Happy New Year, dear fellow gamers! As I already laid down my gaming plans for 2021, let me instead present you with the second part of my very own gaming epopee. We parted on a cliffhanger, and it is time to end the suspense. Enjoy!
2000 - 2006: The Days of Emulation
After the Sega drowning fiasco, I entered the new millennium bereft of
gaming systems; and it wasn’t long before I found out that none of the current consoles fitted my playing needs and wants. See, what I wanted at the
time were pixels, vivid colours and lovely, wholesome brand-new games. The Game
Boy Color was reaching the end of its life and couldn’t provide the latter, and
neither could the agonizing Dreamcast. As for Sony, I hated them with
such a passion for flooding the gaming landscape of the late ‘90s with
polygons, shitty shades of brown and disturbing games that the mere though of
owning one of their systems was anathema. To my utter dismay, I was left
stranded with no console to call my own; and as neither retro gaming nor
internet shopping were yet a thing, I couldn’t even secure another trusty
Megadrive or a Super Nintendo.
This was the beginning of the longest dry spell of my gaming career. Those days were dark, let me tell you that; my forced parting from regular gaming was painful indeed, and left me with intense feelings of loss and frustration. I wouldn’t get over these feelings until a whole decade later; in the meantime, I tried to alleviate my loss and maintain an ever-so-tenuous connection to gaming by diving into the budding emulation scene. I secured all my favourite cult classics on my desktop, and proceeded to replay them on a regular basis for the next five years. An annual summer gaming marathon with gallons of green tea by my side was mandatory, as well as several smaller spells all through the year.
Still, this wasn’t enough. I needed some new gaming material as well; and I quenched my thirst by spending long, delightful hours watching my sister play the Tomb Raider games on her laptop. We all know that watching someone play can sometimes be as fulfilling as playing ourselves, all the more so if the player in question masters the game more than we do. Indeed, I totally suck at all things Tomb Raider, while my sister made Lara Croft her b*tch long ago; and boy, did I get a kick out of seeing her blaze effortlessly through the games. While she was getting engrossed into collecting Universal Fighting System cards, I discovered the Samurai Showdown series on a Neo Geo emulator, and played the heck out of Samurai Shodown IV — to the point where I managed to make mincemeat of final boss Shiro Amakusa with all characters, in all settings.
2007 – 2011: Coming back on track
After six years of that regimen, I was seriously itching to play new games. Not just any new games, mind you: RPGs, folks. Having to survive for six years on Landstalker and Link’s Awakening alone made me crave new adventures like crazy — and lo and behold, the Game Boy Advance, the DS and their meaty RPG library were right there to humour me. But at that point, I was so disconnected from gaming trends that I didn’t even think of checking the current pieces of kit. Emulation had become my one and only way to play, for better or for worse; and thus I missed on those amazing handhelds entirely. I would fix that oversight later, as you all know; but in the meantime, I turned to emulation once again to unearth RPGs. First to quench my thirst was the mind-blowing Terranigma, soon followed by other cult classics such as Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3, Illusion of Time and A Link to the Past.
As I indulged in these RPG gems, my desire to own a dedicated gaming system grew stronger by the year, until it culminated in 2011. I toyed with the idea of making my gaming comeback with the DS: I had handled it some time ago at my cousins’ place and utterly relished the feel of it in my hands. I conveniently used Amazon and its fiendish ‘You might also like’ feature to find DS RPGs, and it wasn’t long before I had a list of potential purchases — and that sealed the deal. The rest is history: the most glorious Second Coming of Gaming finally happened in Christmas 2011, making me a full-blown gamer again.
2012 - 2020: The Halcyon Days
You kinda know the story from there on, dear fellow gamers: I’ve invested in other handhelds, I’ve become a full-blown collector, and I’ve played with abandon and never spent more than two months away from D-pads since then. Most importantly, I am at long last completely and utterly happy as a gamer. Until 2011, the joy of gaming always came with a healthy dose of frustration: either I didn’t have the funds to purchase coveted games, or I couldn’t find those coveted games, or there were no consoles or games I fancied — heck, there was always a killjoy. Those bittersweet days are done: I’m now the proud owner of six handhelds and hundreds of RPGs, I’m always a mere click away from getting a new addition to my precious collection, and I’m basking in the joy of gaming like never before. I’m truly living my Halcyon Days of Gaming, and I pray that they’ll last long — hopefully as long as yours truly.
Here ends my gaming epopee — boy, what a ride that was! Those 30 years of gaming were amazing indeed, and it felt good to reminisce and see how far I’ve come since I first laid my thumb on an A-button. Feel free to share your very own gaming epics in the comments, dear fellow gamers; and see you soon with fresh 2021 gaming goodness!
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