Do the Donkey Kong!

Save me, Mario! Its Sunday, July 17, 2011, that title sounds naughty, and this is The Side! Talking video games because it seems like whatever horrible funk I had last week is sticking around by way of infecting everyone else in the Nozz Compound. I suspect this is a result of a bio-weapon meant to kill me sent from Lady Gaga. To retaliate I sent my agents to Australia to chuck eggs at her. My agents need to aim better.

VIDEO GAMES!!

The other day I was painting a stained ceiling at a beach house. It was the first time I had been in that particular one. The ceiling was small, but I had to bleach the mildew stain and prime the ceiling. This meant I had time to wait before I could paint. There were no renters so I figured I'd spend a little time reading some Sherlock Holmes in the house's rec room. Well, that didn't happen because upon entering the rec room I found stand up video game which had DONKEY KONG, DONKEY KONG JR, and MARIO BROS. as well as a MS PAC MAN table top. All of which in tip top condition. That was a complete blast.

I love video games. I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means, but my brother and I have spent plenty of time with various console controllers in our hands. He recently got a PS3 and one of the things that excited him was that he could download old Playstation games. He had also downloaded old Nintendo games onto his Wii, which is something I'm going to end up doing very soon. Playing some old school CASTLEVANIA would be awesome.

This love of older games certainly has to do with nostalgia, but there's a bit more to it. These were actual games, and not so much interactive movies. My cousin, Chris, knows a lot more about video games than I do and he made a very good statement "Back then, you couldn't hide lousy gameplay with pretty graphics." There was only so much you could do with 8 bits, so if the game handled like a truck with no power steering and flat tire, you figured it out pretty quickly. There was a recent list by Yahoo about horrible video game adaptions from movies and the complaint that just kept repeating was horrible controls.

Its been said that the music that comes out when you're 23 years old is the music that you're going to identify with. I thought about applying this to video games and it holds up about as well for me. Meaning, not really. At the time Playstation was making their big push. This is about the time FINAL FANTASY VII was hitting. I was getting my FINAL FANTASY TACTICS and CASTLEVANIA: SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT groove on. Some of my favorite games came out around this time, but I love a lot of games that came before and many that came after.

I do think that for a lot of people there's a certain tipping point with gaming technology. Somewhere down the line for many of use the tech hits a point where it just doesn't appeal to us anymore. That's not saying that these newer games are bad, but its a matter of appeal. I'm not interested in HALO but I do love playing CONTRA. Up up down down left right left right B A B A Select Start, bitches. I'm not trying to sound like some retro hipster ranting on about how things were better back in day. I've just hit a certain point in my gaming in which when I hear about some of these new hot games I just say "No thanks, I'm alright. I've got Mario Bros."

MUSIC!!

Party like its 1982!



That's it for me because I have to go get tissues for a bunch of snotty people. See y'all Wednesday.