A new generation, and rebuilding of the Retro Room.
My little brother Jake came up this past weekend. For the past two weeks, he’s been calling me every couple of days asking about GoldenEye. What we can do, what levels we can play, and most importantly, what cheats we can use. Haha. I don’t think he typically plays a lot of games, but for whatever reason he’s really latched on to GoldenEye. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone this excited about GoldenEye since… me.
So we spent a large amount of time playing that. I was content to spectate. As I’ve said before, I almost like watching people play games, more than actually playing them. Which is why I still nag Andrea once in a while to play through Final Fantasy X. It’s just so fun watching people discover the game as they play. It’s as close as I can get to playing it again for the first time.
More than anything, I found it remarkable that an 8 year old kid in 2013 is at all interested in a game that is literally twice as old as he is. Compared to games today GoldenEye must some mundane to some extent. But I appreciated and enjoyed our shared enthusiasm.
If you’ll notice the TV on the floor in the picture above. Luke has since moved into the old Retro Room. So we moved that TV upstairs. It is a heavy bastard. Much more than one person can handle alone. So in a time crunch, I had to set everything up like that, because I knew I’d be at work, and Jake would NOT want to wait until I got home to play GoldenEye.
Later this weekend, Andrea was able to help me get the TV up on the stand, and I started rebuilding the Retro Room.
Seems like a nice spread to me. =) One thing to note, is that little of that has been actual collecting, for collecting’s sake. A vast majority is just accumulation over time. Most people garage sale old games and systems once they are bored with them, I just never did and now I have a ton of this stuff. This is all pretty much everything before HD consoles. The only things missing are the Wii games which we still keep downstairs to play on the Wii U, and the ridiculous amount of controllers. Everything else from 1987 – 2012 is pretty much right here. Kinda weird to see all that history and all the memories in one place.
I like this arrangement better than what I had in the old room. Rather than a straight line from left to right. Looks pretty good I think for some free cards from Club Nintendo, and $1 frames from Dollar Tree.
You can’t be around all these classic games and NOT pick one up! Andrea found Super Mario Land 2 and decided to give it a go.
And there’s pretty much the current setup. I like it better than the previous arrangement. I still have to swap some cables out to get some of the systems playable, but for the most part, it’s all within 60 seconds of being ready to play. I have an idea for controller storage I’m excited to try and I want to try to find a few more things for the walls. But the Retro Room is back! That’s the important thing.
The Craziest Vacation Ever
Having fun shouldn’t be this hard. We had a family reunion to go to in Lowell, Indiana. Since it’s so close to Chicago, we thought, heck, let’s swing through.
Two days before we get ready to hit the road, the Jeep starts losing oil pressure. I haven’t fully diagnosed it yet. But best case scenario, the oil pressure is fine, just the gauge is screwed up. Worst case… we need a new motor. Ugh. So figured it wasn’t a good idea to set out on a 30 hour round trip drive in the thing, so we took Andrea’s mom’s car instead. Sufficed to say, things were a little cozier in a Carolla than they would have been in the Jeep.
Between late starts, detours for Andrea’s sister to get a rental car, stops to eat, etc, etc… after leaving home Thursday night, we finally arrived in Chicago almost 24 hours later at around 10PM. Didn’t have time to go up any of the skyscrapers or anything like that. But we did go to Navy Pier that night for about an hour and a half. And DID have some fun!
If you look closely you can see the moon next to one of the buildings in the distance. Pretty cool sight in person.
View from the top of the Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier.
I knew Chicago was big, but I didn’t know HOW big. Would be fun to visit, but I would hate living there.
So at about midnight, we left town and headed on to Lowell. Tolls everywhere. Geesh, I couldn’t afford to drive there on a daily basis. Seemed like we were plonking down $4.00 every couple of miles.
The family reunion part was good. Had a lot of fun, played a lot of games. Some Cards Against Humanity, and some lawn games when the weather was nicer.
