Monday, April 03, 2006

Moving on

I had a sickness when I was in college. It’s a sickness I’m still trying to get over today. That sickness is the “must buy way too many video games” sickness. It started when I was a freshman. I went out and bought a Playstation, not because I needed one, but because I could. I got the PSone and Final Fantasy 7. The sickness was pretty contained at that point, since I didn’t have too much disposable income at that point. However, slowly it grew over time.

When the next generations of systems came out, with the exception of the Dreamcast, I bought all of them. First the PS2, second the Gamecube, and finally the XBOX. I then went on to buy games just to buy them, more games than I could possibly beat, even with all the free time I had. So, here I sit, years later, dealing with that sickness, and with a stack of games.

As I’ve noted here, I bought an XBOX 360 the other week. That left me with an XBOX that I no longer needed. Now, granted I can play all my old XBOX games on the new XBOX, or at least most of them, I really never bought too many XBOX games to begin with. I had the NASCAR games and I bought the Halos, but other than that, I did most of my true gaming on the PS2 and Cube. So, I decided, let’s get rid of the XBOX and all the games I’ve got since I really don’t play them (I’m over Halo and Halo 2, and have nothing left I could do in NASCAR). I also took stock of the other games I had, for all three systems that I knew I wasn’t going to play again. Good games too, some I hadn’t even beaten, and let them go as well.

It was tough, but to get over this sickness, I had to do it. No more will I just buy a game to buy it. It’s got to be something special, something I’ll really get my moneys worth out of. For example, I got Star Ocean Till the End of Time two years ago. I spent over 80 hours playing it. Now that’s worth it. Here’s a bad example, Dynasty Warriors 5, as much as I love killing hundreds of people, I played it maybe 15 hours. I’m also going to have a firm rent before I buy standpoint. Too many games are renters, and I’m a sucker that buys them. I buy it, and either tire of it 10 days later, of beat it in the time frame I’ve rented it.

I feel like I gave something away yesterday, and in a way I did. I gave away something that held a lot of memories for me, good ones. Fun times spent with my fraternity brothers blow stuff up, making fun of each other, goofing around, and just relaxing. But it’s time to move on. Gaming will always be a big hobby for me, it’s fun and simple, and I get more enjoyment out of it than movies. I’ll probably end up buying all the next gen systems too. However, I will no longer buy games just to buy them.

I made my first step yesterday. I had 160 bucks of in store credit from my trade ins and I bought one game, Kingdom Hearts 2. The first one game me 50 plus hours of game play, and I feel like this one will too. I didn’t rent it, but in this case I didn’t have too since I enjoyed the first one so much. I kept my other 100 some odd dollars in credits and will hang on to it, until something else comes along I like. This way, I don’t have to spend real money for some time.

Wrestlemania was on last night. I didn’t watch it. This was the second year in a row I didn’t order it. I haven’t watched WWE for several months now. It just doesn’t interest me anymore. The storylines are boring, and the wrestling is even worse. It’s a shame too, because it did used to be something worth my time. This year, it’s not. I’ll keep getting my wrestling fix from TNA, and most likely order their PPVs instead, which are cheaper anyway.

Look for the immigrant issue to really heat up this week, but in the end had little progress. With bills starting to come out of committee senators are going to have to actually start voting on some of these, and it will be interesting to see how things start to shape up. I’m still on the fence about the issue, not sure which way to go. I don’t want them all criminalized, but agree something has to be done to secure our southern border and stop the flow of immigrants, or at least contain it and formalize it. I don’t have a problem with them coming here. I do have a problem with them not paying taxes and sucking up an disproportionate amount of public services. I also have an issue with the not learning English thing, but that’s related to some other social issues and not really the immigration deal, even if they are all under the same umbrella.

Spring Break this week for high school kids here in North Atlanta. We’ll see if traffic thins out at all for me this week in my commute. Bebe is done student teaching now and will be teaching online full time through the summer, while also working at her old law firm, and doing some adjunct teaching for Kennesaw State University. Hopefully she’ll get a full time teaching job near the house. She’s quite the busy bee.

-O

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