Meet the Reader: YOURMUMANDME

Welcome back to another installment of Meet the Reader. This week we’ve got one of the more popular characters around these parts. Your mum, and me… No, no, I mean YOURMUMANDME. 

Who are ye, how auld are ye, and where did ye come from? How’s my Scottish accent?

That was very decipherable scots! I am Russel Cook, I am 25 and a bit years old and I’m from an awful place called Cupar in Fife, Scotland.

Awful? What’s so bad about it?

I live there! Nah, It’s OK just fairly quiet.

I could imagine your presence knocking tens of thousands from local housing.

They flock here to see me I’m the incredible… person.

You’ve got a rather odd screen name, which I think sounds a bit like a sitcom. How did you settle upon YOURMUMANDME? Also, what the devil were you thinking, going with caps lock?

I knew this would come back and bite me in the backside one day!

Contrary to what I may or may not have told several people in the past, the real reason is that when I first made the handle I was young. I never really thought past the internet anonymity thing, and started using yourmumandme123 about 8 or 9 years ago. When I got my PS3 the name YOURMUMANDME on it’s own was available for the first time on anything I’d signed up to, so I used it and proudly put it in caps. When I found TSA it was free too so I figured it to be less hassle for people to find me. Honest!

I’m kind of curious now what long-nosed tales you might have told people in the past…

I told Bunimomike once that it was an expression my dad used to use when I was younger, which was also true  “Your mum and me have been discussing why you set that cat on fire…” or “Your mum and me were wondering when you plan on releasing those girls…” It lets me blame him for the bad grammar too!

I was going to tell you off about that, but I guess I can let you off the hook in that case. Lets move on, and back to when you were setting girls on fire, and kidnapping cats. When did you first get into gaming?

Tough one. I remember picking up a broken Spectrum from a car boot sale when i was about 4/5 and my grandad took it to fix and I got it back a few months later but the first games I played were Alex Kidd, Fantasy Zone, Sonic etc… all on the Master System. Sega for the win!

Did you get into many playground arguments over Sega vs. Nintendo? Where did you go from there?

Oh yes, I remember having numerous fights, both verbal and physical, about which of the two were better. This one kid supposedly had all of the Nintendo games and asked me how many games I had, it was probably about 5. He said that was because Sega were rubbish and didn’t have any good games. He changed his tune at break time!

Did you show him what the bloody from Mortal Kombat looked like?

I did a finishing move but it was more like ‘humiliation’ rather than a ‘decapitation’.

So how did you switch from Sega to Sony? Did you suffer through to the Dreamcast, and cry silently when Sega dropped the manufacturing side?

Neither actually, when I was about 9 I went from MegaDrive to Amiga. The Dreamcast had lot’s to offer but no one I knew had really picked one up. Although Chu-Chu-Rocket is one of my favourite games, which makes no sense at all.

From the Amiga I got a Playstation as a present, and I bought Tomb Raider for it. That game might have actually changed my gaming life forever, I had never really ever spent a 2/3 hour stretch playing through a game and been entertained constantly.

Then I jumped ship briefly to Gamecube, maybe. Which came first GameCube or Ps2? Anyway, I bought it for Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, absolutely no other reason at all as I no interest in it. I was scared that kid from school would come back point at me and scream like a Bodysnatcher.

I ended up playing Pokemon Colosseum on it twice as much as Final Fantasy though. I’d buy another GameCube just to play that game again. The Ps2 came after that and it pretty much took up the majority of my day, every day! In amongst all of this gaming was PC gaming too Counterstrike, The Sims, and Diablo. All great games.