If there was ever an emotion that could be described as bitter-sweet, it would be nostalgia. Nothing quite ruins a good memory more than the realization that the moment you are currently recalling can never be experienced again. Luckily, that sadness can be counterbalanced by the happiness that the thing you're remembering brought you.
Whether you see nostalgia as a good thing or a bad thing really comes down to whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. An optimist will more likely focus on the happiness of the memory, while a pessimist will probably just be bummed that the good times are gone.
Photo: dramyjohnson.com
"There was a time when I would doodle tanks and explosions on all my homework. Now I just write notes in the margin. It helps me get payed, but it's not a fun." *sigh*
As a gamer, nostalgic moments occur all the time. More than likely is because there are so many sequels that remind us of days spent playing their predecessors. Or maybe it's the fact that we don't always get rid of old games, and they just sit there, silently begging us to play them again.
And we all have those old games. For some of my friends, the reason they don't play them is because they would have to plug up a different system. They started out on an N64, and they'd have to drag it out of it's box and hook it up, just to play some old Donkey Kong game. It's not that they don't want to, it's just to much work.
I don't have that excuse. For me, one of my most nostalgic games is Halo 3. That's right. Not Halo: Combat Evolved or even Halo 2. But the third one, the one that is on a current generation system. I have a copy of it, and I love it, and it is by far one of the best games I've ever played. I just...don't anymore.
But perhaps I should backtrack some more. There is a fine reason why that particular game pulls at my heartstrings the way it does. A couple reasons, actually. But this adventure into my past doesn't start with the Xbox, or the GameCube, or even my first real gaming platform, my GameBoy Advance. It started...with a harlot in red.
How It All Began
Where in the heck is Carmen Sandiego? This woman had a time travel device which teleported her anywhere in the world at any point in time. If the device didn't leave a giant, gaping hole in the fabric of space and time whenever it was used, she'd be unstoppable.
My parents probably thought it would be a great learning tool for me. I was always distracted in school. I talked too much and occasionally talked back to the teacher. I wasn't exactly a problem child, but I had problems.
And I did learn from it. I learned about the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and how Sir Vile (real imaginative) was trying to steal it.
I learned that Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press. Ivan Jane Reaction (yes, that's her name), stole the first copy of the Bible, so I helped make posters to warn the townsfolk there was a thief on the loose.
I learned that salt is essential for survival in the desert from some Arabian dude on his way to Mecca. For some reason, Bug Zapper (seriously?) thought it was worth stealing his salt. That always confused me.
Because what these bad guys were supposed to be doing was stealing important historical artifacts. But if they are stolen, then nobody ever finds them or hears about them... so why are they important? Time paradox!
Be that as it may, I forgive this games bumbling premise because of how important it was to my development as a gamer. It was my introduction to the puzzle genre. Now I play Portal 2 and...well, that's it.
Also, the only way they are actually similar is that they have portals. One has time portals created by a "Chronoskimmer", the other has blue and orange spacial portals that come from a "Portable Quantum Tunneling Device" (portal gun). They aren't really similar in any other way. I guess I just like it because it was my introduction to games.
Image: Wikipedia
THERE SHE IS! GET HER BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARS AGAIN!!!
How It All Began
Where in the heck is Carmen Sandiego? This woman had a time travel device which teleported her anywhere in the world at any point in time. If the device didn't leave a giant, gaping hole in the fabric of space and time whenever it was used, she'd be unstoppable.
My parents probably thought it would be a great learning tool for me. I was always distracted in school. I talked too much and occasionally talked back to the teacher. I wasn't exactly a problem child, but I had problems.
And I did learn from it. I learned about the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and how Sir Vile (real imaginative) was trying to steal it.
I learned that Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press. Ivan Jane Reaction (yes, that's her name), stole the first copy of the Bible, so I helped make posters to warn the townsfolk there was a thief on the loose.
I learned that salt is essential for survival in the desert from some Arabian dude on his way to Mecca. For some reason, Bug Zapper (seriously?) thought it was worth stealing his salt. That always confused me.
Because what these bad guys were supposed to be doing was stealing important historical artifacts. But if they are stolen, then nobody ever finds them or hears about them... so why are they important? Time paradox!
Be that as it may, I forgive this games bumbling premise because of how important it was to my development as a gamer. It was my introduction to the puzzle genre. Now I play Portal 2 and...well, that's it.
