June’s Gamer Girl Brunch with GGB Reno!

GGB Reno’s June Gamer Girl Brunch seemed perfectly suited to the times. With many of us having spent the last few months stuck indoors, what better time to take advantage and spend hours on end gaming!? Although our brunch group was smaller than usual, we most certainly all had plenty to talk about.

Funnily enough, we started off with Chelsea who calls herself the “worst game person ever,” eventually being designated “zombie bait” when playing the Call of Duty zombie games. She highly recommends Red Vs. Blue, and says you don’t even have to be a gamer to find the series funny. She also mentioned card and board games, calling Gloom in Space her favorite card game, and perfect for sci-fi geeks!

Janet used to play games, but then fell out of them for a while, until she “took over” her boyfriend’s Switch. Super Mario Odyssey rekindled her interest and now she has a list of games to get around to. In the meantime though, Animal Crossing has dominated her time. As far as board/came games, she’s a huge fan of Cards Against Humanity.

Alexis plays a lot, mostly PC games, and League of Legends is her current top game. Her Dad was actually a beta tester a decade ago! She loves Minecraft and a game none of the rest of us had heard of, but sounds amazing – Subnautica. She said the VR version is so cool! She is also still a proud owner of a massive collection of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards!

The first game Julie wanted to discuss was Eternal Darkness on GameCube. She loved its “sanity meter.” Diablo 2 was her first foray into gaming by herself – it “consumed her soul” for a long while. Now she mostly games with her husband. She loves the Borderland series, and plays a lot of mobile games too, like Amity Arena, also from Rooster Teeth. She also plays A LOT of Mansions of Madness (she proudly proclaimed that owns ALL of the expansions – eliciting an audible GASP from the rest of our brunchettes!), and highly recommends the game to ANYONE who loves tabletop gaming.

Kayla did not start gaming until she was in her teens – and first started with DDR! She actually convinced her school to allow her to do DDR for PE credit. We are still in awe of how amazing this is. She and her husband love the Resident Evil series so much that they even named their son Leon after Leon S. Kennedy. She ran through an impressive list of video games she loves to play (included in our master recommendation list below), but she is also a huge fan of Magic the Gathering, having an impressive closet full of her card collection. She also recommended, when cons start up again of course, that everyone who loves gaming check out the Penny Arcade Expo (which has gone virtual this year and is free to attend – check it out here.)

Anzia’s first console was a Sega. She grew up playing games like Super Mario 3 on her Game Genie – which, incidentally, is the first game she ever beat, and with her stepmom no less!  When she got a Playstation in high school, her favorite game to play on it was Legend of Legaia. When it comes to tabletop, she loves to create weird and unusual characters in DnD, often to throw off and annoy everyone else!

While some of us started gaming at older ages, Ami came from a gaming family “since always.” She became a master at Break Out on an old Atari (play it here!)she found in her attic, then took over the Super Nintendo that her dad originally bought for her brother. She and sister Nuriko found it to be a more socially acceptable way of fighting with their siblings! Ami also educated many of us in the history of Roberta Williams, who created the first video game with graphics. Her contribution to gaming cannot be overstated!

One of the benefits of virtual brunch is that a brunchette can be under the weather, laid up on the couch, and still be able to add to the discussion, which is precisely what Nuriko did from the sidelines of Ami’s screen. She got into JRPGs at a young age. She really loved Horizon Zero Dawn, and is wildly excited about the upcoming sequel, the trailer for which dropped just two days before brunch! She’s also proudly logged more than 300 hours on Animal Crossing.

CJ had a Mac when she was young and played old school games like Hurdles and Snake (play a Google Maps version here!). She also loved Nintendo games like Solomon’s Key, Super Metroid, and Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy 9 is still her favorite, and the first game she ever finished. She’s a big fan of mobile games as well, particularly Fire Emblem Heroes and Love Nikki – Dress Up Queen. And – perfectly on theme – she was late to brunch, admitting it was due to being up until 3am playing…you guessed it…Animal Crossing.

Vanessa also grew up playing games, starting with titles like BurgerTime and Space Invaders on her old black-and-green monochrome PC monitor. After her family bought an NES and her own Game Boy, though, she became a Nintendo girl for life, especially for her favorite game series of all time, The Legend of Zelda series. She’s pretty sure Breath of the Wild is her favorite game ever (squee for the sequel!), narrowly beating out her former favorite – Ocarina of Time. She even has triforce tattoo, and personalized license plate. She just finished playing Journey, which was one of the most emotional games she’s ever played, and is currently finishing up Horizon Zero Dawn. She also grew up playing a ton of classic board and card games, with games like cribbage and Tripoley as major family pastimes.

While there’s no way to include every single detail that was shared, here are some call outs and recommendations thrown around during our many discussions and tangents:

Video Game Recommendations:

• No Man’s Sky
• Final Fantasy XIV
• Pokémon games (various)
• Mass Effect
• Dragon Age
• Fire Emblem
• Kingdom Hearts
• Super Smash Bros.
• Kirby
• de Blob
• Assassin’s Creed
• Witcher 3
• Uncharted Waters 2
• King’s Quest
• Red Dead Redemption + Undead Redemption
• Hamtaro on GBA
• WoW
• Max Gentleman Sexy Business
• Skylanders
• Gaia Online

Board/Card Game Recommendations:

• Santorini
• Shanghai Rummy
• Dominion
• Tanto Cuore (like Dominion, but with cute anime girls!)
• Cards Against Christianity/Star Wars/Disney

Other Notes:

• Many of us are excited about the upcoming but woefully, repeatedly delayed CyberPunk
• Check out this insane history of Kingdoms of Amalur, brainchild of former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling which almost bankrupted the state of Rhode Island
• At least one brunchette has sworn off WoW (a difficult task for a self-professed “addict”) due to the controversy regarding Blizzard Studios and the protests in Hong Kong
• Check out Janet’s website – www.janet-illustration.com!

GGB Reno hopes to return for another virtual brunch in July! Check back soon!