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Post by Ex on Jan 13, 2018 0:20:07 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder if people who grew up with heavy gaming restrictions, now harbor a kind of subconscious desire to eat as much of this forbidden fruit as they can, now that the garden is wide open in their adult life. But then you have people like me, who grew up with no restriction, yet still chow down at the buffet very regularly. Hmm, I don't know. Food for thought!
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Post by chibby on Jan 13, 2018 8:06:29 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder if people who grew up with heavy gaming restrictions, now harbor a kind of subconscious desire to eat as much of this forbidden fruit as they can, now that the garden is wide open in their adult life. You would be correct! My first gaming console I ever owned was the N64 (a gift from Anayo, actually) and I got that when the Xbox and it's generation were in full swing. A few years later I received a Sega Genesis and an Original Xbox (I mean technically the Xbox was for me and my 3 siblings) during the same Christmas, and I probably played the two evenly. To be fair, it's not like my family only restricted video games out of some fear of the unknown or of new tech. We also, at some point, removed any cable television from our home, we weren't allowed to listen to music that didn't measure up to a "Godly" standard, and we were homeschooled in order to kept away from negative influences. That being said, my mother wasn't very consistent on enforcing those rules and we used our library like some sort of elicit black market from which you could smuggle Simon and Garfunkel tapes into the home. Without getting any more personal, I had a few hardships in my early years and I'm pretty sure that as a result my childhood memories are a bit scattered and spotty on the recall. When it comes to gaming, most of the time, when I'm buying something for the N64 or Genesis let's say, I don't think to myself "I am reclaiming my lost childhood!" or anything. However, there are definitely moments where I reflect on my collection and I think young me would be pretty okay with how things turned out.
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Post by toei on Jan 13, 2018 11:00:43 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder if people who grew up with heavy gaming restrictions, now harbor a kind of subconscious desire to eat as much of this forbidden fruit as they can, now that the garden is wide open in their adult life. But then you have people like me, who grew up with no restriction, yet still chow down at the buffet very regularly. Hmm, I don't know. Food for thought! For me it wasn't parental restrictions, just lack of money. The only time I could hope to get a game was at my birthday, sometimes, and apparently I made terrible choices cause I actually owned that terrible Taz-Mania game on the Genesis, and really had to be bored out of my mind to try to play it. When I discovered emulation, and then actually had a computer that could run these things, it was like walking into a candy store and finding out you're the owner.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 13, 2018 12:37:34 GMT -5
I can relate to the lack of money, too. I rarely got new games, but always had to chip at the edges at thrift stores and pawn shops. I think in my younger days, the collection topped out at 20-25 NES games; I'd have to trade old ones I didn't play for new ones. Now I'm sitting on around 250.
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Post by Ex on Jan 13, 2018 14:01:39 GMT -5
I think my excessive game buying over the years, was a result of never getting to own all the games I wanted as a kid. In retrospect, my parents and aunt did a nice job of buying me the games I wanted. However, that was usually only for birthdays or Christmas. There were long droughts throughout the year where I could only play new games by renting them, temporarily trading games for games with friends, or trading toys for them with friends, and eventually mowing lawns to afford them. There were always lots of games I'd drool over in video game magazines, yet never have a chance of even finding, let alone buying. As a result of that mostly unfulfilled youthful desire, when I became an adult with disposable income, I made up for it in excess. I'm more reasonable these days about buying games, then I used to be. But I was quite the hoarder in my twenties.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 13, 2018 15:45:17 GMT -5
I'm still a hoarder, ha! Who knows, maybe some day I'll actually sell some stuff... I absolutely think a lot of my purchasing was making up for lost time, so to speak. Like y'all, I drooled over so many games in magazines. Then emulation came along, and my mind was blown. Of course, that also meant I didn't try as hard to buy stuff, so there's a gap where I stopped really purchasing much. Kinda down on that, but at the same time, I still wasn't made of money in my college years. But there were a few times where I wish I'd actually had some money to buy up NES games; when I was out of a job, I visited a rental store up in Arkansas and they had tons of great games at bargain prices, but I only had $15 in my bank account.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 13, 2018 17:53:24 GMT -5
After spending the last several years on communities like these, it's become very easy to see I'm not even close to being a "collector". I have a lot of videogames and consoles compared to the average Joe and it's consistently been my favorite hobby my entire life, but I have never run into the issue of overspending or sinking too deeply into a massive uncontrollable backlog. I definitely didn't really grow up middle class nor lower class, I don't know what it is that my dad drilled into me growing up but I guess there was somewhat of a frugal lifestyle for my childhood that maybe planted some seeds. I might even be more frugal than them, they can barely even manage a savings from what I've seen... Maybe it's part of why I still love replaying some favorites more than most. Granted there was one point in my later high school and early college years when I got that debit card, was working a lot and still living with parents, when I had a ton of money to spend. I did Gamefly for awhile and even did the 3 games out at a time option and generally opted to keep most of them. It's the majority of my 360 collection and I frankly regret 80% of it at least, haha. That's probably the only time I really overindulged, it's been controlled and in moderation ever since. I recommend dividing up your collection if the space is available. Place a bookmark on your shelf (I used slim CDR cases) that separate games beaten/played between games unplayaed. I did this for awhile and it was extremely rewarding and organized. A visual reference to see what you need to play and can then move over to the played side once you tackle it. Now I even have a small dedicated shelf for my backlog. Only a row and half makes up my entire current backlog, so I think I'm doing good.
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Post by Ex on Jan 13, 2018 23:33:21 GMT -5
Place a bookmark on your shelf (I used slim CDR cases) that separate games beaten/played between games unplayaed. I've never heard of anyone doing it that way. I just keep my stuff divided by platform, and said divisions are organized alphabetically. One thing I've never done is buy video games or video game hardware on credit. I think that's where gamers (hoarders really) get in trouble. That doesn't mean in the past I didn't buy more than I should have, but I never went into debt over it.
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Post by chibby on Jan 15, 2018 20:57:34 GMT -5
I am not so much a fan of Iron Storm though. I owned it at one point in my life, but found it to be overly punitive. You would also be correct on this front. I started playing it and immediately thought, "I am enjoying this. It is not objectively very good, but I am enjoying it". Fast forward to level two and the woman from mission control tells me I need to sneak onto a truck and pretend to be a prisoner. Because I'm a maverick I just continued to play on like normal. I get to an area where opponents are waiting in ambush and I try everything to pick them off one by one but I am having no luck. Finally, I get the bright idea to chuck a grenade, and then run to the most recent enclosed hallway in order to bottle neck the baddies into a manageable cluster. Nope. Either the helicopter is able, in this situation only, to shoot through solid walls (and given that earlier in the game I took cover behind a tent flap and was able to avoid damage, I find that questionable) or if you set the alarm off the game just starts hitting you with invisible bullets (I could hear the gun collision sounds, but there were no present shooters). I remembered the demo being a real bear, but I can do without stealth sections in shooters, especially non-optional stealth sections. Also, the mechanics by which enemies do or don't see you (and immediately explode you into polygonal chunks) is pretty unclear. I'm giving up for tonight, but I can already sense that I'm going to come back to this game later because level three was in the demo and otherwise I spent about 2 bucks for nothing.
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Post by Ex on Jan 15, 2018 22:11:17 GMT -5
Yeah your experience sounds about like what I remembered. I played it around the same time I tried Deadly Dozen, which was another overly punitive shooter. I don't mind challenging games, but I do mind absurdly difficult ones. Well I wish you much luck and hope you end up enjoying Iron Storm. But if you don't, I can recommend some good early 00s PC shooters for you.
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