Hello All, Santos Gonzalez (AKA Grim Santo) here. I am the latest addition theBBPS loony bin. Instead of posting a bit of news for my first post, I figured I would post a story from my gaming past.

When I was a wee Santos and didn’t have much money. I remember saving up money to buy a game. I used to take long trips; long trip meant going 10 blocks away from your house. I remember hoping on a bus and heading to Main Street, Flushing Queens. I walked into a random electronic shop.

You see back in the day you didn’t have Gamestop like we have now; you got your games from Ma and Pop shops. Anyway I would go in with the little money I had and picked up Strider for the NES. I liked the arcade version a lot and figured the NES one was going be the same thing. This was way before the internet’s, you didn’t really know if a game was good or bad until you bought it or a friend got it. EGM was around but their reviews were always late. So I jumped back on the bus and while taking the trip back, I took the box out and stared at the back just imagining how good the game was going to be. I couldn’t wait to get home, I was so excited that I ripped open the box and started reading through the manual. At this point I am so psyched I get home and plug it into my NES. I start to play and I am confused. The game is nothing like the arcade. They turned it into an adventure side scroller, but I play on.

I get stuck at this one point. In my head I think I found a bug. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what to do. If the internet was around at that time, I could have easily gone to Gamefaqs and found a faq, but this wasn’t the case. So I take it back to the place I got it from. Of course they wouldn’t take it back. I was all sad and mad on the bus ride back. I got back home and figured out what I was doing wrong. It turns out there was nothing wrong with the game. It was quite good in fact.

That is my story… What is my point? I think about buying games now and the magic isn’t there for me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still love video games; but when I buy a game there is no surprise anymore. The excitement is less now. There is no need to look at the back of the box anymore, as you can get a preview of a game months before it comes out on the intertubes. No need to read through manuals as most game have tutorials. No more having that special one game that you play the hell out of because it’s your only game. At any given time I play through at least 3. I so do miss those golden times, Ah those were the days…