What a beast. It was the size of two Game Boys. It took 6 aa batteries just to turn the thing on. 6! And they only lasted for 5 hours. Not even long enough for an average family vacation car trip. They actually sold an ac adapter for the Gamegear. Yeah, an ac adapter for a HANDHELD video game system. It was cool at the time, because it was the first color handheld system, which was a big step above the sepia tone Game Boy screen. The Game Gear also had a larger screen, which was nice. I remember having a magnifying glass/light add-on for my Game Boy because the screen was so small and dark at times... How geeky is that? And they made a tv adapter add-on for the Gamegear which allowed you to watch tv on your Gamegear. I didn't have that, but the idea of portable color tv that was also a gaming system was revolutionary at the time. But at the 6 batteries every 5 hours rate, I didn't play it much, nor did I have many games for it.
I didn't get a new system until college, when my parents bought me a Playstation 2. I didn't even ask for one, oddly enough. I guess they figured it wasn't normal for a kid to be content with an old video game system. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated it, and I still like Playstation 2 games. It was just unexpected. Although to be honest, I used it more as a dvd player than a video game system. Except for my Grand Theft Auto binges. My roommate Sophomore year had Grand Theft Auto 3 when it had first come out. He went to an exclusive pledge-only fraternity function and he let me play it while he was out. I ended up playing it all night long. He got back around 4Am, and I was still playing it. I was instantly hooked. And they followed that up with Vice City, which is still my favorite Grand Theft Auto game. It's basically interactive Scarface, down to the mansion being identical in the game and the movie. It is digitalized crack. The follow up, San Andreas, was fun too, but very glitchy. And then I met my now wife, and our video game worlds combined.
She's definitely the gamer in our house. She got an Xbox 360, and I bought Grand Theft Auto IV for it. Still haven't finished that game. It's just so drastically different from the others. It's too much game for me. Eventually, we got a Wii. I think I've logged a total of 4 hours on a Wii in my lifetime. I get why people love it; it's just too much technology for me. Through eBay, we bought a Super Nintendo, and I still rarely ever play it. It was too much system for me back then, which is why I never bothered to get one, and it's still too much system for me now. I liked Sega. It had 3 buttons. Super Nintendo had 6. 6! The original Nintendo had 2. How do you jump from 2 buttons to 6? I still really don't know how I ever figured out a Playstation controller. And the controller is probably the main reason I stay away from Xbox 360, for the most part.
I sometimes feel ashamed of my reluctance to jump on board the new technology train. I feel even more guilty when something new comes along that forces me to try it out. Like the game Dead Rising. Holy hand grenade do I love that game. It's so much fun. Which is why it has been extremely difficult resisting buying the sequel. I know if I wait long enough, it'll plummet in price. And I don't play video games often enough to really justify not waiting. But man... it's tempting.
I really don't know what my problem is. Old man-itis perhaps? Could be. It takes me awhile to grasp new technology and trends. I just figured out Sudoku a couple of months ago. I didn't jump on board the Facebook fun bus until well into it's popularity. I never even had a Myspace page. I didn't even have a cell phone with a keyboard until this year. My wife's Droid phone scares me. Try to take a picture, and it wants me to talk to it instead. Hangs up my calls when they're complete without me pushing a button. Then again, my simple Verizon En v phone somehow changes my background picture, adds keypad mashed contacts and stores keypad mashed phone numbers while in keylock mode... Skynet is imminent, I tell you! It starts with these so-called smart phones. Just how smart are these wirey bastards? You call them applications, or "aps"; I call it military intelligence. Back in my day, four square was a game you played at recess, not an application that tells the world, "Hey, I'm not home! Come rob me!"
Back to video games. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the World of Warcraft. My warrior is level 74, and unless I get some kind of divine video game intervention, he shall remain that way, because my patience with that blasted game is wearing thin. I'm trying so hard to catch up so I can finally play with my wife and her friends, my whole reason for trying it out to begin with, and in a few weeks yet another expansion will be released, pushing my character even further behind everyone else. And that's suggesting that if I even were able to catch up, I'd be able to play along. That's not the case at all. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing on that game. I just click buttons, and things happen. Usually my character's frequent death...
And when the modern games freighten me, I recoil back to my beloved 8 bit simplicity. Only, I play horrible games. Horrible games that I, for some inexplicable reason, actually enjoy playing. Like Friday the 13th. I love the movies, so there's some joy in living out the setting via video games. But by all accounts, it's one of the worst games ever made. The weapons arc over the enemies, the game play is super confusing at first, and Jason looks like he's wearing a purple tracksuit.
Not to mention, the ending is one of the worst in video game history. There is no big pay-off for beating the game. It's just as much of a b.s. ending as most of the endings in the movies. Is he dead? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? End. And yet, I've played it so much that I can now beat it every time. There's even a trick to beat it in about 20 minutes or so. So why? Why do I keep playing it? It's like I have video game amnesia or something, and I think if I play it another 100 times, a secret chip will activate, turning it into a great game; a game worthy of the Friday the 13th name. One where you either actually encounter a difficult Jason who doesn't act like a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out reject character. Or better yet, lets you play as Jason, going around, coming up with unique methods of offing your prey. You couldn't do that back then, but nobody would blink an eye at the idea now. Just slap a MA warning sticker on it, and let me have at it.
I do like that people like me actually have a hip title for our reluctance to embrace new technology. We're called "retro" gamers. That sounds much better than freightened old men scared that robots might come and steal their Ensure drinks, Bingo chips and Social Security cards...
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