Welcome to this fifth day of March, 2015.   I’m John “Boomjack” Hoskin and this is Here Comes The Boom – EP #27.

Age of Empires was the first game that I was ever a part of, in the sense of being part of a gaming community.   I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours playing Age of Empires, helping build the game and more importantly to me, cultivating the community that rose up around it.  

AoE Heaven, the place where everyone who enjoyed the game hung out, was a site that I incubated.   I owned  an ISP in those days and hosted game sites for free.   

Some great people, Mike McCart (who later went on to work at Ensemble Studios) and Steve Cherrier (who is a PR gaming genius) were just two gentlemen who I was fortunate enough to work with in those days.  Rick Goodman and Bruce Shelley of Ensemble Studios were incredible mentors.  The game and the people that I met because of it have helped shape me as a person.  It's no coincidence that my children love games.

So there is my throwback and here are pictures of the original AoE Foil (signed by Rick and Bruce) and AoE inked art.  My apologies for the glare, but these are hanging on my office wall.  Very few people have ever seen these.   The inked piece of art is one of a kind.   The foil is one of very, very few.  

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What games shaped who you are or what you do for a living?