The year was 2011, the month was December. Between gorging on cinnamon biscuits
and using the short days as an excuse for copious napping, I was eagerly
waiting for my sister's imminent visit — and for the Christmas gift she would
bring in her luggage. Make yourself comfortable and bring the pop-corn, dear
fellow gamers; for what you're about to read is the sweet story of how I
reacquainted myself with gaming after nearly fifteen years away from D-pads.
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Icecap Zone, Sonic 3. Because winter, snow, Christmas. |
That blissful moment had been a long time coming. Ever
since I lost interest in my Mega Drive in 1998 because of a lack of games to
play, I had virtually retreated from gaming. I stopped purchasing consoles,
stopped following the industry's evolution and generally stopped investing time
and energy in all things gaming, pouring instead all my fan instincts and my
funds into manga and anime. In 2000, gaming made a timid comeback in my life
through emulation, as I discovered the joys of replaying oldies on my newly
purchased second-hand PC. However, such bouts of nostalgic gaming were but a
mere distraction: I usually indulged in a gaming binge once a year, preferably
in summer when free time was abundant, and left my emulators untouched for the
rest of the year. This became the pattern for the next fourteen years, up until
that fateful year 2011.
I don't remember how this happened exactly; but the fact is that by the end of
2011, I had somehow become interested in gaming again, to the point of wanting
to get my paws on a current-generation console for the first time in, like,
fifteen years. I spent the second half of 2011 comparing consoles and
prospecting for potential games; and upon discovering that the Nintendo DS was
blessed with a vast array of RPGs, I decided to just go for it and get on board
with Ninty again. Enter my beloved sister, a.k.a. my partner-in-gaming ever
since we got our first Game Boys together way back in 1990: we plotted that
whole thing together and decided that my Christmas 2011 present from her would
be a brand-new DS, complete with a copy of Sonic
Classic Collection so that I
would have something to feed my DS right out of the box.
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I wanted Christmas gaming pictures, but hey, copyright issues. |
That awesome Christmas 2011 came to pass, and I felt
the joy of laying my hands again on a true blue gaming device at long last.
Emulation is all well and nice, but it just cannot compare to the
feeling of holding a handheld and knowing that this little machine packs up
hours of potential gaming happiness and can deliver said gaming happiness
pretty much anytime, anywhere. I was utterly smitten with my gorgeous new DSi
and could hardly believe that I owned a console again, after what felt like a
million years spent away from gaming.
Yet despite being overjoyed at the prospect of diving into gaming again, I
didn't quite do that right away. Years spent on an intermittent gaming diet had
taken their toll, and I needed to get used to the thing again — all the more so
as even back in my active gaming days, I was not the most avid and obsessed
gamer of them all. I basically spent the first half of 2012 playing nothing but
Sonic Classic Collection and Sonic
Rush, with large
periods of not touching the DS in between. Then games started trickling in,
amongst which cult classics of mine Avalon
Code and Dragon
Quest IX; and slowly
but surely, the DS became a fixture in my life, along with my ever-growing
gaming library.
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But lo and behold, these are from my first DS game. How symbolic! |
Now, my gaming ways have changed a lot in six
years. In the early stages of my gaming rebirth, I used to play each and every
game intensely, leaving no stone unturned, no extra dungeon unroamed and no
complimentary boss alive. This attitude was born all at once from the desire to
recoup my gaming investments, from a sense of duty towards the developers' hard
work and, last but not least, from deeply ingrained gaming habits. Games being
few and far between in the '90s, I had to squeeze every single ounce of fun out
of each and every game I managed to get my paws on. That's how I found myself
playing Sonic Triple Trouble on the Game Gear for weeks despite the fact
that I hated that game's soundtrack, level design and overall atmosphere; and
don't get me started on Super
Mario Land, the game that
taught me all about making lemonade when life gives me lemons. Coming from that
place of scarcity, it should surprise no one that I milked my first DS games
dry and kept playing them long after they lost their freshness, despite the
fact that I had other games waiting to be played.
I've mellowed over time when it comes to game completion, and no longer do I
force myself to go platinum with my games no matter what. Life is too short and
my collection too humongous to lose time playing games I don't fully enjoy; so
when I don't click with a game in the first hours of play or don't feel like
toiling on a cheated final boss, I ditch the game entirely and without regret.
I've learnt that it's simply impossible to end up loving every single game one
buys — especially when one buys games by the truckload — and that one must
humbly admit their lack of judgement, sell the offending game and simply move
on to the next game in line. I'm also much less of a purist when it comes to
game series. There was a time when I insisted on playing a series' entries in
chronological order, preferably starting with the very first one when it was
possible; however, I don't care anymore nowadays and simply play series in any
order I fancy, letting my gaming instinct run the show.
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That was totally a Christmas post in disguise. |
And since I'm mentioning this... My sharp, ever-dependable gaming instinct
played a huge part in shaping those six years of gaming awesomeness. See, I
don't determine my next gaming pick through rational means, such as asking
myself which game/series/genre I want to play right now or deciding on a list
of games to play in a given timespan; instead, I simply daydream about my
collection until I get a sudden and irrepressible desire to play a given game.
I don't even have to look at the games themselves: I just let my memories of
them flow until I get that sharp, unmistakable impulse to play one of them. The
lucky winner can be my newest acquisition, or it can be a game I bought five
years before; there's no rule, apart from letting my gaming instinct run the
game. (Pun totally intended.) This also means that I have no backlog to speak
of: I simply assume that I'll play all the games in my collection sooner or
later — that is, if arthritis doesn't catch up with me first. And the most
amazing thing is that it works like a charm: the game chosen by my gaming
instinct nearly always end up fulfilling my gaming wishes of the moment.
There you have it, dear fellow gamers: the story of my Second Coming of gaming,
my long-awaited return to the gaming roots I should never have strayed away
from in the first place. I'm currently basking in my Halcyon Days of gaming,
and let me tell you: this time, gaming is here to stay. I made sure of that, by
purchasing enough gaming material and backup systems to maintain my gaming habits
for years, if not decades. And since I'm mentioning this, no story of my return
to gaming would be complete without covering the collecting side of things as
well; and that's exactly what I'm going to do in a
future post. Thanks for
reading, be my guest anytime and, last but not least: Merry Christmas!
Tehvidya1 January 2018 at 20:03
I call it "listening to the voice of the games." It sounds like so much mumbo-jumbo, but it really works. After years of gaming experience sometimes you instinctively know what you want to play at certain points in time.
You know, sometimes a given game pops up in my head all of a sudden while I'm not even especially thinking about gaming, and stubbornly refuses to bulge. I fancy thinking that games are actually calling me from their storage boxes and begging for attention... Which I gladly give them. ^^
Oooooh I missed
this post from two years ago !!
Very pleasant to read :)) I'm glad you enjoyed my 2011 Christmas gift so much
^^
Isleif25 January 2021 at 16:00
I did, and I still do! 😍 By december 2021, that DS will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Oh, how time flies! 😁
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