With all of the amazing/story driven/beautiful/sandbox/B movie/casual games in today's market, it was actually refreshing to start playing the games that are at least 10+ years old. As it's probably been said a gazillion times before; today's games are made to be beaten. Yesterday's games were made for challenge.

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I recently acquired a top loader NES with 25 games (added some more now, see my games list if you're interested :P) and it was actually a great experience for me to just pick up and play a game instead of having to watch lengthy cutscenes, go through tutorials and the whole 9 yards. This is something that most may find weird from a guy my age, since I'm in the age group where gore and breasts are the 'pinnacle of awesome'.

I've actually spent most of my time playing the Megaman games. After neglecting them for oh-so-many years, picking up the old NES Megaman and Megaman X games have been a real blast. Testing your reflexes and wits and what-not. Oh yeah, I spent a good deal playing Contra as well. I actually managed to get to level 5 and a get a high score of 70,000 or so without using the infamous Konami code.

Oh man, can't forget the cl@$$ic musical scores that 8-bit monster created as well. Vampire Killer (Castlevania), Bloody Tears (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest [Although I don't own it. :(]), The Jungle Stage (Contra), Dr. Wily's Theme (Megaman 2), along with many other nameless tracks that are just catchy and unforgettable.

Not only does retro gaming bring back that charm games used to have where times were simple, it also makes you use a completely different mentality from today's games. They managed to actually make me think.Something I haven't done while playing games (besides fighters) for a looooooong time.

Does this make me a retro gamer? I guess you could say that. Does this mean that retro will live on in my heart and everything else should die? Hell no. :P