Getting a new game sucks today. Back in my day, we had booklets to read by street light on the drive home from Toys ‘R Us. You popped the game in, and if your room was clean, you were ready to rock. No console updates. No installing files to disk. No downloading game updates. Just you, your shiny new game, and a soda.

On that note, I finally grabbed Red Dead Redemption II. If it ever finishes installing, I hope it is as good as everyone says. Update: it took 80 minutes to install fully.

A more positive note, some of the better new game memories I have:

  • Metal Gear Solid (Sony PlayStation): I remember getting the PS1 without any games for Christmas and then having to wait a month until getting one for my birthday. Thankfully, Sony included a sweet sampler with the intro to Metal Gear Solid, along with the first bits of Spyro and MediEvil. When I finally got it, my mom made me clean my room first. Let me tell you, I’d never cleaned that room so fast before. I still remember being stuck on the cyborg ninja for days, and how great it felt to finally kick his ass 10 mins before lights out.
  • Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (Sega Genesis): This was probably the first game I remember waiting to come out. It was also the first game I bought myself. I dutifully called every toy store in town and gave them my entire name and address before asking if they had Sonic 3 for sale and at what price. Ah, kids on the phone. I remember being blown away by the first levels when I tried it for the first time. I also remember spending an entire Saturday filling out the 6 save slots with 100% complete games, just to say I could. Sadly, the battery in the cartridge died and it stopped saving games. I was never able to get it fixed.
  • Starflight (Sega Genesis): This is a game most of my gamer buddies have never heard of. I actually wasn’t big into it when I first got it. It wasn’t until after I’d gotten bored of Sonic, Road Rash, and Desert Strike that I finally moved on to the one last game I had at the time. What finally sucked me in, was the game manual. It was about 200 pages and included a small novella in the form of a log book from the previous captain of the game’s ship. I must have put hundreds of hours into different attempts to complete Starflight. And I read that book at least 20 times until it had a tattered cover. If I could get one piece of my gaming stuff back, it would definitely be the Starflight manual.
  • Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis): I don’t remember actually getting the game. I do remember struggling to beat Sonic 1, and my dad telling me to keep at it and he’d buy me the 2nd copy when I finished. I spent weeks trying. When I finally did it, I called my dad at work and was ready for him to come pick me up and bring me to the mall.