Also, the only way they are actually similar is that they have portals. One has time portals created by a "Chronoskimmer", the other has blue and orange spacial portals that come from a "Portable Quantum Tunneling Device" (portal gun). They aren't really similar in any other way. I guess I just like it because it was my introduction to games.
Image: lold.com
Also, they both have horrible female antagonists.
I moved on from Carmen Sandiego to bigger fish. Like Freddii.
Image: softwreper.com
And they wonder why we do drugs.
Freddii fish the investigative flounder, Putt-Putt the talking car, Pajama Sam the child superhero. These are the games I played, and I'm sure they all taught me very valuable lesson. However, the biggest lesson I learned from them is this: I like to explore.
In Freddii fish, it seemed like there was an entire ocean available to explore. However, I quickly became frustrated with the constraints the game placed on my characters mobility. Basically, the fact that I could only go in a few, pre-ordained directions was infuriating.
Up to this point, all I'd ever played were these point and click computer games. If someone would have come back in time and told my about Skyrim and it's miles and miles of vast wasteland to roam free in, I would have knocked them out, stolen their time travel device, and conquered the world using the lessons I'd learned from Carmen Sandiego.
So that example didn't really pan out. Whatever. What I'm getting at is that I had been hooked to the digital life, but it could not satisfy what I wanted.
What I wanted was freedom. Freedom to do whatever I wanted in a digital realm free of consequence. Phrased that way, it sounds almost sinister. But I just wanted to explore the world, and since I couldn't explore the real world, I wanted to explore a fake one.
My time would come. Oh yes, it would come.
Moving On Up
I got a pink Gameboy for Christmas one year, and it was the greatest gift I'd ever gotten. I was used to Lego's and books, which were good, because they allowed me to do my two favorite things: Pretend I was creative and pretend I was smart.
Anyway, my cousin gave me her pink Gameboy Advance when she thought she was to old for it. I couldn't have been older than 6 or 7. She gave me Tetris with it, and that was about it. I played Tetris so much the Russians began marketing it directly to me.
That was a stupid joke. Sorry. Anyway, it wasn't long before my friends from across the street encouraged me to get a Pokemon game. We had all been collecting Pokemon cards for awhile at that point. When I think of all the allowance money I blew on those things...
I saved up my money until I had enough to get Emerald version. It was the newest Pokemon game available, and it was worth the money. Every. Last. Penny.
In Freddii fish, it seemed like there was an entire ocean available to explore. However, I quickly became frustrated with the constraints the game placed on my characters mobility. Basically, the fact that I could only go in a few, pre-ordained directions was infuriating.
Up to this point, all I'd ever played were these point and click computer games. If someone would have come back in time and told my about Skyrim and it's miles and miles of vast wasteland to roam free in, I would have knocked them out, stolen their time travel device, and conquered the world using the lessons I'd learned from Carmen Sandiego.
So that example didn't really pan out. Whatever. What I'm getting at is that I had been hooked to the digital life, but it could not satisfy what I wanted.
What I wanted was freedom. Freedom to do whatever I wanted in a digital realm free of consequence. Phrased that way, it sounds almost sinister. But I just wanted to explore the world, and since I couldn't explore the real world, I wanted to explore a fake one.
My time would come. Oh yes, it would come.
Moving On Up
thestrong.com
"Back in my day, we didn't get none a them PSP's or 3DS's. If it played games, we'd use it, and we were thankful for it, you can bet yer bootstraps!" - Me
I got a pink Gameboy for Christmas one year, and it was the greatest gift I'd ever gotten. I was used to Lego's and books, which were good, because they allowed me to do my two favorite things: Pretend I was creative and pretend I was smart.
Anyway, my cousin gave me her pink Gameboy Advance when she thought she was to old for it. I couldn't have been older than 6 or 7. She gave me Tetris with it, and that was about it. I played Tetris so much the Russians began marketing it directly to me.
That was a stupid joke. Sorry. Anyway, it wasn't long before my friends from across the street encouraged me to get a Pokemon game. We had all been collecting Pokemon cards for awhile at that point. When I think of all the allowance money I blew on those things...
I saved up my money until I had enough to get Emerald version. It was the newest Pokemon game available, and it was worth the money. Every. Last. Penny.
A lot of my friends these days cite various reasons for never playing Pokemon as kids. For some, they say they never saw the appeal. They were never into games. Others say their parents wouldn't let them. I know some of their parents thought it was "demonic".
This makes me sad to think about, because Pokemon games were...no, are amazing! They put you in a fantastic world of adventure and excitement, and you, along with your friends/pets, get to save the world from Team Bad Guy (The villains are always Team Something).
