Reclaiming Childhood

I've been a gamer my whole life. Memories of life experiences are intertwined with whatever video game I was playing at the time. I've generally tried to keep up with each generation of games that comes out, but I find myself not enjoying anything of the modern age. I am getting older and I sometimes wonder if it's just nostalgia and pining for ages past, but I honestly believe that more love was put into the crafting of the games of old.

I managed to score some good trades when I was a kid, trading bad games for better games and sometimes  even whole consoles. Then as I became an 'adult,' the dollar bill ruled everything around me and I sold the things I loved for ridiculously low prices so I could move out on my own and become a productive member of society.

I never stopped playing those games though. I may have gotten newer and fancier consoles and games, but thanks to the marvel of emulation, I'd still go back and play the games I loved on NES, SNES, and Genesis. It's really not the same, though there are some wonderful projects out there that can give emulation a wonderful "authentic" experience. I still really love the Hyperspin project, for example and actually made a home theater/gaming PC utilizing it you can check out here.

Emulation can be fun, but for a few reasons it's not ideal for me anymore. Though many emulators have come a long way, there's still many games that are not accurately emulated and won't play correctly. Though most of the games I enjoy play reasonable well, It became pretty frustrating when nearly every game my girlfriend wanted to play through Hyperspin had some kind of issue making the game unplayable on the emulator.

There's also some really nice game pads, such as the Logitech Wireless Gamepad F710, you can use for emulation, but absolutely nothing beats using the physical cartridge, consoles, and controllers the games were meant to be played with. It's true, many games are completely digital now and don't even exist on physical media, but the cartridge of a Nintendo game was truly the soul of a game. The artwork on the labels and boxes mingled with the gameplay itself and set our imaginations off on wonderful journeys. I don't quite get that same feeling from putting a Call of Duty game in my PS3...

So I'm going to set out on a quest to reclaim some of my childhood and see what I can find, collect, and most importantly play again! Thanks for reading and I hope you will enjoy sharing this experience with me!