Then again, maybe I won’t.
I bought a Nintendo Gamecube from a friend of mine last weekend. This is the third one I’ve owned. I think I’ll keep this one.I originally bought one at a midnight sale on launch day (Oct. 2001) from a local game store in Tacoma. I got Tony Hawk 3 with it (skateboarding game, for those not into these things) and it was cool. I rented most of the launch titles that piqued my curiosity, but didn’t buy any others. After the first couple of months, it was clear that there was nothing impressive looming on the horizon, so I sold it to a friend of a friend. Got back most of what I’d spent, so I chalked it up as a long-term rental and figured I’d mostly come out ahead.
I bought my next one during my last stint in Korea. I had PX access thanks to my inactive reserve military ID, so tax-free shopping was mine. There were more games out worth the purchase at the time, so I binged. Got some great ones, had a lot of fun with it and all was good. For a while. After I came back to the US I gamed a lot. I mean an awful lot. I wasn’t working and just lived off my savings from Korea. I wasn’t a total couch potato. I’d go out for walks or bike rides, so it wasn’t like I was gaming 24/7. But it was my main activity and – believe it or not – it got old after a bit.
When it was time to head back to Korea (end of Summer, 2003) I’d decided to lighten my load of material possessions and sold most everything I owned.
Everything must go!
And it did. All I have left is two Rubbermaid totes and box of stuff left with a friend in Tacoma. I had a Playstation 2 and the Gamecube and had decided to take only one to Korea with me. The Cube got the boot since the PS2 also played DVDs and could be modified to play bootleg (much cheaper than retail) games. I hadn’t been playing the Cube much at that point, so it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I got a fair price for it and the games, so all was well.
Which brings us up to the present. Or, rather, the very close past. Last weekend I was hanging out with a friend here and he remarked that he hadn’t been playing his Cube much and was thinking of selling it. He’d made the comment on Saturday, and Sunday morning (I crashed at his place) I gave his setup a critical once-over. Decent games, good accessories, everything in good shape – why not make him an offer? I did, and he accepted. I crammed it all into my backpack for the ride home and have been geeking happily with it all week. Clearly, the role videogames play in my life has changed. Where it used to be an all-consuming passion that sucked up all my free time, now it’s a leisure activity. It’s the escape it’s meant to be. After a day of putting up with noisy kids, it’s nice to come home and unwind by questing through Hyrule, or hunting Metroids, or even tooling around space in my X-Wing. It’s almost as though I’ve rediscovered gaming – not that I’d given it up, really. It just feels new all over again. I’ll be hanging on to this one for quite a while.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a princess to rescue.
^.^