For Love of the Game

Ever since I said the magic words “Oregon Trail” I have been absolutely dying to play the game. Then, while driving I passed a sign that said “Settlers,” and as that was a game I played around the same time I’ve since been craving the chance to play it. This threw me into full out game nostalgia mode. Thus I have decided to do the neek thing and dedicate a post to some of my favorite games over the years.

Some you may recognize, some are obscure, and some are rather mock-worthy.

Let’s start with the classic! The Oregon Trail is quite frankly a fabulous game. It’s based on some for realz history, which means it’s totally acceptable to play in school, without being a stupid math game. Score! People also tend to die, which makes it far more fun. My favorite part was naming my fellow passengers after a mix of people I loved and hated, and seeing which ones survived. And while I normally cannot deal with any kind of animal violence (even in video games) it was actually really fun to shoot all the animals when you were running low on supplies. It taught you not to be greedy too! If you shot too many you’d end up still only carrying half the meat home.

Now thinking about the Oregon Trail inevitably makes me think of Settlers. I played both games around the same time. Settlers was on one of those discs we got monthly (ish) with free previews of games. This meant you could play only to a certain point. Settlers is a bit similar to Civilization. You start by settling on this new land, and you have to spread out your settlement, creating things like pig farms, mints, and mines. The little people were adorable. You could see the supplies traveling between points on the road to make it to where the supplies were needed, so that was pretty fun too. Sadly I was just reminiscing about this game with my brother, and he said he tried to find it recently and it would require something-something-terms-I-don’t-understand-but-the-word-“bit”-might-have-been-involved to run on computers nowadays. Jerkfaces haven’t made a new version. Someday I may write them a letter.

Another computer game I started playing around that age was Catz. My parents thought this would help keep me from constantly bugging them for more animals. It kinda worked. The virtual pets were fun. Of course the part I most enjoyed was breeding them to get new adorable kittens. That way I could mix the breeds up to get interesting new types. Plus it would chart the family history, which for some reason amused me. Granted, in retrospect that’s kind of a weird aspect of a game designed for kids. When you wanted kittens you’d get a male and female cat out at the same time, and then you had to make sure they liked each other. You could help set the mood with some heart-shaped pillows, perfume, and candy. Weird, right?

Moving away from computer games momentarily, let’s look at some multiplayer games. There were few games that my brother and I could actually play together without devolving into outright war. One was called Herc’s Adventures, and it was AMAZING. I loved Greek mythology, and this game was a weird mix of ancient Greek gods & heroes, and aliens. Yes, aliens. Initially we didn’t even own it. We rented it for our Playstation and played endlessly. Of course eventually we’d hit the same point where I’d die a lot and give up. My brother was actually the only one to finish the game. It had many aspects that appealed to me though. For one thing, there was actually a FEMALE character I could play. I don’t know about other girls, but it drives me batty when I have to play a guy. I find this intriguing. Did you know that when taking tests, statistically girls respond the same whether the test uses girl or guy names in the examples, but guys respond better to same gender names? On the other hand, in my personal experience guys seem more than happy to run around as girls in video games. At least they seem to do it a lot in WoW. Someday I must poll the larger world to see how other girls feel about playing games as male characters.

 Since we’re discussing both Playstation games and games I could play with my brother (without wanting to kill him in the real world), let’s also talk about Twisted Metal. We actually initially started playing Twisted Metal II, which was my favorite. I believe at some point we did end up with the original Twisted Metal, but I still prefer II. We could play against each other, or as a team. It’s one of the few games that I don’t horrible suck at. Outlaw was my preferred character (which also might explain my preference for II over I; in I Outlaw is a guy named Carl, in II it’s his sister, Jamie). Sometimes I’d switch it up though and play Minion, because it was easier to squish the other contestants. I’ve recently been trying to find TM II again because I really loved the game (Mom made us go through some game purges over the years, and at some point it got sacrificed) but I can’t find it. I did get Twisted Metal: Heads On, but it’s kinda meh. Of course when I say I’m trying to “find” the game, I mean I look for it when I’m in a store. I have this really weird thing where I’ll only buy stuff I really want if I happen to run across it, I won’t search online or anything (which is why I also don’t own things like the Drive Me Crazy movie I’ve been wanting to re-watch for forever).

We’ll finish with my absolute favorite game ever. That would be Mario Party. I LOVE Mario Party. How can you not? I mean it’s a combination of every possible good thing from video and board games. You move around an interesting, themed (cuz I love me some fun themes) board. There is some strategy required. There is also some dumb luck. Then there is some skill necessary when you do the mini-games. You can do everything right and lose. You can do everything wrong and win. Normally, you do a mix and get really angry. Mario Party is the reason in high school we frequently said “medieval.” As in, “You dummy, why the heck did you just go medieval on me!?!” after the dummy in question shoots you during a mini-game. This also became the game in college where we most frequently used the phrase “cheating whore.” It actually originated for us playing Skip-Bo, but quickly became a Mario Party catch phrase when we’d play 50 game rounds and near the end everyone started screaming “YOU CHEATING WHORE YOU STOLE MY STAR.” True story – sophomore year of college our worst housemate fights were 100% started by Mario Party games.

Sadly I do not own any of the Mario Party games. My brother briefly owned them, but due to some shenanigans with an evil ex-girlfriend they are lost forever. My college roomie had them, but she felt it necessary to grow up and get married and all that good stuff, so I lost access. I’ve been debating for a while whether I want to go out and buy a GameCube. All my favorite versions were on the GameCube. I don’t particularly want a Wii, because while the new ones are on Wii I’m not in love with the stupid controllers.

Mario Party actually caused me one of my saddest moments this year. The sequence went like this:

I was over at a friend’s house

saw a Mario Party game box

knew this friend would be cool with me basically taking over their house to play

got super excited

opened the box

discovered the game was missing

turned to the friend

found out THEY LOST IT YEARS AGO.

Way to crush my fragile moment of pure happiness. I have secretly knocked points off their mental brownie score because of this instance.