May Games and Collecting Things

There are more bad games about Pac-Man than there are good. Like, a lot. Trust me, stick with the classics, Pac-Pix (which shouldn't even be a Pac-Man game), Pac-Man Championship Edition and the four-player, arcade hit, Battle Royale. Does anyone care about how Pac-Man is doing with the "challenges of being a teenager"?

I've been playing a lot of Batman: Arkham City the last few weeks, in the very spare moments that I have between house work, child rearing and spending time with my wife. Now that it's summer, we are outdoors a little more, coping with the "challenges of being" allergic to nature with a four year old.

I might still say that this is the best comic book based super hero game of all time. Besides that, this game has it's hooks in me for collecting items and unlocking content that I really don't even care about. Only Crackdown can compete for time with all it's tiny orbs floating around the city. I must have them all in these games. If someone ever figures out DLC that's just fresh locations for collecting stuff, I might be a little less likely to stop at 7-11 for an eclair as often as I do. Seriously, someone just go back Halo or Gears of War and drop some artifacts, dog tags or little pretty flowers in the maps and I might have my games planned out for the rest of the summer.

Stick Man Golf 2 is also competing on iOS with You Don't Know Jack for the winner of the award for Game Most Played At Work While SOL Testing Is Going On. Standards testing for technology support staff is a huge game of sit and wait. You're bored out of your mind and want something to do, but you just hope it doesn't have to do anything with testing the overly tested kids and stressed out teachers.

My son is in love with the Wii U Nintendo Land and Warioland: Shake It. He's quite good at playing the Pikmin game in Nintendoland and loves repeating one level over and over again. Sometimes he even asks me to play because it's so fun. Now we just need a full on Wii U game for it and we'll both have fun playing that one together. And of course I'll need extra time to make his dinner, clean up a bit and catch a breath. I really don't know how people with WoW accounts and two kids make anything happen in their lives. More power to you all.

Gamercribs.com - Retro Gamer (ME!)

New website, Gamercribs.com, found some of my pictures on Flickr a few weeks ago and sent me a little interview questionnaire. I enjoyed answering the questions and digging a little deeper in to my gaming subconscious.

Link: Gamercribs - Home - Gaming setup - retro gamer

A Story of Two Gameboys

My awfully nice cousin decided that he had the need and the ability to further my slight video game collecting disease by sending me his Gameboy that he's had since he was a little kid. Normally I don't want things that I also didn't have as a kid, but I do make exceptions for retro-geeky things. And, since my wife had a Gameboy and a few games but can't actually find the console, I was happy to oblige.

But sadly, the Gameboy didn't have a fully working screen. I'm not so much a completist for collecting as I am, what a t-shirt I own says, a prefectionist. So I had to start hunting down a working display for the Gameboy and see if I could 1) actually find one and 2) repair it myself. This proves much harder to Google than I had thought. I'm still working on that one.

In the mean time, I figured why not look up what Gameboys are going for and maybe buy another one. Then I thought, why not get a better one. The first Gameboy I owned was a Gameboy Advance in college. It was a little too new for this retro bug my cousin had forced upon me and I wanted to play original Gameboy games. On the other hand, I just couldn't force myself to buy another green-screen-mess that those consoles ended up being to anyone but the eyes of a 7 year old boy. So after a little research I found the Gameboy Pocket, Nintendo's "second generation" of Gameboy. They were smaller and sleeker, ran on two fewer batteries and had a new black and white lcd display. I found one on eBay for $10 in new perfect condition and now it's sitting on my desk along with a rechargeable battery back that came with it.

Now I plan on playing Pokemon Red, Super Mario Land and Tetris all before realizing that old video games suck and go back to playing Legend of Zelda on my DS.

