Long time, no blog. Not much of a reason to when you’re finishing out your last year as a college undergraduate, working as an Assistant Hall Director, and have downgraded your Nintendo DS, the most recent gaming-specific hardware you bought, to a back-up alarm clock should your phone fail you.
Of course, that was me until May of this year. I’m now graduated Magna Cum Laude, distinguished myself as having managerial experience while completing my degree, and of course, as a result, have been unemployed for roughly four months now, turning cover letter writing and resume building into my full-time job.
I’m back in my childhood bedroom in my parent’s house, with a one-thousand piece Obama puzzle a former boss bought at the Dollar Store as a gag gift to go in place of that faded poster Paul Ryan was talking about at the RNC. I am currently seeking Roseanne Barr’s finite grace that one of the 30 places I sent resumes into the void that is clearcareers.com over the last 90 days, or a multitude of other companies reached through different means, will see fit to give me a full-time job before my personal Debtmageddon I’ve made my fate by joining the “liberal elite” of higher education destroys my savings account.
So it’s probably good for my sanity that someone named Christian Whitehead coded an enhanced, HD version of a game that upon its release would have shitty FMV, only one soundtrack and playable character to speak of, and likely cost fifty dollars on top of the expensive CD add-on needed to play it, offer it to me in the 21st century with more content and enhanced graphics for five bucks, playable on a touch screen I use primarily to request the delivery of Jimmy John’s sandwiches.
That’s right, despite my lack of any console or handheld made after 2005, I have entered the modern gaming fray by upgrading last fall from a Tracfone to an LG Optimus V, Android phone in order to mass text my staff teams. Or is it that I’ve re-entered the retro gaming fray, considering what I bought was:
If I'd known of SATAM as a kid, I think this would have been a good opening song for it.
Oh yeah, Sonic CD, a game I never even knew of until recently, and is considered by many Genesis gamers a gem lost to those whose parents lovingly asked, “it costs WHAT to attach a CD player to that fucking thing?!” Of course, in the 90s, I myself grew up only experiencing Sonic through the cartoon that let me know, fat, dumb child I was, that chili dogs are the breakfast of champions, overweight MENSA members are the devil, and that I should never allow a police officer to touch my special place. I honestly didn't know about Sega CD's existence until recently.
That’s because the systems my parents bought my older brother to excuse neglecting him while they tended to the teething toddler that was me in 1992 were the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, and Super NES, abbreviated SNES on Blockbuster rental boxes, and pronounced “sneeze” by grandpas from all across the great video store accessible suburbs of North America.
Despite that fact, I’ve always loved Sonic the Hedgehog games, feeling a bit of jealousy when a friend or kiosk had that sleek, black looking Genesis that let you “blast process” a prickly rodent until it turned blue and destroyed an army of animal-controlled robots. And while the term “blast processing” has since been revealed as 90s marketing bullshit lingo to highlight the Genesis’ ONE thing Sega could factually claim Nintendidn’t have at the time, specification-wise, its superior Mega Hertz processor, I still regret not having had the attitudinal ‘hog at home.
While Sonic CD is a bit too easy, especially compared to its Genesis counterparts I’ve played, and its time system, while probably a great way to showcase how much space could be used on a CD at the time, isn’t exactly mind-blowingly innovative to me now, its simplistic fun and replayability reminded me how much fun I had playing Super Mario World, and infuriating my older brother by spamming buttons as E. Honda in Street Fighter II Turbo. I remembered shooting ducks with a gun that any straight or Takei man with an eye for 80s fashion could tell you would complement Marty McFly’s jacket design. I remembered barely remembering how “bad” the Power Glove was, mostly just seeing the design on the box next to the Game Genie.
Better yet, it’s inspired me to create my own little nostalgic blog series, to recall and share my youth experiences related to and surrounding gaming, marking my return to 1up after about a year of having IGN as my primary source for gaming content; hell, I actually had the light bulb go off in my head to do this while reading IGN’s top 100 Super NES games article. Don’t be too mad 1up, I’ve enjoyed your retro content as well recently, and I was searching for Electronic Gaming Monthly’s take on the subject when I found it.
So, without further adieu, here’s how I’m planning to break up my series of blogs about my gaming youth and development:
Consoles:
NES and Super NES: My 90s in a Nutshell
N64 vs. Playstation: Console Rivalry, Sibling Rivalry, and a Star Fox Christmas
Gamecube and Playstation 2: Jealousy, Money, Graphics, War
Handhelds:
Game Boy: A star fighter, some Russian blocks, and Pokey Men in a Bar
Game Boy Advance: Golden is the Sun to a Man, Black is the JRPG Night to a Platform Gamer
Nintendo DS: Innovation, Domination, Alarm Clock
Android:
Modern Day: Falling Off a Wagon, Hopping on Another
I hope you’ll read and enjoy the blogs, if not I’m still going to do them for fun.
Bullets: Games, movies, music, life
- Other than Sonic C.D., I’ve recently been playing Super Metroid, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Words With Friends, Scramble with Friends, and my greatest Flash addiction ever: Song Pop. If you’re a music nerd, try it on Facebook. It even has a Video Games playlist. What have you guys played lately?
- Over the summer, I saw all three major comic book movies.
- I loved Avengers way more than I thought I would, not even realizing the day it came out; great humor and action, and Hulk’s best use in a film yet.
- I thought the new Spider-Man was good, I especially liked the female character that actually does something, and the introduction of the snarky quip-spouting Spidey I knew from the 90s cartoon to the silver screen; but I also enjoyed the original trilogy’s goofy charm, and didn’t really understand a lot of the internet hate for the previous series.
- I loved the action set pieces and bleak tone of the last Nolan directed Batman, but my God, you could put the plot holes in a landfill meant for Atari E.T. games.
- I also saw Ted, which was hilarious, featured two of my favorite thespians in Wahlberg and Kunis, reminded me why I used to watch Family Guy, made me want to watch Flash Gordon, and provided my now ex-girlfriend with what she now accepts as fact about Taylor Lautner (Twilight werewolf)’s past.
- Most recently I saw The Campaign and Bourne Legacy. I thought the first one let me down after getting me hyped from the ads, by being a bit too obvious and Aaron Sorkin-esque with its satire; the parts that were a Will Farrell movie worked, the satire kind of fell flat. Legacy, on the other hand, was panned for being too boring, but it had enough action and I felt there was enough tension in dialogue heavy scenes to make it a pretty entertaining flick, just one that goes on for too long.
Finally, I have gotten back into alternative music lately; there seems to be a trend of using electronic elements in alternative lately, and I’m digging the hell out of AWOLNATION and Foster the People’s CDs. I also got No Doubts’TragicKingdomfor $5 at Target. I prefer more horns with my ska, a la Street Light Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, and Mighty Mighty Bosstones, but I’ll take classics from my childhood like “Don’t Speak,” “Just A Girl,” and “Spiderwebs,” plus my favorite so far, “Different People.”
Oh, and I bought a car.
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