Decided to not just write about retro games

Dear reader, as you can tell I haven’t written anything on this blog in… oh… 2 months. This hasn’t been because I haven’t been playing any games. I have, though not enough. I just haven’t felt like playing any retro games, which was the original point of this blog.

So, in the interest of expanding my publishing (and seriously, excuses for playing videogames) I’m going to start writing more about my gaming experiences in general.

First off, it seems like Steam sales are addictive in a really insidious way: like, $10 for Arkham Origins when I haven’t played Arkham Asylum or Arkham City (from previous Steam sales)? Definitely! Get in my pocket…

I want to think about that one a bit more.

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Why have I never played Metroid?

I’ve never played any Metroid game. Ever.

There, I said it.

I have no idea why I never have. I’ve wanted to, especially since I started writing this blog. But something always stops me and I don’t know what it is.

My 1st memory of Metroid is being a kid and being over at a friend of my brother’s. I don’t know if this was actually the case, but I remember they had a TV hung from the roof (remember, this is old CRT TV’s and it probably would’ve been quite small by today’s standards) AND THEY WERE PLAYING METROID ON NES ON IT!

It probably looked something like this – AWESOME then, not so amazing now

This probably set the standard for opulence that I’ve been trying to achieve in my life since then, but that’s a different blog. I recall he NES being new at the time, this might have been the first time I had even SEEN a Nintendo, so the whole thing was really impressive. BTW – remember at the beginning of the NES when they had a robot? A ROBOT?!?!

It’s Samus, not Seamus. Dumbass.

I also don’t know a ton about the game. I think it’s an open-world-ish game (ala Mega Man); that it’s hard, but not Mega Man hard; and of course, it features the most famous female videogame protagonist: Samus Aran.

Anyway, at some point I’ll start in on this series and it will be epic… or maybe hard to get into… or maybe the NES game will be too difficult and I’ll skip ahead to something more appropriate for my skill level… but you get the point 🙂

Blogging is hard

So I love playing videogames. I’m even writing my Master’s thesis about videogames. I like games now, but I LOVED them as a kid. Or at least, I really loved them in retrospect – probably something that happens to one as one gets older… the application of past love to things done in the past… (there’s probably a germanic verb conjugation for that)

ANYWAY

In the name of this love, or assigned love (or past love magnified by the passing of time or past frustration forged into love by a longing for youth) over the last few years I’ve been slowly putting together a collection of retro games/ systems. Chiefly NES, but I picked up a Genesis and even brought all my OLD OLD Coleco stuff home from my parent’s house. However, and to my everlasting shame, I’ve never really spent any time with the old favourites. I own Super Mario 3, BUT I’VE NEVER PLAYED IT, for example. There are lots of reasonable excuses like “being lazy”, “being busy”, or “I’m tending my WoW garden so leave me alone”, but it really came down to convenience. Modern TVs don’t have coax connections and having system upon system set-up in addition to XBox, Wii, Bluray, etc. takes up a buttload of space.

So imagine my happiness when I came across the RetroN 3. The damn thing plays 3 different systems worth of games! 3 SYSTEMS! It has wireless controllers and modern (well, not, like, HDMI or anything, but rather the respectable composite & s-video) video outs.

So I bought this thing online, waited for it, set it up, and tried it out.

Fail #1: the wireless controllers are rubbish (I’ll tell that story another time). Well, OK, that’s annoying, but no problem. The RetroN 3 has input for legacy controllers…

Fail #2: using the NES controllers still has WAY too much lag! I don’t know if you remember old games, but what they lacked in video quality, they made up for in speed and need-for-super-quick-movements-to-avoid-the-BOUNCING-KILLER-ENEMIESOFDOOM!

So. I’m back to my legacy systems and the not-doing-it-ness that comes with them, from me.

Though it isn’t THAT bad, it will just delay the population of this blog. And hey, this really is the epitome of a first world problem 🙂

EDIT: I tried again last night and don’t hate things quite so much.