I have been on a strange and fairly pointless kick lately. I have barely turned on my Xbox 360, or even my PS3. I’ve been watching more movies, and playing other games. Games that I’ve missed. Missed in both terms of “never played” – like the games that occasionally show up in my “Backorder catalog, and also missed in terms of “just haven’t played in a while.” I went on Goozex and got a a few games like NES Play Action Football, and Silent Hill for the PlayStation. Two games that I’ve never played, but always heard good things about. I can’t wait to hook up my original NES for a play session.
I recently went on GoG.com and purchased Sim City 2000 when it was on sale. I even went on Steam and loaded up some game expansions that I never completed like Half-Life’s Opposing Forces. I added my original Star Craft CD Key to my Blizzard / Battle.net account. I found a rare game in my parents’ attic called Gunman Chronicles (which you can’t activate on Steam, by the way!). Another victory for Steam, I bought a special sale priced collection of games from id Software, and found myself playing a lot of DooM 3 and Quake III Arena.
I can’t explain why, so suddenly, I have been compelled to play so many classics. But I ran through a few levels of Donkey Kong Country, and even picked up the Virtual Boy I had left in the childhood bedroom where I grew up. Something is calling for me, and I can’t yet tell if it’s something genuinely retro, like my Gameboy, or if it’s something slightly newer. All I know is that right now I long for the days when controllers had wires, and you sat on the carpet about 4 feet from the TV, and you bleeped and blipped your way around a world that looked the way it sounded. I haven’t found the right thing to itch the scratch, but it’s a good gaming Friday, and I think it’s time to start the quest to find what I’m missing.