Nick “Kaz” Kosareo
Blood Type: 10W30 (5W30 in the winter)
Likes: Long drives, twisty roads
Dislikes:Â Traffic jams,
Kaz is a mechanical engineer. As such, his hobbies include talking about nuts and bolts and the merits of reaching minimum thread engagement – clearly skilled enough to be a judge of what makes a game good or bad. Hailing from the great city of Cleveland (Official Motto: We were cool once!), he knows how to root for the wrong sports teams – like any team from Cleveland and the NFL 2K series. Nowadays, he deals with his city’s sports impotence by pretending to be good at first-person-shooters and dabbling in all the games he can.
Top Five Games
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1. Half Life II: Episode 2 (PC)
2. League of Legends (PC)
3. Mass Effect 2 (360)
4. Minecraft/Terraria (PC)
5. CounterStrike: Source (PC)
Tom Sheppard
Blood Type: AB negative
Likes: dnL, sofas, a dartboard
Dislikes: monkeys, sauerkraut
Tom Sheppard real strong. He lifty box. Hobbies include getting all of the useless items that developers put in video games to make sure people like him never interact with the rest of polite society, impressing Nick with his amazing Japanese skills, writing to long-dead fictional celebrities like Stick Stickly and Beakman, trying to convince Justin and Kaz that Lost is still good, and other Sisyphean challenges. He majored in Anthropology, the “gentleman’s major”, because he enjoys scholarly pursuits such as sleeping in and eating cold re-fried beans straight from the can.
Top Five Games
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1. Rez (DC)
2. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSone)
3. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)
4. Silent Hill 3 (PS2)
5. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC)
Honorable Mention: Bill Cosby’s Combat Football (Fairchild Channel F)
Tony Divito
Blood Type: Laden with Cholesterol
Likes: sleep deprivation, getting sexy, the miracles of nature and science
Dislikes: ignorance, corporate greed, hyper-liberals, every driver on the road other than me, red frosting (it tastes funny)
Originally raised by wild buckbeaks and bugbears, Tony was trained on pack instincts and gold coins hoarding. He was soon picked up by two kindly strangers that gave him a home and a Nintendo console. After seeing this “Magic Box” in action, he and the gaming industry became intertwined. He has evolved just as the game controllers have – from clunkly, little squares to sleek, sexy, hand-conforming love machines. Now, having graduated with a double major in Biochemistry and Political Science from Case in 2007, he lies in that intermittent period when work consumes his life but allows for a healthy gaming habit. After playing 70 straight hours of Trauma Center on the DS, he has determined that medicine will be his future and has found his calling at med school. No fears though – gaming will still be around in his life…constantly.
Top Five Games
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1. Final Fantasy III (US),VI (Japan)(SNES)
2. Chrono Trigger (SNES)
3. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (PC)
4. Super Smash Bros. (N64), Melee (GC)
5. Diablo II (PC)
Michael McFadden
 
Blood Type: B+
Likes: Knowing why you’re sick, Dessert and all things sugary, Lifting heavy things
Dislikes: Iatrogenesis
McFadden is a second-year medical student currently drowning in a sea of medical knowledge while preparing for Step 1 of his medical licensing exams. He became a gamer at the young age of 6 years old when he unwrapped a Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas morning. That milestone would eventually lead him down the lifelong path of a gamer: from collecting change in the couch cushions to purchase his very own Sega Genesis – not a mistake, despite what anyone else may say – to collecting summer job earnings to pick up a PS2 on launch day, and now back to collecting change from the couch in an attempt to afford a Wii U. (Med school is expensive, okay?!) He says gaming consoles were the original Pokémon – gotta own ’em all!  His claim to fame is being one of the tens of people that had the Sega Channel, and possibly the only person to remember it. If you don’t know what the Sega Channel is, ask him about it some time; he loves to hype up a service that hasn’t been available in 16 years.
