Golden Years

I touched on some nostalgia with a post about my 28th birthday earlier in the week (notably how I started playing EarthBound again for Super Nintendo, a game that came out when I was 14). Nostalgia seems to have been the theme for the rest of the week.

A friend came to visit from out of town, a college buddy and soon to be Californian super-lawyer, the day after my birthday. After a tasty lunch at the always great El Azteco in East Lansing, we came back to my place and watched Aliens (the extended version too, no less).

After Aliens, I dug out my copy of NHL ’95 for Super Nintendo, since he is one of only a few people I know that not only like those games but know how to play them (he once spent an entire afternoon as a teenager creating an entire team of Tom Chorskes with friends, each with a slightly different spelling).

While some games, like EarthBound, hold up pretty well after fourteen years, sports games such as NHL’ 95 don’t fare that well–specifically in the realm of play control and game mechanics. We were so accustomed to the faster-paced modern NHL video games, that playing NHL ’95 felt like watching a snail race. But, it wasn’t that we didn’t have fun, far from it. We certainly enjoyed ourselves. My favorite was the Battle of the Extinct Teams, he played the Winnipeg Jets (now the Phoenix Coyotes) and I played as the Hartford Whalers (now the Carolina Hurricanes).

But as tough as NHL ’95 was to play, it was nothing compared to the frustration of NHLPA Hockey ’93, which was considerably slower and the players seemed unaware of our commands. Still, we had fun. The charm of NHLPA ’93 is that Electronic Arts didn’t have the rights to use the team names, but they could use the names of the players (the title comes from the National Hockey League Player’s Association, their union)–for example, instead of playing as the Detroit Red Wings, you would just play as Detroit, and the teams were the same colors (give or take), but there were no logos anywhere (EA had a NHLPA license but not an NHL license).

We had fun though, and it was a nice time capsule, especially the aspect of Jeremy Roenick being the best player in the game.  EDIT: I got my years mixed up, the unstoppable JR was actually in NHL ’94. Sorry, some of those early games kind of blur together.

That evening, after sushi at Sushiya and drinks at Woody’s Oasis, the two of us (and three other friends) walked next door to Pinball Pete’s, East Lansing’s arcade. A discussion of the epic six player, two-screen X-Men arcade game over drinks had led us there, hoping to relive even more of our wasted youth.

Sadly, no X-Men (or our second choice, Turtles in Time) was to be found. However, they did have the four player version of Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder. The irony here, is that when I was in my early teens, I would rent a Sega Genesis for my birthday party (friends and I stayed up all night playing games) and the original Golden Axe was one of the games I would always get.

About $5 in quarters later, we defeated the game (rotating turns, as there was five of us and Golden Axe being a four player game).

It was a fun game (although I think I still prefer the original). One thing bothered me though. There is a playable character who is a female centaur (woman’s torso, lower body is a horse), which was neat–however, whenever she would ride a creature (one of the game’s fun features, you can steal mounts from foes), her sprite changed to that of a two legged woman (riding side-saddle no less). Whenever she would dismount a creature, her sprite turned back to the normal centaur version.

I realize the design reason for this, as how do you show a four-legged horse woman riding a giant fire-breathing mantis without it looking too silly–but, it still struck me as odd.

And my week of nostalgia didn’t stop there–I received a Wii Points card from my parents for my birthday, which allows me to buy downloads of old video games for my Wii (and I honestly think that is the future of game systems). I opted for Secret of Mana (which I have been playing non-stop) and Earthworm Jim, both early 1990s classics.

This made me think: fourteen years from now, what will today’s 13-14 year old boys be nostalgic for? Rock Band? Wii Fit? Catz 2?

Only time will tell, I suppose.