Zyrteki
noun | zeer-tek-ee
A Canadian gamer and streamer who enjoys trophy hunting and collecting a variety of physical media.
See also: Teki, Z
An east-coast transplant, Zyrteki originally hails from the island province of Newfoundland & Labrador, but after spending several years in Alberta has somehow found himself living in the very rectangular and flat province of Saskatchewan.
Since his initial spawn in the late '80s, Zyrteki has been surrounded by passive/casual gamers, and some of his earliest memories include playing Tetris with his grandfather on the Gameboy. It was due to this that Zyrteki was a Gameboy kid throughout his formative years, finding comfort in series such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon. Although he does recall visiting friends at a young age and playing Gex the Gecko and Parappa the Rapper on PlayStation and Earthworm Jim on the Sega Genesis, growing up in a small town meant that video game variety was very slim, and aside from the occassional rental at the family-run convenience store, Zyrteki would not own an actualy console until many years later.
Upon moving to a slightly larger town and starting high school, Zyrteki found a group of friends with like-minded interests, and in turn they introduced him to, not only new video game series like Final Fantasy and Diablo, but also to the world of trading card games and anime. It was a great time to be a geek - the PS2 was launching, Shonen Jump was making its debut in the west, and the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG was about to take the world by storm. Zyrteki and his friends (including now fellow streamer i_am_jeff) fully embraced the influx of new properties by running official Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG tournaments (which is where Zyrteki's original online persona and PSN username "MrReferee" came from) and starting their own anime and TCG fan site - Endless Vortex. Teaching themselves HTML and web coding and fully exploring their love off all things video games and anime, Zyrteki and company spent most of their formative high school years embracing what made them happy.
As is normally the case, high school ended and with it so did the honeymoon. Zyrteki went to university and, although it never went away, his passion for all things geeky was slightly subdued as he obtained his Bachelor of Business Administration. Coming out of school his love of video games took a new turn as he spent several years managing GameStop (known at the time in Canada as EB Games) locations across Alberta. This did not, as you can imagine, help his collector's nature and began what can only be described as a downward spiral into launching his video game (and every other) collection.
Life continued on, and during the COVID-19 pandemic Zyrteki (along with i_am_jeff) decided to start streaming on Twitch, and here we are! It's been a wonderful journey so far, and hopefully it doesn't let up any time soon!
OTHER PASSIONS: Books, Music, Movies, LEGO, Photography
