Mega Derived

I boxed up many of my games today and transported them to a big cupboard, which is their new home. My whole Mega Drive, Saturn, N64 and PS1 collections have now been hidden away from public view. In some respects, this is quite sad. Collecting games has always been a pretty major part of my life and it certainly hasn’t been an easy mental journey forcing them into a cupboard. The reason, my justification, is that in two weeks I will be leaving for university and that there is no point in littering up a room with things that will never be enjoyed.

But, at the same time, I don’t care for these games anymore. I have memories of thinking they were the greatest thing in the entire world and giving them a proud display in the corner of my room. I’ve often referred to my shelves of games as an army of little soldiers, standing valiantly and fighting my own personal war against boredom. This, however, is something that is in my past. Over the course of this year I’ve moved on and I don’t feel the same way anymore.

When I move in two weeks, I will not be taking any consoles with me. My computer is a Mac and therefore can’t run games for shit. For the first time in fourteen years, I will be in a world without games. This, I feel, is a much more exciting prospect than covering the latest gaming release or spending three hundred shitting pounds on an Xbox or four hundred shitting pounds on a PS3. I will be gifted with more time to read and more time to develop my other hobbies and interests. If anything, gaming has impeded my personal growth over the past eight months and I’m ready for that to stop. For Christmas I will probably pick up a DS Lite. Maybe. I intend to play FFXII over my Christmas break, too. But that’s about it.

It’s not that games don’t appeal to me anymore, I’ve just got off playing Valkyrie Profile for two hours, it’s just that I see no real need to hang around them at the moment. In five years I’ll pick up a 360 for fifty quid and a handful of games for a fiver each and play them all then. I couldn’t care less about the latest releases, or whether there’s some new downloadable content out, or what TV displays the best HDTV picture. I think that means I’ve transformed into a casual gamer.

It was officially announced today that the lucrative cash buyoff Microsoft PayPal’d to EA and Konami to secure FIFA and Pro Evo on the 360 for the upcoming holiday season was sadly reduced to nothing more than an atrocious waste of cash: the villains over at Sony have responded by just delaying the PS3 launch in Europe.

A press spokesman at Microsoft said* “We are all devastated. We just don’t know how to respond to the news. All that money! Wasted! It’s a sad day at Microsoft offices today. Peter Moore is taking the blow harder than anyone. He couldn’t even play his early morning game of Time Pilot today; he just couldn’t focus!”

Industry analysts agree that this is much worse than all the money that was lost when some dude stole the source code to Half-Life 2. Nobody knows if Microsoft will be able to recover in time for the Christmas season, or if EA and Konami will offer a refund. Needless to say, it’s a grim time for the mighty M.

No Sony representatives were available for comment.

*Not true.