Grandma and Luke are playing with bubbles. Luke was EXCITED!
Andrea sharked everybody tossing beanbags, just like she does with washers.
So we all got up and around Sunday morning. Then we just kinda hung around for a while, waiting for Andrea’s Aunt to come home, only to find out she wasn’t going to make it home in the first place! So we left about 3 hours later than planned. Again, between stopping to eat, pit stop in KC to return the rental car, yadda, yadda, we finally made it home about 4:30AM Monday morning. And then I’m off to work at 9AM. Took it upon myself to get an extra hour of sleep.
So I never really want to do a vacation like that again. Not saying it wasn’t worth it, but it was just way too exhausting. It took me until about Wednesday to finally get back on track.
So now back to the daily grind. Off to work today, and hopefully can finish getting my yard mowed tonight… between this trip and work there’s been no daylight to get it done. C’est’ la vous.
06.10.13
The Retro-Room Has Been Evicted!
What was the “Retro-Room” is now officially “Luke’s Room”. We had some doubt about how he would take to moving downstairs and into a room all by himself. And turns out, he couldn’t be happier apparently! He went to sleep without a single peep! We’ll see how he handles the morning though when he wakes up and Mommy isn’t right there.
I for one am super happy. I always feel like I have to tip-toe around in the morning getting ready because I don’t want to wake Luke up, and that in turn wakes Andrea up. So this way, I don’t have to go into his room at all and he can stay zonked out.
As for the retro-room. I guess all that stuff is getting relocated to our bedroom, which is really two rooms that got combined at some point in the past. So there is plenty of room up there. But I thought with it in our bedroom it would be less accessible when guests come over. But then I thought, who am I kidding. In all the time we’ve had guests over, maybe once did we spend any time in the retro room. I guess I’m alone in my love for these old games. If nothing else, hopefully in our bedroom, and having the opportunity to look at them each day, they will get a little more play time, at least by me..
Reunited
No one else can possibly see what I see when I look at that car. That right there is my first car. Not a car like my first car. That IS my first car. It’s a 1979 Caprice Classic. To most people, you look at it, and you see a pretty cool car. But to me it represents so many things. And now it’s mine again, thanks to Dad.
I see history first of all. My history. A “flash before your eyes” kind of moment when I stop and really look at that car. The places I went as a teenager, the stuff we did, the friends I hung out with, my job, school. All of it comes rushing in too quickly to take it all in at once. It’s like a focal point where so many chronological paths cross.
I see freedom. I was never really guarded as a youth. For the most part I stayed out of trouble… my parents trusted me because of it… and because of that, I got to do what I wanted. So that car for the first time in my life could take me where I want, whenever I want. But suddenly my borders were expanded. I wasn’t bound by the city limits, or having to ride my bike home before the streetlights come on.
I see independence. No longer did I have to rely on my parents to take me places. I didn’t have to wait until Mom had to go to the store to see what new games were on the shelf. I could get a job, I could make money. And if I wanted to go to a movie, as long as I had gas and the money to do it, I could go.
I see people. A lot of people that bluntly aren’t a part of my life anymore. Nothing personal, we’ve just all lost touch over the years, which makes it all the more surreal to see this car again. After a while you gain a sort of acceptance that relationships aren’t what they used to be and you accept it. But this is just like an old friend that you haven’t seen for years, but you can instantly strike up a conversation with the moment you are reunited.
04.2.13Spring at Last!
Well the weather the past couple days has been cold and dreary, but this past weekend was absolutely beautiful! I for once didn’t have many commitments to worry about, so we spent a lot of time outside. It’s like the beginning of Bambi where all the animals start crawling out of their holes for spring. One by one, all the neighbors on our street started coming outside to do yard work, or just enjoy the day. Wasn’t long before we were standing in the middle of the street yakking. Gotta love the small town life.
Getting outdoors is great for Luke. He has so much energy now, that it’s good to get him out of the house and burn off some steam. He loves exploring the yard and especially playing with the sand from the street. I know it’s only a matter of time though before he’s ready to start exploring past the confines of the yard. Gotta watch that kid every second!
