Cycles

I go in weird cycles where I end up revisiting my favorite games of years gone by. I've played through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past maybe five or six times now, and this is my third time playing Final Fantasy V. Viewtiful Joe, We <3 Katamari, several of the Mario games, and SSX 3. And a couple more (lots more on PC), I guess. DragonRealms, of course.

I don't know what it is: I know the stories, and I've sought ought most of the secrets. The mechanics of these games still linger in my consciousness, examples, I suppose, of what a game should be. They're sort of the archetypes, to me, of genres: epic action-adventure, JRPG, brawler, dunno what to call Katamari, platformer, snowboard game, text-based RPG.

We all have these sort of past joys that we tend to revisit, I think. Rereading the books you loved the first time is fun after a few years; Lolita is infinitely re-readable, for instance, even when one has the tale practically memorized (yo). I recently re-read the Harry Potter series. It was as fun the second time as it was the first. I wonder sometimes if I truly revisit these things because I still like them, or simply because I used to love them. I'm curious as to whether the nostalgia of youth casts a rosy light on otherwise normal things: certainly LoZ:ALTTP is an excellent game, but why do I count it better than Ocarina of Time? Why is Perfect Dark higher on my list than Goldeneye? Why does FFV beat FFVII (actually, VII wasn't that great)?

It doesn't really matter. I still enjoy them again on this go-round, and that's all that counts. Still, I wonder...

By my hand,
~Michael Akerman