Reclaiming a piece of my childhood

So I know I am a nerd.  Really I have come to accept it.  I am not an uber nerd though.  Not the kind of taped glasses, suspenders, slouching, braces, buck toothed, and pimply faced nerd.  I get excited about cool little gizmos and the like.  Video games and electronics are to me like craft stuff is to Laura.  She of course would argue that her diversion is more worthwhile because it involves creating things or preserving things, such as memories, where mine is mostly useless.  Fortunately it is not a sore point in our marriage.  While I may not be creating anything I am enjoying the art form of another.

It takes a great amount of skill to create a video game (well that is) or a nifty electronic gadget.  Take the I-pod for example.  While I don't like Apple brand products because of the way it takes over my computer and I can't tinker with it, the i-pod has a certain aesthetically pleasing look to it.  Smooth lines, user friendly interface, variety of shapes and sizes.  Looking only at the music play back feature it doesn't play your music any better than any other name brand mp3 player.  There is not something magical about it that makes crappy music sound better.  The I-pod is more expensive than most mp3 players of equal capacity yet I tend to see more i-pods than I do any other player.  You can find other players that do almost everything the i-pod can for half the price but most of them look like bricks.  Though having a brick that plays music would kind of be cool it just wouldn't sell in my opinion.

I see video games, that are well made, in a similar fashion. They are an interactive art form.  It takes time and dedication to make a video game well.  Someone needs to create the story, a group of people have to create the scenery, others have to get actors for the characters, a director to get everything pointed in the right direction, so on and so forth.  The point is someone had to take and abstract thought and translate it into a form the users could enjoy and understand while including all the necessary forms of a well defined plot.  Of course some focus more on graphics than on the plot making the game only a once through worthwhile game. So while I may not be the creator of such art, though I am working on story building, I find it no different from appreciating a good film or even a good painting.  Don't get me wrong moderation is important but I don't find it any less worth while than revisiting your favorite painting or sculpture at a museum.

So the other day when I logged onto the Wii shopping channel to see what aspects of my childhood they resurrected I found a game that brought back a lot of memories.  It was a remake for the Wii of an old NES game.  It actually is more of a sequel than a remake.  The game looks and feels like the NES game except with updated graphics and music quality.  The music is actually the same and some of the areas are quite similar to the others in the NES version.  I remember when I was first introduced to Blaster Master on the NES.  We had gone to visit my grandparents down in Oregon.  This time we were staying with my Mom's mom.  Sometimes the adults would go do fun things and leave us kids in the hands of a baby sitter.  So my parents let me rent a game so I could have something to do and keep out of the sitter's hair.  It was this game.  So I had to get it when I saw the sequel.  It isn't often we get to recapture something from our past.

So while my lovely wife is probably balking at the post, as are perhaps most of the other female readers, I really am a normal person.  I have descent social skills and I don't smell too bad.  I mean you only need to shower once a week to be socially acceptable, right?