As I sat here this morning (I’m ill *cough* see?) I was ‘playing’ three games at once. On the PC I was running EverQuest, on the GBA SP I was playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and on the Xbox I was playing Soul Calibur II. Naturally I wasn’t actually playing them all at once, EverQuest was there as a chat tool at that point, Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced is turn based strategy so doesn’t require total concentration and Soul Calibur II was being paused a lot.

It does make me think of how my gaming experiences have changed though. Going back a few years (insert wibbly wobbly special effect here) I remember gaming life with the Super Nintendo (had machines for gaming before this but let me tell this my way). At this time I was doing some kind of studying and therefore had lots of free time but no money. Discovering a love of Japanese RPGs at this point (many of which were never released in Europe and therefore needed to be imported) which were ?50-?60 second hand (we actually used to pay these prices, blimey) meant that when I got a game I couldn’t afford any other for a while.

I’d sit down with my game and play it through to the end. During my playing hours I’d usually have a CD on auto repeat and as with games, CDs wouldn’t be regular purchases either, meaning that I have a mental link between certain albums and games. Once a game was completed I’d go buy another and then play that through.

Fast forward to now. I’m working, I have money. I still have time, not as much as before but still time. What I find happens now I that I buy a game, play it a while and then another game I want comes out… so because I have the money, I buy it. Since it is all new and sparkly it gets played for a while and the old one neglected. If I do go back to it, I’ve forgotten what I was doing or want to restart. This cycle continues and I cannot actually remember the last game I completed.