Digital entertainment at its laziest

I've always enjoyed video games. My earliest video game memories are from way back when I was a sweet, chubby, dimpled little 3 year old and my brother got an Atari (I can't remember what version) for Chanukah. Mom and Dad hooked it up in the basement/playroom and I watched him play Pac-Man and Baseball and Missile Command. I tried to learn how to play the games too, and Mom made him let me play them, but hand-eye coordination isn't at its best when you're only three years old, so I assume I wasn't that great and probably threw quite a few tempter tantrums in the interim.

At age four, however, I finally started getting the knack of playing games. While Pac-Man and Space Invaders were still beyond my ability to grasp, I found that there was one game I wasn't too shabby at. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it was a two-player combat game, with tanks and battleships and things of that nature and you moved around and shot one another. Maybe someone who was old enough to have clear memories of that time could educate me with the name of that particular game. All I remember is that if you lifted up the console and dropped it back down with the game in the console and the console turned on you got a playable error level that was stupid and pointless, but kind of fun all at the same time.

After we'd left Pittsburgh and moved out to Oxnard, my brother got a ColecoVision for either his birthday or Chanukah that year, and I have clear memories of watching him play Mr. Do. I don't think I ever played that game, but there was another game for that system that used the Alfred Hitchcock theme music as its theme music and had something to do with food, and devils and angels, but I'll be damned if I can remember anything beyond that. I played that one a few times, I think, but I may have been too obsessed with my Cabbage Patch Doll at that point in time. I DO remember when we got another Atari system... this was the one with the built-in keyboard and optional (and additional) tape drive. I played the HELL out of some Joust on that system, and my brother played some weird-ass game called 'Oil Well'. I remember this because he used to say 'Oil's well that ends well' all the time. Yeah, I didn't think it was all that funny either.

When my mother got remarried in the summer of 1986, my brother and I got an NES for Chanukah. We got the deluxe package, with Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt (and the light gun), the stupid little robot thing, and the game that came with it (I think it was called GyroMite). Duck Hunt was a great game. I sucked ass at Super Mario Bros., but I had some early talent for shooting things. GyroMite was just too god damned complicated for me, so I just sat back and watched my brother play it for hours on end.

The next year, The Legend of Zelda came out. I STILL love that game. When they re-released it for the GameBoy Advance, I made my husband go out and buy it for me, and I played it over and over and over and over and over again during down time at work. But back when it was on the NES, I just (once again) watched my brother play it. It was just as interesting to me to watch it as it was to play it. I offhandedly wonder just how long my mother had to search various toy stores to find that shiny gold cartridge around Christmastime that year. She may have had the patience to do that (she did that to get me my aforementioned Cabbage Patch Doll), but I definitely would not have. Thank god I was too old for Tickle Me Elmos when the chaos surrounding them occurred.

We never got a Super NES, or an N64, or a Sega, or any of those other consoles. By then, Tetris had come out for the NES and that's pretty much all we played. The entire family played it. My stepfather claimed it was 'educational' and that's why he played it, but at that time, the internet was in its infancy and my brother had a Prodigy account so he felt that video games were too young for him.

The next game system I familiarized myself with was the Sega Dreamcast. Yeah, big gap there, innit? But with that system (that belonged to my husband) I was introduced to the wonder that is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I wasn't very good at it, but it was a fun game and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Even bailing was entertaining.

Soon after that, the wonder of the world that is XBox came out, so naturally I got myself a Sears card and bought one. I never got into Halo, I don't like 1st person shooters (my talent for Duck Hunt notwithstanding) but there was a version of Tony Hawk for the XBox and I got rather good at it.

Then we discovered the PS2 and the plethora of RPG-style games developed for it. Now, with those kinds of games, I don't really have any interest in PLAYING them, I just enjoy WATCHING other people play them. It's kind of like a movie. My favorite PS2 RPG to watch was and is Dark Cloud 2. That game is just too interesting for words.

You do things in the past, then visit the future, and see what your past actions have caused in future events. What a concept! It's like reality, but digital! My poor husband would play that game for hours, and eventually I'd fall asleep on the couch watching him play.

Now, we have an XBox 360. My husband has been playing Oblivion on it for well over 100 hours now, for both of our entertainment, between sessions of playing Guitar Hero 2 (I play that one too). He's almost done with the main quest, and I do believe he's been playing it for about 6 hours straight now. I've been watching him play it while I've been writing this post. Such a pretty game, so in-depth and detail-oriented. I'm sure it's been as much pleasure for him to play it as it's been for me to watch it. Besides, it has the added bonus of Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean as voice-over artists!

So if you have a 360 and a LOT of free time on your hands, and haven't played it already, I heartily recommend Oblivion for your time consumption needs. Enjoy!