Top 5 Games
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1. Super Mario World (SNES)
2. God of War (PS2)
3. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC)
4. League of Legends (PC)
5. Rogue Legacy (PC)
Neil Waggoner
Blood Type: Dark roast coffee
Likes: Bourbon
Dislikes: POPCORN IN MOVIES! Seriously people, just LISTEN to the awful sound of MUNCH before every movie EVER. Also, Grad school
Neil is an organizer with the Sierra Club’s beyond coal in Ohio where he spends a lot of time talking about energy efficiency, getting upset over the typoz he makes usiing the Beyond Coal twtter account, and occasionally dressing up as a polar bear to visit the offices of US Senators. Neil got his start gaming spending way too many hours devoted to all things Sid Meir, collecting an unseemly number of joysticks and versions of the Wing Commander games, and arguing the Microsoft’s Allegiance was the future of gaming. He was right…sort of. After a hiatus from games for a few years during a dark period spoken only in whispers as “grad school,†Neil happily jumped back in with a full-fledged addiction to Fallout 3 and teh Haloz. He has an irrational love for the PS Vita, may or may not be stockpiling joysticks again for the day space combat sims become mainstream again, and is still legitimately shocked his fiance puts up with his gaming proclivities.
Top 5 Games
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1. Sid Meir’s Alpha Centauri (PC)
2. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (PC)
3. Fallout III (Xbox 360)
4. Halo: Reach (XBox 360)
5. BioShock Infinite (XBox 360)
CONTRIBUTING MEMBERS
Daniella Kosareo
ALUMNI
Nicolo Accordino
Blood Type: A
Likes: 日本ã®å…¨ã¦, working out, One Piece, Scott Pilgrim, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Dislikes: Umeboshi, close-minded people, cynicism, Mr. Fe
Born with a joystick in his hand, Nick Accordino’s a strong believer that there’s nothing a good dragon punch can’t fix. Spending his childhood holding his own against guys twice his age at the local arcade, he quickly fell in love with anything he could find that was blasted out of the land of the rising sun. After returning from Japan in 2006, he finished his senior year at Case Western Reserve University and now lives happily in Washington D.C. as one of the select few American gamers that can import Japanese games…and actually understand them. Hobbies include yelling at snakes, watching bears fall out of trees (or pushing, who knows?) and collecting Alfa Progressive Organic Genomes or “ALF pogs.” And while the FPS genre has taken hold of his homeland, he’s never shy about his fondness of JRPGs and fighting games. So put up that quarter and get in line – this guy’s accepting all challengers as a proud member of The Pack.
Top Five Games
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1. X-Men Vs. Street Fighter (Arcade)
2. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)
3. Mother 3 (GBA)
4. The King of Fighters 2001 (Neo Geo AES)
5. Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii)
Justin Hemenway
Blood Type: O
Likes: Raisin Bran, artsy-fartsy platformers, Terriers, New York City
Dislikes: Diddy Kong, Trish from Devil May Cry (long story)
“The man who only knows how to love.” Justin Hemenway is the social media community manager for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and a lifelong gamer. Though he admittedly carries the Nintendo fanboy gene, he’s been a multi-platform player ever since the Dreamcast showed him the way back in 1999. Over the years, “Angry J” has made many foolish purchases (two Virtual Boys, Steel Battalion, the Trance Vibrator), but none of them have deterred him from continuing to seek out the weirdest and most original games. In addition to collecting bizarre peripherals, he loves 70s pop culture and marathoning cult favorite TV shows. In 2008, Justin taught in China, where he acquired a taste for donkey burgers and chicken feet. He followed that up with a master’s program in journalism at the University of Illinois the next year. He currently resides in Brooklyn but wishes to make it clear that he is not a hipster, despite not having a clear idea what that actually means.
Top Five Games
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1. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (SNES)
2. Earthbound (SNES), Mother 3 (GBA)
3. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
4. Tearaway (Vita)
5. Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS)
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