A Link to the Past

I'm a slacker. Here's my response that was due Monday. YIKES!




My idea of vacation time: Drinking an excellent beer and playing excellent emulator games!


I recently downloaded a Super Nintendo emulator for my Mac; a remediation of my childhood video games, if you will. I have found that playing the SNES games on my computer just doesn't cut it for me. It makes me miss the feel of my old SNES controller in my hand and sitting too close to the TV screen while playing Zelda. I went so far as to finding an SNES controller that has a usb output so you can feel like you are playing on your old SNES console. I was just about to buy it when I realized that it was such an inconvenience for me to download emulators, roms, and purchase $20 replica controllers. I still own my SNES and a few games for it. It would be much cheaper for me to buy the SNES games that I want to play from Amazon.com and play them at home on my SNES than it would for me to recreate my SNES on my Mac (which is never as good as the original SNES).

A combination of video games and childhood nostalgia made me get the SNES emulator in the first place. In the time that I spent downloading games, I could have just as easily walked over to the next room, grabbed my SNES console, dusted it off, and plugged it into my TV. The necessity to remediate something from my childhood is mind boggling to me. I realized that I have been a sucker for remediation of my favorite video games for years now. When SNES was the latest in video game technology, I bought Super Mario All-Stars. The selling point of Super Mario All-Stars was that all of the previously released Mario Bros. games were included in one game. It was an excellent way for a new gamer to play catch up in the Mario games department. The problem with me buying the game was that I already owned all of the games that were included on it. I convinced my parents that I absolutely needed to get the All-Stars game because it was for the latest console and it was better. In all reality, the games were still in the old 8 and 16 bit fashion and nothing was different about them whatsoever.

New technology automatically assumes that it is better than the pre-existing technology. Toys and relics from our childhood will bring back that warm and toasty feeling and harkens back to a day when things were less complicated for us. The SNES emulator for my Mac and the All-Stars game are proof that I participate in this phenomena without being aware of it. I am eager to see if I continue to do so now that I am aware that I seek out remediated artifacts that take me back to my childhood memories. One thing is for certain, Gin and I are against this new version of the Lite-Brite and I will definitely not be purchasing one for myself or for any kids in my life!