Most Regrettable Video Game Purchases

I can't imagine how much money I've spent on video games in my life time. My current collection at retail prices as tracked by my list on IGN's website says that it's totalled at almost $5,000. I'd say that with considering that there are quite a few Atari games that aren't on their list, the price of buying consoles (some multiple times because I sold them when I was a kid), and of course the games that I just don't plain have anymore, I'd say the figure is somewhere closer to $7,000 in my lifetime (I have owned every major Nintendo console/handheld at one time or another).

But as I was taking back a third Wii-mote that I purchase this weekend and decided it was a waste of $40 for someone who barely uses two at a time, that there have to have been some pretty stupid purchases down the line. And I bet that most of them weren't even as a kid who couldn't research games online before he before bought them. No, I'd say that as an adult with a pretty big disposable income, the time between I graduated college and when I got married probably had the highest chances of buying something stupid. Especially when I went on a shopping spree for about two years and bought almost everything back that I had sold when I was a kid. That included an NES and games, a SNES and games, and a handful of Atari 2600 cartridges.

But I still can't think of a boneheaded purchase that I truly regretted and actually kept. But here are some of the purchases I made that I think stand out the most and the price I think I paid for them:

• A PS2 and Madden 200(ish) so I could play with Brian online. $200+
• Farcry 2 so Brian and I could make online maps together. We never did and I barely touched the game. $60
• Dance Dance Revolution 3 Ultramix because punishing myself with 1 and 2 wasn't enough. $50
• Devil May Cry just because it was hyped so much. I hate that game. $20
• Earth Defense Force 2017 because I wanted to see how bad a game really could be on purpose. $20
• Full Spectrum Warrior has to be one of the worst games on my list that I still actually have. $40(?)
• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 completely didn't meet my expectations. $30
• LEGO Indiana Jones proved that not all games are good LEGO material. $50
• Lost: Via Domus I knew would suck, but my wife is a serious tv junkie. She played it for an hour. $15.
• Two copies of each of the following DS games: Mario Kart, Tetris, Nintendogs. Having two DS's is murder on your wallet. $180.
• Need for Speed Underground 2 is a classic sequel of suck. $40
• Nightcaster was really an apology from Microsoft for losing my console in the repair center. Free
• X-Men Legends had mutants in it. And suck. $30

So there's my big regret list. And those are all games I still have in my possession. I can't even begin to remember how many games I would buy and then sell on eBay because of retail stores refusal to take return video games because of pure dissatisfaction. When you buy things purely on hype, marketing and review scores, your taking a huge chance with your money and there's no safety net except for eBay.

But in the last couple years I decided that I was going to quit that practice and not sell anything ever again. It's worked pretty well so far and I've only ended up with a couple of novelty lemons.

Gamer Credit Card - Capcom

Don't get me wrong, I love video games, but love them enough to put myself into more debt buying gamer related stuff to get another credit card? Not hardly.

But in case your insterested, Capcom is teaming up with Visa for you to earn discounts to their online store. That's a first in my book! I'm already going to get laughed at when I use my custom printed Homestarrunner.com checks...

(p.s. I don't even remember the last check I wrote...)

Intrinsic Values: Self Restraint

Around 2001, when I graduated from JMU and started a real job that paid actual money, is when I started coming to grips with my gaming habit and let loose a little cashflow to support it. I was making a ton of money (in my mind) so I started buying back all my old game systems off of eBay and the games to go with them. I also started buying memorabilia for my room and books about gaming and audio soundtrack cds.

But now as a full-fledged adult with a mortgage that's twice the size of my post-graduate townhome with all the bill trimmings and basically the same income, gaming has taken it's toll financially and psychologically. I just haven't gotten my body to stop it's habits.

Habits such as my fingers typing in "http://www.ebay.com" into my web browser. Or my legs from walking into Gamestop while I'm really just trying to grab a burger at Five Guys. Either of even just these two actions can result in an expenditure of $14.99-$60. And sometimes a burger. And even for the times that I do have the money to throw away, I still catch myself in an inner gamer tussle: do I buy this awesome game now or do I finish all the awesome games I have at home first?

