THE CO-OPTICREW

Owner, creator, and mad scientist of Co-Optimus, Nick spends every spare minute devoted to gaming.

Co-Op gaming has been in his blood since the days of Sega Genesis playing Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. Of course the fond memories of the boardwalk arcade and Raiden II, Aliens vs. Predator, and Ninja Turtles didn't hurt either.

Nick's resume includes over 6 years of gaming coverage experience, including leadership roles at many prominent gaming outlets. He has created numerous websites to feed his insatiable appetite for world domination, of which, is coming along nicely.

I have been playing games of all types my whole life. My first experience with video games was playing Pong at a friend's house when I was about four years old. Up until the last generation, I was an unapologetic Nintendo fanboy, but my love for the games themselves has expanded my horizons to enjoy all current systems.

As far as my personal life goes, I am a teacher and technology coordinator for a small rural school district in Missouri. I'm married to a lovely woman, and we have two boys, ages 14 and 7. My sons are my co-op partners, and the biggest chunk of my playtime is with them. Other interests of mine apart from video games are watching movies, NFL football, and collecting comic books and Transformers toys. (This is pretty much exactly what I was doing when I was ten, it seems.)

Unsurprisingly, one of my biggest interests in gaming is the classics. Nostalgia is a very powerful factor for me. Some of my favorite gaming moments ever are the times when I have played an old favorite game of mine with my kids. Games like TMNT IV and X-Men: The Arcade Game are every bit as good now as they were the first time I played them!

A college student bound and determined to show Shakespeare and E. Allen Poe who's boss, Katrina tends to focus on the important things in life. "Important" in the eye of this beholder, covers anything from gaming to reading comics or novels, to fencing and hanging out with awesome people! Co-op has become the core of her gaming preference, and she'll play almost anything if there's someone on the other end of the headset or sharing the couch.

Her contributions to Co-optimus.com will vary from the extreme nerdisms, to classic gaming and everything in between. She may be caught including pop-culture references in her writing, as she enjoys a wide variety of geeky pleasures.

My earliest memories of gaming involve a Nintendo Entertainment System, a television that still used tubes, a family room, and my brother. Before we even had a game where two people could play together, I remember sitting and watching my brother play Super Mario Bros. Occasionally, he’d let me play a life or two, but that was all I needed to get hooked. Pretty soon, games like Blaster Master and Final Fantasy were finding their way onto my Christmas list alongside the Transformers and GI Joes. I used to play so much that my family nicknamed me “Nintendo Boy”, a moniker that occasionally still gets brought up today. From the Nintendo I moved on to playing PC games, thanks once again to my family. I was too young at the time to really understand them, but my mom used to play the “Zork” series and I’d sit next to her while she played trying to contribute and follow along as best as I could. Nowadays I mostly play Playstation and Nintendo DS games, although I still occasionally sneak in a PC game or two and a large portion of my co-op time comes from playing with friends.

Aside from gaming, I also enjoy watching movies, listening to music (anything but country), re-learning to play bass, and reading authors like Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and whatever good science fiction/fantasy novel comes my way. It is my hope that one day I might be able to switch jobs from government contractor to full-time games journalist or freelancer. A man can dream, a man can dream…

Tally is currently a doctorate student in Linguistics because she enjoys unraveling the mysteries of grammar, of all things. In her more normal life, she plays games with her boyfriend and a close group of friends that they consider a guild, but it's more like a bizarre and slightly dysfunctional family. She enjoys nothing more than being part of a team and can often be found filling the roles that make the team stronger and more effective as a whole. She'll roll a priest or monk to your rogue or mage, watch your back while you're defusing the bomb, and be on top of the list for team assists.

Tally got her start on the PC back in 2002 or so and is still most comfortable with the keyboard and mouse set-up. She's a relative newcomer to the whole “new-fangled” console thing, but she's doing her best to make up on lost time (of course prioritizing the co-op console titles that were released in the past few years which she whined at length about not coming out on the PC).