People often ask me why I maintain a cache of nigh ancient game consoles when all of the old games are now available on emulators or virtual console. It might be the archivist in me, it might be the hoarder in me, or I very well be a gaming snob, but I think it’s more. As it becomes more and more difficult to attach these consoles to new televisions I begin to question my dedication to the cause.
And then I spend a day playing remakes of games like King’s Quest or looking through Hyrule Historia with my little geekling and it becomes clear again. The experience is different when the hardware changes. She asks me questions about the first time I played a game and I tell her how difficult it was or how much I loved or hated a controller and she can’t understand because the experience that we are having at that moment is so different. She has cut her gaming teeth, so to speak, on the Xbox 360 and One controllers (with a lot of PS3 thrown in for Ni No Kuni) so she was understandably confused when I told her how it didn’t play a lot of the early Xbox games that we see pictures of because the controller was way too big and bulky for me. She also could never understand why I said most of the new Mario family games were too easy never having played the SNES or N64 versions of the games herself (only the re-released 3DS versions).
And that’s when I realized that there was something awesome about all of the frustration that I experienced with the early versions of those games sans saves, golden tanooki suits, and non-repetitive stress injury causing controllers (not that I want my 7 year old to get an RSI). And that’s when we started playing the games old school style. For us it has meant spending a lot of time scouring used game shops for old games, antiquated peripherals, and in some cases even old replacement consoles. The acquisition has become a part of the fun. I get to share my gaming triumphs and failures as we look through old carts and she loves drawing pictures of the old characters and role playing levels. It’s a geek mom’s dream come true.
Our latest project is the Zelda series and it started with her discovery of the Four Swords version of the game on my 3DS and the realization on my part that she had never played a non-current generation version of the game. She had never had to draw her own map or scream in frustration because she didn’t know where the hell she was going. That’s every gamer’s right of passage, right? As with every great quest we had to be sure that we had proper armor so we began with the acquisition of t-shirts that had Link on one and a warrior Zelda on the other. Then came the research via Hyrule Historia and internet videos (I am an academic after all) and the search for proper Zelda titles. While we search for a proper copy of Ocarina of Time (her choice from Historia) we’ve been dabbling in a little Windward and driving around with Minish Cap mini-figs dangling from the rear view mirror in the car. We’ll find it soon I’m sure, but the journey there is sure a hell of a lot of fun with my little party member!
