Despite (mostly) outdated stereotypes of the closet-geek, a lot of gamers have hectic lives. Between job, school, and family commitments, it can be hard to find time to sit down and play a video game these days, never-mind sink dozens or even hundreds of hours into one alone.

I’m a University student, and I commute to Glasgow everyday from home. The heavy workload prevents me from playing much of anything during term-time, and I have to be very selective about what I do play. But I do use the commute to my advantage; during less-congested journeys I can flip open my DS or PSP, and I’m almost always listening to a gaming news podcast otherwise. Even if I can’t keep up with my play-time, I always keep up with the latest announcements. And that’s half the problem for me.

With heavy-hitters like Bioshock, Mario Galaxy, and Call of Duty 4, it wasn’t uncommon to hear people proclaiming 2007 as the greatest year of gaming since 1998, and this meant hype-levels were through the roof; as a gamer, I wanted to get in on the latest games while everyone was discussing how awesome they were. It’s human nature! Instead, I grudgingly had to add those titles to the backlog, while others finished them and moved on to more great games.

But hang on a second. Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong.

I finally played through Super Mario Galaxy in May of this year. I only beat the base game with 60 stars, but I loved every second. I knew it was supposed to be impressive – the true sequel to Super Mario 64 – but my preconceptions had been dulled somewhat with all the talk of Niko Bellic visiting his cousin in Liberty City, or Snake facing off against Liquid one more time. So although I missed out on talking the game over with fellow fans, any bias towards (or against!) the experience was partially lifted, and I ultimately enjoyed it more.

It’s the same for other games, too; recently, I was working through Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Nintendo GameCube – a title some three-years old – and it was a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be, after some initial-release rumblings that it’s not as good as other games in the series.

So perhaps I need to worry less about which games I should play when, and more about just playing what is convenient and fun at the time. After all, my backlog of those higher-rated titles isn’t going anywhere.

As a lead up to our upcoming MMO feature we have some news on Tabula Rasa. More specifically some news on the games creator Richard Garriott. He has been in training for a small trip… into space! He is set to become Earth’s sixth private citizen to conduct a space mission aboard the International Space Station. Interestingly he will be following in the footsteps of his father, Owen Garriott (a former NASA astronaut), meaning that he will become America’s first ever “second generation” astronaut. You can find out more about the mission at http://www.richardinspace.com.

To commemorate this quite unique trip Richard and NCSoft have launched Operation Immortality. As part of his mission Richard will take with him, and store in outer space, a history of humanity’s greatest achievements, human genome data, and personal messages from people all over the world.

From today anyone that has an active trial or retail account for Tabula Rasa can become a part of this mission by visiting https://www.operationimmortality.com/ and adding their own personal message and TR character data to the information stored on the Immortality Drive.

You don’t have an account? No problem, NCSoft have given Ready Up users access to a limited amount of trial codes for the game and a link to download the client. Just click the buttons and you’ll be on your way!

I was looking over my games shelf the other day and picked out a couple thinking ‘wow it’s a long time since I played that,, it was really good!’
This set me to thinking back to the games I used to play and play and play and play… on systems past.

My first obsession was Defender on the BBC Micro. My dad was (is) a software engineer and wrote a couple of languages for the BBC Micro so there was a ready supply of this pretty decent machine, along with the pinnacle of viewing experience at the time the Microvitec monitor! Anyway.. the games!

So my memory throws back to me:

Elite – of course! How could this not be on anyone’s list!

Chuckie Egg
Battletech – The Crescent Hawks Revenge
Civilisation
Tomb Raider

Arkanoid 2 – Revenge of Doh!
F16
Running on, variously, BBC Micro, Atari ST, Amiga 500/2000, PC.

I know that if I saw these today they would seem beyond primative in my world of high-def, ultra-real physics and graphics engines. But I did love them then and they still hold a place in my heart, I may even check out eBay.. there’s got to be some working systems still out there?

But maybe that’s a bad idea. Maybe the fondness they hold is of it’s day and that time has gone. I know that re-visiting the places I used to play as a kid simply doesn’t mean now what it did back then. Perhaps, like old loves, we should look back with a wistful smile and happy thoughts and not try to re-capture those salad days.