Bob Colayco Associate Editor

Now Playing: Ninja Gaiden (Xbox), Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC), Battlefield Vietnam (PC) Anticipating: World of Warcraft (PC), LOTR: The Battle for Middle-Earth (PC), NBA Ballers (Xbox), Sly 2: Band of Thieves (PS2), Pikmin 2 (GC), Getting to play SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash for the first time

Going Back in Time

I consider myself a lifelong gamer, but I never had the chance to own some of the major consoles from over the years. I owned an NES but never a Sega Master System. I graduated up to an SNES from there but never owned a Genesis. I've had every version of Game Boy and even a Lynx but never a Game Gear. After the SNES, I picked up a Nintendo 64 but relied on friends and roommates to get a good taste of the PlayStation. Ditto for the Dreamcast, which I had a decent amount of experience with but only owned briefly. It wasn't until the current generation that I owned every major console, so I have some holes to fill in. I've been tempted to purchase entire collections of some of these old consoles off of eBay and craigslist, but I have successfully fought off the impulses. Until last week, that is.

A brief era of gaming that I missed at the turn of the century.

One of my character flaws is that I peruse bargain sites every night just to look at deals. I've maintained the fortitude to avoid leaping at $600 Pentium 4 Dell laptops and other big-ticket items. But browsing video game deals sites like VGTalk and CheapAssGamer is pushing me farther down the road to financial ruin. Last week, CAG pointed me to a site that was selling a NeoGeo Pocket Color system, bundled with six games--Samurai Shodown 2, King of Fighters R-2, Fatal Fury: First Contact, Neo Turf Masters, Metal Slug First Mission, and Pac-Man--all for the low, low price of $50, shipped! I went ahead and added in a few other games: SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash, Faselei!, and Metal Slug Second Mission. I'm actually not much of a fighting game fan, so I'll probably eBay off those fighting games if I can make a decent amount on them and defray a little bit of the cost. But still, this was an impulse purchase, and for that I place partial responsibility on Frank Provo and his unbelievably detailed History of SNK feature.

There's something strange about buying an old console, years after its retail shelf life has expired. As of this writing, I haven't yet received my NGPC package, but I'm extremely excited--I feel almost the same way I did the first time I brought home all my other consoles. It's like a brand-new world is about to open up to me! I remember how much some of my coworkers at my old publication played Card Fighter's, and I've also heard many great things about Faselei! and the Metal Slug series. Perhaps if the system grows on me, I'll try some of the other games, like Baseball Stars (which I played obsessively on the NES).

I've heard that Faselei! is like Advance Wars on steroids. Sounds good to me!

I suppose the purpose of all this rambling is to point out that even for a professional who has covered the industry for years, there's always something different to explore in this medium. There are collectors out there who own almost every console you can think of, but have they really played all of them or at least a good cross section of games on all the platforms they own? I can't imagine that would be the case, unless they don't work a full-time job and have no friends. I find it astounding that in this era of three major consoles, a major handheld, and PC gaming, that some of our readers would post that they can't find anything interesting to play. We've never had so many choices before, but if what's new today doesn't excite you, maybe you should try going back in time a bit to see if something from the past catches your fancy.