I got my first video game console in the late 80s. My parents never wanted us to have one, they rotted the brain and all that, but after spending a month one summer with my cousins in New York I couldn’t imagine going home and being without Super Mario Brothers 3 and Tetris. My aunt and uncle sent me home to Maine with my own Nintendo Entertainment System. Woohoo!
Over the years my sister Heather and I collected dozens of games for it, picking them up at flea markets and garage sales. We had the console repaired in the mid 90s and as far as I know, Heather still has it and plays with it.
That NES was the only console I ever owned while living in Maine, we couldn’t afford to buy any of the newer systems. Heather eventually got a GameBoy, but I went the way of computer gaming, indulging in Loom, the Monkey Island series, Doom and Rebel Assault.
When I was 18 I moved to New York. My console love was reignited by the discovery of Final Fantasy on the PlayStation. The PlayStation2 was about to come out, so I saved up the $300 (not an easy task, I was supporting myself working as a gas station clerk) and was able to get my hands on one of the coveted machines when a friend who was lucky enough to reserve one was unable to pay for his. The one of the fantastic things about the PS2 was that it was backwards compatible; I got all those Final Fantasy games that came out for the PS and could play them on my nice new machine.
In 2001 I moved in with Michael. My video game love was still intact, and we hosted LAN parties at least twice a year. Again my gaming habits were moving away from the console and games on the computer that I could now play with opponents.
But in the past year or two I’ve grown away from any sort of gaming. Getting Diablo 2 and Doom 3 running in Linux was a fun task, but then I really didn’t feel like playing it. I’ve had my Debian system installed for over a year now and I still haven’t gotten around to installing UT. Michael and I used to play WarCraft3 often, but now I’m not even sure if we have a copy.
I started to think I’d grown out of gaming altogether, and I didn’t have time for video games anymore anyway. My free time was now spent working with Debian and the Ubuntu community, being a mentor to a couple people learning Linux at any given time, offering tech support via IRC and mailing lists, writing documentation and how-tos, organizing local LUG events, keeping up with the fan sites I run. I was being quite productive with my time, and it felt really good for a while.
But lately some of this work I’ve been doing with my free time has felt more like a chore and less like a labor of love. While I know I never will stop contributing to F/OSS or doing many of those things I enjoy doing, I’m going to get burnt out if I don’t take it easy. And with my full time job being so busy I just want to come home some nights and veg out. I greatly enjoy spending time with Michael watching the latest television show we grabbed from BitTorrent, but some nights it’s just not satisfying and I feel lazy. But what else is there to do?
Then my grandmother sent me a puzzle in the mail, which I received after a particularly tough day at work. I was exhausted, but sat down on the floor with it, waiting for Michael to finish up his work so we could go out for dinner, and completed the difficult puzzle in about 20 minutes. This made me feel GREAT! I missed doing puzzles! And puzzles were a big element of what I loved about my favorite video games.
Then
So last night while Michael was working on his latest batch of homebrew, I dusted off my PS2 and fired up Kingdom Hearts (which is actually
I think this is what I’ve been missing. I haven’t really grown out of video games. They’re a fantastic escape that my brain still needs.
I’m going to go ahead and get that Pink DS for my birthday. Obviously I’m already working on a game list, but anyone have more game recommendations?