Member of the Month December 2015 (LordChabelo13)

December...a cold bleak month which brings us the final days of the year... there is not much I like about the cold. December also marks the last of the holidays before we gear up an do this whole crazy cycle all over again, but the holidays are weird aren't they? They bring us back together with family and friends and hey maybe we make some new ones as well. To me December means all this and more after all it's not all about endings. Like for instance here at GTN the first of December means a new member of the month! This means we get to know more about one of our resident Star Wars fanatics, and his life long journey into greatness. Whether he's a dark lord or not we'll find out (somehow I don't think he's all that bad though) although there is that whole PS4 thing....



Name:
Sergio

Where do you live?
I'm from San Antonio, TX. But I am originally from Torreón, Coahulia, which is a large city in the North Central part of Mexico.about two hours West of Monterrey, in a state that borders Texas.

What do you do for a living?
I'm a software engineer for a large government contractor, I basically design, write, integrate and troubleshoot software for automatic testing systems.

Tell me about your Gamertag?
LordChabelo13
My gamertag is a mix of my love for Star Wars, specifically the Sith, hence the Lord, and one of my nicknames. Chabelo is a nickname I've had forever, pretty much everyone I knew back home (in Mexico) called me that, to this day the people I still talk to from Mexico still call me that. The nickname comes from a Mexican kids TV show where the host is a grown man acting and dressing like a child and the character's name is Chabelo, which means big kid. When I was in 5th grade I was already 6 ft tall and I was literary a big kid and the nickname just stuck. Back in the original Xbox days I had the gamertag LordChabelo, but I lost access to it so I had to add something to it for the 360.


When did you start playing?
I can't remember when I started playing, I know that one of my uncles had the Colecovision and I played Pong with him on that. My parent's bought me an Atari 2600 and I had Pac-Man and Joust for it, but getting games in Mexico, pre-Free Trade Agreement was a monumental task so that was about all I played on that console. I played the occasional arcade game, but nothing serious.

One summer one of my cousins from L.A. visited us and he brought his NES with him. My cousin ended up giving me his NES, without any games, but just playing the original Super Mario Brothers got me hooked. After that summer I would save up all my money to buy games during my family's semi annual vacations to my grandma's house in the USA (El Paso, TX) during the summer and Holidays and bring them back to Mexico with me. My youngest uncle also shared my passion for video games and he and I spent lots of time playing games like the Ninja Gaidens, Rampage, NARC, the Zeldas, and the Marios,

I continued gaming through the next generation and ended up with both the Sega Genesis and SNES. I must have beaten A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, Sonic and Top Gear hundreds of times. The Mexican economy took a nose dive around that time (the Peso went from a 2 to 1 exchange rate with the Dollar to a 10 to 1 in about 5 days) and my interests broadened to music as well. I could only afford to buy a CD stereo or one console. My friends had the N64 and my uncles had the PS One so I stupidly chose the stereo, but I did play a lot of good games from that generation (Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Majoras Mask, Mario Kart 64, Donkey Kong, GoldenEye, Final Fantasy VII and VIII, Resident Evil 1 and 2, Parasite Eve, Gran Turismo 2, Metal Gear)

Once I entered college in the US, I got wrapped up in the hype around the PS2 release mostly because at the time it was one of the cheapest DVD players you could buy. I showed up to a Wal-Mart on whim right before midnight and ended up with one of the three release PS2 consoles they received (they had only one other person waiting in line). The PS2 was mostly used as a DVD player since I was focusing more on my studies, and work because I was paying my way through college. My last semester as an undergrad I got senioritis and went through Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City and got hooked on gaming again. My uncle bought the GameCube and I bought the Xbox and we would trade consoles for weeks at a time. That's how I went through both KOTOR games, Smash Bros and the remastered Zelda games.

