huhuh this reminded me of gaming on the amstrad cpc (comment is not meant as an insult with regard to your graphics 
still the game I played most was a bit later on pc and called strike commander which was an F-16 flight sim
Miyamota Musashi! I read the Book of Five Rings when I was 15. It might be beneficial to read that again.
Where did you grow up, Marvin? California?
Kudos to making this thread, Steve. I’m really enjoying these stories.
I’ve been known to frag a little bit as well. 
Used to be a Sunday tradition with Luke and I. We’d do multiplayer Half-Life 'n such. Then he got a girlfriend and that all went down the crapper. (laaaaame! ) I do a little bit every so often, but recently I’ve put that time into Bachido stuff. No worries, just shows how fun making stuff for Bachido is! (Plus, allows time for good titles to hit the bargain bin)
So this is the new member introduction thread around here
It’s the same for me, martial arts and samurai:
-Hollywood action flicks with ninjas and martial arts, popular with us youngsters
-Of course the same in computer games too
-Aunt of mine briefly practiced judo and when she was done with it she gave me a book about martial arts (covering the common varieties) so I got a bit deeper there (theory only, though later on I thought about picking up aikido)
-The TV series, “Takeda Shingen” was maybe the official title, I gather it was wildly popular also in Japan. I’d say that was a bigger dose of actual japanese culture
Later on, there was anime and it got a bit more serious from there, decided to start learning japanese too.
Japanese food, I still consider it kowai. Drive a japanese car currently though
I’ll play!
Through music, I have dipped my toes into many different cultures. I guess it goes all the way back to when I started to discover other styles of fiddling from around the world. I had a season when I was enamored with Celtic fiddling, and I still want to visit Ireland someday.
As for Japan, I guess it started with the Erhu. I started learning it a couple of years ago. From there, I discovered a whole world of exotic instruments from the far east, and Shamisen was the most accessible to me as an English speaking American (thanks to Bachido) so I chose to learn it following the Erhu. My next instrument will be the Kokyu, then from there I’m hoping to get my hands on a Sitar, or a Dilruba (a bowed sitar relative. It’s name translates to “Stealer of the heart” which is reason enough alone to learn the instrument.)
As for Japanese culture in particular, I’d love to know more about it and experience it someday by traveling to Japan (It’s high on my bucket list, along with Israel, Ireland and Australia). The Japanese people have a fascinating and well documented history, and their respect for traditions has kept a lot of their colorful culture alive for the world to see today.
judo (orange belt) and a grayish sony walkman in junior highschool followed by ninjutsu books from the local supermarket and a few others later on and a couple of simple landscape pictures and luckily around the same time that bachido started I had stumbled upon the shamisen . . .
When I was really young I had Japanese culture classes at school. But really it was sumo on the television that sparked my interest. Then other interests came along and there was twenty odd year gap in my interest until my wife started collecting nyan nyan nyanko plushies. Then it was trips to Japan, where many plushies were collected and many suitcases brought back on the airplane. Anything to declare Sir?
After that I took jodo lessons. I loved those lessons, but there is no jodo where I live now and its not a single person activity. Now I am looking for a new sound in my tunes and I think I have found one. Maybe one day I will make a really good shamisen sound library, that would be pretty cool. Of course, need to become a good player first, so might be a while.
Maybe when bachido has finished the app you fine players could make a sound bank; there are really no high class Japanese virtual instruments, which is sad. Well it kind of isn’t for me, if there were virtual instruments I would be lazy and would not need to learn