I lost my gaming mojo.
I’d been a gamer since I was a kid. Arcades, my cousin’s Intellivision, and me and my brother’s first home console was the Atari VCS around 1978 (which is one reason why I loved the film Ready Player One so much). I feel privileged to have grown up during the birth of home gaming and seen it through its entire life (so far). It’s been a journey.
Fast forward to the 2000s and I was playing games every day. Late 2000s I was online every night with friends from work playing stuff like Grid against components from all around the world. I don’t think we did much for international relations, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard with the fun we had. And the fact that I could easily kick Lee’s ass on racing games (even though he now works for EA).
Late November 2009, my XBox 360 suffered the “red ring of death”. I think the repair took around 2-3 weeks, then I got my 360 back. I thought it’d be a case of the console coming back, plug it in, and business as usual. Not so. I just couldn’t get back into playing games in the same way. I still love games, and I love playing them, especially retro games, and really really want to play them. I suppose most of my time is spent watching films at the moment, and I could give up some film time to play games, but I think I know if I start playing games again, it’ll be so time consuming that I’ll spend more time doing that than I do watching films! To give you an idea, I’ve watched 635 films so far this year.
What’s odd is that I own a PS4 Pro (haven’t got an XBox One, but I’ve got a few games!). That’s as well as an XBox 360, original XBox, PS2, original PS1, Atari Jaguar, Atari VCS (2600), Nintendo SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, along with a number of the recent mini consoles that have been released.
Gaming will always have a place in my heart, but I suppose at 50, I’m starting to wonder how much time I’ve got left, and whether it’s worth spending any of that time on gaming. But I’ve got a massive urge to play Crackdown...
I’d been a gamer since I was a kid. Arcades, my cousin’s Intellivision, and me and my brother’s first home console was the Atari VCS around 1978 (which is one reason why I loved the film Ready Player One so much). I feel privileged to have grown up during the birth of home gaming and seen it through its entire life (so far). It’s been a journey.
Fast forward to the 2000s and I was playing games every day. Late 2000s I was online every night with friends from work playing stuff like Grid against components from all around the world. I don’t think we did much for international relations, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard with the fun we had. And the fact that I could easily kick Lee’s ass on racing games (even though he now works for EA).
Late November 2009, my XBox 360 suffered the “red ring of death”. I think the repair took around 2-3 weeks, then I got my 360 back. I thought it’d be a case of the console coming back, plug it in, and business as usual. Not so. I just couldn’t get back into playing games in the same way. I still love games, and I love playing them, especially retro games, and really really want to play them. I suppose most of my time is spent watching films at the moment, and I could give up some film time to play games, but I think I know if I start playing games again, it’ll be so time consuming that I’ll spend more time doing that than I do watching films! To give you an idea, I’ve watched 635 films so far this year.
What’s odd is that I own a PS4 Pro (haven’t got an XBox One, but I’ve got a few games!). That’s as well as an XBox 360, original XBox, PS2, original PS1, Atari Jaguar, Atari VCS (2600), Nintendo SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, along with a number of the recent mini consoles that have been released.
Gaming will always have a place in my heart, but I suppose at 50, I’m starting to wonder how much time I’ve got left, and whether it’s worth spending any of that time on gaming. But I’ve got a massive urge to play Crackdown...