I hesitate to call myself an 'old school gamer'--I don't really even think of myself as a gamer much anymore, either, because I've gotten too busy and too broke to really be as into games as I used to be. The thing with me is, I tend to go through long periods of not paying any attention at all to something I love, then long periods of complete obsession with it. My interests seldom wane, and I still love everything all the same as I did before, just that when I'm interested in something it tends to completely take up my entire brain, leaving no room for anything else--so I have to cycle through them one at a time, until I've had my fill, and then go to something else. It's hard to explain.
And also that's not what I wanted to talk about.
I didn't actually get my first gaming console until I was fifteen--it was a Playstation 2, when it was still a thing but after it wasn't quite so new and shiny and my parents could merit spending money on it. It wasn't even technically mine, but my brother's. So I'm a bit behind the times. Though I did, whenever possible, play any video games I could from Super Nintendo onward at friend's houses. If someone had a game system, I was their best friend. Yes, I was a friendship whore for video games. What of it?
I wasn't totally deprived of games. I played computer games for years, which my parents didn't seem to have a problem with. I think because my dad was a computer engineer by trade and so my parents--or at least my dad--did view computers as being a legitimate tool and not an engine of Satan used to trap kids in gaming addictions. Or something like that. Whatever the reason, my parents were okay with me playing games on the computer so that's where the bulk of my gaming started. I played the Sims and all the other Maxis games, now long forgotten--Sim Ant, Sim Park, Sim Safari, Sim Tunes, Sim Tower, Sim Planet. Strangely, one of the few I haven't played... is Sim City. I don't even know why. I also played Age of Empires and World of Warcraft when it was still a map-based real-time-strategy. My favourite from the series will probably always be Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Mostly because you could blow up the sheep and pigs and seals by clicking on them a bunch of times. (Though I only ever blew up with pigs because I thought the sheep and the seals were too cute. This is how my mind works all the time--to this day my strategy for playing Pokemon and picking my teams is based mostly on which Pokemon I find the cutest and/or prettiest. No, I am not making this up. In my defense, it's served me very well.)
Again, my parent's mental block against all things video game only seemed to be associated with console games. Which makes it hilariously ironic that most of my Super Nintendo experiences were in my maternal grandmother's house. I don't even know why she had this since I never saw her playing it and I didn't have any cousins on that side until I was older, but Nana had a Super Nintendo that she would let my brother and me play. Since Super Nintendo used to come with a copy of Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt, that's what I played. It was awesome. When I was eleven, the Pokemon craze was in full swing and it was still at a time when my relatives were sometimes remembering to send gifts on Giftmas and that I actually had a birthday; after saving the money for a year, I had enough to buy my very own Game Boy. And a copy of Pokemon Blue. I still have it. I played the absolute shit out of that game.
I've retained a habit from the days of having a Game Boy: I am an obsessive, compulsive game-saver.
I can't think of a single handheld game platform in the last several years that doesn't have a lithium or otherwise integrated battery. They come with chargers that specifically charge the built-in rechargeable battery, which is a good idea because it means you're not constantly buying batteries for your freaking game. I'm sure I sent a fuckton of money on batteries back then, much more than I even do on batteries for my vibrator--which should also tell you something about how I prioritize my needs. Everyone who remembers these days remembers what it feels like to be in the middle of something really fucking important and then your fucking battery died. Almost invariably as you were about to catch a Legendary Pokemon. Or, like, kick Ganon's ass in Zelda. (Why the shit is the game called 'Zelda'? That's like calling the Mario franchise 'Princess Peach'.) You don't have that problem with rechargeable integrated batteries. You just plug your game in when the battery gets low and keep playing without having to interrupt anything. You used to be able to buy A/C adapters and rechargeable batteries for Game Boys and shit, which I actually did have for my Game Boy Pocket, but the problem with those was that if your battery ran down and you needed to recharge, the Game Boy would reset if you plugged it in. In order to plug it in, you had to save and turn it off anyway.
So, yeah. I am the most obsessive-compulsive game-saver in the world. Like, every ten minutes I'm saving and I'm one of those loons who saves two or three times at a go just in case I was imagining it and didn't actually save successfully the first time.
It's all because those old game platforms could fucking die on you.
As glad as I am to have rechargeable internal batteries in my laptop and Game Boys (including, I might add, my Game Boy Advance SP), I was really peeved when I was trying to buy a new digital camera a couple of years ago. I specifically wanted a camera that didn't have its own internal battery. I actually wanted a camera that took regular batteries and I was really happy to find one. I don't even think they make any like that anymore--I bought mine in 2008 or 2009. Even though you can be really bored when your Game Boy or iPod or whatever dies on you because you didn't recharge it and then you can't plug it in anyway, it always infuriated me more to have my camera die on me. At least with a camera that operates on a couple of regular old AA batteries, I can just go into any convenience store or something and get new ones. So I'm never bothered when my batteries die because it's easy to replace them.
But dead batteries turned me into a compulsive game-saver.
And I think that drives a lot of people fucking insane!
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