In 2002 someone with the creative username "dan crenshaw" posted three separate guides for the JRPG Suikoden 3. to gamefaqs.com. This consists of the most popular comprehensive guide to the entire game, a list of all the story scenes and endings in the game, and a list of all the things the private detective you can hire in the game can tell you about the underage anime girls that are part of your army (it's a JRPG).
After first going "Huh, that's weird" about the user name, I checked with the site howmanyofme.com to see if this was a common name. It is not. There are 13 Dan Crenshaws in the United States. There are 103 Daniel Crenshaws - which is his legal name - some of whom will be called Dan. Let's dive deeper.
The timing of these guides is just fantastic. Dan Crenshaw finished high school in 2002, presumably around summer, and these guides were written and published in the months after that and stopped being updated in ealy 2003, when his wikipedia article tells me that his university education was kicking off. Let's dive deeper.
Next step is a bit awkward because at this point I was losing focus and since I am not American I don't know your internet service providers, but he does leave an email adress, which is dshaw999@bellsouth.net. It does sound to me like someone with that adress in 2002 is probably in the south, which he was, but I haven't actually looked that one up too much.
Here's a link to the list of guides for Suikoden 3: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/536777-suikoden-iii/faqs The link for the post will have to be to a picture of main character Geddoe, the one-eyed mercenary that I am now convinced he has built his entire persona around.
Also I just downloaded Suikoden 1 and 2 with the hope of playing through them in order, but 1 really feels like a slog... How much would skipping straight to the second one harm my experience?
Just play the second one. Anime bullshit aside, it's an absolutely beautiful game. Despite all I've said, I did notice this because I do like the series, anime bullshit and all.
I've never played S1, but S2 is one of my favs. you can prob skip it.
So 2 has quite a few pretty important characters you meet in 1. It was really cool to me to see how things progressed when I played 2. I would personally recommend it if you like lore and getting to know the characters more but it's definitely not that big of a deal if you don't. Idk if it works for emulator but you can actually import some of the stuff you accomplished in 1 inside of 2. It's been so long idk what exactly it did but I thought it was cool when I was younger.
Suikoden 1 absolutely is a slog. It's not a terrible game, but it's kind of on the mediocre side, and I personally don't think it's super important. It's definitely cool to see the full series through though.
2 has some returning characters and a bonus character you get for having a s1 savefile, but honestly the first game is so generic and light sotry-wise you can probably skip it. 2 is amazing, though I think it takes a bit to get going too.