My past just came back to me so hard and so fast with all this time off. It's kind of scary and awesome at the same time. Going though your past can bring up all these memories whether it's good or bad. In this case (or several cases) this has been very positive. Really, when your reminiscing about this media it is always has a positive result. You don't really remember the bad aspects of your childhood when you focus on gaming. Maybe it's because it's our choice on what we play and how we rate a game's quality when were older compared to when you were young. Is that why we rate games from the past as the greatest games of all time instead of every holiday release because of it's superior presentation and gameplay? Who knows, maybe because we have less to worry about in our youth then now. All it was were you and the games and oh boy, the games I played in my youth came back to me with a heavy load...
 
First things first: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.
 
I recently bought ' Unreal Tournament 2004' for an awesome price of $20 AU and whether or not it's because of it being a recently installed game or because it's on an external hard drive or the my machine sucks but the load times are extremely long. Like 5 - 10 mins long. So what I have been doing during these down times is playing my recently rediscovered ' Nintendo 64' and with that I have been playing 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'. It has seem to have ended up that I have been playing more Ocarina then I have of UT2004. I don't know if you know this but Ocarina is mathematically and with my opinion the greatest game ever made. It's been about 11 years since it came out way back in 1998 and still to this day is have surpassed every game ever since. It's still an absolute blast to play as the gameplay, story and even the graphics never get old. Going through the Great Deku tree has never gotten old no matter how many times I have went though it. In the only media in which older products can be harder to play and overall less enjoyable it's astounding that Ocarina has stood up for so long during the hard test that is time.
 
With that my big ball of nostalgia began rolling down the hill...
 
A friend of mine was selling his Playstation with a bunch of games for about $30 and with those titles came two games which I never really played but is almost as revered as Ocarina and they are ' Final Fantasy VII' and ' Metal Gear Solid'. Now these two franchises have not had a had lot of exposure to me. The Final Fantasy's I have only play were 'IX' which I played and enjoyed but didn't finished and barely remembered it and finally X-2 which I never want to play again. Metal Gear is more positive as I went though ' Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater' which is the closest game that has made me cry, I barely scraped though the ending with a dry face.
 
Obviously these franchises alone made the Playstation back in the early 90's and is one of the revered series in the media. But back then I was very indifferent to them. I had to go on for about 10 years being told "Final Fantasy VII made me cry" and "Metal Gear Solid's Psycho Mantis is the great boss fight ever" until I got my hands on it. The result of my crusade into the Playstation's greatest hits has been mixed. Final Fantasy VII is a great game today and even though one of my most hated concepts of any game is random encounters VII still manged to make me stay with it's engaging story and deep combat system. Metal Gear on the other had been a bit more negative. Don't get me wrong. the story and cinematography is quite good with good voice acting and a great sense of humor but I can't shake the feeling that I'm just a floating camera watching Solid Snake rather then controlling him. Sure I can run around and move but I still can't do things I would of done in the situation and the main fault of that is the camera. Yes indeed I have been hit by the thought of 'I have played too many modern stealth games that I can't play it in a fixed camera angle'. Metal Gear Solid 3 had roughly the same problem but that was soothed by the first person shooting view which is easier taking out guards. I don't know I just can't see myself playing the rest of MGS (mainly because I'm stuck on that fucking dickhead in the tank). Maybe I should play more fixed camera games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill.
 
Another non-game related nostalgic crash course was unfortunately Pokemon. No, I'm not talking about the games (which I only played Yellow or Blue or Red, fuck I don't remember) I'm talking about the kids TV show which took over my life for about 3 years. I don't know how it happened, I don't know why it happened but Monday I was reading Pokemon wiki pages, watching about 5 episodes and watched the 2nd movie, Pokemon: The Movie 2000 for a collective of 9 HOURS. Jesus Christ, that almost as bad as reading Persona 4 fan fiction for 6 hours. I just don't know what the hell happened but somehow I ended about with the original theme song on my iTunes, made a midi cover of said theme song in FL Studio and almost bought Season 1 on DVD on eBay. I needed help which was somewhat achieved with a combined effort by Daft Punk, Call of Duty 4 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2.
 
Hopefully this nostalgia free fall will make me end up buying a Playstation 2 (and playing Persona 4) and me watching The Mask.