Playing games has been a big part of my childhood, from old school handheld Nintendo Game & Watch series like Octopus and Donkey Kong (not forgetting Egg, Fire, Parachute, Popeye) to the Casio Game's iconic Western Bar & Kungfu to Pacman on Mac to game consoles like Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Famicom, Sega, Playstation and PS2.
If you played similar games I mentioned above, you would definitely have to visit Super Potato in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. They sell used games and consoles and it will definitely bring back sweet memories (it did for me).
Game addiction is also part and parcel of my life. I remember the most extreme was during secondary school holidays when I was deeply hooked by the Final Fantasy Series by Square Enix. The RPG series with strong storylines and amazing graphics kept me playing throughout my school holidays. I think my record (from what I can remember) was 58 hours in three days with about 4 hours sleep per day and meals in between long game animations. If only there were Cyber Olympics during my time. My parents have been nagging that I play too much computer games right to the day I moved out to my own place (then my wife takes over, ha).
The previous addiction started when I moved to my new place and found my neighbour Alan with similar (or should I say stronger) interest in gadgets and gaming. He got me hooked onto WOW (World of Warcraft) which was a first as I have never believed in paying a monthly subscription to play a game. But the game was so well developed that I was addicted to it and even felt the monthly subscription was worth it. The reason was the constant update to the game and the fact that the developers are very committed to making it one of the best game in history (who wouldn't if you got over 11 million gamers paying you a monthly subscription of USD14.99. That's about USD164.89mil per month mind you).
I worked hard on my character (a beautiful female blood elf warlock), raided with a guild call Stasis and had great fun for 1.5 years till the arrival of Xavier forced my "retirement". I no longer could afford the time non had the energy to raid and that took the fun off WOW.
Given Xavier has random calls for attention and with the need to help out with the daily chores, I have resorted to facebook games like Bejeweled Blitz since they are usually short games which you can stop anytime. However during my recent MTA, I got addicted to a another facebook game - Mafia Wars.
Mafia Wars is a mob style "text based" game that involves leveling your character, earning money and joining forces with your friends to fight other facebook players. I guess with the fact that you can have an alter ego in cyberspace doing all the "bad" things while not actually harming anyone appeals to a lot of people.
If you have been flooded with heaps of announces on your news feed in facebook about Mafia Wars, do pardon me. If you are keen to join me in the game, do give me a shout. I might probably do a post on the game mechanics for those who are interested.
Cheers.
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