Another great day and a walk down memory lane.

Well I had another great day at work on Friday. When I came into work, one of the gals there cleaned and organized my desk. I was ecstatic. I get so busy at work I have a hard time keeping my desk clean and organized. I know, I know it only takes a few seconds to put stuff back, but when you pretty much suck at coming up with an organizational plan you are doomed from the get go. She organized a bunch of the folders and streamlined my desk so it just flows. Wow, hopefully I will have more time now to get more stuff done with a clean desk that is easier to use.

Well I have been putting in some time playing a Final Fantasy game that my buddy E gave me. I got the full hook up, game and a Brady game guide to boot. It got me to thinking about what you told me E. I too have been having a hard time finishing up a game lately. In fact I would sadly say that about half of the games I play these days I never get around to finishing. I also have that problem where the game just gets to a point where you are like ok, ok already, when do I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Another thing that I kind of have to laugh at is it seems like most of the games that have come out nowadays are sooo freaking complicated that something is really lost. I laugh because I remember when the Sega Genesis came out with a (gasp) six button controller. I was in heaven. I couldn’t believe all the extra options it added to my game play. My father however complained right alongside my mother. Their complaint was it was too complicated. “whatever happened to the good ole days of one button on the Atari 2600?” I would hear. LOL Oh man I must be getting old because sometimes that is exactly how I feel. I remember playing Street fighter II and taking my time to learn all of the commands to do all of the special moves. Now mind you back in the day pulling off Zangief’s spinning pile driver was a move that was braggable to pull of.

Well about two years ago I picked up Dead or Alive for the Xbox 360 and started playing. I looked at the menu on how to do the special moves… I about pissed my pants. Those moves made the Zangief’s spinning pile driver look like something my toddler son could do. I mean some of them involved complex controller moves that took up two lines of text. Two freaking lines of text!!!! Needless to say I mastered about 10% of the possible moves you could do in that game. I guess it added a realism touch for me. I would’ve had to study that game for three years before I could earn my black belt in kicking boootay. However that is not what I wanted to do. So after my wife schooled me for about six months ruthlessly beating me (must be those freaking Asian genetics she has) it got traded in at game crazy.

So I have been really thinking about how nowadays all I want to do is pick up my controller and button mash and have a good time. I am no longer looking for complex challenges, games that take me months to beat, let alone master. I just want to go through and bash some skulls, and maybe, just maybe beat the game in a day, while drinking some soda pop with a buddy or my wife.

I remember back in the day the order of things for a good time in Jr. High involved going down my buddy E’s place or him dropping by my house and hitting the game system. man o man were those the days. I still have grin when I think of all the time spent drinking soda, Pepsi at my place, RC at E’s, usually a snack or two and some vicious two player co-op action. Some of the games I remember the most were Forgotten Realms, TMNT, Golden Ax, Altered Beast, (I was disappointed when they made a new one for PS 2 but didn’t release it here), double dragon, Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Super Spike V-Bal, Gauntlet, and World Cup Soccer. Oh man those were the days. They just don’t make games like that anymore. E you remember good ole Ears! in World Cup Soccer? LOL That was a great game. I remember getting the NES satellite for my birthday. It was a big thing back in those days to have four people playing all at the same time. We would have these great games with Bo, Neil, Eric and I. E I still remember spending hours in the evening playing world cup soccer religiously, and no matter what team we played against we would have to kill Ears. LOL he didn’t have a name in the game but he was this little pixilated character that had these ginormous ears. No matter what country we played against he was on their team. After a couple of super bicycle kicks to the soccer ball we could usually kill that guy dead. If we couldn’t hit him with a super kick we would just tackle the crap out of the guy.

We even started the Capcom library of games. It was where we would share our Capcom games amongst each other, but our goal was between all of us kids in the neighborhood to have every Capcom game made. (sorry E just out’ed us all as geeks. LOL)

The thing I remember most though was just being able to finish a great game like altered beast, or forgotten realms in a few hours. They were great games and as soon as we beat it, we would start it over again and play it again. Sometimes five times in a row not ending till one in the morning. No matter how many times we played it, no matter how many times we beat it, there was fun and comradery to be had on each and every time we picked up the controller. Well that was my walk down memory lane of simpler times. Till next time.