G-pinions

This time of year can be somewhat depressing for young Jews like myself, what with the lack of family, friends and free swag. So what did I spend yesterday eve doing? Why, getting my Super Nintendo working and all of my games cleaned and maintained, of course! Playing Midway's Arcade Treasures 2 recently and hearing Tom talk about the joys of FF1&2 got my old-school blood flowing a bit, and I figured it was time to fix what needed to be fixed. Nintendo makes some high-quality hardware, no doubt, but time, dust and microscopic evil Sega minions can wreak havoc on an unsuspecting young SNES. So I spent a good two hours cleaning and polishing connector pins and sticky cartridges, having about as much fun as a gamer can have contributing to the well-being of his collection. I've obtained my SNES games from all over the place, and I sometimes forget I have a pretty decent collection - Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG, FF2+3, Secret of Mana, Shadowrun, Super Contra 3, Castlevania IV, and of course the usuals, Zelda, Super Metroid, and that weird Super Mario World/Mario All-Stars hybrid (I love that sick freak).

I started the renewed vows celebration by popping in Super R-Type, one of the roughest mofos in the galaxy. It's weird how hard some older games are, without so much as a save ability, nevermind mid-level checkpoints. I guess people were more persistent back then - if a game frustrates me too much now I either relegate it to the back of my playing priority list or trade it in to stop it from taunting me. It's also pretty interesting how the whole notion of difficulty and learning curves have changed. Nowadays it's fairly easy to succeed at a basic level in any game, with a whole variety of other options to consider if you want to get the most out of it or beat it properly. Tom can hold his own at Halo, but I'm better than him because I account for reload time, recoil and shield regeneration more effectively; I doubt I'm much better at actually spraying bullets into an opponent, but learning the ins and outs of a game can help you get a lot more out of it. That might sound obvious, but I don't think that was the case with a lot of older games - you could kick ass at Donkey Kong Country, but you arguably wouldn't get any more out of it than someone picking it up for the first time. And then there's games like Norrath, which force you to instantly learn every nuance of the gameplay and item management or die. Anyhow, I just wanted to remark that me and Mario are back in business, celebrating the holidays together in style.

Tonight: Operation Fixo Genesiso (which has actually never worked). I'll be together with you soon, Kid Chameleon.