HOW RIVIERA CHANGED MY LIFE, AND YOURS, AND YOURS, AND YOURS... Options

[Irysa]

IF I HADN'T EVER PLAYED RIVIERA, I'D NEVER HAVE FOUNDED MARI LINKING TO LACRIMACASTLE FOR THE EPILOGUE DISCS AND SOUNDTRACKS AND STUFF.

I'D NEVER HAVE JOINED THE IRC CHANNEL.

I'D NEVER HAVE GOTTEN STURM'D HARD AND GRADUATED FROM TOTAL FUCKING ANNOYING TWATFACE NOOB INTO TOTAL FUCKING ANOYING TWATFACE JERK.

I'D NEVER HAVE GOTTEN INTO ANATHEMA (AND A LOT OF OTHER COOL MUSIC)

I'D NEVER HAVE STARTED NETPLAYING FIGHTING GAMES, STARTING WITH IAMP AND MOVING INTO MELTY BLOOD WHICH TOOK UP A BIG PART OF MY LIFE (ESPECIALLY LATELY, I WON A TOURNAMENT LAST MONTH). AND SUBSEQUENTLY LIKE EVERYTHING EVER

I'D NEVER HAVE GOTTEN INTO VISUAL NOVELS (THANKS MELTY AND F/SN SIMUWATCH)

I'D NEVER HAVE READ BOOKS LIKE A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

I'D NEVER HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP ON SKYPE PLAYING RISK ON A PAC-MAN MAP WITH SAUCE AND RHIA WITH MY UNBEATABLE CUPCAKE STRATEGY (FUCKING ALASKA HOLY SHIT)

I'D NOT HAVE MY CURRENT NAME FOR EVERYTHING EVER BECAUSE I'D NEVER HAVE SPAZZED ON MY KEYBOARD WHILE LISTENING TO 65DAYSOFSTATIC TO GET MY NAME OUT OF THE FIRST 5 LETTERS.


I'D NEVER HAVE EVENTUALLY MELLOWED OUT INTO THE GUY I AM RIGHT NOW

AT 20 YEARS OLD I CAN SAFELY SAY THAT RIVIERA WAS THE DEFINING GAME OF MY ADOLESCENCE



I LOVE ALL OF YOU, THANKS! AND THANKS TO STING FOR MAKING THIS GAME

[P.P.A.]

I cannot even guess what my life would be like without Riviera, for it was what first led me onto the internet (this site, to be exact, which I am moved to still be able to call my home!)—a medium which was to shape whom I am become today. You could go further and say that Riviera was what gave birth to me; my personality was so dull, my interests so unrefined, and my circle of friends so barely existent, I would hesitate to call myself alive during the first fifteen years of my life—before Riviera!

Playing Riviera made me more proliferate in English, as did my conversations with all you guys here on the site and on IRC. This, in turn, opened the vastness of the anglophone internet to me, confronting me with people from all over the world. Some of them (and some from this very community!) have become my dearest and most trusted friends; others teachers, rivals. I learned so much—about the world, the people in it, and no less myself—from meeting and sharing experiences with them, from being given ideas and inspirations, and from having been taught so many lessons in life, arose what is today me.
None of them I would ever have met were it not for Riviera and LCN: All of my friends and many other people I only really got to know via IRC, a medium which LCN introduced me to.

Without Riviera, I would never have come here, I would never have met the people here, I would never have discovered the internet and its colourful inhabitants and infinity of information. I would not be able to write “I” here and now.

Thank you, Sting, and thank you, LCN; I love you. ♥

EDIT: I just realised that the thing through which I learned of Riviera's existence in the first place—what with it never having been released in Europe—was the Nintendo Official Magazine UK. I got one on a vacation in the Netherlands, in a large book store with many international magazines; finding it to be very interesting, and conductive to improving my English, I subscribed to it, and it features Riviera once in a preview and another time in an import review. It intrigued me somehow, so I imported it.
Thus, I should add: thank you, NOM UK authors! Too bad it has disappeared since, and been replaced by the boring Official Nintendo Magazine.