marksabbatini

I'm a professional transient living in Longyearbyen, Norway, a town 800 miles from the North Pole that's home to the world's garden after Armageddon. I worked as a newspaper editor and reporter in the U.S. (mostly Alaska) for more than 20 years before spending the past several years wandering the seven continents seeking unknown jazz musicians, unusual food and unauthorized video game ripoffs.

In theory, I'm now freelancing, writing a book and launching Icepeople, the world's northernmost alternative newspaper, in early 2009. In reality, I drink a lot of coffee and wonder how I'm going to earn a living doing any of those things.

I've been a hopeless arcade addict since the Pong coin-op era, when my dad paddled me for staying hours too late at the pinball machines of an ice rink when I was 5. My consoles have included various pongs, the RCA Studio II, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, NES, Super NES, CD-i, Playstation, N64 and Wii, plus a huge assortment of Gameboys and various other portables (including my current Palm pilot and its collection of emulators). Computers include TRS80s (Model III and Color Computer), ZX81, TI99/4a, Atari 800, Apple II, IBMs and clones, and about a dozen Macs from the original to the latest Intels - plus dinking around on most of the '80s models courtesy of friends and schools. I've still got a huge collection of working machines but, alas, they're in storage in Alaska since I don't have the space or necessary case of voltage adaptors and NTSC TVs for Norway.

All time favorite game: Robotron 2084.

Best at: Joust (played one game for eight hours after learning the buzzard trick, then killed off my dozens of extra men and never played the game again).

Absolutely abhor: Every fighting game since Karateka.