Sunday, April 27, 2008

Well, here goes nothing...

Let me preface this whole thing by saying I know absolutely nothing about anything even remotely related to creating a website. This is truly a test run, and we'll see how it goes. I'm not known for following through on things...I tend to buy a lot of games, open one up, play for about an hour, then never touch the thing again. I have a giant, ever-swelling pile of uncompleted games lying around my apartment, in various stages of neglect, and these are good games.

I remember being a kid, and getting a Nintendo for Christmas. This was the old NES, the one with two buttons on the controller. My folks had raided the bargain bin for games when they bought the thing, and they'd come up with some absolute train wrecks. One of them was called Destination Earthstar.



It was a travesty. Playing it was a purifying experience, like self-flagellation, or drinking acid. It made children cry, eyes bleed; dogs barked and bared their teeth when I turned the game on, as if it was the vessel for some evil, satanic poltergeist.

Who am I to say that it wasn't?

I bring up Destination Earthstar for a reason. You see, excruciating as it may have been, I played that game. I played it all the way from its terrible, terrible genesis until the names of its godless creators slithered their horrible way across my television screen following the pathetic insult that served it for an ending. Once I'd finished it, I returned to it, as an abused dog will return to his master for a fresh beating. I played it again. Why? I suppose it may have been a misguided attempt to squeeze some additional "challenge" from it. I didn't feel I had seen all of whatever that malformed, abhorrent afterbirth of a game may have had to offer, and I wanted to really beat it, to truly wring it until some enjoyment fell from its unholy bowels.

Perhaps my adolescent mind was, in its unsophisticated way, trying to punish the game for being so bad. Perhaps I was determined not only to beat the game, but also to defeat it in such a way that its evil might never taint the Nintendo of another child.

Perhaps.

I will hold to that thought.

Earlier, I mentioned that I have a point. I said there was a reason for bringing up this awful game and then discussing it for far longer than it had any right to ever be discussed by anyone, even as the first post on a blog no-one knows exists and no-one has yet read, or may ever read. I didn't lie, though the point itself may not be worth the self-inflicted horrors of making of it.

Here it is:

Somewhere along the way, I stopped finishing things. I have approximately five perfectly glorious Zelda games sitting on a shelf in my room, unplayed. I have several games with the words "Final" and "Fantasy" somewhere in their title that share the same fate. I bought Persona 3 last year. I have started it four separate times. Though it is not found anywhere in any version of the Bible that I am aware of, that particular oversight is almost certainly a sin. I should sit with that game, devour it whole, then pick apart the resulting feces to see what I can learn from it.

But I don't.

So now comes this blog. Will it sit, shelved like Persona 3? Or will I somehow find a way to commit to it, to follow through, and maintain it beyond the initial creation?

I'd love to say...but I think I'm gonna go blow off my Destination Earthstar cartridge. Surely it isn't as bad as I remember...

Surely.

1 comment:

Xeriphas1994 said...

I completely agree that this is a problem (the video game aspect at least). From time to time I have broken out of it, and there is indeed a cosmic feeling of satisfaction when a story finally closes, but I'm not certain it balances out the hostility and ruthlessness filling one's brain in the interim. Steve Benway, a very smart man, has suggested confining oneself to titles dispensed in "units" of several minutes (e.g. deathmatch sessions, or arcade-style shooters with no ending).