a software company for strategic management, which is reasonably well recognized in its field in Latin America, more than half of the clients are hospitals. But I'm kinda bored, and trying to become an independent game developer, finally, and have my livelihood creating games. I'm trying to develop unique games, which I'd like to play and that also bring meaning.
In the technical part, I program in several languages, using several frameworks and several databases etc etc. I've done some small 3D games, used Unity, and currently GameMaker Studio 2 and venturing into the world of pixel art, as you can see from my little avatar.
I'm excited to be part of the Indie community!
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