My PS2 died around the time GTA San Andreas was coming out, so I decided to wait it out until the PS2 exclusivity ran out and I could get it on the Xbox and I also went through every Star Wars game I could get my hands on. When Halo 3 came out I got the 360 and got hooked on the achievements. I still got the PS3 and Wii later on, but all the multi-platform games I get are for the Xbox systems now, I only get exclusives for the other systems

What's your play style? Ex: booster? Completionist? How often and long do you play?
I was a completionist, and that's how I ended up with a huge backlog of games that I have yet to play because I was afraid of messing my completion percentage. Now I am trying to get rid of the completionist habit and work on my backlog at the same time and enjoy more games, I even participated on the last TA bean dive for the first time.

Being happily married, with two young kids and working does not leave much time for gaming. But I usually get to game every weekday from 6 AM to 7AM before I head to work. Some people exercise before going to work, I game. My Windows Phones also help out a lot.

What’s your gaming setup like?
We have a media room in the house that my wife and kids call "daddy's theater", but it's for everyone and that's where we have family movie nights. But that's where the Xbox One, R2-D2 Xbox 360, Wii, Xbox One, Darth Vader PS4 and Win 8 ROG Laptop are set up in. They are all connected to a Yamaha 7.1 receiver with Klipch speakers and sub woofer, though I rarely get to use the sound system's potential for gaming since I game when everyone else is still sleeping.. That's also where the vast majority of the remainder of my Star Wars collection is in.
I also have a Win 7 HTC Radar, and a Nokia Lumia 1520 (that is giving me lots of problems and has spent the last month in transit between my house and the repair center and back with unresolved or repeating issues) and a PS VIta. I also get to play with my wife's Nokia Lumia 1020 and Surface Pro 2 and I am in the process of upgrading my old laptop to Windows 10.

Tell me a good gaming story or experience? ex: Epic win/fail, marathon, accomplishment, a time you visited a game convention or met someone...or anything.
There are plenty of great stories about gaming. I'm going to list a few quick stories if you don't mind.

When I was in middle school one of my friends rented one of those NEO GEO arcade cabinets along with a bunch of games (Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, Shinobi, King of FIghters and Soccer Brawl) for a weekend, for his birthday. About six of us spent the weekend at his house playing all day and all night. One of those friends to this day is still my best friend and was the best man at my wedding.

My best friend got Mario Kart for his SNES and him, his brother and I passed every track on every category and were growing bored of the Battle Mode. We came up with a game where we had to meet inside an area where you could not shoot power ups at each other (I think) and then we tried to push/bait each other outside of that area and the last person in the area would win. We continued our version of the game when he got Mario Kart 64 for his N64.

Even though I never owned a PS One, I still played the heck out of Final Fantasy VII on my uncles' PS Ones. I completed the the game at 100%, I defeated all optional Weapons, dungeons and bosses, got all items, maxed out all stats for all characters. My total playtime on that game was over 300 hrs. I still have the memory card with that game save and it's backed up on my backwards compatible PS3 as well.

I also have great memories of me and two great friends playing Halo on the original Xbox during my graduate school years. We would play multiplayer matches against each other for hours on end. All of a sudden one of us would notice it was 5 AM and we had to be at work/school in a few hours, but it was great fun. I wasn't the greatest Halo player, but for some reason I was almost unbeatable in the Hang 'Em High map. We ended up expanding our Halo group and we would have 4 on 4 LAN matches where each team was in their own room. Sadly, one of those close friends passed away shortly after from a very rare and aggressive type of cancer. I like to remember my friend during the Halo playing times, not the hospital bed ridden times.

Also, this past summer we were visiting my sister-in-law and my nephews were playing on my old 360 Elite console I gave them. One of my cousins was with me and I told him about how one day he should pass on the gift of gaming just like my cousin did when he gave me his old NES and how I gave my old 360 to my nephews. My cousin couldn't think of someone who he could pass on his old consoles to, but he shared with me how he had fond memories of watching me play video games for hours on his dad's PS One

Do you have a special shout out to anyone in particular in the gaming community?
Thanks to Fshguy for his 360v calculator which I used a ton, plus he's a fellow Dolphins fan.

What's your favorite game genre?
I love RPGs but I just don't have time immerse myself in them anymore. Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Skyrim, the three Dragon Ages and the three Final Fantasy XIIIs keep looking at me from the backlog shelf. I also love sandbox games and racing sims, which are also giant time sinks in a very sneaky way since you always just want to do one more quick race.

