Six years of gaming happiness: Playing 'em games

The year was 2011, the month was December. Between gorging on cinnamon biscuits and using the short days as an excuse for copious napping, I was eagerly waiting for my sister's imminent visit — and for the Christmas gift she would bring in her luggage. Make yourself comfortable and bring the pop-corn, dear fellow gamers; for what you're about to read is the sweet story of how I reacquainted myself with gaming after nearly fifteen years away from D-pads.

Icecap Zone, Sonic 3. Because winter, snow, Christmas.

That blissful moment had been a long time coming. Ever since I lost interest in my Mega Drive in 1998 because of a lack of games to play, I had virtually retreated from gaming. I stopped purchasing consoles, stopped following the industry's evolution and generally stopped investing time and energy in all things gaming, pouring instead all my fan instincts and my funds into manga and anime. In 2000, gaming made a timid comeback in my life through emulation, as I discovered the joys of replaying oldies on my newly purchased second-hand PC. However, such bouts of nostalgic gaming were but a mere distraction: I usually indulged in a gaming binge once a year, preferably in summer when free time was abundant, and left my emulators untouched for the rest of the year. This became the pattern for the next fourteen years, up until that fateful year 2011.

I don't remember how this happened exactly; but the fact is that by the end of 2011, I had somehow become interested in gaming again, to the point of wanting to get my paws on a current-generation console for the first time in, like, fifteen years. I spent the second half of 2011 comparing consoles and prospecting for potential games; and upon discovering that the Nintendo DS was blessed with a vast array of RPGs, I decided to just go for it and get on board with Ninty again. Enter my beloved sister, a.k.a. my partner-in-gaming ever since we got our first Game Boys together way back in 1990: we plotted that whole thing together and decided that my Christmas 2011 present from her would be a brand-new DS, complete with a copy of Sonic Classic Collection so that I would have something to feed my DS right out of the box.

I wanted Christmas gaming pictures, but hey, copyright issues.

That awesome Christmas 2011 came to pass, and I felt the joy of laying my hands again on a true blue gaming device at long last. Emulation is all well and nice, but it just cannot compare to the feeling of holding a handheld and knowing that this little machine packs up hours of potential gaming happiness and can deliver said gaming happiness pretty much anytime, anywhere. I was utterly smitten with my gorgeous new DSi and could hardly believe that I owned a console again, after what felt like a million years spent away from gaming.

Yet despite being overjoyed at the prospect of diving into gaming again, I didn't quite do that right away. Years spent on an intermittent gaming diet had taken their toll, and I needed to get used to the thing again — all the more so as even back in my active gaming days, I was not the most avid and obsessed gamer of them all. I basically spent the first half of 2012 playing nothing but Sonic Classic Collection and Sonic Rush, with large periods of not touching the DS in between. Then games started trickling in, amongst which cult classics of mine Avalon Code and Dragon Quest IX; and slowly but surely, the DS became a fixture in my life, along with my ever-growing gaming library.

But lo and behold, these are from my first DS game. How symbolic!

Now, my gaming ways have changed a lot in six years. In the early stages of my gaming rebirth, I used to play each and every game intensely, leaving no stone unturned, no extra dungeon unroamed and no complimentary boss alive. This attitude was born all at once from the desire to recoup my gaming investments, from a sense of duty towards the developers' hard work and, last but not least, from deeply ingrained gaming habits. Games being few and far between in the '90s, I had to squeeze every single ounce of fun out of each and every game I managed to get my paws on. That's how I found myself playing Sonic Triple Trouble on the Game Gear for weeks despite the fact that I hated that game's soundtrack, level design and overall atmosphere; and don't get me started on Super Mario Land, the game that taught me all about making lemonade when life gives me lemons. Coming from that place of scarcity, it should surprise no one that I milked my first DS games dry and kept playing them long after they lost their freshness, despite the fact that I had other games waiting to be played.

I've mellowed over time when it comes to game completion, and no longer do I force myself to go platinum with my games no matter what. Life is too short and my collection too humongous to lose time playing games I don't fully enjoy; so when I don't click with a game in the first hours of play or don't feel like toiling on a cheated final boss, I ditch the game entirely and without regret. I've learnt that it's simply impossible to end up loving every single game one buys — especially when one buys games by the truckload — and that one must humbly admit their lack of judgement, sell the offending game and simply move on to the next game in line. I'm also much less of a purist when it comes to game series. There was a time when I insisted on playing a series' entries in chronological order, preferably starting with the very first one when it was possible; however, I don't care anymore nowadays and simply play series in any order I fancy, letting my gaming instinct run the show.

That was totally a Christmas post in disguise.

And since I'm mentioning this... My sharp, ever-dependable gaming instinct played a huge part in shaping those six years of gaming awesomeness. See, I don't determine my next gaming pick through rational means, such as asking myself which game/series/genre I want to play right now or deciding on a list of games to play in a given timespan; instead, I simply daydream about my collection until I get a sudden and irrepressible desire to play a given game. I don't even have to look at the games themselves: I just let my memories of them flow until I get that sharp, unmistakable impulse to play one of them. The lucky winner can be my newest acquisition, or it can be a game I bought five years before; there's no rule, apart from letting my gaming instinct run the game. (Pun totally intended.) This also means that I have no backlog to speak of: I simply assume that I'll play all the games in my collection sooner or later — that is, if arthritis doesn't catch up with me first. And the most amazing thing is that it works like a charm: the game chosen by my gaming instinct nearly always end up fulfilling my gaming wishes of the moment.

There you have it, dear fellow gamers: the story of my Second Coming of gaming, my long-awaited return to the gaming roots I should never have strayed away from in the first place. I'm currently basking in my Halcyon Days of gaming, and let me tell you: this time, gaming is here to stay. I made sure of that, by purchasing enough gaming material and backup systems to maintain my gaming habits for years, if not decades. And since I'm mentioning this, no story of my return to gaming would be complete without covering the collecting side of things as well; and that's exactly what I'm going to do in a future post. Thanks for reading, be my guest anytime and, last but not least: Merry Christmas!