Pokemon games gave me the open world I had longed for since I'd first learned that no, you can't use the Chronoskimmer to go back in time slightly before the does of the villain, and catch them upon their arrival in the past. In the Pokemon world, certain areas only become available after completing certain events, but in each area there is a considerable amount of space to explore, and look for rare Pokemon or items.
I played Emerald version all the way through dozens of times, and I learned something new about it every time. There was always a new path I'd missed in a cave, or a rare item underneath some rock. It was exactly what I needed.
But eventually, it stopped surprising me. I found myself restarting the game over and over, looking for that sense of adventure. It's a problem that I have yet to solve to this day.
It's the developers way of making the game addicting, and whoever came up with the system is a psychological genius. The "Variable Reward Ratio" is a thing that games have been using since leveling up became a thing, and in Pokemon, it's interwoven into every facet of the game.
It's a proven fact that the best way to get an animal (the gamer) to repeat an action is to randomly reward the action. If you give a reward every time the action is performed, the animal will realize that they only need to do the action when it is needed.
However, if the reward is given randomly, then the gamer doesn't know when the next health pack will be available, so they look everywhere. Video games like "Pokemon" and "Skyrim" are creating a generation of looters and hoarders. Virtual ones, anyway. These behaviors rarely spill into the real world.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that the beginning of the the game is most exciting because you have nothing. You are totally vulnerable. You have to begin grabbing all the loot you can find, and, when your pack gets full, you have to decide what to take and what to keep.
The reason the Pokemon games began to lose excitement every time I restarted is because I learned where everything was. Loot was not random, for the most part. All the items found throughout the world were in the same spots. Yes, there were hidden ones, and I could usually find a few new ones each time, but the number grew lesser and lesser.
Eventually I realized that the game had become one giant easter egg hunt for me. The fighting was no longer exciting, I'd memorized all the cheap tricks of sneaking through the Gyms, and I knew how to catch all the rare Pokemon. New games held new adventures, but the game will never, ever be the same for me.
This makes me sad.
To be continued in Part 2
Pokemon games gave me the open world I had longed for since I'd first learned that no, you can't use the Chronoskimmer to go back in time slightly before the does of the villain, and catch them upon their arrival in the past. In the Pokemon world, certain areas only become available after completing certain events, but in each area there is a considerable amount of space to explore, and look for rare Pokemon or items.
I played Emerald version all the way through dozens of times, and I learned something new about it every time. There was always a new path I'd missed in a cave, or a rare item underneath some rock. It was exactly what I needed.
image: ign.com
If you haven't played Pokemon, then you probably haven't realized that this actually isn't ragingly stupid.
But eventually, it stopped surprising me. I found myself restarting the game over and over, looking for that sense of adventure. It's a problem that I have yet to solve to this day.
It's the developers way of making the game addicting, and whoever came up with the system is a psychological genius. The "Variable Reward Ratio" is a thing that games have been using since leveling up became a thing, and in Pokemon, it's interwoven into every facet of the game.
It's a proven fact that the best way to get an animal (the gamer) to repeat an action is to randomly reward the action. If you give a reward every time the action is performed, the animal will realize that they only need to do the action when it is needed.
However, if the reward is given randomly, then the gamer doesn't know when the next health pack will be available, so they look everywhere. Video games like "Pokemon" and "Skyrim" are creating a generation of looters and hoarders. Virtual ones, anyway. These behaviors rarely spill into the real world.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that the beginning of the the game is most exciting because you have nothing. You are totally vulnerable. You have to begin grabbing all the loot you can find, and, when your pack gets full, you have to decide what to take and what to keep.
The reason the Pokemon games began to lose excitement every time I restarted is because I learned where everything was. Loot was not random, for the most part. All the items found throughout the world were in the same spots. Yes, there were hidden ones, and I could usually find a few new ones each time, but the number grew lesser and lesser.
Eventually I realized that the game had become one giant easter egg hunt for me. The fighting was no longer exciting, I'd memorized all the cheap tricks of sneaking through the Gyms, and I knew how to catch all the rare Pokemon. New games held new adventures, but the game will never, ever be the same for me.
This makes me sad.
Image: mypokecard.com
I didn't realize how upset writing this would make me until I ended it. I was gonna write one long one, but I think I need to take a personal leave. Maybe play some Pokemon or something. I don't know anymore...
To be continued in Part 2
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