It’s going to be a great weekend, let me tell you! To be honest, I’m surprised that I’m actually taking the time to even write here this evening…
You see, in cleaning out the remaining mountain ‘o boxes that I had previously left behind up in Michigan, I actually came across something that I wanted to find, that being a whole box of my old video games for the Super Nintendo! One way or another, I’d gotten on a huge eBay kick before I left for Michigan, searching day and night for auction lots to make up all of the old games that had been presumably lost in the shuffle…and things hadn’t been going so great. A couple of the classics were found, such as F-Zero and Pilot Wings, but mind you, I had never even bought them in the first place so they don’t really count! I was on the hunt for the Zeldas, the Marios, and maybe even if I was feeling particularly bored, the Sim Citys…
And so approximately 1500 miles and half a day’s worth of digging through rubble, I found a small, orange box that more or less made the entire trip worthwhile! (…other than sharing time with friends and family, going home for the first time in two years, and getting to see my little sister graduate, mind you!) Super Mario World and All-Stars, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and of course, Home Alone - arrrggghhhh! The find was almost like rediscovering Christmas and had it not been for the fact that the actual console itself was still back home at the other end of the country, the nostalgia would’ve come rolling back in troves and officially marked my vacation as forfeit. In retrospect, I guess it was probably better off that I’d have to wait until I got home before committing myself to hours upon hours…upon hours in front of the TV like I was thirteen again, but really, who’s got the time to whip up the colossal batch of Chex Mix as required for such a gaming experience while they’re on vacation, anyways?!
Of course, the age-old question that races through my mind as I sit here playing the games of my childhood for hours on end is painfully simple – why doesn’t anyone make games like these anymore? Maybe it’s just a part of being old-fashioned, but when I sit down to play video games, I have only a couple of requirements: make it simple enough to where I can understand it (because frankly, I don’t like to have to think when I’m trying to relax!), make it simple enough to where I can sit down and only play for five or ten minutes if my schedule doesn’t allow for anything more, and of course, make it fun. And mind you, a lot of the modern games that I’ve played still manage to hit the nail on the head with respect to that last one, but otherwise, I’m sitting there for hours upon hours, hint guides and tips from the Internet spread out across the table, and it becomes all too clear that I’m not getting up to do anything else any time soon! While I’ve got no objections to the occasional game day as it presents itself, just see how your significant other takes to learning that buying you the new Grand Theft Auto game was the equivalent of inviting game month into your home…good luck with that one!
Maybe it’s just a case where technology has advanced so far that somebody has decided that we shouldn’t be satisfied with a two-dimensional Super Mario scrolling across the screen in 16-bit action at best. It seems today that if it’s not in 3d, preferably 1st person, and requiring a minimum of 80 hours of game play to conquer, then consumers simply won’t be interested and I really think that we’re cutting off a classic branch of entertainment by thinking that way. Of course, one might argue that it wouldn’t make anymore sense to program for the NES or SNES at this point than it would to start working on applications for the Apple 2e again…old school might be fun for a few of us old farts, but I guess it’s just not all that profitable and we all know what drives this industry…
But while I think that I’ve come to accept the fact that there won’t be any new old school games to be found out there on the shelves, I find comfort in that old television saying, “If I haven’t seen it, it’s new to me!” as I continue to browse through hundreds of listings on eBay for classics that I’ve never even experienced yet. So let Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft battle over their next generation, $300 consoles and the uber-amazing graphics that will pour out of them to only the finest of home entertainment systems – in the meantime, I’ll be right here trying to once again uncover the secrets of why Mario, in fact, is missing…in wonderfully-gritty clarity on the 52-incher, and that’ll be just enough for me!
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