Game Daze

It's time for GameStop's annual Game Days celebration, where they try to shell off a lot of overstocked games by offering up to half off selected titles. I picked up some old ones, including Namco Museum Virtual Arcade for the 360 and Final Fantasy II for the PSP for $15 and $10, respectively.

I like old games. They were simple, they never tried to do too much at once, and you didn't feel bad about setting them down for the night to get some sleep. Yet, they can still be tremendously addictive, especially if you're just a few points shy of the top of the leaderboards. When the first Rock Band came out, I got up to #6 on the Bass Score Duel leaderboards. When you're that close to the top, you make sure you don't lose. If your phone rings, you ignore it. If someone trys to get your attention, you say, "HEY I HAVE A 12X MULTIPLIER HOLD ON I'LL TALK TO YOU IN A MINUTE!" In Call of Duty, if you get shot, you still have a chance to come back and win the match. When you're plucking your fake bass strings, you can't miss. One wrong note and you can lose the song, and then you've wasted hours of work climbing the boards, 1 TrueSkill point at a time. On Rock Band, you didn't know how many hours you had wasted, or how many matches you had played. You knew your TrueSkill score, and your rank on the national leaderboards. Get suckered in, and it's hard to get free.

Everyone wants to be the best.