Well here we are. I hope you realize that I am aware that the above image is a distorted AI generated horror that I am using as a template image because I’m too lazy to find or make one myself at this moment. You see, I’ve never been a huge proponent of AI usage as someone who was at one point in his life a graphic designer and believe it or not a web designer. I know the evidence to either is non-existent but I don’t care what you think. I think AI is used for evil and takes jobs from skilled individuals who deserve the chance to shine. I don’t think I’m actually against the use of AI in other areas like ChatGPT and helpful quality of life applications but I do not like it at all as a way of creating art. I have friends who work in various creative industries and I wouldn’t imagine taking a job from them because I can have a semi-intelligent computer program do it for me in 5 seconds and add extra fingers or fuse multiple organisms together in some Cronen-esque nightmare. Hell not even the other day I remember seeing a movie poster that was so obviously created with AI that I instantly lost any interest in seeing it so much to the point that I don’t even remember the movie title or a single detail. It’s literally disgusting when I think about how quickly humans latch on to the easy shortcuts because the short-term benefits are a hit of dopamine and allow us to go back to doomscrolling and bed rotting while the long-term effects are so terrible that they’ve literally made movies since the dawn of time about the bad things that happen with a reliance on AI. Hello? DID WE NOT SEE TERMINATOR?! GOSH!
So as you’ve probably realized by now I already forgot this was a blog I created to share my memories and stories about games I grew up playing, am currently playing or will plan on playing in the future. Games that I’ve shared with my children and my wife. Games that I forced my dad to play with me as a child. Honestly the point of me doing this is something I can occupy my mind with because I don’t really do much of anything anymore besides adulting and boy let me tell you that adulting sucks. Growing up I thought I would have so much time to just veg out and play games or watch shows or stay plastered to a computer screen browsing whatever fan wiki of some current obsession I have But I can’t do that as much as I’d thought. If I did I’d be sacrificing something of more importance like my health or social life or even watching my kids grow up and do annoying kid things that we think are adorable. Actually on that topic, watching my kids has made me think about my childhood more often, which is something I tried not to do after I grew up because honestly there wasn’t much to remember. For example I watch my son play any of the Mario games from my childhood or modern ones and notice how he has trouble making a jump or avoiding a level hazard on the older titles but on the newer ones he’s making me look like a chubby baby who doesn’t even consciously know they exist yet. Not to say that I’m a terrible gamer but I have noticed an odd occurrence where a lot of times I have more trouble playing these newer titles than I did the older ones. My theory is that I have trained my body to get used to the latency and timing of the older titles, TV’s and controllers. It’s probably not entirely accurate but it’s a good excuse and I’m sticking to it. The other option I have is that I’m getting older and slower and that’s not okay. But I digress…
Growing up I now realize I was pretty lucky. My parents, mainly my mom, were “gamers”. My mom greatly enjoyed playing our NES and Sega Genesis and even some PC gaming on her early Windows and/or DOS machine. Nobody else in my neighborhood had both of those systems in their house. Everyone was already picking their sides in the non-existent console wars that were more like small skirmishes in those days. I remember I’d watch my mom sit down on the floor, the controller cord being too short to allow her to sit on the couch, and hearing the forever iconic fanfare as the title screen for The Legend of Zelda blares on the gigantic speaker system that every household seemed to have in the late 80’s and early 90’s. She never beat it. I kept accidentally deleting her save game every time I’d start a new one. She didn’t seem to care either. She had more important adult things to worry about that I would never imagine until I had to worry about them. I never beat it until I was a younger adult that thought life was still going to be easy. Let me tell you when I say it was NOT worth the wait. Anyways as I grew older we got a few more games. Honestly the NES and Genesis did not get a larger library than what I had at the start. Games were, and still are, super expensive. But the finite selection we had allowed me to hone my skills with Super Mario Bro’s 1 & 3. We never owned the second. I do not like the second one. I was definitely a NES fanboy in those years. The Genesis tended to get dusty and unplayed for long stretches of time. For a young Gibbs it was the hard game system and Gibbs had to perfect his Mario time trials. I honestly don’t remember much about what we had on the Genesis besides Sonic 2, 3 and the Knuckles game that you could stack said games onto. That was a pretty cool feature in hindsight and young Gibbs was a fool for not realizing that. Young Gibbs was a fool in many ways when it came to gaming choices. I’m not getting into those right now as this post, for a first post, is getting very long.
My parents used to say “You’re addicted to video games!” and I really wish I had the capacity back then to point out how they introduced me to video games and really it was all their fault. Maybe AI can figure out a way of traveling back in time and giving your younger self some sage advice timeline integrity be damned. On second thought AI would probably only jumble the words and make everything worse. Fuck AI.