Tuesday 20 May 2014

"That Game" Syndrome

When you've been playing games as long as I have, "that game" syndrome is one of the worst things that can happen to you.

You know what I mean, you're just spacing out one day and then you remember some awesome game that you played years ago.  You remember the general premise, art style, music or something like that and those memories make you really want to play it again BUT you can't remember the games fucking title.

You scour the net for hours and hours trying to find out what the hell the game was, asking on forums only to be met with tons of people giving suggestions that end up being way off.  At this point most people just give up but for the people who do find that game it can go one of two ways.

The first is that they fire up the game and it's exactly how they remembered it.  You play it for a while and come away with a deep sense of satisfaction from the little nostalgia trip you just took.  The other way, which is way more common, is that you play the game and it turns out to be a total piece of fucking shit and you have no idea why you wasted so much time wracking your brains about it in the first place. 

This is what happened for me with Mohawk and Headphone Jack, a piece of shit platformer for the SNES that I bought when I was quite young.  I remember the night I got it quite vividly too.  I went to to game store and got a pre owned version of Donkey Kong Country but when I took it home and popped it in, the fucking thing didn't work.  So I took it back and got it exchanged for Mohawk and Headphone Jack and at the time I thought it was fun.  Years late I played it again and I had no idea why I enjoyed it so damn much as a kid.  Maybe I was just happy to have a new game, but playing it now it's just a frustrating load of crap.

No doubt it'll happen again sometime but let's hope that when it does, it's a good fucking game.

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