Thanksgiving 2009, Wii Tennis tournament.
I’ve always been a video game girl. For a long stretch of my childhood and teenage years, any money I received as a gift was put immediately towards a new video game. My brother and I would go into Best Buy and spend a solid half an hour perusing the shelves and trying to decide which games to get. Sometimes we knew exactly what we wanted, but I specifically remember the occasions on which we’d be holding two games in our hands, weighing the options and determining which one would be more fun.
Fall 1999; getting my game time in before a family picnic.
Because my brother was heavily into video games and I had my own healthy addiction, we accumulated several systems – everything from an old-school NES to our new Wii and my DS Lite. Hidden in our entertainment shelving is a vast collection of cartridges and disks, many of which we’ve very recently been using all over again.
Christmas 2006. Guitar Hero with my brother.
Last night, as I was sorting through my own Gameboy games, my brother came in with his collection and emptied the box on my bed. I nearly died - it was like he was pouring our childhood out, in little two-by-two-inch cartridges. Among the findings were five Pokemon games (blue, red, yellow, gold and silver), a word puzzle game that I used to play for hours, and a bunch of other favorites from when we were young. I hadn’t seen half of those games in years and it was just such a throw back.
Things clearly haven’t changed, though. With the purchase of my new DS Lite and two games to go with it, I spent most of this weekend attached to it. I could never gauge how "normal" it was, because I'm a girl and the stereotype is that they don't play video games (or, if they do, it's very limited). But to me, it's totally normal to spend a Friday night playing a bunch of old games or even dedicating a whole weekend to conquering a new game.
