Mortal Nostalgia | GamesYouLoved
It’s not easy remembering your online banking app password when it goes wrong. You can’t recall ever adding that ex-girlfriend or boyfriend on Facebook one night after six pints of scrumpy cider and heat stroke. The cats flea treatment. Your wife’s birthday is in May, but when in May? That thing you had to do indoors to make that thing work that makes stuff work in the house.
Article by Daniel Major – follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyFawkesRetro
You can’t remember everything that you need to. So, why is it, when somebody shouts out a game on Twitter that’s twenty four years, you can remember the music, the way it played, the shop you got it in, the date, the name of your neighbours cockatiel and the first time you played it?
Well, the easiest conclusion to jump to is nostalgia. But that’s just an easy copout and a widely used excuse for people who are in denial of the facts. The easiest way to explain this is that you really, really like gaming and it’s a part of you. Another way to decipher this unassuming yet no less shameful past time is to go back to the roots. Go back to its beginnings, its never centre. Like blowing up the Death Star, it was easy.
Somebody for got to put a metal panel across and air vent and this allows us to penetrate the weakness and blow it up, over and over and over again.
Your brain, ‘The Death Star’ as it’s now know is the nerve centre. In the middle of the nerve centre there’s a ventilation shaft. You can’t penetrate the outer defence systems that hold vital information about wedding anniversaries or when Bob at work is having a retirement party. No, you can only penetrate the shit that you really, really want to care about minus the obvious natural life occurrences like children and other loved ones.
As soon as somebody mentions ‘oh, hey, Mortal Kombat was good on Mega Drive’ you attack the nerve centre with a huge burst of rapid fire into the ventilation shaft that’s opn at the top of your Death Star (your brain, keep) and boom, it’s exploding. A whirl of toxic stimulants eject form you Death Star and rush around your body like a can of Tizer Ice. You remember everything. You remember asking for the game in tirade of abuse towards your parents on how you need this game.
You explained its like Street Fighter 2 Turbo but with real people. You tell them that everyone will have a copy. You remember getting a copy. The day. The time. You remember it was on a Saturday. Before lunch. You went to Romford indoor market. There was a independent gaming specialist who sold Japanese Super Famicom Imports. They sold US Mega Drive Games. They every PAL game you could think of. They sold you the game. You paid forty five quid. You had £2.88 for a Big Mac Extra Value meal. You had 30p left to get home on the 294 bus from Romford to Collier Row. You knew the parents and siblings were out.
There was a can of Apple Tango, two Wham Bars and a bag of cheese and onion Tubes in the stash under your computer desk where you kept Readers Wives and various copies of X-Copy Amiga. You got home. Slammed the door. Ran up those stairs. Pulled MERCS out of the Mega Drive. Moved the SNES over to make a space on your desk for the Apple Tango etc and a hand written code sheet for Mortal Kombat form that weird kid at school.
You put your feet on the desk, closed the curtains and turned the crackling speakers up that you spent five days wiring and testing the connection to the SONY Trinitron KV-M140U CRT TV.
A, B, C, A, B, B, A, C, A.
You music hits loud. You haven’t even played the game yet but you’ve just enabled blood. Blood everywhere. It’s like Cannon Fodder but real.
You remember everything. The whole lot. All the finishers. Each characters individual move set to a degree. You remember it all.
But what you didn’t remember was the milk you needed to get for indoors. Then reality hits. It’s 2018 again. Nostalgia? Nope. Just something that made you happy during a time when so many mixed emptions were going through your head.
To remember this single, individual event from probably an array of things you could have remembered form way back or even two weeks ago is a blessing, a homage to al human Death Stars (Brains) that walk the earth today. Gaming doesn’t always bring out the positives in people, but it brings out the memories we share individually with ourselves and luckily in this day and age with social networking, everyone else.
Nostalgia shouldn’t be tossed around as an excuse for escapism or people in their thirties and forties playing old ‘kids games’ trying to relive days gone. It should be seen as a positive stimulant that allows people to be happy and communicate with other people that are also enjoying this past time. There’s no reason to remember everything life throws at you, but if you can still remember picking up a copy of Street Racer and when, how or whom you first played it with, then your brain is working. That must be a good thing. A positive thing.
Keep gaming.
Article by Daniel Major – follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GuyFawkesRetro