What’s your favorite game on 360? ONE? Of all time (any system)
On the 360 I'm going to have to go with GTA V such a fun game though The Elder Scrolls is closely behind.

On the One I have to go with Forza Horizon 2, though I have not played too many games on the One.

Favorite game of all time it's a tough choice between Final Fantasy VII, KOTOR and GTA Vice City

What is your worst game and Why?
That's a close call between Darkest of Days and Disney Sing It. Darkest of Days is just a bad game, the controls are horrible, the level design is horrible, the weapons are almost useless. Disney Sign It took me way longer to complete than it should have. There were two songs that I could not get the required score to 1K the game. Jumper was relatively painless compared to having to listen to those songs over and over again.

If you were a Video Game or game character who and why?
Commander Sheppard's job sounds fun, exploring space and other planets, blowing stuff up, working with aliens/other races. But Darth Revan did the same thing in KOTOR and he has two lightsabers (at least in my game he did) and he can use the Force and he wears a cooler outfit. Revan is my final answer.

Are you looking forward to any new releases?
At the moment not really. Halo 5 and Star Wars: Battlefront just released and so did Forza 6 about a month ago. Those were the games I most wanted to play this year. Although I own all three now, I have yet to play Halo 5 and Battlefront. The re-master/re-release of Final Fantasy VII has me intrigued as does No Man's Sky, but who knows when those will come out and if i will have time to play them. Mafia III also looks promising but it is not a must buy for me yet. I'm itching to play Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 but I want to finish their respective previous installments before I start those.

What do you like to do besides gaming?
I like to watch movies with my wife and we are active in one of the church's ministries, I like to play Star Wars with my kids. I also like to watch sports. Since I didn't grow up in the US my teams are all over the place I like the Dolphins, the Celtics and the Spurs, Cubs, Penguins, UTEP football and basketball, Texas football and Duke basketball. I also like the type of football the rest of the world likes and I follow my home teams Santos and the Mexican national team, I also try to keep up with Liverpool, Valencia and Inter Milan. The past four years I also got back into watching Formula 1, Indy and other types of racing.

Do you collect or not so much?
I do have a large collection of games and I have a weak spot for steel books, Cheap Ass Gamer is an extremely resourceful site for acquiring a ton of games at very cheap prices. I started getting rid of games I will never play again or have gotten all gamescore in or have acquired digitally. I had a pretty nasty Star Wars collecting habit and I try to keep the gaming habit under control.

What's your favorite feature on GTN?
Definitely the badges, they have encouraged me to play/load games I have not had the chance to and get achievements in apps as well.

What would you tell people about GTN if you were trying to get them to join?
It's a great community and a fun place.

Is there anything you would like added to the site?
Definitely some sort of Genre badges, not a carbon copy of 360v but some sort of evolution of it.

Congrats Lord and I agree with you on the Genre Badges.

Excellent read. Congrats Lord.

Awesome details, Lord. Thanks for sharing!

I had a great time reading your interview.

Great read. I love all of the favorite games it is hard to choose which would be best and genre badges would be interesting.

Congrats, great interview

Great read! Congrats on MotM!

Thanks guys

Congrats, great interview! Between competitions and being completionist, I have fallen into the same backlog problems as you, having never even touched some of the good series like Fallout, Mass Effect, Assassin Creed to name a few.

Great read, congrats!!

Congrats. Go Dolphins!!!!

Congrats. Go Dolphins!!!!

Originally Posted by Fshguy

The Skins continue to lose in dramatic fashion. After 58 mins of the most boring football every, it's two mins of crazy ups and downs with the Skins losing. Just like the past 15 years. Go Skins!

The Skins continue to lose in dramatic fashion. After 58 mins of the most boring football every, it's two mins of crazy ups and downs with the Skins losing. Just like the past 15 years. Go Skins!

Originally Posted by Kaens

Yeah, 3 way tie for the lead, at 5-7...

I thought for sure the Dolphins would be popping corks until the Saints happened.