Where is the shame?

At the end of August Dave and I saw Coheed & Cambria live (yes, again, and yes we do talk about them an awful lot on a video game site). It was our third show, so when The Dear Hunter took the stage (after a lengthy delay) to open we knew the drill: play a few songs, then say ‘this will be our last one’ so you can get the hell out and we can see the band we paid for. Then something surprising happened: they were good. I had some Amazon MP3 credit laying around, so I bought their first album (and we saw them live in Rochester last Friday, where I picked up their other two albums). I commented that this was the first time I had ever bought an opening act’s material… and then realized oh. No. I also did that when Staind (shudder) opened for Korn (shudder).

Scott Stapp is a musical genius

In my defense, (a) I was 15 and (b) this was pre-acoustic Staind. But those, especially the latter, only go so far in absolving my guilt. The fact is, I listened to some stupid stuff in high school. I’m talking about Kid Rock and Blink 182 bad. Yeah. Diggy said the boogy said up jump the boogy.

(But not to knock on 15 year old Dan too much. I also listened to Rage Against The Machine, They Might Be Giants and Harvey Danger, all three of which I still firmly stand by)

I’ve been playing video games for longer than I’ve been listening to music, though. So if I could take that cookie and stick it up my yeahhhh! then certainly I’ve made some bad gaming decisions, right? In thinking about it, though, I’m not sure. I may not have played all the games you cool kids did, with your Zeldas and your Residents Evil, but I sunk my pubescent teeth into Wild Arms, Rock n Roll Racing and endless hours of Super Mario World. Sure, I played some NASCAR 98, but it really wasn’t so bad once you turned on paintball mode and could make cars lose traction by shooting a gun on the front of your car (and also, it had Flirting With Disaster as its theme: come on!).

So as I see it, there are three options: either no bad games were made back then (doubtful), I only played good games (semi possible) or nostalgia is clouding my vision (also possible, but if you tell me Rock n Roll Racing sucks you are a Communist, sir!)

There’s also the possibility of ignorance. Kids today like some stupid stuff, and especially in those crazy days before the internet (I am aware I am old, oddly savvy 13 year old reading this site) it seemed like a crappy game had a better chance of catching you — or an even less informed parent — unaware.

f this game in its a

Now that I think about it, I owned plenty of bad games; I just never played them. Bayou Billy for the NES, I am looking directly at you. My Nintendo game collection seemed massive, and there were plenty of games I had played for maybe 10 minutes total. I asked my dad, in my late high school years, how much NES games cost and was surprised, given this phenomenon, when he told me they were about $50 each. Really? Granted, I recall a trip to Lockport (which back then seemed so very far away) where my dad bought a handful of games from a going-out-of-business sale (one of them was Platoon and it earned its place in the never-played pile by daring to make jump the up botton instead of A or B, which was just weird). When you get right down to it, though, I fear I may have been one of those blossfully unaware spoiled kids. Hrm.

But I have no regrets, beyond the possibility of wasted money, about my NES habits. I guess the story that I’ll stick to is that a bad game back then was simply discarded and forgotten while today I’m forced to think about the money that was wasted every time I see a reference to Scribblenauts and its brilliant-for-five-minutes gameplay. Back then I was pure, unadulterated. Now I see the world for the ptifall-infested cesspool that it is.

I’m such a cheery fellow.