Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

by gSathe

I grew up with eight bit consoles. The first game of Contra I played, I honestly said wow. I’ve still got fond memories of those days, and I still have old DOS games with me, hoarded for these many years and run with much careful tweaking, which leave me grinning like an idiot.

And for the longest time, I believed that all a handheld console could offer me was a watered down version of that same experience, trading on my nostalgia and slapping on a little paint to cover up the fact that there’s a tiny screen with strangely placed buttons in my hand in an oversized gadget which will power down in half the time it’ll take for me to start to enjoy myself.

Then again, the bus is crowded, autorickshaws bounce too much and I’m never on the metro train. So… Should I sit next to a proper, powerful, comfortable set up with a big screen and a gamepad which blessed God fits, and fiddle with a handheld?

Then I quit my old job and decided to travel around a lot. And what with airfares being so cheap now, I started to spend a lot of my life in planes. I mean sure, you can read on a plane, but you know what, there are always some times when you don’t feel like reading. After a point, specially on the long flights with the squealing kids two rows behind you, you just can’t think, or take in what’s written in front of you.

And so, I thought to myself, I want a handheld. Never mind that the last handheld I owned was so aged that it only made faint beeps and the display was squiggly black lines on a green screen which became invisible once you took it outside. So I read about this and that and battery life and about availability of titles and thought, what I want is a DS Lite. In the shiny black finish. And the one good thing about living in India is that it’s easy enough to get your hands on whatever you want. I read again and again about people living in America struggling to get their hands on one of these babies, and I think about how simple it was for me. Just one trip to the market and then I say, hmm, no, not that one, the other one looks better, ooh, that’s a nice colour too…

And I walked out and I thought that my travel troubles are taken care of, and that I will have happier flights from now on. On the way back home, sitting in an auto-rickshaw that bounced me like a trampoline, I started to explore the world of Animal Crossing. If you’d told me a week earlier that you were obsessing over which wallpaper looked best with the flooring I’d fitted into a tiny house which doesn’t even exist, I’d have laughed. After I started with Animal Crossing - I’d likely have had a few earnest suggestions for you.

And that’s when tragedy struck, again. I ran out of money, and realised I had to get a job. Which also meant that I had to stop jet-setting around the country demolishing my savings, and stay put in Delhi.

For days, weeks now, my life in Animal Crossing has lain neglected. I might play a bit of Metros lying in bed, when I’m feeling too lazy to climb out and run something else, but Animal Crossing needed me to be serious. And so I find myself making excuses to ride the Metro, making trips I really didn’t need to, and grinning stupidly at the screen while looking for a fish for a dog, or something equally important.

I’ve learned that the game experience is just as rewarding, and with the touch interface sometimes more so, and that the games aren’t just short and silly but often as long and as involving as titles on the “real” consoles. And I’ve picked up a PSP, and I’m going to broaden my horizons some more now.