I miss things from my youth..
Well, don't you? I mean life these days contains working, squeezing meals in between, trying to attempt to maintain some small semblance of a social life and try all the other dozens of things one hopes to finish and accomplish on the side. It's only natural that we often resort in memory to those simpler times, those things we enjoyed so much in our youths.
I'm sure everyone does once in a while, the new and fresh charm of the best cartoon movie you ever had, or that place you used to go to have fun like a fair or park. That fun game one would always play with their friends or that cool place one went to every Summer. One thing that really makes me feel nostalgic has to be playing the old video games for Super Nintendo I used to love so damn much. That was it for me.
I was a mega-nerd when I was a kid, so video games were definitely one of the more exciting aspects of my happy but typical suburban life. In one moment I was a bored kid, the next I would press this magical button and would near instantly become enthralled into a mystical world of swords, magic, villains and pretty girls who wanted me to save them. If I found this realm to be not to my liking, I would instantly change that world into one where I
was an incredible martial arts expert and would beat, smash, and defeat my enemies with lightning speed. Looking back on how it felt at that age, it's almost incredible.After playing some of these again, it's almost as if I'm transformed into a world I once lived in - sure simple, not three dimensional, basic and with MIDI music. But that's what I loved about it... the simplicity, the charm of the colourful graphics. The well thought out and interesting story lines. When I was young, innocent, and perhaps naive it was this simple enchanting music that used to help transform the world around me into a beautiful place where I was the adventurer and there was a great problem that only I could solve. The possible achievements were endless and imaginative.
And more than that, it was a refuge from the more boring aspects of the real world at the time. School, rainy days, evenings with nothing to really do. It became a place I recall I grew more and more fond of over the years.
Is there any real way to replicate that sensory igniting and creatively immersing feeling that I had, that could only becoming involved in such a quest or adventure?
When I got older I found myself feeling less and less 'involved' in video games. Perhaps that was just the reality of growing up kicking in, or maybe it was something more. Maybe that cathartic-like feeling that seeped from the very best games, that would steal me away from the boring and normal real world into it's own designed existence of power and the romances of epic adventure. Oh, how I miss that.
That's the whole reason I saved and spent so much money on an X-box 360 which I purchased while living in Shanghai. So I could sit down with a beer and attempt to relax, and find my way back into that world that I feared I had lost.
But it's not the same anymore. Or is it?
Sure, my new games look more real than a video game world to me has ever looked. In one of my games it literally looks as if I am in this beautifully designed world featuring endless forests of various trees and in the distance I can see what looks like cold, windswept mountains. These newer gaming systems are superb - the graphics are smooth and admirable, the very technical controllers easy to become familiar with, and the games larger than life in many cases. And they will only get better as time goes on I would imagine.
.... But that special feeling is not all there anymore. I know not it's gone, lost in my youth, a kind of idealism that there's wonder yet in the world - at least the alternative electronically-powered fantasy world of my choosing. The feeling of possibilities being endless and the stories and adventures requiring your great skill. It was a part of my youth.
But sometimes when I'm deeply involved in a plot or mission - a quest or adventure there is a spark inside my gut.
- Oh yes, it's there all right. Buried under years of baggage and cynicism of the real world, but I know it's there. This is why I keep buying video games, at my age.
