Confessions of an Aging Gamer

8-Bits Bites The Dust 

27 Years old.

That, my friends, is the age of my bones...my sweet, little, video-gaming bones. It's unfortunately a few years away from 30, and that is something I am having a hard time digesting. But this isn't a blog posting about how I am well past the quarter-century milestone. No. Instead, these are the reflections of an aging gamer.

1-99 ... Damn You, Glass Joe

I feel I need to start this particular blog with a flashback. Yea, let's go all "LOST" on everyone. As I've documented previously in my blog, my video gaming started way back in the ATARI/NES days. Really, more of the latter. I was 5 or 6 years old at the time when I grabbed that little rectangular piece of plastic with 4 buttons and a diagonal pad that would come to be known as an NES Controller and started hammering the crap out of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.  That excitement didn't last long as the game's first adversary, Glass Joe, pounded me harder than Paris Hilton at a rave with 12 coked-up dudes. Yes, Glass Joe; the guy who has a record of 1-99, and that one win came at my expense. I still can't live out the shame my brothers and cousin give me for that.

Following that Glass Joe beat down, I honed my Punch-Out skills to take down that milky white, ginger bastard and succeeded. I couldn't tell you what a miraculous moment that was; having a Rocky-esque training montage of getting pounded by Glass Joe over and over again until I learned the controls and figured out my adversary's attack patterns. Learning from your mistakes, sounds a lot like life? Little by little, I'd take out one opponent at a snails pace, but I eventually got up to Kid Dynamite and took him down. End Scene...

Anyway, that's always been my "gaming-birth" moment. It's kind of like that "where were you when Halo 2 came out?" or the "how you lost your virginity" story, but it's always fun to share. Nowadays though, those stories are changing. I guess it's a sign of the times, but the current generations seems to be trending from the "man, I love gaming because of the challenge" to "man, I love gaming because it's cool." All I have to say is, where the f**k were you all when I was in grade school?!?!

Call of Duty with some Stark-Power

I think the point I'm trying to make is that in this day and age, gaming is "in" now -- and for lack of a better word ... that's pretty frickin' cool. There are big budget productions for video game commercials a la Black Ops II's "Tag" spot which featured explosions that would make a Jerry Bruckheimer film look like a PBS show, as well as some celebrity cameos including Mr. Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey Jr. I can't help but reflect back on my years of gaming as a kid when I would go over to a friend's house for the 1st time, and inside the bedroom I'd find a video game console and get totally ecstatic of the proposition of gaming. You see, to me, it wasn't common for other people to be into video games. Nowadays though, it's almost a guarantee you will find a video gaming console in someone's house whether it's for gaming purposes, or, dare I say it, entertainment console purposes. (Cue dramatic gopher music) Dum Dum Dummmmmmmmmmm.

Fan-f**king-tastic is how I would describe this game

Either way, I'm glad gaming is taking its mantle of awesomeness pretty seriously. It's great to see people play video games as a way to socialize as opposed to being the opposite -- a way to anti-socialize. However, I do feel myself slipping away from the gaming landscape. It's not because I voluntarily do so, but rather, life is getting in the way. Whether it's the job, the girlfriend, the family, or just the flat out partying, I don't have as much time as I used to when it comes to sitting my ass down and hammering some games. In fact, I recently bought the absolutely jaw-dropping, hair-raising, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious game "The Last of Us," and I couldn't beat it until a month later due to all the times I had to save my game to head out to my next adult-ish commitment. Mind you, I'm just talking about the single-player experience, which is a solid 14 hours depending on how much you like to explore (Which I do ;D) -- I haven't even started the multiplayer.

It's good to see you again, MMO. It's been years

In other words, I almost fel like that old geezer who passes the baton from one generation to the other. No longer can I spend marathon sessions playing WoW or whatever the MMO of the month is. I can't complete a 10 hour game within two weeks time, unless of course I call in sick to work, which happened a few months back when I beat Bioshock Infinite over a two-day, crap-my-guts-out kind of day. There's a slight sadness I feel coming to this realization. I still try to fight it as much I can, squeezing in a gaming session whenever I can. As it is, I'm trying to play the F2P MMO "Rift" with my younger brother just to re-live those glory days. I almost feel like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite tossing footballs in front of a camera in the middle of nowhere. It's slightly depressing, but oddly relatable.

You mean you didn't kill Ganon with the light arrows?

Just to wrap it up, I guess what I want to say is it's ok to be a grown up gamer. Sure, I'd love to spend a day or two playing a brand new game, but that's what the sick days are for I guess. It's pretty neat to see gaming come so far in terms of shaping social atmospheres. I even get bashful when I can strike up a gaming conversation at the water cooler as opposed to politics, jobs, or sports. No matter how old you are, you gotta admit, it's good to be a gamer.

-Game On-