Re(tro)cycling

I’m clearing out my room.

In a bid to sort the house out, I’m going through all the stuff that’s currently in my bedroom and tossing away all the crap I don’t need anymore. It’s weird seeing all the things that I’ve owned that used to  mean a lot to me that I’ve forgotten about over the years: books I’d made with my mum when I was learning to write, boxes stuffed to the brim with Beanie Babies, even a couple of Neopets plushies (collectors’ editions, supposedly. They’ll be going on eBay). I’ll be keeping all the sentimental stuff, binning all the rubbish and punting all the stuff I no longer want.

Midway through my clearout, I stumbled upon these bad boys.

Seeing these two friends again stirred up a whole host of memories. I remember the day my parents gave me the Mega Drive, my first proper games console, after buying it from the boy that lived next door. I recall just how excited I was to be playing games like Ecco the Dolphin; seeing the Electronic Arts logo for the first time when booting up Lotus Turbo Challenge; trying out games on the new-fangled (and, looking back, pretty crap) Mega-CD; having pals over to play Streets of Rage and Bomberman and smiling every time I reached the bonus stage of Sonic 2.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBYqR8L9rvo[/youtube]

It was my first home console and I loved it.

The reminiscing about my N64 wasn’t as ardent, but it still meant a great lot to me. I thought back to the first time I first played  the console, sitting on a bed – TV and all – surrounded by my brother and cousins shooting each other in Goldeneye 007 and it was glorious. To this day, that remains one of my fondest memories of gaming and perhaps even my life. I thought back to when my brother and I took virtual snaps of Pokémon and beat the crap out of each other with them when the franchise was at its zenith; smashing other racers off the track in F-Zero X and remembered my sorrow when my copy of Conker’s Bad Fur Day wouldn’t work on my console – mum had inadvertently purchased an NTSC cartridge by mistake.

It was fun to see these consoles again and look back over my favourite pastime with rose-tinted glasses.

Will I keep them, though? No.  Like everything in life, the time for these consoles has come and gone: graphics have gotten better, stories have become more complicated and emotional and gameplay has improved to a nigh-unbelievable degree. These machines once played a major part in my life, but now no longer. I’d been deluding myself with the idea that once I move out, these machines would take pride of my place under my television, but if I still loved playing them, surely they’d be sitting underneath the one I have now, rather than lying unused and collecting dust for years.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the retro scene, either. It’s good to revisit an old classic from time to time, but why opt for an older generation title when you can play something like Halo Reach or Gears of War 3? In the past, I’ve purchased a number of classic game collections, hoping to revisit the nostalgia of my youth these games bring with them, but, in actuality, they only served to bore me. I can understand why others love older titles so much, but for me, time, however harsh it may be, marches on.

So I’ll be getting rid of these consoles. Why keep them locked up, unused in my room when someone with a genuine passion for the machines could be using them? Who knows, maybe they’ll even become the first console of another kid out there, beginning the cycle anew. I’ve already laid my hands for the last ever time on my original Game Boy before getting rid of it and given away the SNES that I finally got for Christmas two years ago after asking for one only fourteen years prior.  Even if I want to revisit the games I had again, I can always just download a ROM of them on my PC or buy one of those awesome handheld Mega Drives.

My Game Gear, the first console I ever laid hands on, though? That stays with me.