Starting a new journey in Retro Gaming

As a life long tech enthusiast, gamer, tinkerer, and all-around geek I now look back on my nearly 4 decades on this Earth and feel the need to indulge my inner story teller. Like the countless wise elders I have met in my digital journeys, I want to share my thoughts on retro gaming with young adventurers.

It is with this warm, nostalgic glow that I chose to start a blog. It's a cliché worthy of the great made-for-tv movies. But, the friendships I have built, the conversations over cold pizza and warm soda, the smiles and the stories are well worth the time it takes to share them with a new audience. Videogames are a window into the adventures of our innocent childhoods. Cozy feelings and cherished memories. What gamer doesn't hear a familiar old 8-bit or 16-bit tune and, if only for a moment, returns to their childhood bedroom....sitting on the Jurassic Park bedspread, wearing the worn out Power Rangers pajamas, with the smell of a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch filling the air. Few things in my life can open the flood of memories quite like the sounds of Hyrule Field, or the Green Hill Zone, or the slums of Midgar.

The beauty of those memories is that, for myself at least, I can remember some of those adventures as if I was actually there. Not just pressing a button on a controller and watching a 2D sprite move on my old TV. It took me until later in my life to realize that those places my virtual adventures took me weren't just in MY memories, but also in countless other "old school" gamers memories as well. We had all been sucked into those worlds. Like the Neverending Story, we were all pulled into the Fantasia of our own choosing. Be it the feeling of climbing the winding stairs of Dracula's Castle when we took on the role of Simon Belmont, or the sense of danger when we became Link and had to cross Hyrule Field before the sunset, or even the imagined smell of the grass, dirt, and straw when we think about the town of Whiterun, when we stepped into the boots of the Dragonborn. These are places that don't exist, but so many of us have stepped foot into.

So, back on topic, this new journey I now set out on is to explore those old memories, those old adventures. To enjoy these mutual journeys that we shared when we were children. And to look at possible avenues we can use to re-live some of those memories. I'm a father now, and it's time I honor a promise I made myself when I was still a young kid. I sat in my bedroom, playing video games with my father, and promised myself that one day, I'd be a cool dad too. So, fellow "old school gamers", are you ready to bust out the SNES and show these kids a thing or two about gaming? Let's do it...Game On!