Owner, creator, and mad scientist of Co-Optimus, Nick has spent the last 10 years working on Co-Optimus.

Co-Op gaming has been in his blood since the days of Sega Genesis playing Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. Of course the fond memories of the boardwalk arcade and Raiden II, Aliens vs. Predator, and Ninja Turtles didn't hurt either.

Nick has been covering video games since 2004, including leadership roles at prominent gaming outlets. He has created numerous websites to feed his insatiable appetite for world domination, of which, is coming along nicely.

My earliest memories of gaming involve a Nintendo Entertainment System, a television that still used tubes, a family room, and my brother. Before we even had a game where two people could play together, I remember sitting and watching my brother play Super Mario Bros. Occasionally, he?d let me play a life or two, but that was all I needed to get hooked. Pretty soon, games like Blaster Master and Final Fantasy were finding their way onto my Christmas list alongside the Transformers and GI Joes. I used to play so much that my family nicknamed me ?Nintendo Boy?, a moniker that occasionally still gets brought up today. From the Nintendo I moved on to playing PC games, thanks once again to my family. I was too young at the time to really understand them, but my mom used to play the ?Zork? series and I?d sit next to her while she played trying to contribute and follow along as best as I could. Nowadays I mostly play Playstation and Nintendo DS games, although I still occasionally sneak in a PC game or two and a large portion of my co-op time comes from playing with friends.

Aside from gaming, I also enjoy watching movies, listening to music (anything but country), re-learning to play bass, and reading authors like Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, China Mi?ville, and whatever good science fiction/fantasy novel comes my way. It is my hope that one day I might be able to switch jobs from government contractor to full-time games journalist or freelancer. A man can dream, a man can dream?

When he finally managed to get a go on his older brother?s brand new ZX Spectrum, unbeknownst to Sam he was embarking on a lifetime love of games and being British. When Sir Clive Sinclair stopped making computers Sam had to admit that he needed to buy some consoles made further afield and he has not looked back since; owning every single console since the Super Nintendo.

As one of four, he learned fast to share a multi-tap and play games such as ?Bomberman? and ?Snowboard Kids?. Now as a Librarian he believes in world peace and harmony, shunning the world of competitive gaming in favour of co-op. You can find him online in a variety of places from shooting terrorists in ?Rainbow 6 Vegas? to tending his garden in ?Viva Pi?ata: Trouble in Paradise?.

As a Librarian, Sam is also an avid reader and would encourage you all to try a book once in a while (and keep him in a job).

Tally is currently a doctorate student in Linguistics because she enjoys unraveling the mysteries of grammar, of all things. In her more normal life, she plays games with her boyfriend and a close group of friends that they consider a guild, but it's more like a bizarre and slightly dysfunctional family. She enjoys nothing more than being part of a team and can often be found filling the roles that make the team stronger and more effective as a whole. She'll roll a priest or monk to your rogue or mage, watch your back while you're defusing the bomb, and be on top of the list for team assists.

Tally got her start on the PC back in 2002 or so and is still most comfortable with the keyboard and mouse set-up. She's a relative newcomer to the whole ?new-fangled? console thing, but she's doing her best to make up on lost time (of course prioritizing the co-op console titles that were released in the past few years which she whined at length about not coming out on the PC).

Mike's primary duties include building, maintaining and washing/waxing our lovely cast of robot characters. In the remainder of his time, he co-hosts the Co-Opticast with Nick.

A gamer since he discovered manual dexterity and the myriad uses an opposable thumb provides, Mike is a proponent of PC gaming and the proud owner of every major console and handheld release since the NES. He also won't shut up about his cats.

I have been playing games of all types my whole life. My first experience with video games was playing Pong at a friend's house when I was about four years old. Up until the last generation, I was an unapologetic Nintendo fanboy, but my love for the games themselves has expanded my horizons to enjoy all current systems.

As far as my personal life goes, I am a teacher and technology coordinator for a small rural school district in Missouri. I'm married to a lovely woman, and we have two boys, ages 14 and 7. My sons are my co-op partners, and the biggest chunk of my playtime is with them. Other interests of mine apart from video games are watching movies, NFL football, and collecting comic books and Transformers toys. (This is pretty much exactly what I was doing when I was ten, it seems.)

Unsurprisingly, one of my biggest interests in gaming is the classics. Nostalgia is a very powerful factor for me. Some of my favorite gaming moments ever are the times when I have played an old favorite game of mine with my kids. Games like TMNT IV and X-Men: The Arcade Game are every bit as good now as they were the first time I played them!

Depending on who you ask, Enoch Starnes began his hobby in gaming with either Tiger Electronics' Madden Football 95 or Link's Awakening for the Game Boy Pocket. It was soon after this that the tendrils of co-op gaming sank deep into him via extensive sessions of Zombies Ate My Neighbors on the SNES. Since then, he has spent countless hours in co-op gaming with friends both online and local. Be it the Tales series, Civilization, FIFA, or Gauntlet, he has searched constantly for games that allow he and his friends to goof off, work together, and tell each other really dumb jokes. He's immensely proud to be able to channel this passion on Co-Optimus and hopes that his love for the genre will extend to you too.

I?m a high school English teacher, writer, and ninja. My co-op gaming life started with the original Double Dragon arcade game in 1987. As I only owned an NES back then, my Sega Master System-owning friend used to get tired of me wanting to play through Double Dragon with him all the time. I still love cooperative beat-em-ups, including Final Fight, Castle Crashers, and Scott Pilgrim. I was once a competitive Saturn Bomberman player, but otherwise I have always been about the co-op.

My first experience with writing about games came in 2003 when I wrote a full walkthrough for Bomberman Land 2, an amazing Japanese Bomberman RPG. Over the next several years, I continued to write FAQs and Achievement guides for various games, culminating in an award-winning Bionic Commando Rearmed guide. I finally joined the gaming press after Windows Phone 7 launched, covering and reviewing games for Microsoft?s fledgling mobile platform. Now I?m on the console scene at Co-Optimus, one of the coolest and most unique gaming sites around.

Eric has been a gamer for as long as he can remember. His first gaming experiences were shared with his brothers on a Commodore 64 with games like Mario Brothers, Fire King, Double Dragon, and Save New York City. Eventually, he ventured into PC gaming where he expanded his experience to online gaming and participating in gaming communities. In college, he was thrown into console gaming (kicking and screaming) around the release of Halo:CE which was the start of his ultimate transition away from PC gaming. That transition was complete when he met his soon to be wife who is also a gamer. Now, you'll rarely find Eric gaming without his wife at his side, so "couch co-op" games like the Halo, Gears of War, and Left 4 Dead franchises are a staple of his game library.

When he's not gaming, he's working for a consulting firm as a software engineer, spending time with his family, or geeking out with one of his many computer related hobbies. At Co-Optimus, he is in charge of the forums where he feels at home engaging with the community.

Locke was born out of the NES era with a controller in his hands and the cord wrapped around his neck straight out of the womb. Since the age of four he has been collecting games and creating his very own gaming library, boasting over 2000 titles that go all the way back to the Atari 2600.

Locke?s co-op gaming started with Friday night rentals of old school classics like Contra, Double Dragon, and Battletoads where the game would go in, and the weekend would evaporate away. Games like like Toe Jam and Earl 2, Turtles in Time, and Sunset Riders established the foundation for his co-op background and paved the way for future generations of games.

Locke has been reviewing, podcasting, and establishing gaming communities for the past 5 years. He is a self-proclaimed ?video wizard? where many of his dreams materialize into crazy web-series and ridiculous antics that can be seen across the Internet superhighway.