But fortunately I do have that pretty big backlog of games I used to want to play and have no reason not to. So when I do find myself browsing a game shelf, I almost immediately think about when I play this game between games I already own, not to mention mowing grass, installing molding in the basement, or cleaning out the future baby room.

And there is where the intrinsic value is: time and money management. If an example like this had ever come across my 6th grade desk, I think I would have understood it a little more. In life, the important things come first. Whether it's fixing up a new baby room or deciding that level grinding in Call of Duty is time that could be used finishing Grand Theft Auto IV. It's almost like have separate to-do lists in my head for life and gaming and I'm constantly battling myself to take care of them.

Mass Market Gaming Getting Stale

bcullers brought over DarkSector last night for the 360. As he started talking about it, he immediately brought up gameplay references like Gears of War and Army of TWO (which is a Gears of War wannabe in it's own right). We shared a sad laugh about yet another Gears clone and then we both said, "Well, if it works..."

It was something I hadn't thought about playing Army of TWO. Instead of the whole time playing the game with an angry cloud over my head because the gameplay in it wasn't original, should I have been more focused on what new things the game brought to the table instead of what it didn't? I'm not sure what other things like that exist in the world like this. When I buy a new game, unless it's a sequel, prequel or derivative IP, I want it to be genuine and different. Music is a possible comparison if you really like music and not a genre. Books too. But I think with games I always want the next game of that genre to fix the things that were broken in the last game.

I think, overall, I find it really hard to not reference other games when playing a new one. Unless it's a game like Katamari Damacy for the PS2 or Brain Training for the DS, your getting a game that is specifically set in a genre (football, driving, FPS) and there is little you can do to differentiate it from it's members.

But most of the games I own (and keep) I like very much. So getting a new game with elements of my old ones should be comforting. But I want new experiences from gaming constantly. I don't want another Gears of War game with a different set of characters, voices, and graphics. I don't want another Forza Motorsport that touts more cars and tracks. I want new experiences and games that make me think in a different perspective. Having sold on eBay Mass Effect (a mediocre space RPG) and Army of TWO (a clone of another game), I can tell my purchases are going to start getting far and few between and overly scrutinized.

A new hope in gaming recently is Penny-Arcade's The Greenhouse. This is a game related comic-drawing duo that has it's hands also in charity work, game expos, and now with Greenhouse, independent game developers. Not much has been said about Greenhouse other than right now it's a platform to release their new game (another hand) "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness". But I wouldn't mind starting to play games on a PC or Mac if meant getting really good content.

Flickr Group: Game Rooms

I finally got around to posting up pictures of my game room. But it's been like pulling teeth to get anyone else too.

It's weird to say that I'm so proud of this, but it's like my chronological life after my mom stopped keeping and collecting all those mementos from things I did in that big scrap book. And it took a lot of time and effort to track down all the games I stupidly sold as a kid when I needed money for other games.

*Note to self: never let offspring sell anything.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/530462@N21/

The other Flickr group I started, Video Game Photo Mode, was a little more popular, but it's leveled off now.

Video Game Rooms

I'm hopelessly lost in trying to figure out how I want to set up my basement. I know there is going to be a corner or wall dedicated to old games, with posters and figures strewn about. The problem is that I can't think of a classy, contemporary design that I like. I'm sure there is going to be a trip to IKEA involved. But I wanted to scour the net for inspiration. Something that has been difficult to do.

But while I was digging around, I came across VideoGameCollectors.com. It looks like a picture hosting site dedicated to people's gaming rooms. There about 60 pages (some are blank) of galleries posted of people's bedrooms and basements, packed to the gills with games and systems from every generation. If you want to see what serious game collectors rooms look like, look no further(!!!).

This is probably one of the cleanest rooms posted, but the feeling of Wal-Mart furniture in a 16-year-old's bedroom permeates throughout.