Here’s some pictures we took of Luke’s weekend adventures!
I was going to write something this morning…
I got about 500 words into a post this morning and bailed… I felt like I was just rambling and I didn’t see any resolution to my thoughts in the near future. The post was based on this Kotaku article posted a few days ago, titled “How to Balance Video Games with Real Life”. It resonated with me on a very personal level. Gaming is something I’ve been passionate about from a young age, and finding time to make it a part of my adult life is a daunting task.
So if you get the chance, read it. It apparently expresses my thoughts clearer than I can this morning. Guess I need more coffee.
02.10.13Luke & Mommy Playing
Sorry. Now with video!
[youtube=http://youtu.be/xmC9hjdEtGo]
11.19.12A Great Day For U
We got our Wii U yesterday. I haven’t spent a TON of time with it yet, but so far it’s pretty sweet.
Luke and I got to Gamestop at about 11:00am, and it turns out they said we were the first person to come pick theirs up! At first I thought, “Well that’s lame, when I was younger, I would have been waiting at the door for the store to open!” But then he said that Wal-Mart got a ton of them and decided to do a midnite launch, so a bunch of Gamestop people cancelled their pre-order and went to get it at Wal-Mart at midnight. That made me feel better. There’s still some gaming and Nintendo fanaticism left in the world.
We decided to go with the “Deluxe” package. It comes with some extra stuff like stands, a charging dock, and the game Nintendoland. Along with (I think) double the internal storage space of the basic bundle. So for the extra $50 it’s certainly worth it over the life of the console. Which is pretty much forever I guess, seeing as how my original NES is still in working order. Nintendo makes some quality stuff!
I asked Andrea before she left for Wichita this weekend, “Do you want me to wait until you get home to open it?” She said “Yes.” And it’s a good thing I asked, or else I would have just tore into this bad boy! But as I’ve written before, and as lame as it sounds, opening the package on this kind of stuff is a big deal for a geek like me! And actually it kinda made me happy that I’m married to somebody who thinks its kinda a big deal too. I mean she did want me to wait, right?
When she got home Luke had just woke up, and it didn’t take long for us to pop it open. Everything was perfectly wrapped. I didn’t document any of it… if you want to see what’s inside, just go to Youtube and search for “Wii U unboxing” and pick from any of the 2300 results.
It didn’t take long for the contents to get strewn all over the basement. We had to move things around. Unhook old stuff, hook up new stuff.
The keyboards on the floor were Luke’s doing, haha.
We decided to move the Wii to make room for the Wii U. Since the U will play all the Wii games anyway. The Wii console will now be queued for installation into my current backburner project, the “retro” room. More on that in a later post though.
Luke was trying to be helpful. Or… just trying to figure out what all these new thingys do.
There’s Luke with the gamepad dock…. in his mouth.
Here’s that queue I was talking about for the Retro Room. Years of fun on this table!
So we got it all set up, and after about a 90 minute wait for the System Update… we FINALLY got to play! Boy, I don’t know how excited kids on Christmas morning are going to be able to handle that brutal system update… It was about to drive me nuts! But alas, we are up and running! I’ll do some more gameplay impressions soon! For now, I gotta get to work!
Luke Playing His Drums
Grammy got Luke a drum set a while ago. He loves them. It’s funny. He has to have the little stool just right before he will sit down and play. Here’s a little video.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/rS-430_VPrI]
11.3.12Halloween 2012
Sorry I haven’t posted much. Really thought I would over the vacation here, but we’ve been super busy.
Here’s some pictures of Halloween out in SWK with the family. Luke is a little dragon. We were super surprised that he left the little hat on almost the whole time!
It was a perfect night for Trick-or-Treating. Temperature was in the 50’s and it was just starting to get dark. Things were winding down by time time we got started, but there were still PLENTY of lights on.
